Only Delight

Peter Binoit. (1615). Still Life of Grapes and Peaches on a Porcelain Bowl.

“He creates in a mystery. What He holds intimately and contemporaneously in being, acts, nonetheless, for itself. The secular is not the sacred. Creation exists in its own right, is no parable, no front, no Punch and Judy show in which God plays all the parts, but a vast and raucous meeting where each thing acts out its nature, shouts I am I, as if no other thing had being. The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms; wine is in order to wine: Things are precious before they are contributory. It is a false piety that walks through creation looking only for lessons which can be applied somewhere else. To be sure, God remains the greatest good, but, for all that, the world is still good in itself. Indeed, since He does not need it, its whole reason for being must lie in its own goodness; He has no use for it; only delight.”

—Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb