Blowin’ in the Wind: “Seasons of Nature” -- by Ilana

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a periodic feature on my blog containing an assortment of nature writings – songs, excerpts, poems, prayers, Bible readings or other things – pieces written by others but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

I know I just did a “BitW” feature last month, and I cannot recall if I’ve ever shared a work by a family member, but I cannot resist avoiding either of these this month. My wife Gail and I just received a special gift from our eight-year-old granddaughter Ilana, and it tickled us so that I thought you might appreciate it as well. 

Each of our eleven grandchildren has their own special personality, and we love every one of them more than life itself. Ilana? She is a beautiful child full of the wonder of life, and of the love both of people and of God’s creation. She is also a ton of fun to be around in spite of the fact that she sometimes tells me I have been demoted to ‘the second-funniest person in the family’ behind our son, her Uncle Jarrett. But that never lasts long, and she typically and appropriately restores me to the throne quite quickly. (Sorry, Jarrett...)

And the girl DOES love God’s creation! It is always a pleasure to hike with her because she notices things, a key characteristic of nature lovers and all of us who find in nature an important spiritual pathway to God. She also calls herself Grandpa’s ‘nature companion’ whenever she and I hop on our ATV and pick up trash along the county road near our Michigan cabin. In other words, she is already concerned about Earth care. It’s therefore fitting that her name is even natural: ‘ilana’ is one of several Hebrew words for ‘tree,’ most often associated with oaks. That was not surprising when we first heard her name after her birth, as her father is a horticulturist, though I don’t know if that had anything to do with it at the time!

Upon our arrival for a visit last month, Ilana told Gail and me she had something for us, then with a shy smile gave us the hand-printed original of a poem she had written a few days before during a rest time she and her sibs take after lunch. We thought it precious, and so I present to you here Ilana’s “Seasons of Nature,” with her spellings and punctuation intact. Enjoy!

When the first snowflakes fall

When one by one they start then thousands shimer in the sky

When fluffy snow covers everything

When sparkling white they glisten megestic do they look

When few sounds nor animals are there only robins or none

Then do you know that Winter is here.

When the drifts are small yet get smaller each day

When the flowers peek from the wet soil

When the air is warm and damp

When animals wake up and continue their lives

When the areas are colerful 

Then do you know that spring is here

When the leaves on the trees turn green

When the air is schorching

When water is the want for outside fun

When ice cream and cold treats turn from a cream to a liquid faster than a hummingbird

When animals are everywhere trees, grass, sky

Then do you know that summer is here

When the air becomes colder and jackets required

When the leaves turn vibrant colers of yellow, orange and, bloodred

When nuts fall to the ground

When animals scurry to get food and store it for winter

When people start getting snow shovels and hot chochlate

Then do you know that Autum is here

I want to live nowhere else for

Seasons Make a year a year.

And, oh, I can’t forget her dedication from the back of the page: 

Dedicated

To

Papa and

Grandma

Whom love

Me and Nature

Very much

With Love

Isn’t that delightful? The simple, fresh and wondering thoughts of a child… amazingly compelling. 

I don’t know if you’ve paid attention to a malady that is oft-touted by psychologists over the last two decades, but the dysfunction has to do with nature deprivation. Exposure to the natural world has been proven to improve mental, social and emotional health in profound ways, to say nothing of the spiritual dimension of celebrating the beauty of the Lord’s sanctuary. Nature outings are being prescribed as treatment for both adults and kids. We’d all do our children and grandchildren an enormous service by getting them outdoors regularly, establishing natural rhythms and opportunity for healing while they are young, whether they are super eager to go or not. 

Please excuse my diversion into preaching -- it’s an occupational hazard! So skip that paragraph, take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and go back and read Ilana’s poem again. Then getcha self outdoors at the next possible opportunity.

~~ From a Grandpa ‘whom’ loves his grand-

children and nature very, VERY much, 

RGM, March 19 2024

From My Nature Journal: When the Curtain Draws Back

There is so much going on around us in the natural world of which we are unaware.  I have often advised budding naturalists, especially children, how important it is simply to pay closer attention to one’s environment in order to see God’s creation reveal its rarities, secrets and mysteries, but a couple experiences these past two weeks brought this home to me yet again. 

