From My Nature Journal: Making Sense of Things

The Bible speaks of things that are a ‘delight to the eye,’ a phrase that’s a good description of my experience of natural beauty. Yes, delight is in the mind’s eye and not the actual one. And yes, the first thing mentioned in the Bible utilizing that curious phrase was the description of the infamous forbidden fruit, not a great beginning for the idiom. But thankfully it’s uphill from there.

Nevertheless, the phrase effectively conveys the ethos of beauty, the privilege of seeing such splendor that it can almost ache. It is interesting to me that beauty can evoke such a sensation, not quite pain, but close, such loveliness that ‘it hurts.’ One lets out the same kind of “Oh…” as when they’ve just bitten their tongue! Only it doesn’t hurt like that, it’s delight… great word.

But sight is not the only sense that evokes delight in nature. Think of the delight of the other senses...

What about the smell of rain? Or the fragrance of lilacs or lily of the valley in May? Of desert sage? Of camp coffee? Or of hot sap in a northwoods pine?

What about the touch of warm sand on just bared feet? Or the feel brushing your finger across a thistle bloom, perhaps a sensation made all the more wonderful by the thorny visual effect of the rest of the plant? What of a small child’s grasp of an adult thumb? Or of a presenting breeze on a sultry day?

What about the sound of a small brook while picnicking? Or the whisper of wind through conifer boughs? The evensong of a thrush on an early summer night? Or the sound of distant but approaching thunder?

What about the taste of a handful of plump, wild raspberries? Or a firm apple on a break from an uphill hike? What of the almost eye-popping sweetness of honey, or maple syrup, or beloved brother Greg’s blackberry jam? Or even of a simple hotdog cooked over a campfire?

Yes, natural delights are not to the eye only. I have often thought, with my love of nature, what a sadness it would be to lose my sight. But the more I think of it, the more I realize there would still be much to enjoy.

Sight, smell, touch. sound and taste?

…Jesus said, “Blessed are the eyes that see the things you see…” (Luke 10:23)

…We are a fragrance of Christ… (2 Corinthians 2:15)

Jesus said to Thomas, “Touch me… and believe.”  (John 20:27)

They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze… (Genesis 3:8)

Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord. (Psalm 34:8)

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

revised for my blog October 2 2015

QOTM...*: Ted Loder

(*Quote of the Month)

We’re back on our little acre in the woods. Here in the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I cannot say that it is easier to experience the ‘thin places’ of which the classic spiritual writers speak, those moments of greater spiritual translucence when God’s presence seems more palpable. Let’s just say we are always the more ready and eager to seek them out in these periods when we are less ‘…cumbered with a load of care…’ in the words of the old hymn; there are fewer loads to care about or preoccupy us here.

So when I come across a great quote that reminds me of this truth, surrounded as we are here with nothing but God’s natural beauty, my spirit is arrested, tugged quickly to a slower pace as a bungee cord attached behind me to my belt loop, or as sand in shallow water catches and slows a canoe. I share this blessing with you who also find in the natural world a constant or at 

least regular reminder of the graces of God.

…At certain moments

     when sunlight strikes just right,

     or stars pierce the darkness just enough,

     or clouds roll around just so,

     or snow kisses the world into quietness,

everything is suddenly transparent…

and something in me is pure enough

     for an instant

to see your kingdom in a glance,

and so to praise you in a gasp –

     quick,

          then gone,

               but it is enough.

This excerpt is from the poetry collection Guerillas of Grace by Methodist minister Ted Loder, quoted extensively in Ruth Haley Barton’s Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership (a great book, by the way). What do you think? Can you relate to it? There are moments when I’m so caught up by a serendipitous snatch of God’s beauty that my eyes widen, a lump rises in my throat and I feel I could walk through a portal straight into heaven. As Loder says, it’s quick but so worth it. How about you?

~~ RGM, July 17 2015

QOTM...*: Thomas Merton

(*Quote of the Month)

I am surrounded by a beauty that can never belong to me. But this generates within me an unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things, for they are pure and perfect and belong to God and are mirrors of his beauty. He is mirrored in it all…

~~Thomas Merton               

Years ago when I was music director at a Bible camp, we sang a folk song called “Have You Seen Jesus, My Lord?” Written by John Fischer around 1970, it was sung long into the 80’s in churches, too, was even a well-loved song used in many Christian renewal movements such as Cursillo and Lay Witness Mission. The song makes the point that we see the very face of Christ when we can finally learn to recognize him in another person. That is not dissimilar to concepts Jesus taught, after all. And in the very same way, we see the ‘face’ of God in what God has created, and the old song spoke of that as well.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was a Trappist monk. Trappists are known for their commitment to silence in daily practice, a habit difficult to understand in our wordy culture. (They're also known for their beer!) Yet Merton’s choice to speak through his writing was not a violation of his vows, but one encouraged by his superiors. An activist and prolific writer, he was also a thoughtful observer of nature, finding sustained solace in the forest environs of his home, the Abbey of our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky. As a result, he often wove contemplation on the natural world into his writing, speaking and teaching. If I recall correctly, I got this quote from a collection of his nature writings called When the Trees Say Nothing.

