Today I want to share with you some thoughts from two writers separated by many centuries. Ken Gire is a contemporary writer that I greatly admire. His book, Windows of the Soul, is one of my all-time favorites. In this book he explores the many different ways God speaks to us today and he identifies these avenues as “windows of the soul.” In the opening chapter of this book he writes: “We must learn to look with more than just our eyes and listen with more than just our ears, for the sounds are sometimes faint and the sights sometimes far away. We must be aware, at all times and in all places, because windows are everywhere, and at any time we may find one. Or one may find us.”
Gire goes on to explain that “windows of the soul is a way of seeing that begins with respect.” To this he adds, “The way we show respect is to give it a second look, a look not of the eyes but of the heart. But so often we don’t give something a second look because we don’t think there is anything there to see. To respect something is to understand that there is something there to see, that it is not all surface, that something lies beneath the surface, something that has the power to change the way we think or feel, something that may prove so profound a revelation as to change not only how we look at our lives but how we live them.”
Gire’s words deserve our attention. He’s right; there truly are many “windows of the soul” available to us and we must make sure that we take advantage of them. One of the windows he discusses at the end of his book is nature. He realizes, like many who have gone before him, that Creation itself is a window of the soul.
Writing over eight hundred years before Gire, Bonaventure noted how important it is that we pay close attention to nature. He said, “All the creatures of this tangible world lead the soul of the wise and contemplative person to the eternal God, since they are his shadows, echoes and pictures… They are set before us for the sake of our knowing God, and are divinely given signs. For every creature is by its very nature a kind of portrayal and likeness of that eternal Wisdom.”
Like Ken Gire, Bonaventure recognized that when people look at the things around them they do not always see all that is there to be seen. For him it is “the wise and contemplative person” who is able to discern God’s Presence in Creation. How does one become such a person? By practicing the respect Gire writes about, by giving Creation a second look realizing that in it we do, indeed, find a window of the soul that reveals to us our God and Savior. I truly believe that when we give nature a second look we actually do find “something that has the power to change the way we think or feel” and something that will alter “not only how we look at our lives but how we live them.” With that in mind, wouldn’t you agree that nature does, in fact, deserve a second look?
Today I want to share with you some thoughts from two writers separated by many centuries. Ken Gire is a contemporary writer that I greatly admire. His book, Windows of the Soul, is one of my all-time favorites. In this book he explores the many different ways God speaks to us today and he identifies these avenues as “windows of the soul.” In the opening chapter of this book he writes: “We must learn to look with more than just our eyes and listen with more than just our ears, for the sounds are sometimes faint and the sights sometimes far away. We must be aware, at all times and in all places, because windows are everywhere, and at any time we may find one. Or one may find us.”
Gire goes on to explain that “windows of the soul is a way of seeing that begins with respect.” To this he adds, “The way we show respect is to give it a second look, a look not of the eyes but of the heart. But so often we don’t give something a second look because we don’t think there is anything there to see. To respect something is to understand that there is something there to see, that it is not all surface, that something lies beneath the surface, something that has the power to change the way we think or feel, something that may prove so profound a revelation as to change not only how we look at our lives but how we live them.”
Gire’s words deserve our attention. He’s right; there truly are many “windows of the soul” available to us and we must make sure that we take advantage of them. One of the windows he discusses at the end of his book is nature. He realizes, like many who have gone before him, that Creation itself is a window of the soul.
Writing over eight hundred years before Gire, Bonaventure noted how important it is that we pay close attention to nature. He said, “All the creatures of this tangible world lead the soul of the wise and contemplative person to the eternal God, since they are his shadows, echoes and pictures… They are set before us for the sake of our knowing God, and are divinely given signs. For every creature is by its very nature a kind of portrayal and likeness of that eternal Wisdom.”
Like Ken Gire, Bonaventure recognized that when people look at the things around them they do not always see all that is there to be seen. For him it is “the wise and contemplative person” who is able to discern God’s Presence in Creation. How does one become such a person? By practicing the respect Gire writes about, by giving Creation a second look realizing that in it we do, indeed, find a window of the soul that reveals to us our God and Savior. I truly believe that when we give nature a second look we actually do find “something that has the power to change the way we think or feel” and something that will alter “not only how we look at our lives but how we live them.” With that in mind, wouldn’t you agree that nature does, in fact, deserve a second look?
–Chuck
(I photographed the marmot at Olympic National Park, the black snake in my yard, and the elk doe at Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in western Kentucky.)
