I have been posting blogs at Seeing Creation for thirteen years. During that time I have written well over 600 entries related to nature and spirituality. It has been a labor of love. But I have a confession to make; in recent months I have found myself struggling to find something new to say. I started by posting blogs twice a week. Eventually that changed to once a week. For quite some time, however, it has been only once a month. I am frustrated by my inability to come up with new material and have thought about shutting down the Seeing Creation page. I will probably do that eventually but I thought for a little while I would share with you some of my early posts. Today I share with you one called “Like a Tree Planted by Water” that was originally posted May 29, 2009. It was one of my first attempts at blogging. In the coming weeks I will share with you some of my favorites from the past. I hope you won’t mind.
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water…” (Psalm 1:3)
I have just returned from a photo trip to California that included stops at Yosemite National Park, Muir Woods, Point Reyes National Seashore and Santa Monica National Recreation Area. One reason I enjoy visiting other parts of the country is that I get to see trees we do not find here in the southern Appalachians where I live. Majestic redwoods, ponderosa pines, Pacific dogwoods — even a sequoia planted by John Muir himself–brought great delight to my soul.
While on this trip I started reading Eugene Peterson’s book, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer. Commenting on Psalm 1 he writes,
“Comprehension of the invisible begins in the visible. Praying to God begins by looking at a tree. The deepest relationship of which we are capable has its origin in the everyday experience of taking a good look at what is in everybody’s backyard. We are not launched into the life of prayer by making ourselves more heavenly, but by immersing ourselves in the earthy; not by formulating abstractions such as goodness, beauty, or even God, but by attending to trees and tree toads, mountains and mosquitoes.”
I think Peterson is on to something here. Contemplating the natural world can, in fact, move us—even compel us—to pray. Psalm 19 begins with the words, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” The same psalm ends with the Psalmist praying “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
I suggest that it’s not just “the heavens” but all of Creation that declares the glory of God and that as we begin “seeing Creation” we will join the Psalmist in offering our prayers to God.
A few months ago my pictures began to be used to illustrate prayers by John Philip Newell on his Facebook page. The person who puts the images and prayers together does a fantastic job. There is always something about the image that corresponds to the prayer. I always look forward to seeing which image is chosen.
Getting to see my photographic work appear with Newell’s prayers inspired me to begin working on a new project. In January I was invited to participate in a peer group of ministers from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Kentucky. We began by spending three days together at St. Meinrad Archabbey in southern Indiana. We will continue to meet together once a month for the next year to year and a half. Prior to leaving St. Meinrad we committed ourselves to reading through the Book of Psalms together. We then established a Facebook page for our group and everyone was invited to share reflections on the various psalms we read each day.
On the first day we read Psalm 1. Verse 3 of this psalm says the person whose delight is in the law of the Lord and who meditates on that law “is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” When I read this I immediately thought of an image I took several years ago of a tree situated right next to a stream of water. I located the file of the image and posted it on our Facebook page, along with the verse. When we moved to Psalm 2 the next day I had another image come to mind so I did the same thing. A number of weeks later I’m still doing the same thing each day. I decided it would be a good discipline to examine each day’s psalm and try to connect it to one of the images of Creation I have captured over the years. Some of the psalms are easy to find images for, others not so much.
I have found that reading the Psalms while searching for pictures to illustrate a verse or two is both challenging and helpful. It forces me to look at the scriptures in a new way—visually. I am convinced that reading the scriptures this way can help one find new meaning in the Bible. It is something anyone can do; you certainly don’t have to be a photographer to approach the Bible this way. Just use your imagination when you read the scriptures and see where it takes you. Try to visualize what you are reading. Perhaps ask yourself what type of image you would use to illustrate what you are reading.
The Book of Psalms is probably the easiest book in the Bible to take this approach but it will work with any book or passage from scripture. I encourage you to give reading the Bible visually a try. See if it doesn’t help you and open new doors of understanding for you. “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Psalm 34:8)
–Chuck
(I used the first image to illustrate Psalm 1:3, the second image for Psalm 21:13, the third image for Psalm 31:3, and the fourth image for Psalm 11:1.)
