From My Nature Journal: A Walk in the Woods and a Missing Piece in Christian Discipleship

I was fortunate last week to serve as program director of a week-long retreat experience for pastors in our denomination, a retreat we call “Deeper in Christ.” Intended for our clergy in a season of discernment, in need of rest, or simply looking for quality, guided quiet time with God, we do a couple of these a year through the generosity of the Lilly Foundation, and our venue this time was one of our favorites, St. John’s University and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota. We had a great week together.

New England has nothing up on Central Minnesota this time of year, and the fall colors were spectacular, even deepening over the several days we were there. In such a setting, and with the warm and inviting weather we experienced, we urged retreatants and staff alike to get out and enjoy the sanctuary of God’s creation every opportunity they could. St. Johns’ property includes vast hardwood and coniferous forests, oak savanna, prairies, wetlands (some complete with boardwalks for up-close inquiry), and gorgeous riparian habitat around a large northwoods lake. Trails completely traverse the property, and one can walk or hike numerous routes without ever stepping foot on the same terrain twice. Wildlife abounds -- deer, squirrels, raccoons, eagles, great blue herons, and songbirds and waterfowl of many kinds. I even nearly stumbled upon a small black bear shortly after dusk one evening. I must say that I always enjoy seeing a bear on a trail, but especially when it is running away from me rather than towards me. 

Benedictine hospitality is also stellar, what with their rule of receiving guests as one would receive Christ. It is one of the things that make this location one of the top three or four retreat centers in our rotation. Even the architecture of the guesthouse takes full advantage of the natural beauty, with large picture windows, patios and terraces overlooking woods and water views. Fall color? In various coniferous greens along with the deciduous reds, yellows, oranges and golds of the hardwoods, it is truly a varied palette. And the trees? There are red and white pine, even some jack, red and sugar maple, white birch, poplar, cottonwood, red and white oak, black and blue spruce, hemlock, ironwood, balsam fir, tamarack, eastern white cedar and willow, let alone many smaller species -- but just as colorful an assortment – such as dogwood, alder and a nearly breathtaking sumac. 

One late afternoon, several of us staff went out to walk a trail together before the dinner hour. We all were smitten by beauty upon beauty as we navigated the trail up and down through its varying topography, and my dear friend and sister in Christ Debbie turns to me and says, “Rick, how is it that we appreciate so much the beautiful diversity of a forest and yet struggle so much in our culture to appreciate and see the beauty of human diversity?” Debbie has been a respected leader for many years in our denomination in the area of Christian formation, and one of her many specialties has been justice ministries as we have worked to pursue a missing piece of evangelical discipleship, that of racial righteousness and reconciliation. An African-American, she recruited me many years ago to help resource this important work among our pastors and churches, and it has been one of the most meaningful labors of my career, and Debbie one of my most beloved mentors. She continued, “I sit on the guesthouse deck or in my room and treasure the beauty of diversity displayed before my eyes, and I ask, ‘Why? Why is it so hard in the human realm?’”

What an important question. Why indeed? 

There’s no question as to whether nature thrives in diversity. It always has. Even in cultivated settings, a large rose garden of the same hue of red hardly captures the beauty of one with a variety of colors. In fact any garden with all the same flower, say, yellow lilies, scarcely captures the senses like a garden with varying textures, colors, sizes and shapes. Even a basket of mixed fruits portrays a greater attraction than a bowl of green grapes. And then I think about farming practices and what we call our economies of scale that result in vast monocultures, whether Midwestern corn or overseas palm oil plantations. These all end up requiring pesticides and fertilizing chemicals to replenish the soil with what would be produced naturally if the culture were more diverse. Now I can’t go far on this subject because I know very little about farming, but the point is made. Nature thrives in diversity.

...How is it that we appreciate so much the beautiful diversity

of a forest and yet struggle so much in our culture to 

appreciate and see the beauty of human diversity?

Yet forests and gardens and farming are one thing. Cultural diversity is completely another. The challenges of forestry and agriculture, though very important in the realm of creation care (another oft-missed piece in Christian discipleship), usually seem infinitely simpler than the racial challenges we face. And yet the reason I write this blog is because I find, again and again, that nature has very important things to teach us, and that what it teaches is confirmed over and over in the Bible. God’s word could not be clearer than it is on the beauty of the human family -- all people -- created in God’s very image. 

