Seeing Creation

Yesterday I started reading Philip Newell’s book, The Book of Creation: An Introduction to Celtic Sprirituality. I can already tell I’m going to love it. Its seven chapters are divided up by the seven days of Creation. Genesis 1:3-4 says “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.” This passage is the focus of the first chapter.

Concerning Genesis 1:3-4 Newell says, “To say that light is created on the first day is to say that light is at the heart of life.  It is the beginning of creation in the sense that it is the essence or centre from which life proceeds.  At the heart of all that has life is the light of God.”  Newell makes sure to distinguish the light spoken of on the first day of Creation from the sun and moon that are created on the fourth day.  It is the light created on the first day that makes everything else possible.

Newell goes on to say “the heart of all life is the light of God.”  What he says next I find most intriguing. He claims “The more deeply we move in relation to any created thing the closer we approach ‘the divine brillance’ at the centre.”  In other words, the more we get to know other life forms the more we will come to know and experience the light which comes from God.  This means learning more about the flora and fauna that surround us, not to mention our fellow human beings, can bring us much spiritual benefit.

Even though the Scriptures declare that “God is light” Newell is careful to distinguish the light created on the first day of Creation from God Himself.  He says, “God is always more than that light. Though invisible, it is a created light and can never truly reveal the Uncreated.  God expresses the light of creation into being and yet is beyond creation; he is simultaneously immanenet to the universe and transcendent to it.”

Towards the end of the first chapter Newell draws some practical implications of what he has written.  He says “God is to be found not by stepping aside from the flow of daily life into religious moments and environments, or from looking away from creation to a spiritual realm beyond, but rather by entering attentively the depths of the present moment.” What wonderful advice! I encourage you to give Newell’s words some thought and to begin looking harder and deeper for that light which God spoke into existence the first day of Creation long ago.  As God Himself said, that light is “good.”

–Chuck

(This week I’m in Louisville on a summer mission trip with a group from my church.  We’re helping out at a facility with about 500 elderly residents.  On the grounds there are some nice gardens.  I took the pictures shown above there.)

Like countless other photographers, one of my early sources of inspiration was the work of Ansel Adams.  Even when I knew nothing about photography it was obvious that this man’s work was phenomenal.  I continue to this very day to be inspired by his photographs.

A couple of days ago a friend sent me a link to a website that focuses on Ansel Adams work in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  I have most of Adams’ books and there are very few images from this park in them.  The website I went to indicated why.  Ansel Adams found it difficult to photograph in the Smokies.  In a letter he wrote from these mountains he told a friend, “they are going to be devilish hard to photograph…”  Considering the fact that I have spent more time photographing in this park than any other I found his comment to be quite amusing.  The Smokies are filled with extraordinary beauty; how could the great Ansel Adams find them so difficult to photograph?

I forwarded the link to my blogging partner, Rob Sheppard.  I pointed out to him how I was intrigued by Adams’ comment about photographing the Smokies.  Rob responded to my message by saying, “I think Adams definitely was attuned to the West because he grew up there and spent most of his time there.”   If you are familiar with Ansel Adams’ work you know that most of his famous images were, indeed, made in the West.  Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevadas are featured prominently in his work.  That was the landscape he knew best and his familiarity with it helped enable him to capture the spirit or essence of that region.

In my note from Rob he went on to talk about how familiarity with a landscape affected his own work.  He wrote, “I think I am only beginning to really ‘see’ the chaparral because I have been photographing it for a few years now.”  Georgia O’Keeffe once said “seeing takes time.”  She was no doubt right.  I remember how frustrating it was when I first started traveling out West to photograph.  I was rarely satisfied with the results.  Now, after dozens of trips out West I feel more comfortable and familiar with the environment and it shows in the photographs I take.  The more time you spend in a location truly does make a difference.

I suspect that what is true in photography is also true when it comes to seeing God in Creation.  Here, too, it takes time.  There are not a lot of “burning bushes” out there (see Exodus 3); God seems to make Himself known in much more subtle ways.  This means that we will likely have to spend a good bit of time becoming familiar with our surroundings to see and hear all that God longs to reveal to us.  Certainly God can speak to us anywhere, and we should always be open to that possibility, but it is likely that we will see and hear Him best in our home environment or the places we are most familiar with.  Has that been your experience?

