From My Nature Journal: The Bible as 'An Outdoor Book'...

With my apology for my frustrating inability to find the time to write lately, I need to get a little assist this week and draw on another Wendell Berry quote I recently ran across.

I’ve just finished a newer book from Zondervan’s Biblical Theology for Life series entitled Creation Care: A Biblical Theology of the Natural World, a 2018 publication by father/son academics Douglas J. Moo and Jonathan A. Moo. It’s pretty good. The book is formatted with many quotable quotes in its margins, and I really liked one by Berry, who has long been one of my faves. Berry, an environmental activist, farmer, poet, essayist and novelist, has appeared in my blog before, one of my heroes. Here’s a link to my first post in which I highlighted him; you can find others through the index tab above, though I confess it has been quite some time since I fully updated my index. I’ll get to that some day.

When Wendell Berry speaks, many Christian environmentalist/naturalist types listen, and he is vastly respected outside the church as well. He’s one of the few voices of faith well known in the larger public sphere who does not embarrass Christians every time he opens his mouth. We need many more of those. I am less familiar with his essays than his fiction and poetry (an FYI shout out for my favorites – one of his poetry collections, A Timbered Choir, and his novel Jayber Crow), but I more often run across quotes from his essays, and value what he says in one about the Bible as a book best read outdoors:

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a ‘hypaethral’ book, such as Thoreau talked about – a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. This is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is turned into grapes.*

Hypaethral. How can you not like a word like that? It’s from the Greek by way of Latin and simply means ‘exposed to the heavens,’ as Berry infers. God’s most awesome cathedral IS outdoors, after all. So it stands to reason that God’s word might best be appreciated there. 

What do you think? I’m reading through the New Testament this fall with several dozen others in our church, so I think I’ll do some of my reading outdoors and see how it feels.

“The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the skies his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make God known.” – Psalm 19:1-2

Get outside.

~~ RGM, October 30 2020 

*Source: Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, Community: Eight Essays (1993)

From My Nature Journal: Where Waters Meet, They Always Flow to the Low Spots

Our little cabin in the big woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula has as its mailing address the small town of Watersmeet. Thirteen miles away, Watersmeet is the nearest town and the place where we pick up our General Delivery mail. Never mind that our place is in a completely different township and county (crazily, even a different time zone!), our mailing address is still Watersmeet, for which we’re grateful. Otherwise we’d probably have to travel at least twice as far to get our mail.

What’s in a name? Well, what might you imagine from a town named Watersmeet? The town sits within the south central Ottawa National Forest, a million vast acres of semi-boreal northern forest; its predominant woodland type is one called Hemlock Hardwood, as the forest is around us, speckled with diverse broadleaf trees (mostly maples, birch and aspens) and conifers (hemlocks, pines, spruces and firs). But I venture to say that this area is also one of the wettest spots in the ol’ USA. Michigan itself is enveloped of course by the Great Lakes, but beyond that, not an insignificant portion of the Ottawa is wetland – lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, marshes and bogs. Some might even disparagingly call part of our area swamps. Frankly, as I tip my hand above, I prefer the term wetlands, or even the more exotic-sounding words -- muskeg, as they say north of the border, or fenland, as they call it across the pond.

Thus, nearly needless to say, it’s fairly wet around there, and that brings us back to Watersmeet and its name. Curiously, somewhere nearby is the confluence of what is called a triple watershed. In that general area, waters will divide and flow three different directions. They’ll flow north to Lake Superior, the largest and most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, and thereby through the Sault and into the rest of the Great Lakes system. Or they will flow south and east to Lake Michigan via the Menominee, and from there, together with water from Lake Superior and all the Great Lakes, will go over Niagara Falls and out the vast St. Lawrence to the prodigious north Atlantic. Finally, other streams will take it south and west to the Wisconsin River, into the mighty Mississippi, and out to the sea via the warm Gulf of Mexico. A triple watershed… Natives and early travelers knew this reality very well, the place where the waters meet, and it dictated their portage routes. If I could find that general area, perhaps I could poke around a bit, spit in three different places, and have it flow with the rest via three vastly different, grand courses to the ocean deeps.

