From My Nature Journal: Holy Ground

I’ve heard it said that one’s time on earth is filled with glory when one can look at everything as if they were seeing it for the very first time or the very last. Thus is a naturalist’s life filled with joy, but I think the same might be true for anyone who lives by this philosophy.

Gail and I were walking late one May evening just before sunset in rural Coupeville’s Rhododendron Park, a little-known, county-owned gem with towering Douglas firs and enormous coastal rhododendrons, some twenty and thirty feet tall as they stretch up and out for pockets of sunlight beneath the dense conifer canopy. The park has been one of our favorite mid-spring walks, being as it is just chock full of Washington’s ‘rhodie’ state flower.

Our attention was caught by what at a distance appeared to be a stump on fire, and it resolved itself as we approached into a hollow trunk remnant just coincidently catching the very last of a direct sun ray from the west, standing out in the forest darkness. It became for us almost a literal ‘burning bush,’ a gift of God’s grace, and provided yet another reminder that all of God’s masterful creation is holy ground. 

…One’s time on earth is filled with glory when one

can look at everything as if they were  seeing

it for the very first time or the very last.

…There the angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.” When the LORD saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied. “Do not come any closer,” the LORD warned. “Take off your sandals, for you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your fathers —the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” When Moses heard this, he covered his face because he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3:2-6)

~~ RGM, July 15, 2021

QOTM...*: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

(*Quote of the Month)

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God.

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

The rest sit ‘round it and pluck blackberries.

~~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1856,               

From the Poem Aurora Leigh             

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was a 19th Century British poet with great influence on both sides of the Atlantic. An outspoken proponent of key social issues in England and the United States, such as the abolition of slavery, and support for women's rights and child labor laws, Barrett Browning's overall work transcended her prolific poetry. Still, both her social conscience and her writing were deeply influenced by her strong Christian faith, believing that Christianity itself was essentially the 'glorified poetry' of God. She became the wife of poet Robert Browning, six years her junior, long after her own career and wide popularity had been established.

Often including literary images in her writing that evoke her love for nature, she may have been influenced by the early stirrings of the Transcendentalist Movement in America, though her initial work preceded it by some years. The quote is taken from her poem Aurora Leigh, in which she unfolds the story of a strong woman writer whose experience roughly parallels her own; of course, the quote also draws an allusion to the Biblical account of Moses at the burning bush, with the character and author inferring that God's presence is more available to us in nature than we often comprehend. 

~~ RGM, May 30, 2014