Indeed, God is mirrored in all God has made. Most profound of all, we are made in God’s very image – able also to love beauty, and be creative, loving, resourceful, powerful and wise.

In the Bible translation known as The Message, Romans 1:20 states it this way:

The basic reality of God is plain enough: open your eyes, and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such cannot see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of God’s divine being…

So whether it’s the songwriter, the Bible or Thomas Merton, there is no doubt in my mind: they all get it correctly.

~~RGM, May 15, 2015

POTM...*: From Epiphytes to Chelonioidytes

(*Photo[s] of the Month)

OK, what do epiphytes and chelonioidytes have in common? Actually, not much, except that I encountered them both during some recent hiking in Florida!

Epiphytes are also known as ‘air plants,’ plants that can attach themselves to just about anything, from tree bark to power lines, and receive all the moisture and nutrients they need from the air, sun and rain. Obviously, they tend to be more prolific in warmer and more humid environments. Chelonioidytes are a family of sea turtles, and though I didn’t actually see the creatures themselves, I was out at sunrise and was the first to see their tracks on the beach, fresh from the lady having laid a clutch of eggs the night before.

Florida is covered with epiphytes, from bromeliads (that can also be seen as houseplants or planted in landscaping) to orchids to ferns to the ubiquitous Spanish Moss hanging from pine and oak. My favorite is the Cardinal Wild Pine, pictured here twice, a strangely-named bromeliad with a spiky red flower. They were prolific in a bald cypress swamp, the boardwalk of which was part of a hike I made in the DuPuis Natural Management Area in western Martin County. The plant can be two feet broad and the flower two feet tall and more.

Over on the coast, I went nearly every morning to my favorite place in the area, Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge on the northern half of Jupiter Island. March and April is nesting time for Florida’s three kinds of sea turtles – loggerheads, greens and leatherbacks. I would typically say that these two separate sets of new tracks were made by loggerheads, by far the most abounding genus of the three to hit the beaches there. The only odd thing was that the particular mama in the first photo was enormous, much larger than the average loggerhead: the track of the carapace alone being dragged across the sand looked to be about three feet wide, with the flipper tracks extending to nearly six feet. This made me wonder if it was a leatherback, the largest sea turtle, but far more rare and endangered. The turtles come in the night, lay hundreds of eggs, and are gone before the first hint of dawn. Several weeks later, if the nest survives predation, the little hatchlings will look for the light of the moon over the ocean to guide them toward their watery abode. I remember snorkeling in the Pacific one time and seeing a sea turtle ‘in flight.’ What a beautiful sight.

To say the least, natural beauty captures me, and I imagine if you are a regular reader of this blog, the same is true for you. One of my favorite authors is Henri Nouwen, who said in his book Creative Ministry that we must be careful we are not

…like the busy man who walks up to a precious flower and says, “What for God’s sake are you doing here? Can’t you get busy someway?” and then finds himself unable to understand the flower’s response: “I am sorry, sir, but I am just here to be beautiful.”

~~RGM, April 17, 2015

QOTM...*: Augustine of Hippo

(*Quote of the Month)

People travel to wonder at the majestic

height of the mountain, the huge waves

of the sea, the long courses of the rivers,

the vast compass of the ocean, the

circular motion of the stars. Yet they

pass by themselves without wonder.

                                                                                                ~~St. Augustine

People who love nature are sometimes criticized for seeming to value the creation higher than they value persons, whom the Bible says are the crown of God’s creation. On the contrary, the nature lovers I have known have by and large also been lovers of people, and yet it can be true that some do exactly what Augustine says.

The truth? There is nothing more impressive or more remarkable in God’s order than man and woman, girl and boy.