So it’s still early enough in the fall that there is a LOT of color out there. What are called ‘leafers’ or ‘leaf-peepers’ are out in droves, as usual, whether visiting the beauty of the northeast or northwoods, the aspen golds of Colorado, the diverse majesty of the Appalachians, or the western larch’s flaming yellows in the Northern Rockies. Do this for me: next time you’re appreciating fall color somewhere, say a prayer of appreciation for human diversity and for a personal commitment to racial reconciliation, a critically missing piece in Christian discipleship. Then act on that prayer.

Get outside.

~~ RGM, October 17, 2024

From My Nature Journal: The Hard Work Yet to be Done

Life is physical.

Speaking personally and vulnerably, this has seemed especially so to me with arthritis recently flaring up in practically every joint of my body these last couple of months!

But as a nature observer, one of the times that the physicality of life seems most pronounced to
me is at the change of seasons, and, though there are four changes annually in northern climes, it’s the change from summer to fall that astounds me the most. Whether it’s the eye-popping delight of green trees turning red, gold and purple here in the northwoods of Michigan, the taste of a good crisp caramel apple with peanuts, the smell of smoked fish or burning leaves (which have some similarities!), the honking of chevron after chevron of Canada geese heading south, or the tingle of early morning air already in the 30’s, the five senses alone declare the physicality of life. And this is to say nothing of that sixth sense: something in us actually sometimes senses the very physicality of change. 

And yet life is also spiritual. 

I wouldn’t blog these thoughts over these nearly nine years past if I did not believe this was so. Most of you who share these musings with me also find in nature a simple and beautiful pathway to God, though some of you might not describe it in quite that same way. God has created a lovely universe. The ancient Psalmist said it very well: “Your works, God, are wonderful, and my soul knows that very well (Psalm 139:14).” Yet, while holding precious God’s creation and committing to its care as its responsible ‘keepers,’ or stewards, it is of course not creation that we revere but the Creator. 

To me, these two simple declarations are to state the obvious. Life is physical. Life is spiritual. I typically write of elemental things. 

It is, however, as these two realities converge – the physicality of life and the spirituality of life – that deeper learnings and yearnings present themselves. Just as there is something in the physicality of creation’s beauty, awe and majesty that leads me to contemplation of spiritual realities, there is also somehow something in my arthritis for me to contemplate spiritually. Where is God when we are in pain? Is there anything possibly redemptive when one suffers? These are questions that have vexed many through the eons, and the answer that God is right there with us in our pain, while true, is not always that satisfying. 

Covid-19 has ravaged the world these past eighteen months, and the flourishing of variants present anew the prospect that we are not quite beating this thing as we had anticipated. The work that is still before us in our country to address racial conciliation and righteousness is as daunting as it is necessary. Our hyper-charged political climate and its absence of civil discourse has become such that the commonweal is neither common nor well. Each of these will require tremendous physical and emotional sacrifices and effort to overcome. And yet none of that can begin to be accomplished without the work of the spirit, both the God-given human spirit and the Holy Spirit, calling upon the mercy of God to empower our most creative spiritual resources. The physical beauty of God’s creation can belie the ugliness of the challenges we face, can play a part in its healing.

But we need the holy. And we need to remember, as Anne Lamott said in a recent National Geographic article, “The holy is not a spectacle… It is more often felt in small graces and blessings, although you do have to be paying attention to catch the momentousness. It’s around us, above us, below us and inside us all the time. It’s here, but often we’re not. Life wants to keep reminding us of its sacred self, but we have to open our eyes and hearts.”

Let’s put all of our resources to work, both physical and spiritual, to meet the challenges before us. 

~~ RGM, September 28, 2021 

From My Nature Journal: Soul Seasons

Lord of Creation, God of the universe,

You are not simply summer to my soul.

Yes, I do love You in the sensuousness of summer,

When leaves wax and fields are a riot of color and joy,

When Your sun warms my skin,

And Your cool water revives my strength,

And long days become a sabbath-season that allow space, grace and growth.

Yet I also love You in the melancholy of autumn,

When Your earth dies a blood-red blaze of glory

And trees rain back their yield to the ground,

When something in me saddens amid the late-season blessing,

And I come to terms with mortality and winter’s approach.

But I love You as well in the dead of winter,

When wind howls over barren earth

Both outside my window and sometimes inside my soul,

When the heart can freeze like ice, or can rest easy, asleep,

Like a garden, patiently waiting for Your beneficent, restoring touch.

Finally, I love You in the giddy burgeoning of springtime,

When quickened life bursts from somewhere deep and wonderful,

A resurrected earth mimicking a resurrected Lord,

And something also in me is embraced by resurrection,

As the cycle of life again begins its turning.

