Windows of Nature
By: Ken Gire
A mother’s love is translated through the breast she offers her newborn, through the gently rocked cradle of her arms, through the tenderness of her smile and the lullaby infections of her voice. Although the baby cannot understand the depths of its mother’s love, it can understand the softness of her breast, the warmth of her milk, and the gentleness of her voice.
Nature was such a mother to me, growing up. I was suckled in its leafy arms, rocked by the gentle rhythms of its rivers, calmed by the voices of its mourning doves cooing in the gray margins of the day. Although I didn’t understand all I received there, what I received nourished me and became part of me and helped me grow in ways I am only now beginning to understand.
Much of what I received came from the Trinity River. It was almost lunar in its influence on me, pulling at the tides of my spirit, ebbing, flowing, taking me there in the morning, bringing me back late in the day, especially summer days.
I went to the river to see what it had to offer. Sometimes it was sunfish. Sometimes it was crawdads or tadpoles or minnows. Every once in a while, a turtle.
The first thing you did when you got there was to note all the tracks that crisscrossed the banks. Cryptic as cuneiform, the paw prints on the clay banks had written stories, and if yu studied them, you could learn what went on the night before. After that, you baited your hook and cast your line and see what the river had to offer.
You can see the hook a few feet below the bobber. One by one the smaller sunfish are getting up the courage to charge the bait, which today is raw bacon, because bacon looks more like something a fish would eat than anything else that was in the morning’s refrigerator.
The bigger fish, meanwhile, are watching, an aloof distance away. Food critics. You’re hoping for one of them. What the river offers you, though, is a sunfish so small you wonder how it could have opened its mouth that wide to take the bait. Its not much, but as a boy on the banks, you take what you can get.
You take something else too, though you don’t know it at the time. You see a water snake S-ing its way below the surface. Or a crawdad the size of lobster. Or a dead alligator gar in two feet of water, and it’s as big as you are, looking like some extinct, prehistoric sea creature. That something else you take from the river is a sense of wonder at the murky mystery of it all. That is what brings you back as a kid.
And that is what brought me back as an adult.
We were planning to move from southern California but weren’t sure where. Judy and I discussed a few places, finally narrowing them to Texas and Colorado. What helped us decide between the two, at least helped me, was the movie A River Runs Through It.
When I saw it, something eddied around the ankles of my soul, aswirl with memories of all those days on the Trinity River and those especially magical days in the Canadian wilderness where, as a Boy Scout, I had taken a 120-mile canoe trip. I realized none of my kids had experienced much of those things, but that it wasn’t too late for them. That, as much as anything, is why we ended up in Colorado.
“The heavens declare the glory of God,” says the psalm, day after sunlit day, night after starlit night. There are few places you can hear that declaration spoken so articulately as in parts of Colorado.”
That od speaks through Nature is something taught not only in the Scriptures but in Seminaries. In seminary you are taught Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, and Greek, the language of the New. In some seminaries you can even take Aramaic, a cognate language in which a very small portion of the Bible was written, a few chapters in Daniel, a couple in Ezra, a verse in Jeremiah. Nature, it seems to me, is every bit as cryptic as the Hebrew script used in the Old Testament, and it seems a gap in the curriculum that there are courses teaching us how to translate what naturalist John Muir referred to as “the manuscripts of God.”
We are taught how to parse verbs, but not the seasons, how to do word studies, but no how to trace the etymologies in Nature back to their origin. We draw truths to live by from Solomon’s Proverbs by not from Nature’s. We study the Davidic Psalms but not the divine ones in Nature, which chorus praise as well as cry out lament, and which groan along with David for its rescue and redemption.
If one and the same hand penned them both, are not both in some way speaking to us?
“All nature seems to speak,” said van Gogh. “As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it or feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand.”
In our search for God, Nature is one of the places we look and one of the places He looks for us, speaks to us. If, indeed, Nature is one of the cognate languages of God, it seems only logical it would be one of the languages we should study.
Solomon was such a student. Jewish historian Josephus tells us that he “spake a parable upon every sort of tree, from the hyssop to the cedar; and in like manner also about beasts, about all sorts of living creatures, whether upon the earth, or in the seas, or in the air; for he was not unacquainted with any of their natures, nor omitted inquiries about them, but described them like a philosopher.”
“Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise!” says Solomon.
Where did Solomon get his eyes and his ears and his heart to understand?
God appeared to him in a dream at Gibeon, telling him to ask for whatever he wanted. When he asked for “a discerning heart” so he could have the wisdom to rule God’s people, it pleased God so much He granted the request beyond Solomon’s wildest dreams.
It’s interesting to note that the word discerning comes from the Hebrew word that means “to hear.” A “hearing heart” is what Solomon literally asked for, a heart that could look at an overgrown field or an ant at work and see windows of the soul. That same word is used in the great commandment, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your strength.” The first step toward being wise is also the first step in loving God, and that is being attentive to the words He has spoken.
When I moved to Colorado, I tried doing that, especially being attentive to what God might be saying through Nature.
I think I might have heard something the day I went down to put a penny on the railroad tracks. Something I always wanted to do as a kid, but I never lived close to a railroad. Now, the Sante Fe Railroad clacks by my office several times a day. And today I go to the tracks to pick up a small joy unclaimed from my childhood.
I put a line of pennies on the polished rail and returned later to find them all thin as aspen leaves. I palmed them all the way back to my office, looking at them with such childlike delight I almost stepped in a mud puddle. It was a shallow puddle and murky, and yet I could still see the sun reflected in it. Even in its muddy perimeter there was a glistening of sun.
I guess it was seeing the sun in the puddle while holding the flattened pennies in my hand that I realized something. No matter how defaced the coin, I could still tell it was a penny. I could tell by the copper color and the round shape and by the faint outline of Lincoln’s face that somehow survived the train. And even though the puddle was a shallow and muddy, I could still see the sun. Even in the mud I could see a glistening of it.
Even in Buckwheat beating up his “old lady” there was something beneath the brutality. One moment his hands were balled into fists, ready to fight. The next they were gently touching my hand, and after explaining why he couldn’t stay, he said “Thank You” before running off. Even in the rain and in the muddy mess Buckwheat’s life had become, something of the sun still glistened. Even in the loose change of his actions, I could still see traces of God’s image on the coin.
Another day I took a walk up the mountain behind my office, and I sat on the banks of the Palmer Lake Reservoir, which was just beginning to thaw. The enthistire lake was covered with ice, except for the six-inch margin closest to shore. I was looking in the clear water to the pebbles a few inches below the surface when I caught a reflection of the sun its rippling surface.
The light was broken into a prism of colors, and behind the prism was a veil of clouds, and behind the clouds the sun. I looked up to see this beautiful image in the sky, but even through the clouds, even through the filter of the earth’s atmosphere, even through a distance of ninety-three million miles, my eyes couldn’t take it in looking at the reflection in that six-inch margin of water, and then, only when veiled by the clouds and rippled by the wind.
We cannot look at the sun in its noonday glory; only in the early mornings or late afternoons when it is filtered through the dust on the horizon, mirrored off the ripples of a pond, reflected off the face of the moon or the faces of the rest of creation that borrow its light.
Neither can we see God in his glory. It must be veiled or it would blind us. And so He comes to us in ways that our senses can take Him in without injury, which is always less than He is. And this helped me understand why God speaks to us in the ways He sometimes does.
Were there any gifts God had to offer me through the forest, through this forest? Anything in this place in the forest, this day in the forest, that might be for me, might in some way offer me direction at this juncture in my spiritual journey?
The person I loved but couldn’t seem to communicate with was still very much in my thoughts, my prayers, my heart. But I didn’t know how to respond, what I should say or do, or if even I should say or do anything. There was a specific, unresolved conflict that I didn’t know how to handle. I had gotten advice from others, but the advice was conflicting, and I still was confused. Should I be firm and unyielding, make the person pay the consequences? Or should I be forgiving and pay them myself?
I sat there for a long time, knees scrunched to my chest, lost in the folds of this vast evergreen blanket that surrounded me, hoping God would meet me there, hoping for some gift of insight.
But it seemed the only gift from the forest that day was the peace I had received from the time I spent in its presence. That was something’ a gift in its own way, and a gift I was thankful to receive. Getting up, I picked up a small pine cone, one from a Douglas fir, I later found out. It was not hard and brittle like most pine cones but supple instead, and its scales were overlapping each other and drawn in, as if to keep out the cold. I took it with me, dropping it off in my office and placing it on a bookshelf before I went home.
