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This post is part of a series where I’m sharing some of my reflections from my senior project, for which I spent three full days in solitude at Lake Hiwassee, NC. For a fuller explanation, see the introductory post.
The first night of my project I read Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. I’ll write more about it later, but suffice to say that on of the insights I gained out of it was this: I must have faith in the individual moment, not for the whole of the future. The latter is overbearing, depressing, impossible, but the former is immediate and even reachable. Jesus “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself… Sufficient for the day is its own troubles.” At the time, I wrote this: I pray that at the individual moments of my life I would have faith in God, without concern for having total faith all at once. Essentially, I have come to recognize that a real relationship with God requires, often, a willingness to advance in incremental steps of daily faith.
I returned to this idea later during the week, after one of my long runs (read: intermittent jogs). On the way back during the run, I passed a little mound of earth next to the road (I suppose I must have passed it on the way too, but I didn’t see it then). Flowers were planted in it, and I thought of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), specifically this passage where Jesus talks about flowers:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed not like of these. (Matthew 6.25, 28-29)
The flower verses occur in the same passage as the “Do not worry about tomorrow…” statement quoted above. Flowers thus are a promise: we need only have faith for today, and tomorrow will take care of itself. This provided further reinforcement of the concept I had embarced at the start of the project, that a relationship with God requires only daily faith, not faith for the future, which will come by God’s grace in its own time.
Incidentally, the longest conversation I had during the entire three days also had a connection to flowers. Walking back from the lake one afternoon, I passed by an older gentleman who was planting tulips in a pot in his front yard. We greeted each other, I remarked on the weather (“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” – it was), and that was all. That was the most I’d said to anyone since I had eaten at Zaxby’s on the trip. It was nice to see someone else interacting with nature, and actually bringing about something creative and natural in the world. All of my reflection on nature throughout the prior morning made me feel a certain kinship with the flower-planter when I saw him, like the kinship of two strangers united for a moment at the Eucharist.
It’s the second day of the project. I’m on the porch, having just eaten breakfast.
The light has that peculiar morning quality that is so beautiful. Down the mountain, the lake is glistening, and the trees all around are, quite literally, glowing in the new sunshine. Birds sing a lot in the morning, but unfortunately at the moment I can’t hear them very well because a garbage truck or something of that kind is roaring along a little farther down the road.
It leaves now, and I can hear the birds again. How ironic that human beings, perhaps the most well-equipped of any creature to appreciate nature’s beauty, are so often the disruptors of it! The roar of the intruding garbage-truck is replaced not by silence but by a symphony, an orchestra of a thousand instruments that plays forever a single song – a song with no repetition and with endless variation. Humanity could be the First Violinist of this natural ensemble, but more often than not we are the bratty kid on the third row, shouting loudly and disrupting the entire performance. I feel sure that the Conductor is less than pleased.
The music around me is not just one of sound, but of light as well. If I practice my new art of looking intently, I can see that the forest displays the same beauty and variety in its colors as it does in its tones. Throughout the visual performance a melody of green dominates. There are undertones of brown and grey, intertwining and harmonizing in inventions that would make Bach proud. Here and there a pine tree, a soloist, emerges from the harmonies for a special performance – an ascending scale of varied brown up its trunk, an explosion of furtive green staccatos at its heights.
Later, I am walking to the lake. I take off my sunglasses and am dazzled immediately by the verdant foliage. The words “symphony of green” immediately popped into my mind, bringing back what I have reflected on earlier. On the return trip a couple hours later, I realize that the orchestral metaphor aptly suits not just sight and sounds, but smell as well. Forest fragrances are varied and beautiful: broken twigs give off an interesting odor, and there is no smell quite like that of soil. But even these find themselves outdone by the sweetness of crushed pine needles. If the mountains are God’s temple, surely pine is his incense.
This post is part of a series where I’m sharing some of my reflections from my senior project, for which I spent three full days in solitude at Lake Hiwassee, NC. For a fuller explanation, see the introductory post.
On the first full day of my project, I decided to go for a run. After some time, I turned off onto a side road and came to a tiny, old, overgrown cemetery. The cold, grey headstones were often illegible, and some seemed never to have had anything written on them at all. Many were tilted, crumbling, ready to fall. Yet this cemetery was hardly a place of death. Indeed, what astonished me about it immediately was how much life there was. Pine trees were growing. Moss spread throughout. Bees buzzed nearby and ants clambered along.
Lichen grew on the gravestones, eating away at them in the slow progress of time (though all years are but a blink in the eternity those stones represented). Gravestones, to most people, symbolize death – but right there, on those crumbling markers, new life was sprouting.
I’m one of those Christians who believe in a literal resurrection from death. But I also believe in resurrection as a metaphor, as an idea with incredible power. I saw resurrection today; I saw new life coming from death, new hope springing out of what must have been great sadness. I saw graves, and though there were bodies in them, those graves were empty.
Resurrection is all around us.
This post is part of a series where I’m sharing some of my reflections from my senior project, for which I spent three full days in solitude at Lake Hiwassee, NC. For a fuller explanation, see the introductory post.
On the first full day of my project, I went down to the lake for a couple hours. It was beautiful. The rain from the day before had totally gone away; it was bright and sunny. I read Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God, and skies above proclaim his his handiwork…”), realizing that I could just as easily substitute “lake” and “waters”.
Solitude is an amazing thing. I could just lie there on the dock, letting the sunshine wash over me and listening to the birds singing all around; I could feel the gentle rocking of the waters as the dock tilted ever so slightly with each passing wave; I could perceive, as it were, the very touch of God in each breath of wind. Nature is not God, but it is certainly divine. Nature is not God, but God is truly in nature. Nature is not God, but it reveals his face in a thousand colors and his voice in a thousand sounds.
In The Powers That Be, the theologian Walter Wink writes of the “integral view of reality” that “sees everything as having an inner and an outer aspect”. Everything in the universe has a spiritual dimension: “Heaven and Earth are seen here as the inner and outer aspects of a single reality. This integral worldview affirms spirit at the core of every created thing. But this inner spiritual reality is inextricably related to an outward form or physical manifestation.”
I thought of this passage (Wink’s book is one of my favorites) when I was on the dock. Indeed, the spiritual was all around me. Spirit is indeed “at the core of every created thing” – but in nature, surrounded by green and blue and song and light, that core isn’t nearly so far away. This is as it should be, if the words of John 1 are true: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without him nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of people. … And the Word became flesh (stuff, matter, living, natural!) and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” The Incarnation demonstrates the presence of God in the physical universe, a universe that is itself an expression of divine thought/language (logos, the Word).
Note: This series will be posted intermittently, and will continue on Monday.