Parenthetically, do you know why it is that water flows at all, unlike most other compounds or elements? Interestingly, it’s because a number of the electrons of a molecule of water, the good old compound H₂O, are in a constant state of paying friendly visits to the molecules next door,

just as those molecules in turn are sharing their electrons with the various molecules of water next to them, and so on. I don’t understand quite how it does that, but it makes the whole thing, as they say, fluid. Amazingly, even some seemingly solid elements can flow, over time, due to gravity or other forces, just nothing as fast as water.

Here’s a no brainer as I get to my point, though: it doesn’t matter where waters meet, as long as there’s somewhere further to flow; water always flows to the low spots. No surprise here, the nature of water is to flow to the next lowest nearby point, if it can, always to somewhere else. That area of Michigan is only one kind of low spot, which is what makes it so wet. But there we are in turn over eight hundred feet above sea level, and the water that doesn’t evaporate must eventually move along to sea level.

Allow me to reiterate. Water flows to the lowest spot. The town of Watersmeet is only that point in a local sense; it must flow elsewhere from there, given the chance.

...It will not flow uphill to the 

haughty spirit, but only downward

to the contrite in spirit...

Did you know God’s Word is also like that, like water? That’s not my idea but God’s. And it also flows only, and thankfully, to our lowest points. It will not flow uphill to the haughty spirit, but only downward to the contrite in spirit, only to the one who is ready and open to receive it from somewhere higher up. Unlike the water near Watersmeet, however, God’s water never evaporates, but remains in constant flowage to where it is allowed. That’s God’s idea, too.

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:10-11)

Be encouraged.

~~ RGM, from an earlier entry in my nature journal,

Adapted for use here February 11, 2016

P. S. And yes, as the signs say, Watersmeet is also the home of the Nimrods; far from its common parlance, the Bible says Nimrod was a mighty hunter warrior...

QOTM...*: John Ackerman

(*Quote of the Month)

Some people simply cannot listen to God in scripture. (They) find God most readily in music or in the outdoors. Contemplation… is paying attention to the reality of God. Whenever we get beyond our own small preoccupations, whenever we have some degree of self-transcendence, whenever we are aware of the reality of God, contemplation has begun. If you are absolutely unable to meet God in your Bible, go outside, listen to music, or do whatever you need to do that puts you in touch with Something More.

~~John Ackerman

I am sometimes asked if I am a ‘contemplative’ or an ‘active;’ those who ask often seem to have a pretty settled definition of what each consists of, a much more settled definition than I possess. If it’s from the contemplative side, some of these persons’ definition of ‘contemplative’ seems to entail such adjectives as reflective, thoughtful and philosophical, yet reserved, sometimes introverted; ‘active,’ in these same persons’ construct, can mean brash, unthoughtful and impetuous, doing without thinking. From the active perspective, many type-A’s see the word ‘contemplative’ as a put-down, characterizing a detached naval-gazer who cannot get things done; these persons can often respect only the take-charge pushers, movers and shovers.

To say the least, I find these definitions simplistically lacking. Frankly, I don’t think the contemplative-active spectrum is an either-or kind of thing. In very broad brushstrokes, an ‘active’ is a doer, a ‘contemplative’ a thinker, but this does not mean the one does not possess the ability to do the other. And besides, the doer may be doing absolutely nothing that reflects a Christian worldview or advances God’s blessing, nor the thinker thinking anything of the attributes of God and God’s call to be a servant to his world.

Frankly, I don’t think the contemplative-active

spectrum is an either-or kind of thing…

I’ve been an extrovert all my life, it’s just the way I’m wired. But I will never forget what one of my accountability partners, a quiet man, said years ago, when I told him that I was anticipating an upcoming silent retreat. He blurted, “You’ll never be able to do it. It’ll drive you crazy.” Needless to say, I found him wrong.