For the sake of the computer in my office, I kept the heat on all night. When I returned the next morning, it was cozy and warm. As I passed the bookshelf on the way to my desk, I glanced at the pine cone. Overnight it had changed. The scales had all spread out and opened up. I wondered. Was this the gift from the forest that I had prayed to find there yesterday? The pine cone had been closed when it was out in the cold, but it opened up in the warmth of my office.
It opened up in the warmth.
Opening up to warmth is the way the natural order works. It works that way because the word of God ordained it to work that way. Had He ordained the spiritual order to work that way, too? It seemed to me, as I reflected on it, that He had.
I decided to respond with warmth and forgiveness.
And not overnight but gradually, the pine cone started to open.
I returned to the reservoir another day, and on the way down I got a different view than I got going up. I noticed how beautiful the diagonals of rock were that jutted skyward. I wondered how it happened and how many years ago it happened. I imagined how violently it must have been thrust through the earth, rock shearing rock, splintering, colliding as the earth pitched and rolled. Great hulks of gray breaching the surface like a pod of whales, crashing down with enormous force. What deafening noise must have rent the silence here once a long time ago. What devastation was wrought, and yet, by the weathering grace of God, what beauty remains.
The juxtaposition of those two images—devastation and beauty—brought Psalm 46 to my mind.
God is our refuge and strength,
And ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
Though its waters roar and foam
And the mountains quake with their surging.
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
The holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
He lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord Almighty is with us;
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
Come and see the works of the Lord,
The desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
He burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The LORD Almighty is with us;
The God of Jacob is our fortress.
That psalm in the Scriptures and that psalm from the side of the mountain on the way down from the reservoir, came together for me in such a way as to frame a window of the past year. Through that window I could see the devastation. The upheaval forever altered the landscape of my soul. But squinting, I could also see something of the beauty that was beginning to emerge.
In A River Runs Through it, Norman Maclean’s father, a Presbyterian minister, is sitting on the banks of the river, reading the gospel of John while his sons are fishing. When Norman comes over to where he is sitting, the farther pensively remarks: “In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water.”
Underneath the Creation are the words of life, “Let there be…and there was.” Underneath the Exodus are words of deliverance. Underneath the wilderness, words of judgement. It was the word of God that brought forth manna. By a word of God, Israel was led out of the wilderness, and by another word, Moses was left behind.
God’s words are underneath everything. And if you listen carefully, you will hear them.
I was fishing in Cheeseman Canyon where aeons ago a mountain parted to make room for this regal procession of water. It is one of the most beautiful places I know, and there are few places I would rather be, especially in the fall. I was standing knee-deep in the stream as the water curled around my waders. I worked the line on my rod, lifting the fly off the water and feathering it back. The river’s voice was quiet, its lilting inflections rising to a gurgle, then falling to a murmur, rising, falling, speaking, calling.
What words were underneath these waters? What was the river saying? And what, if anything, was it saying to me?
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it,” wrote Maclean as he was concluding his book. What the psalmist writes is a little different. Eventually, all things merge into oblivion. All things on earth, that is. But in heaven stands the city of God, and a river runs through it. One of the things the river offers the city is its gladness.
As I stood listening to the river that runs through Cheeseman Canyon, I could hear something of that gladness, or thought I could.
The world we live in, form the small worlds that are my life and yours to the great wide world we all live in, will one day come crumbling in around us. In the midst of that upheaval, the psalmist says: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
It is not my nature to be still. By nature, I am a nail-biter who talks to himself all day long with a babble of Post-It Notes and a scribble of To-Do Lists.
The river helped me to be still. And in helping me to be still, it helped me to realize who God is. So did Psalm 46. The Lord Almighty, He is the one who is with us. The God of Jacob, He is the one who is our fortress. He sees all that shakes…and remains unshaken. He sit s above all that changes…and remains unchanged. In my anxiety I had forgotten that. The river helped me remember.
He sits enthroned in the city of God, and a river runs through it.
The river offers different things to different people.
To the boy on its banks, it offered sunfish.
To the man, it offered stillness.
And as I listen to the words underneath the waters, I think I hear something else. I think I hear the first spluttering syllables…
…of gladness.