Seeing Creation

American’s National Park Service will be turning one hundred years old in just a few weeks. Because I love our national parks so much I cannot let this occasion pass without offering the NPS my congratulations and best wishes.  Since taking up nature photography twenty-four years ago I’ve been blessed to visit most of our national parks.  I’ve also visited scores of other national park units such as national recreation areas, national monuments, national rivers and seashores, etc.  Each of them has had an impact on my life one way or another.  I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be who I am today were it not for our national parks.

I was introduced to our national parks as a small child when my family visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Today I visit them as often as I can.  Just two days ago I was able to pay a return visit to Mammoth Cave National Park.  I keep going back because I benefit so much from them.  Our national parks are incredible repositories of natural beauty that move my soul.  They are places where I often connect to God.  In fact, when I think of some of the parks I’ve visited I think not just of the scenery or wildlife but of the spiritual connections I made there.  Let me give you some examples.

When I think of Denali National Park I remember “the peace of God that passes all understanding.” I have felt a peace there I’ve not quite experienced elsewhere.  When I think of Grand Teton National Park I recall how important humility is in the spiritual life.  Standing before that giant mountain wall I always feel small and humbled.  When I think of Yosemite National Park I think of worship.  John Muir referred to those majestic Sierra mountains as his “temples” and “cathedrals” and they became that for me as well.  I can hardly imagine walking through Yosemite Valley and not singing the “Doxology” or “How Great Thou Art.”  When I think of Yellowstone National Park I find myself reflecting on the mystery of God.  Yellowstone is such a mysterious and magical place.  As with God, there is no comprehending all its wonders.  And when I think of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park I associate it with love. There is a wonderful and abundant diversity of life in this park that is so dear to my heart.  That diversity symbolizes for me the generosity and goodness of God and it serves as yet one more reminder of the divine love that is the source of all that is good.

I could go on making spiritual connections with the many different parks I have visited and photographed. They are all special and they are all important.  We are incredibly blessed to have these national parks and we should, by no means, take them for granted.  I would encourage you in this centennial year of the National Park Service to give them all the support you can.  Visit them as often.  Work to preserve and protect them.  Our national parks are far more than just beautiful and ecologically diverse places, they are special places where God resides and where God can be experienced in some marvelous ways.

–Chuck

(I took the top image at Yellowstone NP, the middle one at Great Smoky Mountains NP, and the bottom one at Yosemite National Park.)

One of my goals for writing posts on Seeing Creation is to share with you from time to time wisdom I come across in my reading.  Recently I have been reading a book by Joan Chittister called The Monastery of the Heart: An Invitation to a Meaningful Life.  Within its pages I have found much wisdom and would like for you to consider some of Joan’s words found in a chapter called “Co-Creation.”  She writes, “In our twenty-first century view of life—through the lens of the Rule of Benedict—we know now in new ways that the earth and all its fruits are not for our exploitation, they are for our care.  We are co-creators with God of what creation has left unfinished.  What has been left in embryo is left for us to develop.  What can be developed God trusts us to bring to full potential.  But not for ourselves alone.  Co-creation, the human commitment to continue the work of God on earth, requires us to tend the land and conserve the waters, to till the garden and protect the animals, to use the things of the earth in ways that enhance all life now—and preserve them for later generations as well.”

Chittister goes on to say, “The human-centered view of creation is a stunted one.  It fails to recognize the oneness of creation, the symphony of life forms that depend on one another to bring the universe, pulsing and throbbing with life, to a wholeness that is mutual, that reflects the full face of God rather than simply our own.”  This last line I find particularly insightful.  How we choose to care for the earth and look at it will, in the end, determine what others see.  Obviously Creation is meant to be a reflection of God’s face or glory, not ours.  By failing to take seriously our role as co-creators with God we have marred or dimmed the reflection that is meant to be seen.

Too many people have looked at the earth and its resources as something to be exploited.  The earth is not viewed as sacred or understood to be God’s other book of revelation; instead, it is basically seen as something to be consumed or used for financial gain.  I remember once being at Camp Denali in Denali National Park with a group.  After a day or two we were asked what we thought of the park.  Most people spoke of the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness and how blessed we are to have such a place to visit.  One person indicated that what he saw was a whole lot of land that could be developed.  Apparently some people just don’t get it.