–Chuck

*The link to the website on Ansel Adams and the Smokies can be found at http://knoxart.org/exhibitions/higherground/ansel.html.  You’ll find several rare and unpublished images here.

(I took the top image at Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the middle image of Yosemite Falls at Yosemite National Park, and the bottom image  of Mesquite Dunes at Death Valley National Park.)

Later today summer will officially arrive.  I say “officially” because the heat and humidity associated with summer arrived prematurely in southeastern Kentucky.  This time of year I don’t get outdoors any more than I have to.  I find the heat and humidity too oppressive.  For me summer is a great time for reading and reflection.  I plan to do plenty of both.

A number of years ago Mary Oliver wrote a poem called “The Summer Day” where she did some reflecting of her own.  I share this incredible poem with you here:  “Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper?  This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.  Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.  Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.  I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.  I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day.  Tell me, what else should I have done?  Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?  Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

I’ve written in the past of my love for Oliver’s poetry.  I admire her attentiveness to nature and things spiritual.  I especially admire the way she often joins the two together.  In this poem Mary’s thoughts of nature lead her to think of both the brevity and meaning of life.  Paying attention to God’s Creation can have that effect on you.  Even a cursory look at nature may cause a person to ponder some of life’s most important questions.  Without a doubt, the question Mary Oliver asks at the end of her poem is one of these questions.

How would you answer Mary?  What do “you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  So much hinges on a person’s response to this question.  If you haven’t stopped lately to consider this question I urge you to do so now.   As Oliver’s observations of nature revealed, we won’t be here forever so we need to make sure that we make what time we do have count.  The apostle Paul said much the same thing when we spoke of “redeeming the time” or “making the most of every opportunity” in Ephesians 5:16.  Both books of Scripture—the Bible and Creation—call for us to examine our lives and to make sure that we have a plan to make the most of the one life we have to live.  What is your plan?

–Chuck

(I photographed the black bear in the Smokies and the katydid in my yard.)

Writing several centuries ago, the Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote “Nature and Grace are in harmony with each other.  For Grace is God and Nature is God.  Neither Nature nor Grace works without the other.  They may never be separated…  That Goodness that is Nature is God.  God is the Ground, the substance, the same that is Naturehood.  God is the true Father and Mother of Nature.”  I read these words a few days ago and have been giving them some thought.  They are certainly deep words.

I cannot help but wonder if someone during her time was making the claim that nature and grace are not in harmony with each other.  I assume that is possible.  If so, I like how Julian addressed this claim.  I think she is correct in seeing the source of both grace and nature in God.  The Bible is clear in noting that we would have neither apart from Him.   Since they have the same source it makes sense that nature and grace would be “in harmony with each other” and that neither “works without the other.”

What all this seems to be saying to me is that we can expect to experience God’s grace in Creation.  Certainly we experience that grace first and foremost in Jesus Christ but it is also to be found in the world Christ has made.  And just as we must open ourselves up to Christ in order to know and feel his grace, we must likewise open ourselves up to nature if we are to know and feel the grace that is to be found there.  Matthew Fox once said, “When we can no longer feel the grace of nature we need to pause and allow grace to bless us again.”  That is good advice.

Have you paused lately to allow the grace of God that is found in Creation to bless you?  Last week my wife and I went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to celebrate our anniversary.  We spent a good bit of time in those wonderful mountains and beside the streams that flow from them.  I must say that in those misty mountains I felt God’s grace.  And like Julian, I realized “that goodness that is nature is God.”  That is not to say that I see God and nature as one and the same, just that the One who is “the true Father and Mother of nature” has a wonderful way of bestowing grace upon us through Creation when we realize that the two truly are in harmony with each other.  I encourage you to live in this realization so that you might experience even more of God’s amazing grace in the days to come.

–Chuck

(I took the pictures shown above last week on our anniversary trip to the Smokies.)

You have probably never heard of the chaparral if you are outside of California. Even if you live in California, you might not have heard of the chaparral. Yet everyone has heard of the redwoods and a whole host of folks know the giant sequoias and ancient bristlecones.