Several months ago I finally got around to downloading a newer feature of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s “Merlin” app to my phone, its bird identification by sound tool. I have always wanted to learn to better identify birds by their songs or calls and have watched for an app such as this for a long time. (Get it! It’s amazing!) But there it sat on my phone these many weeks without getting to it. Finally, on a quirk while I was doing something else a couple weeks ago, I heard a call that I had always wondered about: dzee-zee-zee-zoo-zee. I impulsively turned on the tool for a few seconds and, when the bird called again, a photo popped up in a heartbeat of a black-throated green warbler. What? I don’t know warblers at all, and to my memory had never even identified one. All these years I’ve been listening to a warbler? Well, I got hooked. Or perhaps a birder would say, “I got netted.”

Sometimes now I’ll just go out on our deck early in the morning, turn on the app and see what’s out there. I never fail to be stunned. I had no idea so many species were nearby and identifiable amongst what often seems to me the confusion of overlapping birdsong. Even a song I assumed belonged to the ubiquitous robin ended up being something else, in this case a black-headed grosbeak, and I am now learning by experience to distinguish them from each other. ID’ing by sound is helping me to ‘see with my ears,’ giving me cues and clues to more easily spot the bird by sight when I am able. 

So that’s example number one of the reality that there is much going on around us of which we can be unaware. 

There is so much going on around

us in the natural world of 

which we are unaware…

Example two. I met my friend Mark for coffee yesterday. He nearly came out of his seat (and me mine) as he regaled me with a recent whale-spotting experience. In spite of our living near the ocean for over five years here in Washington (can’t see it but can hear and smell it!), Gail’s and my whale sightings have been pathetically few, and that not for wont of watching. We watch the water all the time! But Mark knew something special was up: he could see the water not far offshore disturbed with something, as a stirred area suddenly became very popular with gathering and crying gulls, dipping and diving, then harbor seals surfacing, and finally minke whales spyhopping and fluking, taking advantage along with the others of the herring school or whatever school it was that was in session near the surface that day. The whole thing did not last long but Mark was mesmerized. Then he said, “Isn’t that amazing? There are things like that going on below the surface all the time but we never see them unless they manifest themselves.” 

We never see them unless they manifest themselves. 

So true, in so many ways. God’s actions are so often below the surface rather than blatant. Spiritual realities can hardly seem real. I truly wish God would manifest God’s self more often, openly for anyone to see. Don’t you? It’s something the people of Jesus’ day seemed to ask for often, in spite of the miracles Jesus performed from time to time in their very presence. Amazingly (and frustratingly), Jesus always seemed to refer them (and us) to the ways God was manifesting God’s self all the time if they just observed the signs, if they just opened their awareness to the irrational possibilities rather than only the presumed certainties. 

Once in awhile, like a furtive bird one had no clue was even nearby, like a whale fluke that seems to come out of absolutely nowhere, just when we thought nothing was happening, God manifests God’s self; a veil is opened, a dimness brightens, a path appears, a curtain draws back, and we glimpse something that near takes our breath away.

I’m not a tattoo guy, but if I ever were, I’ve always thought my ink would either be a Celtic cross or a whale tail: the cross for obvious reasons, but the whale tail because a view of one has always reminded me there is nearly always something fantastic, something astonishing, something perhaps even miraculous going on underneath what’s apparent.

~~ RGM, June 22 2022

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

From My Nature Journal: A Smile in the Sky, And Other Things to Grin At

Of particular pleasure to most naturalists are the moments they see something they've never seen before, along with the thoughtful realization that they might never see such a thing again in their life. Now, interestingly, these 'seeings' are not particularly rare, as there is so incredibly much to observe on, under and above land, sea and sky, especially if one is a generalist like me. Such delights are the compensation or remuneration of what is called 'paying attention.' And it's the 'paying' part of that phrase that I like, because their return in value, if you will, are commensurate with the investment of the attention one pays.

The seeings range from the curious to the cute, from the nearly unbelievable to the believable but still spectacular.

The curious. It rained buckets after dark the night before last, nearly three and a half inches in four hours. At one point, as I stood at our bedroom window for a few moments staring at the awesome sight of the downpour amid intermittent lightning flashes, I noticed several tiny glow worms on what had to be absolutely sopped turf, lighting up and dimming back. It left me inquiring as to the purpose. Who knows? Perhaps they were just sending SOS's. (See one of my earlier posts, "Holy Buckets in the World is That?" for a similar curiosity.)

