From My Nature Journal: The LBJ...

An LBJ… That’s a phrase birders use to refer to any nondescript little bird they cannot identify, or choose not to for the trouble of it. An LBJ is a ‘little brown job,’ generally a sparrow of some sort. One hardly has to pay attention to spot them. They’re ubiquitous, everywhere. Some folks call them LGB’s, ‘little gray birds,’ but the birders I have known prefer LBJ.

In walking through a natural area just now, I picked up a little grey-brown feather actually floating down through the air from some passing little brown job. I could never begin to make identification at this point. The bird is long gone. What’s left is just an indistinct little feather from some indistinct little bird.

But nondescript? I look closely and find it quite lovely. It’s

only about three and a half inches in length, soft-white shaft, soft grey-brown hairs.

Nondescript? In what way? The closer I look the more astonishingly beautiful it becomes. The shaft is not all soft-white, nor the hairs all soft grey-brown, but of differing hues; even the individual hairs are multi-colored. And there are hundreds and hundreds of those soft hairs, starting so minusculely small I cannot see them with my naked eye, then gradually getting longer until they are about three eights of an inch at their longest on the one side, but then shorter again, somehow tapered toward the top in such a way as to leave an impression of a rounded tip. (How does it do that?)

Nondescript? In what way? The 

closer I look the more astonishingly 

beautiful it becomes...

Nondescript? Hardly! I imagine if I held this feather under a microscope, I would be even all the more thoroughly amazed by its complexity. And this from just one indistinct feather from what many consider an insignificant little bird!

Lord, I am an LBJ, self-confessed, in fact a card-carrying member of the club! I struggle at times to know my own significance in this world, in my current ministry call, in what You seem to be calling me to. But Lord, You know what?

I can sing my little heart out for You, too. I can sing it from the top of my little insignificant lungs. I can add my voice to the praises You hear from Your hills (from whence my Help comes), or from Your trees (that clap their hands), even from Your very stones (as they cry out Your praise), let alone the praises of Your people! Yes, I am a little brown job… For even in my insignificance, You do Your astonishingly beautiful work.

                                                   I am Your workmanship.

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest, at Your altar, O lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, ever singing Your praise! (Psalm 84:3-4)

~~RGM, From an earlier journal entry,

Adapted for my blog September 6, 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.

From My Journal: You are SO Insignificant...

Or at least that’s what some would have us think. But perhaps our significance is inestimable…

A faint movement catches my eye as I read outdoors: a tiny speck moves across the lower corner of my right hand leaf. An insect almost too insignificant to be seen crawls across my page, barely half the height of the text-printed comma over which it strides. I am stunned by its diminutive size as it meanders among print script as tall to it as a grove of old hemlock trees. Were it not for its contrast against the sheet’s whiteness, I doubt it would have been seen; a fruit fly seems a garbage truck in comparison.

Exclaiming upon it I show my daughter Sarah, who cautions that if I should try to pick it up I’d probably ‘smoosh’ it. So I observe for a while and strain to see any hint of detail, but find none. It is just a moving fleck, a mote in motion. Finally it makes for the spine and I think, “No, I don’t want this book infested with whatever it is,” so I rub it off onto a finger expecting its demise, then look at my finger and am amazed to see it there, crawling still, at which time, incredulously (and probably pretty ticked off), it raises infinitesimally small wings barely visible to my bespectacled eyes and flies off. Pardon the use of the word but my eyeballs literally bug out, and I shake my head with regret that I did not run for the magnifying glass the first chance I had to see the little beastie a bit more closely.

I wonder what is in me

that might judge it so

significant 'out there'

yet so insignificant

right here...

For a brief moment I unthinkingly ponder the creature’s insignificance in the grand scheme of biological life, but then it quickly occurs to me: if such a creature were found to inhabit or once have inhabited the moon, or Mars, or some unknown distant planet in another solar system, it would be one of the most spectacular finds in the history of science, life in another place, almost on another plane or in a different dimension. Its insignificance would evaporate in its new context, and it would likely be considered a candidate for the most important scientific news of the century. I chuckle at myself and wonder what it is in me that might judge it so significant ‘out there’ yet so insignificant right here. Then I chuckle again as I muse on my own seeming insignificance from the vantage point of the vastness of God’s created universe.

[All photography by Rick and Gail Mylander]

Human perspective is amazingly quick to place value on things by their relative size and impact. Though the tiny thing had at first startled me in its smallness, my next inclination was to entirely dismiss it. (Way to go, Mr. Naturalist…) And yet, it is significant, ineffably and sensationally so.

Glad I was for the reminder that life is an absolute miracle in every one of its manifestations. Yet I am also grateful to God for his creative and massive magnificence, and, in spite of it, somehow, for his sacrificial, outrageously significant consideration of you and me.

When I look at thy heavens… (I ask:) what is man that thou art mindful of him, or… that thou dost care for him? Yet thou hast made him little less than God. [Psalm 8:3-5]

~~RGM, from an earlier journal entry,
Adapted for Blog January 8, 2013

[Psssst... Need further convincing? See also Proverbs 5:21, Isaiah43:1 and John 10:14]