From My Nature Journal -- Celebrating Earth Day by Praying through the Creation Story: Day 4, "Aware"

Introduction: The ways people pursue God, or even pray, can be as different as the very people who pursue God. Spiritual writers and mentors have long appreciated these varieties of pathways that pilgrims have followed in their prayer journey. For example, many are led to deep devotion through such things as music, contemplation or activism, but others have found that it’s the beauty and mystery of the natural, created world that leads them to a humbling encounter of praise and prayer with their Creator God. Of course, the pathways mix to varying degrees according to our personalities and interests.

Those who find nature an important spiritual pathway can see their own faith story unfold in the creation story of Genesis 1 and 2 in the Christian and Jewish Bible. Being mindful not to worship creation but only the Creator, a consideration of the natural world not only helps them do that, but also guides them in their stewardship of what God has created. Each day this week we will look to the ‘seven day’ creation story from these first two chapters of the Bible’s very first book. All references are from the Bible’s New Revised Standard Version.

Day 4 – “Aware” -- And God said, “Let there be lights in the… sky… to give light upon the earth…” (Genesis 1:14-15)

Read: Genesis 1:1, Genesis 1:14-19, Genesis 9:8-17, Psalm 8 and Matthew 16:1-4

Reflect: Lights in the firmament… Yes, enjoying the beauty of sky phenomena – sunrises and sets, rainbows, shooting stars, clouds, sundogs, aurora, glorioles, constellations and planets – is all about being in the right place at the right time to see them. But they’re also about something else: awareness. How often have I lifted my eyes to a fading rainbow or gloriole (a ring around the sun -- see photo above, a shot I took while visiting my daughter in ALaska), or missed the meteorite someone else in the group is always bound to see, because I was too preoccupied to notice them. I not only missed the chance for beauty, I missed the chance for gratitude. Say nothing of the pleasures of the more heady pursuits of astronomy or meteorology; there are myriad simple pleasures to be observed.

Oh, to have the curious, wholehearted spirit of a King David in Psalm 8, or of a John Muir, the grandpappy of Christian naturalists, who was quoted, “Look at that now… And to think that God should plan to bring us feckless creatures here at just the right moment, and then flash such glories at us! Man, we are not worthy of such honor! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!” I’m not even certain what ‘feckless’ is, but I can get an idea from Muir’s enthusiasm!

Here’s the clincher, though. Our awareness of God’s constant presence can be as overlooked as our failure to notice or appreciate a rainbow. God said to Noah, “…it shall be a sign…” (Genesis 9:13) How many other signs of God’s presence and faithfulness do I routinely snub?

Observe: We’re back to looking to the sky today, as we did on day 2, but I’ll not ask for a five-minute retreat. Whenever outdoors, try today or tomorrow to simply look up several times throughout the day. Use that moment to notice what God might have up there; but then use the moment also to express your gratitude for God’s relentless, brooding presence over you.

Pray: Lord, a hymnwriter wrote that your lights in the sky “…join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.” I may not notice the glories of the sky as often as you present them, but may I never fail to notice your communications and activity in my life. Amen.

Hymn for the Day: “Christ Whose Glory Fills the Skies”

Link for the Day: A blogpost of mine on the size of the universe

POTM...*: The Portent

(*Photo of the Month)

They are surprising little beauties with many names. I have always called them sun haloes, though the phenomenon is also known as an icebow, nimbus, aureole and gloriole. Interestingly, the latter two words are also the specific religious terms for the halo depicted in artwork surrounding the head of a saint, something I never knew before now. (I wish now that I had positioned my dear Gail with the bow around her silhouette, to me appropriate!) This photograph was taken last Sunday while camping in Kenai, Alaska, during our delightful visit with daughter Kate and son-in-law Phil’s family. I snapped it above a small grove of Sitka spruce, shortly after noon on a day that clocked nearly eighteen hours between sunrise and sunset.

Not exceedingly rare, optical haloes are still unique enough, often holding their place in the sky around the sun or moon with little notice. They are sometimes referred to more specifically as twenty-two degree haloes, the circle’s distance from the sun or moon, to differentiate them from other sky phenomena containing spectral color. Of course the most common is the rainbow. Who can keep their eyes off of one of those when it displays its morning or evening glory? Another fairly common one is the sundog, or parhelion, something people in northern latitudes can see with regularity – little snatches of rainbow color on one or both horizontal sides of the sun, also twenty-two degrees away. One of my other favorites, though devoid of color, is the sun pillar. All are caused by various kinds of reflection or refraction through water droplets or ice crystals in the upper atmosphere or lower sky.

The ancients and those in the Middle Ages considered sundogs and haloes as predictors of portentous events. One Swedish king almost had his two rivals slain over the appearance of sundogs, also called mock suns, insisting it was a divine revelation to him of their conspiracy to usurp his role as the supreme sun/ruler. Ah, ego…

What a sundog or halo can portend is rain, though not necessarily. The old weather phrase said, “Ring around the moon, rain coming soon.” And since these phenomena appear as the result of ice crystals in high altitude cirrus clouds, which can be the leading edge of an oncoming rainy weather system, rain does not necessarily follow every time.

For me, the only things that spectral color in the sky portends for sure are the promises of God. In other words, whenever I see rainbows or their kin I cannot help but think of God’s faithfulness. The rainbow is held in Judeo-Christian culture as a symbol of God’s fidelity to his followers, based upon the story of Noah and the flood:

          God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you, and

          everything living around you and everyone living after you. I'm putting my rainbow in

          the clouds, a sign of the covenant between me and the Earth. From now on, when I

          form a cloud over the Earth and a rainbow appears in it, I'll remember my covenant

          between me and you and everything living, that never again will floodwaters destroy all                         life. When the rainbow appears in the cloud I'll see it and remember the eternal

          covenant between God and everything living, every last living creature on Earth."

          (Genesis 9:12-16, The Message)

I hope you enjoy the photo. And I pray you will also be constantly aware of the faithfulness of God.

~~RGM, July 26, 2013