You've probably gathered that I am insanely curious about so many things, but especially the natural world and all its intertwined life. I can get drawn into stars and planets and geology, but it's the living breath of the earth that captivates me, the intricate web of ecological connections that grows more wondrous the more one discovers, the more one begins to understand that all the time given in the ages of the universe would not be enough to fully describe and grasp the complexity of it.
Awe and wonder are fundamental needs of the human soul, I think. I can't help but imagine that souls deprived of it are the souls that are withering into black holes drawing all in to self, consumed by ever-growing addiction to greed and power and hunger to satisfy self alone. Wonder, in contrast, is self-emptying, the self leaving its navel-gazing in a wave of delight for that which is totally outside itself.
The world is an ocean full to the brim of such extraordinary magnificence that I must run out into it and exclaim every day "show me more!"
When I read Isaiah 6 this morning, this verse shimmered off the page:
"Holy holy holy is the Lord Almighty, the whole earth is full of his glory."
And then I found the word for word translation from the Hebrew for the second half of that sentence:
"The fullness of all the earth [is] his glory."
I am not a biblical scholar so I might be getting this wrong, but not only is the whole earth full of his glory, but the fullness of the earth IS his glory!
Why does this resonate? Because everyday something like worship happens in my soul as I regard the latest thing that has captured me- the specific web of creatures and interactions that happens on one single species of hickory leaf, for example. The awe of moths I have never seen before, as big as the palm of my hand, arriving at the light trap I have on loan this summer. They have always existed here, high in the treetops, but I did not know anything of them. Looking into the eyes of a spider on a plant turning around to look back at me, the outlandish shocking colors and patterns on insects so small I never saw them before I got a macro lens attachment for my phone camera. The excitement of finding a new native flower blooming in my woods that I've never seen in all my roaming, the return of all sorts of beauties in the places where I have successfully pulled out invasive plants.
The worship I am describing is not a worship of these things in of themselves, it is perpetual turning of awe and thanks and exclaiming toward the Creator of them, that They so wondrously made all things to invoke such delight and make my heart sing and sing and sing.
There was a time when my inner fear constrained me and insisted I must put all of these things and their creator into a carefully constructed box of exactly how they came to be, that to even put a feeler outside that box was a loss of faith.
That box has been exploded open and I no longer have any fear of the way of learning and exploring we call science, a discipline that allows us to hold ideas of all kinds in our hands loosely as we explore them and test them and see what doors of possibility they open or close.
I have no ill feelings whatsoever for the friends, the brothers and sisters of my faith whose thinking is differently than mine- it is not important to me. The thing of import to me is the Awe, the Wonder, the Delight, the Joy in all the things that are the very fullness of the glory of God filling not just the earth but the whole universe. This is where I feel the most connection and kinship with any human of any worldview or system of beliefs. And it need not be that they feel this Wonder in the exact same things I do, but CAN they wonder? Is there something that makes their heart sing and takes them outside themself and completely forget self, whether in nature or sport, in music or psychology or medicine or stories? Putting aside depression and other such challenges that dull joy and delight through no fault of ones own, does this human have the capacity to say "I love, I delight, I wish for the flourishing and health of this thing or this person that has nothing to do with me, nothing to offer me, I am just filled to the brim with thankfulness them?"
Ah, humans, says the Creator of all things-
Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations... while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?
Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have you entered the storehouses of snow, or seen the storehouses of hail?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland, and make it sprout with grass?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens, when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?
Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God's dominion over the earth?
Do you hunt the prey for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket?
Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? Do you count the months till they bear?
(Selection of my favorite verses from the poem that is Job 38)
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