We desperately need more people today who will accept their God-given role as co-creator.  For people willing to do so Chittister offers this advice: “We are called to listen to nature as well as to one another, to hear its groans and till its gardens, to nurture its young and maintain the purity of its air, until we ourselves become the voices for life in everything everywhere.  To do that we must become part of the liturgy of life, treating as holy everything we touch, regarding as sacred every being alive, intent on preserving the best of what is—while we use our science and technology to protect, defend, and enhance them all. “

It seems obvious to me that so many of the decisions being made by Congress in this country, and by government officials in other nations,  do not take into consideration the sacredness of the earth.  They either do not know or do not care that the Scriptures say “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1)  The earth is not ours to do with as we please.  We do not own it; it belongs to God.  Our task, as beautifully noted by Joan Chittister, is to be co-creators with God and stewards of the world we live in.  Until more people come to understand this and act upon it I fear that the face many people will see reflected in the world will continue to be not God’s but our own.

–Chuck Summers

(I took the image above at the nearby Henderson Sloughs Wildlife Management Area.)

This past week there was a good bit of news coverage about Stephen Hawking’s new claim that “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”  Hawking has apparently moved to the point where he sees no need to posit a Creator.

I certainly respect Hawking’s intelligence and contributions to science but when he makes such a claim I realize this is simply his opinion.  He can no more prove that God was not behind Creation any more than I, or anyone else, can prove that God was.  In the end, both conclusions are faith statements.  They are what we have come to believe based on our observations and experience.

Ironically, on the same day that news of Hawking’s statement broke I received in the mail a new book by William P. Brown called The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder.   In this book Brown seeks to show how theology and science are not mutually exclusive and that both benefit from the other.  He recognizes that both disciplines “represent independent fields of inquiry” but that they also have “common points of interest.”  One common point of interest is wonder.

In the introduction to the book Brown writes: “Is science really hell-bent on eroding humanity’s nobility and eliminating all sense of mystery?  Not the science I know.  Is faith simply a lazy excuse to wallow in human pretension?  Not the faith I know.  What if invoking God was a way of acknowledging the remarkable intelligibility of creation?  What if science fostered a ‘radical openness to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.’  The faith I know does not keep believers on a leash, preventing them from extending their knowledge of the world.  The science I know is not about eliminating mystery.  To the contrary, the experience of mystery ‘stands at the cradle of true art and true science,’ as Albert Einstein famously intoned.  ‘Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead.’”

I realize that many Christians today see science as the enemy but I concur with Brown that we need both theology and science.  I believe that he is on target when he says, “The God in whom ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28) has all to do with the world in which we do indeed live and move and have our being.  The world subsists in God even as God remains present in the world.  It is, admittedly, a mystery.  But through science we become more literate in the mysteries of creation and, in turn, more trustworthy ‘stewards’ of those mysteries.”

Even though I disagree with the conclusion Stephen Hawking has come to, I’m glad that it has gotten people thinking once again about the relationship between science and religion.  In my humble opinion, when it comes to “seeing Creation” fully it will take both.

–Chuck

( I took the image of Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake shown above at Denali National Park in early September a number of years ago.)

Greetings from Camp E.D.G.E.!  Camp E.D.G.E. is the theme for this year’s Vacation Bible School at the church where I serve.  The kids are having a wonderful time and learning some very important lessons.  The “E.D.G.E.” in Camp E.D.G.E. stands for “Experience and Discover God Everywhere.”  One of the truths that the children have learned is that God can be experienced and discovered in His Creation.  I’m thrilled that the kids have been taught this.  I don’t remember being taught this truth in the church where I grew up.  It is not, however, a new idea.  Many of the biblical writers imply this very idea.  Likewise, throughout Christian history various theologians have made reference to the “two books of revelation”—the Bible and Creation.  In the end, however, Jesus may be our best teacher when it comes to seeing God everywhere. 

In his book, We Have Seen the Lord, William Barclay writes: “To Jesus the whole world was full of signs; the corn in the field, the leaven in the loaf, the scarlet anemones on the hillside all spoke to him of God.  He did not think that God had to break in from the outside world; he knew that God was already in the world for anyone who had eyes to see.  The sign of truly religious persons is not that they come to Church to find God but that they find God everywhere; not that they make a great deal of sacred places but that they sanctify common places.”

There have been a lot of places in nature where I have definitely experienced and discovered God.  One such place is Camp Denali in Denali National Park (pictured above).   Beholding such awesome beauty as that found in Alaska, it would be hard to not see God.  The challenge for me is to find Him in the not so obvious places.  At Camp E.D.G.E. it’s not just the kids who have been learning.  So have I.

–Chuck Summers