The cute. Over the last couple weeks, Gail and I have picked wild apples several places, making a little jelly and applesauce along the way, but more to fill a couple five-gallon buckets and set some out overnight for the deer. This week as we began doing so, the apples were gone every morning, and we sat at the window eating breakfast, smugly satisfied to have provided a little treat. (Sometimes we're rewarded with them coming in at dusk while we can watch them, always a pleasure.) But no. One morning upon an earlier rising than usual, I watched with both displeasure and amusement as a diminutive red squirrel climbed the stumps upon which the apples lay and carried each, one at a time, into the woods, burying them under fallen leaves. Some of these apples were over half its size and surely close to its body weight, a comical sight.

The nearly unbelievable. I'll warn you now, people think I'm pulling their leg when I tell them of this experience. Years ago, Gail and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with a trip to the Canadian Maritime Provinces. While hiking in a remote area of New Brunswick near the Hopewell Rocks, we stopped dead in our tracks when we heard a crow in a tall tree above us seeming to sing "It's a Small World After All." Now, we had known that crows are smart enough to mimic, but it still challenged our limits of believability. So we stood under the tree for a few minutes and listened to it over and over; quite soon, other hikers came down the trail, a young couple, and we thought we'd put it to the test. Stopping them, we asked if they'd mind pausing to listen to this crow and tell us what they thought they heard; we must have seemed like crazy old people. After the crow called, the woman replied, "Uhh, it's... a small world after all...?" Bingo. Something else crazier than us. We all laughed with incredulity, and I commented, knowing also that some crows can migrate south for the winter, "I guess there's no question where this guy spends his winters!" It must have been one of those that perch nearby and snag French fries and other treats out of people's hands while they're waiting in line at Disney World, listening to that infernal ditty! Who (or what) EVER can get THAT brain worm out of their head, having once stood in that line?

Finally, the believable but still spectacular. I was not even familiar with these two things before seeing them, and though I've only 'seen' the latter through my sister, they arrest me just the same. Many of us have seen sundogs or glorioles. Sundogs are small arcs of rainbow color, 22 degrees either or both sides of the sun when low in the sky, refracting and separating the colors of the sun's rays as a prism does, through suspended ice crystals. Glorioles are rings around the sun or moon (or partial rings) that are also a refraction of light through high altitude ice crystals. But the thing about both sundogs and glorioles is that their arc bends toward the light source, whether sun or moon; in other words, they appear as circles, or partial circles, surrounding the light.

One day as I walked on a sunny afternoon, a small patch of color near the zenith somehow caught my eye, and I found a small, single arc floating among the clouds almost directly overhead. I thought it odd to see a sundog in that spot, as they usually present themselves nearer the horizon earlier or later in the day. But then I realized its arc was bending away from the sun. What in the world? Well, that was called, I found as I researched later, a circumzenithal arc, but I also read, Cheshire Cat notwithstanding, that it was also called 'the smile in the sky,' which brought the same to my own countenance. That’s also a much more fun title, I’d say. (It’s also called Bravais’ arc, or an upside-down rainbow.) Circumzenithal means ‘surrounding the zenith,’ zenith being the point straight up. These arcs are also formed through high altitude ice crystals, appear 46 degrees above the sun (about a quarter of the sky), and, I was surprised to find, are not that rare; it’s just that few of us ever look straight over the tops of our heads. In this photo, I blocked the sun by the tree in order to see ‘the smile’ more clearly.