You are every season to my soul --

Summer, fall, winter, spring -- together.

You transcend them in a timeless time and space beyond Your good earth.

Grant me to walk fully awake through the seasons,

Never missing the slightest nuance of Your vast overture of love. Amen

~~ RGM, December 7, 2017 

From My Nature Journal: All From a Knock in the Head…

“Yowwww!?!!!”

I was walking in the Michigan woods last fall and, out of the blue (literally), something hit me in the head, hard! Looking to where I had heard whatever it was hit the ground and had seen in my peripheral vision something roll to a stop, I found a large, fresh acorn. Maybe a squirrel had just clipped it and let it drop (or aimed it -- I have had that happen to me before with pinecones!). But the oak above was large enough to impede my ability to spot any guilty party nearby. The knock really smarted, though, and I rubbed my head while wondering if it drew blood. The tip had a sharp point, and the nut may have hit me from that position.

Thinking of Isaac Newton under the proverbial apple tree, and the alleged falling orb by which he brilliantly began to deduce the force of gravity, I wondered if there was anything brilliant I was supposed to construe from this occurrence -- besides perhaps wearing a hat when I walk under oak trees in the fall, or avoiding proximity to coconut trees altogether. So it set me to thinking. Why, indeed, do some trees produce large seeds like this, and others produce tiny, wispy ones that float on the breeze? And what is their essential difference? I decided to do a little research, and here is what I found.

In general, trees produce one of two kinds of seed: one has enough substance to give the potential plant some resources with which it can get its start in life, so to speak, and the other kind does not. Rather, the latter’s seed is released to find its own resources if it can. Interestingly, the tree that produces the first kind expends so much energy preparing a seed with its own resources that it doesn’t produce many seeds; conversely, the tree that produces the second kind, expending so much less energy preparing its seed, can release them by the millions. As Bernd Heinrich says in his book The Trees in My Forest, “A tree has only so much to give… It can either have millions of seeds, each with a tiny inheritance… or relatively few seeds, each endowed with a large inheritance.”

Cases in point: my assaulting oak compared with the ubiquitous aspen. The oak produces a limited number of acorns, dropping them in the fall with, of course, the assistance of squirrels. All nut trees, oaks included (and coconuts!), are of the first kind mentioned above: the entire seed contains enough resources to get it started even on a less-than-perfect patch of ground, even in the shade. By contrast, an aspen releases millions of cottony tufts to the wind, each carrying a seed so small it can hardly be seen. One can brush against my face when it flies in May and I likely may not even feel it, yet the ground might be covered in the down. Each aspen tuft and seed drifts randomly in the rare hope of landing on some hospitable piece of real estate, the one with the most suitable depth and health of soil, the most advantageous amount of sunshine and most suitable quantity of moisture to thrive. Infinitesimally few are so lucky, for, on

Aspen seeds

average, perhaps only one of the seeds a mature aspen releases in its lifetime will grow to fully replace it. (Think averages. If this were not true, northern climes would be covered with nothing but aspens.) Luckily, aspens have another thing going for them by which they are far more successful in their reproductive efforts: most aspens grow from shoots sent underground by a parent plant, and are thus clones of the original. It’s what allows aspens to be the first up after a blowdown, fire or clearcut, without having to wait for a parent tree to release its seed.

But I also found some other interesting things. For example, I wondered how oaks reproduce successfully if animals eat all their acorns. After all, they are a favorite of bear, deer, jays, squirrels and others. I knew, of course, that one of the ways is that squirrels forget (or don’t quite get back to) all the places they’ve buried their stores, and those left behind often sprout, with gratitude for the convenient planting. But in addition to this, I found that nut bearing trees don’t produce every year, and after producing very well can go for several seasons with no crop; this gives them a better chance of eventually sneaking in some seeds that don’t get eaten, while the animal, who has been used to feasting there each season, turns up empty a year or two and writes the tree off his to-do list. I thought that was pretty wonderful.

Of course, thinking about these things leads me naturally to think of Jesus’ parables of the good soil (Luke 8:4-18) or the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32). Each of these texts would offer me much to consider if I spun them awhile through my cranium. But the concept most clear and dear to me from this musing is a takeoff on his little parable of the dying kernel in John 12:24, “…Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit…” We humans die as a seed, but of the first kind, like the acorn – with all the resources having been made available while we lived that would be necessary for us to sprout and live fruitfully again, even forever. The only difference is that we need to have realized and taken advantage of it.

Hmmm, all from a knock on the head…

~~RGM, May 12, 2016