Conkers are a reflection of the glory of God By Sr Tamsin Mary Geach
- Oct 9, 2014
- 2 min read
If you are around in Cambridge at the moment, you may have noticed a wonderful crop of horse chestnuts. I find them irresistible, and the people driving to or from work in Cambridge are regularly diverted by the spectacle of a nun in full habit picking up conkers.
A few thoughts: Conkers are beautiful. I remember a priest friend of mine, a man of severely practical mind, looking at them and saying in an exasperated way ‘They are so nice – but what are they for?’ Well, apart from making new horse chestnut trees and serving as toys for children, not much – though I have heard that horses eat them, and that they are quite good as an alternative to mothballs, but basically the vast majority of conkers appear and then rot away, and serve for no greater good than that – briefly- they are beautiful. However, all that is beautiful is a reflection of the mind of God.
I asked a Dominican once if in heaven we would be able to see God with our eyes. He said that not, since God is not that kind of being, but that as well as seeing the glorified Body of Our Risen Lord, we would also be able to see the reflection of the mind of God in every created thing. I tried to look at things in this way for a few hours. I don’t know how well I succeeded, but I did end up feeling a bit drunk!
Some things are hard to see as beautiful – slugs, for example, or spiders, while others are so blindingly beautiful that one is almost swallowed up by it – but conkers are accommodated to our littleness, and have this special feature: When you open up a conker shell, you are looking on a beauty that God created simply and specially for you. No-one else ever before opened that shell, nor will ever again see the particular loveliness of the freshly opened whiteness inside the shell , the shining surface of the skin of the conker, nor feel the cool hardness against the fingers. This was an individual act of love by God, directed at you. So enjoy.
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