Then just last month my sister Carolyn sent me this photo pair of crepuscular and anticrepuscular rays, taken one evening from the roof of her Chicago condo building. I had often seen the former but never the latter. Crepuscular means ‘relating to twilight,’ which is when these rays tend to show themselves best. These rays can often be seen while the sun is low in the sky, especially as the sunlight shines through thick cumulus clouds. (They’re also called splintered light, or god rays. Hmmm…) But I have always thought that the coolest effect is when crepuscular rays show when the sun is below the horizon. Soon before the sun rises or soon after it sets, our star occasionally throws its shadows and light-rays across the sky as it shines through clouds, or even landforms like mountains or hills, that are below our own horizon, which we, of course, cannot see. All those rays and shadows seem to be emanating from the same point below the horizon, like spokes on one half of a wheel, which, of course, they are, coming as they are from our sun's single point of light. Most spectacular is when it happens when our own sky is fairly cloudless. But I’ve also particularly enjoyed it while flying at high altitude into the sunset, when I have been able to see rays opposite the sunset and behind me forming a single, large, arced, purplish shadow, which is actually the shadow of our earth itself, including its curvature, another cool expression of crepuscular light. What I had never seen before is when those rays reach all the way across the sky and exit the opposite horizon, again, as like spokes in another half wheel opposite the sun. Along the way, they appear to expand widely over one's head and converge again on the horizon opposite. But this is only how it appears; the rays are actually nearly parallel, perspective from a single point being what it is, in the same way that parallel railroad tracks seem to come to a point in the distance). These rays opposite the sun are called anticrepuscular, 'anti' of course a prefix from the Greek designating opposition. Sometimes a ray reaches all the way overhead from west to east (or east to west), as some did at the time of these two photos. You can look at both photos and picture the full sky's connecting rays, keeping in mind that one photo faces west to the sunset and the other east (note the Chicago skyline), thus, why the rays are flipped from right to left.

I wax. It's a hazard for us naturalists, as I've said many times. But all of this is to affirm, as I began, what a treat it is to be feted with new and wonderful things one has never observed or experienced before, irrespective of a lifetime of observation.

I've walked with God now for well over a half century. Though much about this walk has become familiar, God also often teaches or shows me new things, or new ways to understand old things. It's why I write. But such was familiar to the Biblical writers as well, with Jeremiah celebrating God's tender mercies of old which seemed to him absolutely 'new every morning' (Lamentations 3:22-23); or James reveling in God's '...good and perfect gifts from above... coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow' (James 1:17). Beautiful image, that one, eh? Or perhaps this from 1Corinthians 2:9 -- 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor the mind of humans conceive what God has in store for those who love him.'

Yes.

~~ RGM, September 23, 2018

From My Nature Journal: River of Life

It appeared a bright orange streak across the hillside hiking trail, as if someone had spilled a can of orange soda on the uphill side of the path and it had run crossways downhill. But we stopped quickly in our tracks when we observed it to be a stream of thousands and thousands of ants heading uphill.

Brilliant in color, they were astonishing, stretching into the prairie grasses, wildflowers and brush on either side of the trail, a parade, not marching one-by-one or ten-by-ten as the song insists ants do, but a pulsing, coursing river of life, in places a half-inch wide. Twenty-by-twenty? Thirty-by-thirty? I could not tell. But they were all heading the same direction, from one place to another, even crawling over each other in places.

It gripped me. Overcoming my initial sensation of the creepiest insect scene in a classic Indiana Jones movie, or an old issue of National Geographic, I followed the downhill side of the procession, seeking their advancing source, picking carefully through thick growth, thinking it would lead quickly to an underground starting place. But it stretched into the pampas along mouse trails and rock edges, down, down, down. “Thousands? There must be millions,” I thought. I was a full twenty-five yards downhill before it all seemed to commence at one medium boulder. I heaved on it. It did not seem to budge. But I no sooner had my hand free than it was swarming with orange, the mother lode. I must have moved it enough to get their attention.

My own attention then switched back uphill to where they might be heading on the other side of the trail. Where were they bound, and to what end? But I was not successful in finding this; within a short distance I lost the convoy in impassible brush.

What an amazing river of life. I have never seen anything like it.

Lord, as I have thought about it, Your river of life is truly an astounding thing. Is this how Your beloved creation seems to You over the eons, an almost endless, yet much-loved marching band?

Is this how Your beloved creation

seems to You over the eons, an 

almost endless marching band?

Yet my mind is further boggled by God’s created variety, over 5,400 known species of mammals, 10,000 birds, 14,000 reptiles and amphibians, 30,000 fish, and a million of insects. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of species of plants and other life forms. Biologists sometimes even say there may be as many undiscovered species on earth as there are discovered, and that today’s diversity represents just a small portion of the species that have walked, swam, flown or sprouted the globe over time. What a procession it all must seem from the Master Designer’s perspective.