Augustine of Hippo is a saint of the church who lived from 354-430 A.D. Having had a dramatic conversion to the Christian faith from profligacy (I told my Bible study group I’d find some way to use that word this week, so there you have it!), he became one of Christianity’s foremost foundational theologians and an important early philosopher of western culture. His books Confessions and City of God remain two of the most important books in the history of Christianity. And, in the category of odd, he finds himself in Catholic tradition the patron saint of printers, theologians, numerous cities, the alleviation of sore eyes (!), and, maybe having something to do with the eyes thing, of brewers! I don’t know if that includes the brewers from Milwaukee… I’ll leave that clarification to my Sconnie son-in-law and nephew.

Personally, as to the temptation to ‘pass by themselves without wonder,’ I just cannot do that. There are numberless ways in which I am both humbled and undone by my contemplation of the beauty of the human spirit, and by the preciousness of people, not only the familiar ones God has placed most closely into my life, but all the good people with whom I have served, and even the nameless legions I encounter on a busy weekend day in the park or in the rush of a downtown Chicago workday.

So then, just because I can (and because I’m on this subject), I share with you today the wonder of those closest to me, my family. They exemplify for me a counterpoint to Augustine’s words, and testify to the truth of Psalm 136:4 – “…(God) alone does great wonders, for his steadfast love endures forever.” They are, and always will be, a wonder to me.

~~RGM, November 14, 2014

QOTM...*: Robert Franklin Leslie

(*Quote of the Month)

It seems to me that only leaves possess

the secret of a beautiful death.

                                                           

                           ~~Robert Franklin Leslie

Photos taken Sept 28-Oct. 1

Sometimes the simplest little quotes jump right off a page and into my heart. Such is the case with this one. I was cruising along in nature writer Robert Franklin Leslie’s simple little The Bears and I, and was halted by this lovely (and mostly true) reflection. Perhaps it strikes me all the more because I happen to be surrounded as I write by nature’s fall color frenzy going on around me here in the northwoods of Michigan. Maple’s oranges and reds blaze around me, along with oak’s scarlets and russets, and aspen’s, tamarack’s and birch’s golds, all interspersed with the various evergreens of the conifers. I walk the woods these days spellbound by its almost aching beauty, almost asking God with each step what possessed him to even think of creating this astounding display.

So the quote grabs me, “…only leaves possess the secret of a beautiful death.” Yet I must admit it has not been completely true in my experience. As a pastor for many years, I have been able to observe many deaths up close and personal, and some of them have been beautiful as well.

I think of a couple old saints who died during my pastoral tenure in Minnesota. One was Joe, who lived into his upper nineties, a gentle and thoughtful soul who always had candy in his pockets for kids on Sunday mornings. I once asked him what he attributed his longevity to, and he quipped just as fast as a blink, “Well, I like people, and I never eat cold potato salad.” Alrighty then, thought I… I’ll have to remember that one! His death was beautiful, as was the life celebration that followed by those who loved him.

Another beautiful death was Hilda’s. Single and childless all her life, she lived as a constant blessing to others around her, often giving the proverbial shirt off her back. She was fairly poor and lived in a mobile home on the east side, but when I heard the story that, before she gave her church offerings, she regularly laundered and crisply starched and pressed her greenbacks, just to give of her best to her Master, I became a lifelong member of her fanclub. She is one of the first I want to see when I get to heaven. Like Joe, her death was also beautiful – she was ready to go and, a smile on her face, ready to let go.

My own mother’s was another. Wilma also had this way of living a full life in the midst of great simplicity. All of us in the family had this sense of the blessing and goodness not only of her life, but even of the last hard years, and even the manner of her passing. When some of us met with her pastor the day following her death, the pastor’s first words to me were, “I am so sorry.” And I was surprised to find myself saying that it occurred to me that, except for the fact that we would miss Mom greatly, most of us were finding very little in this circumstance to be sorry about: Mom was at peace with God, at peace with the world, and beloved of absolutely everyone who knew her. We all should be so blessed when it is time for each of us to lay it all down.

The arresting beauty of an autumn forest, and the joy it can bring, seems kin to the joy that is expressed in lives and deaths like that of Joe, Hilda and Wilma. Yes, of course, there have been many deaths I have walked alongside that have not been so beautiful, and I suppose that brings me back to my quote of the month. Some deaths can be beautiful, some not. But here in the woods today? Today, everywhere I look I see only loveliness. Talk about ‘finishing well,’ or going out ‘in a blaze of 

                                                     glory!’ Maybe, overall, leaves DO possess the secret after all.

And maybe, just maybe, God whispers through them to us the very same secret, that there can be beauty, even hope, in such a thing as death.

~~RGM, September 29, 2014