I guess the point I am getting at, especially for those of us who are extroverts or chronic doers, is that a little bit of contemplation can go a long way in broadening our own experience of and service to God. John Ackerman -- pastor, spiritual director, and author of Spiritual Awakening -- drills down on the fact that even the Bible may not always take us to a place of peaceful meditation where we meet God as the strength of our souls or hear his call to act. Do we give thought about what else might take us there, like music or nature? Or do we just feel guilty because our Bible reading seems dry or academic? The key, as he says, is to pay attention to the kinds of things that bring us a deeper awareness of the Almighty, and more eagerly pursue these things as an additional spiritual practice.

Try it. Something More may be found.

~~RGM, September 28, 2014

From My Nature Journal: No Big Deal?

One of my kids is studying to become a nurse. If I recall correctly, among Jarrett’s very first classes was one on molecular biology, starting very small. That makes complete sense to me as the foundation point for the study of disease and medicine.

I guess I have come to believe it is one of the basic rules of nature observation as well: get small. Getting small, getting low, never ceases to amaze me in my study of the natural sciences. A square foot of earth becomes a veritable and vast jungle when observed up close. Usually we are more impressed with large things – grand canyons, majestic mountains, tall buildings, redwoods and sequoias, record snowfalls, large stadiums, sweeping vistas, broad rivers. But what of the small? Like a tiny, jewel-like crystal? The trifling fiddlehead fern sprout destined to be a yard wide? The veins of a leaf, the geometric form of molecules or DNA, the myriad colors of grains of sand, a head of wheat, a snowflake, a common guppy, the half-inch cone of a one-hundred-foot hemlock?

There is a wonder, a magnificence, in God’s creation that defies adjectives, indeed that sometimes even defies language at all. Be things large or small, I routinely struggle in these essays to describe the splendors and intricacies I see or the lessons I learn. However, it is interesting that I often find richer and more faithful curricula in paying attention to the small or commonplace things rather than the mighty. (Click here for one of my earliest blogposts last year on the significance of seemingly insignificant things.)

It is almost counterintuitive, because in life and work I have accustomed myself to look for broader pictures. Even in photography, Gail has much more of an eye (patience, more likely!) for macrophotography than I do. I’m the one who tends to compose landscapes, panoramas and scenery; she will usually be the only one of us to get down on the ground on her stomach and elbows and take close-ups of bugs, flowers and whatnot. Doubtless there is symbol there, she with her details and me with bigger picture things; we make for a good team.

Photo Notes…

1. Gail and I thought the larger shell was small

when we picked it up, perhaps a half inch in

diameter. Then we looked more closely at the

shells strewn on the Florida beach and

spotted the smaller one, maybe 1/8 inch at

most. (We’ll often use one of our rings in a

photo for size comparison purposes.)

2. This brilliantly-colored little leaf hopper is

maybe 3/16 inch long, and makes the grains of

sand seem as boulders. A question for my

entomologist friends Kirk or Bill: what kind is it?

It’s from Michigan’s U.P.

3. Note the spiral beauty in a tiny cactus seen in

central Colorado, barely larger than Gail’s wedding rings.

4. This little hermit crab character might be one

the coolest photos of something small I have ever

seen. It was taken by our daughter Sarah and

son-in-law BJ on the Oregon coast, amazing.

Jesus said in Luke 16:10, “Who is faithful in small things I will make faithful in much.” It was David, the runt of the litter, who became Israel’s greatest king; ‘gravitationally-challenged’ Zacchaeus whose home the Savior chose to honor; sparrows nesting in the temple’s eaves that caught the attention of the Psalmist; little children that Christ challenged us to exemplify; Joseph, the little brother, who ends up saving his family from famine; the tongue in James 3, likened to the small rudder of a large ship or a small flame that starts a forest fire; Gideon’s army whom God assured that smaller would be better; the infinitesimal ant that provided a lesson to the wise writer of the Proverbs; even God himself who was incarnated to us as a small baby in a small way in a small place.

So, Lord, teach me always to look carefully -- high and low, large and small -- for sightings of your graces and demonstrations of your truths.

~~ RGM, from an earlier journal entry,

adapted for my blog June 3, 2014

P.S. I remember from my youth seeing a video that demonstrated the common frontiers of vastness and minutiae; it was called “Powers of Ten.” Press here to check it out if you have several more minutes; it’s pretty impressive.