I’m undone again by the Creator’s majesty…

Oh, what a wonderful God we have! How great are his wisdom and knowledge and riches! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his methods! (Romans 11:33, TLB)

~~ RGM, from an earlier

entry in my nature journal

From My Nature Journal: “Holy Buckets in the World is THAT?”

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel. Speak to them, and tell them, ‘At evening you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread: and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” It happened at evening that quail came up and covered the camp; and in the morning the dew lay around the camp. When the dew that lay had gone, behold, on the surface of the wilderness was a small round thing, small as the frost on the ground. When the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, “What is it?” For they didn’t know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat.” …The house of Israel called its name Manna (which is to say, “What is it?”), and it was like coriander seed, white, and its taste was like wafers with honey. (Exodus 16:11-15, 31)

Several months ago, our two-year-old granddaughter Myla, pictured at left, coined a new phrase that has taken on with the rest of our family. While several of us were out for a saunter together, she saw something that startled her, opened her eyes wide and blurted out, mixing her newly-learned phrases, “Holy buckets in the world is THAT?”

I recently had one of those ‘holy buckets in the world is THAT?’ moments, and it still has me scratching my head in wonder.

We are up for a few early fall days to close for the year our little cabin in the big woods of Michigan’s Ottawa National Forest. Among the many things to do, large and small, I remembered I had not yet pulled the thermometer that hangs off the end of our dock out of the lake. I was also curious, of course, to know the difference in water temperature since we had last been here a couple months back, because if it wasn’t below 55 yet, I might even take a dip. Pulling up the five-foot string, I noticed immediately that it was heavier than it should have been, and before it broke the surface I saw something dark and strange the size of a large cantaloupe attached to the thermometer’s plastic casing. Hoisting it to eye level, it was some kind of huge,

gelatinous mass of eggs of some sort, the slimy likes of which I had never seen before. Frog eggs? Fish eggs? No, it’s way too late in the season for those kinds of things. Insect larvae eggs? I took out my phone camera to take a photo to show and ask around with some of the neighbors, but my next quick question was whether or not whatever it is was good for the lake. I put it back and launched upon my search. Surely someone will know.

Yet not one of our friends had ever seen or heard of such a thing. Oh, we see weird little masses or strings of eggs floating in the water or attached to lily pads, or odd little creatures coming up out of the lake to leave their watery abode and exoskeletons behind and take flight, but this thing was unusual. So my dear wife went to the Internet on her phone (she is always much quicker than I to think of such a thing), simply keyed in “egg sac under water” and voila, up pops a URL to a site that is quickly becoming one of my new faves, askanaturalist.com, with just our answer. It’s not only fun to read the stupid questions people ask there, but it’s fun to read the great questions people also ask there. (Yes, I know, it’s only a great question if it’s my question, but there are some really stupid things people ask!)

Someone else had wondered what I wonder and included a photo. My strange mass is not an egg mass but a colony of something called bryozoa, and, I was happy to find, it is good for the lake. Nowhere could we find a completely satisfying and simple definition of what bryozoa are, but suffice it to say they are akin somewhat to coral, tiny little filter feeder creatures that clean out impurities as they ingest the water around them. Lo and behold (who knew?), there are in excess of three thousand species known around the world, fifty in freshwater, and fifteen of these in North America, mostly in southern waters. How would you like to make a living as a zoologist who studies such things? Three thousand?

And immediately when I first encountered this mystery the other day and pulled it from the water, I was reminded yet again of one of my favorite things about being a naturalist. And it can be stated in two ways.

·      One: Even after years and years of nature observation, in my case fifty or so, the curious naturalist will come across things he or she has never seen before, and never will again. For example, my daughter and son-in-law, while canoeing, came across an eagle swimming in our lake, like a breaststroker, dragging a dead blue heron to shore it had apparently taken in flight. Crazy!

·      Two: Even after these same years and years of nature observation, the curious naturalist will see things they have not the foggiest clue what they are, things that will utterly astound and mystify them. Take for example my mystery blob. (Does that make this a blob blog?)

