Spies for God: On Paying Attention

Snowy Range Country

6" x 8"

Oil

Recently I just returned from hiking with family members in the Snowy Range of southern Wyoming.  All around me in every direction beauty was to be seen in distant snow-capped peaks, wildflowers were rampant with color, cold mountain lakes mirrored the rugged landscape and sky, and the air was crisp.  Delight filled my eyes and soul!  And I didn't miss the Internet for one moment!!  Aha...yes, the encroaching digital world was far and away, but my whole being felt ALIVE and full, very satisfied.  Follow me up the path here with some thoughts from my recent adventure.

The novelist, Wallace Stegner, wrote:  "Wilderness is the context in which the individual makes a contact with the universe."  Getting away from it all is a needed element to our humaness.  Author and poet Luci Shaw writes, "When our technology separates us from, or interrupts, natural processes, we lose our sense of their value and beauty, and once again we become dangerously self-absorbed."

Snowy Range, Wyoming

Being outdoors in nature on a consistent basis keeps us anchored to truth and beauty.  And it can be found not far outside our front doors.  Annie Dillard writes in her book Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, "I am sitting under a sycamore by Tinker Creek.  I am really here, alive on the intricate earth under trees.  But under me, directly under the weight of my body on the grass, are other creatures, just as real, for whom also this moment, this tree, is 'it'.  Take just the top inch of soil, the world squirming right under my palms.  In the top inch of forest soil, biologists found 'an average of 1,356 living creatures present in each square foot.....Had an estimate also been made of the microscopic population, it might have ranged up to  two billion bacteria and many millions of fungi, protozoa and algae---in a mere teaspoonful of soil.'"

Dragonfly-Omaha's Lauritzen Gardens

From the grand to the small, God's craftsmanship is readily observed, felt, or heard.  Luci Shaw in her book Water My Soul alludes to Annie Dillard's alertness to nature by saying, "We Christians should be, with Annie Dillard, spies, scouts on the lookout for evidences of God at work in the universe.  Our tools?  Alertness, a willingness to wait and allow their reality to penetrate us, and time taken to look and to see and record."  

Blue Heron-Walnut Creek Recreation Area, Omaha, NE

It does take time.  And we all are juggling the demands of everyday life, family, work, and the now ever-present distraction of the Internet/social media.  But I encourage you for the sake of your own self and those you influence, be alert, be out there, and  be beholding the created world around us.  The rewards far exceed the price you pay in time!

Daniel Goleman wrote, "...people who are self-reflective---who take time out to pray or to meditate or have some way of being in nature regularly, who spend time being with themselves and have a rich interior life---are better able to pay full attention to other people."

Einstein said, "Never lose a holy curiousity!"  So... get out and be a spy for God this week!  Go be amazed!!!

American Goldfinch-seen outside my studio door this week

Be brave and courageous!