Awed by Creation
by Deb Baker
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
The idea of humans having “dominion” over the rest of creation relies on an assumption about the superiority of human abilities. And yet, when we examine and reflect on creation, the complexity of everything about our planet, from the “repeated refrains of nature” to the structures of soil and rocks to the lives of other creatures can offer a wider perspective. Many of our fellow beings have ways of knowing that elude us, and for me, invoke awe for both the Creator and creation.
This is not only a theological perspective; scientists try to describe the abilities of the natural world in ways that neither anthropomorphize nor understate. But I am drawn to scientists who express their wonder, as Carson did. Robin Wall Kimmerer explains in Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Moss that these miniature plants survive drought because of the way they’ve evolved. She notes, “Mosses have a covenant with change; their destiny is linked to the vagaries of rain. They shrink and shrivel while carefully laying the groundwork for their own renewal. They give me faith.”
I am moved by what Carson and Kimmerer and other scientists have learned about the world around us. Crows form family groups, have regional dialects, and hold “funerals.” Herring return to ancestral spawning waters when dams that have blocked their way for hundreds of generations are removed. Light particles coordinate their movements. Hydrogen atoms seem to change their paths when recorded.
As I consider these examples, I am reminded of St. Benedict’s teaching that we become more fully the selves God created us to be in community. Several hundred years after Benedict, St. Francis expanded this understanding of community to include our kin in creation, teaching that plants and animals, the elements, the stars, moon and sun are our siblings in God.
Nature models community. In the Hoh Rainforest in Washington while researching her book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth, Zoë Schlanger observes, “All around me are complex adaptive systems. Each creature is folded into layers of interrelationship with surrounding creatures from the largest to the smallest scale.” Contemplation helps me see that we are related to the mosses and crows, fish and water and light.
Contemplating the community of creation strengthens my faith in a Creator whose love is limitless, and leads me to share in this love for all our kin in creation. It helps foster a sense of awe for the complexity and diversity of the natural world, and an appreciation for the common life we share. For this practice, you can go outside, or sit by a window, or contemplate something that shares your space indoors.
To begin, take a few deep breaths and let them out slowly. With gaze softened or eyes closed, take a couple of minutes to notice yourself being still wherever you are in the world. You are standing or sitting in a place where your kin, human and nonhuman, have existed for millions of years, long before the built environment around you came to be. You are breathing in and out as billions of other creatures have, and do, and will. Your cells include stardust.
When you feel settled and open, return your gaze to what’s before you. Choose something to focus on. Maybe you see a bird, tree, squirrel, cloud, rock or shell, an ant or a house plant. Notice its shape, color, line, pattern. Think of what makes it, from cells and particles to intricate structures of bone, feather, branch, leaf, fur, root or mind. Consider the millennia of evolution or natural processes like erosion or eruption that brought it into its current state of being. Spend a minute or two just appreciating this being. Resist the desire to review facts or explain anything, and instead focus on the complexity and mystery of the being before you.
Next consider how what you’re focusing on has an essence, something that makes it itself, as you have an essence. Consider how little you know it, how incomplete your understanding is of what it’s like to be that being.
Consider how just in the space where you and this being are, there are so many other beings — from particles of light to dust motes to molecules of air to other beings — and that moving out in larger and larger circles from where you are, there are more and more beings over the whole earth, the whole solar system, the whole galaxy.
Consider how you are you in light of all these other beings that are themselves. You are here, with this being, alongside billions and billions of other beings, in this created universe. Feel yourself surrounded by the boundless love and creativity that brought everything into being.
Close with a few moments of gratitude for whatever sparked your curiosity, awe or awareness.