For me, it raises the issue of wonder. Any naturalist would do well to have plenty of it. Why? Because we are naturally curious, unless it has somehow been lost along the way. Most creatures actually are naturally curious, not just cats. I can stand on the end of a dock and wave my hands at a loon a hundred yards away, or swing a towel over my head in circles, and it will often come to investigate. It’s curious. It wonders.

Where does simple awe just knock us

back a step or two once in awhile?

Where but in the natural world!

But where do you and I find wonder regularly? Where do we scratch our heads at mystery? Where does simple awe just knock us back a step or two once in awhile? Where but in the

natural world! In our scientific age, many have lost the ability to wonder, yet wonder is a wonderful thing!! Who can keep from being struck by the wonder of children? Wonder is one of the childlike graces I think Jesus had in mind when he said, “Unless you become like a little child…” I like to think that the Israelites spent many, many days in awestruck and childlike wonder about the food God was providing them before they became frustrated with the limitations of their wilderness menu.

So I’ll add my blob experience to the long list of experiences I’ve had that have knocked my socks off. Because for me, to be drawn by the wonder of nature is to be drawn by the mystery and wonder of God.

~~RGM, October 1, 2016

From My Nature Journal: One Good Thing Leads to Another...

My grandbuddy, Wyatt...

Have you noticed? When a child discovers something that really catches their curiosity or wonder, they often look to their parent -- not as if to say, “What IS this?” -- but rather, “Wha…? LOOK at that! Do you see it, too?”

I often found this the case with my kids, nieces and nephews when they were young, and find it now with my grandchildren, grandnieces and nephews now that I am older, especially when we are outdoors. “Look, Grandpa,” one might say, “isn’t it beautiful?” And it might just be nothing but a nondescript moth, small toad or faded daisy. If it’s animate, however, and if it’s my grandson Wyatt we’re talking about, I can almost wager that he’ll follow this with, “He likes me! Can I take him home?” It makes me smile to think of this. He has even done it with earthworms, though I’m not sure what the signs of earthworm affection are that he seems to recognize so quickly… That doesn’t matter, though. For Wyatt and other curious children, the natural next inclination of discovery is often to share what has been experienced. For them, one good thing leads to another.

Again, the natural next inclination of discovery is to share what has been experienced.

It’s why I do this blog, of course, the enjoyment of sharing things I observe with others. None of it is rocket science; heck, it’s often not even good biological science, but there’s joy in the sharing just the same, as well as in the anticipation that another might find similar delight. I have no idea how many people are reading this blog, don’t trust at all the

accuracy of its tally feature. What I DO trust are the comments I hear from others, either personally or electronically, comments that tell me that something is connecting, that there’s something powerful at work out there, that others also find creation’s beauty, mystery and wonder a natural pathway to God. Sharing a discovery seems not so much to validate it, though there’s some of that, as to confirm its value in the heart of the observer, and to share something through which another may find similar value. So for me, as with young children, the next inclination of discovery or delight is to share what has been experienced.

The fourth chapter of the Gospel of John has a remarkable story about a seemingly outcast woman whom Jesus meets at a public well, a story that is one

of my favorites. The area is temporarily deserted, and it gives the woman and Jesus the chance to have the conversation of a lifetime. I won’t go into the details of the story or conversation, because it is an extremely enjoyable read for you to peruse yourself (John 4:1-42). But what almost stuns me is the eagerness by which this woman, perhaps shunned by so many respectable people for so long, takes a momentary break from the conversation with Jesus to hurry back to her town, Sychar, to share her discovery with her townsfolk and bring them back with her to meet this amazing man. Somehow, in spite of what she may have had going against her, even with all the rejection she had likely known, her first inclination was to share.

William Barclay says in commentary about this passage that no discovery is complete until the desire to share it fills our hearts. Do you agree with that? It seems to me that far too many seek to keep their discoveries to themselves, especially if there is gain of any kind in play. Maybe Barclay is just talking like an extrovert, a camp in which I find myself, though I’ve no idea if he was an extrovert or not.

Do you share your faith? I’m not talking the ‘four spiritual laws’ kind of sharing, though those laws are pretty darn good, and quite accurate. But, keeping it simple, like my grandson Wyatt  -- has your discovery so filled you that it cannot help but ooze out somehow in one way, shape or form? That would truly be one good thing leading to another.

No judgment. Just sayin’…

~~RGM, January 14, 2016