The chaparral is a unique ecosystem that is almost exclusively in California and is as unique as the redwoods, the sequoias and bristlecones. Like those other dramatic plant communities, the chaparral is tightly bound to its environment, an environment that is dry most of the year with a wet winter, an environment that results in a shrub-based ecosystem. With only dense shrubs for its landscape, the chaparral tends to be ignored. It has no dramatic 300-foot tall trees, no trees with bases as large as a small house, no 4,000 year-old trees (though some of the shrubs can be hundreds of years old).

The chaparral shows amazing evidence of God’s always inspired creation and management of His world: the plants are mostly shrubs because it is difficult to send water to the tops of tall trees when there is a shortage of water, leaves are small to minimize water loss during dry conditions, leaves have oils in them to prevent too much evaporation of water, many plants have two root systems — a shallow root system for grabbing water quickly and a deep taproot for going after water that is deep down in the soil, and myriads of plant and animal associations that make this community lively and interesting.

Yet, this ecosystem is rarely appreciated and often badly treated. It is often put down as just “weedy brush” as if only trees were important. I admit that as one who grew up in the East and Midwest with trees, that the chaparral is sometimes uncomfortable, yet when I spend some time there, I gain much from just appreciating what is there.

There is something about us as human beings that always want the spectacular. We want God to appear to us in Yosemite, the redwoods, the Grand Canyon, truly dramatic miracles of our world, places that truly are awe-some and cannot help but make us think of good. Yet, God appeared to Moses as a burning bush, not a forest fire, not a burning mountain, not anything particularly dramatic except that the bush was a vehicle for God (Exodus 3).

And Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”  While Jesus was referring to people in this case, he definitely was making the point that it was not just the dramatic, “important”, “beautiful” people that were the only ones that God paid attention to. I think this is definitely true in nature, too. Otherwise, why would places like the chaparral, swamps, marshes, common grasslands be so intricately and marvelously constructed? Obviously God cares about these places and so should we.

Sometimes I think we pay too much attention to the big, dramatic, beautiful parts of nature. There is nothing wrong with those places, but our attention is skewed from the totality of nature and how important all parts of it truly are. In Genesis, you never see this passage: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, some of it was better than others.” No, in Genesis 1:31, it says, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

Sometimes I would like to modify the always familiar Psalm 118:24 passage, “This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” to “This is the world the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it, wherever that is.”

- Rob

In recent days I have continued reading books related to Celtic Spirituality.  One book that I have enjoyed and profited from is called Celtic Benediction.  It is a small book put together by J. Philip Newell containing morning and night prayers, along with various selections of Scripture.  The book’s content is enhanced by illustrations of Celtic art taken from the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Early in the book there is a prayer that has become special to me.  It reads: “I watch this morning for the light that the darkness has not overcome.  I watch for the fire that was in the beginning and that burns still in the brilliance of the rising sun.  I watch for the glow of life that gleams in the growing earth and glistens in the sea and sky.  I watch for your light, O God, in the eyes of every living creature and in the ever-living flame of my own soul.  If the grace of seeing were mine this day I would glimpse you in all that lives.  Grant me the grace of seeing this day.  Grant me the grace of seeing.”

The connection of Christ and Creation is obvious throughout this prayer.  This is one of the hallmarks of Celtic Spirituality.  In my opinion it should be a hallmark of all forms of Christian Spirituality.  I have trouble comprehending how so many people miss this vital connection.  There is certainly no shortage of biblical passages to affirm its validity.

The prayer that I have shared is one I keep turning back to.  I want to make this my prayer as well.  I want to glimpse God “in all that lives.”  But as Newell intimates in the prayer, “the grace of seeing” does not come naturally.  It is a gift of God.  As such, we must ask for it.  And once given, this gift must be nurtured and developed.  This may sound like a lot of work but if the outcome is experiencing and seeing God in all of Creation, wouldn’t it be worth it?  Needless to say, it would be well worth it!  I encourage you to copy the prayer I’ve shared with you today on a card and make this your morning prayer in the days to come.  Don’t be surprised if you start seeing far more than you’re used to…

–Chuck

(I took the pictures illustrating today’s blog entry a couple of days ago at Roan Mountain State Park and along the Blue Ridge Parkway.)