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Dear Covenant Family,
But ask the animals, and they will teach you, the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak with the earth, and it will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the. Hand of the Lord has done this? In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. (Job 12:7-10)
In his book on spirituality, Celebration of Discipline, Quaker author Richard Foster encourages us to learn from nature, in the study of what he calls "nonverbal books."
The easiest place to begin is with nature. It is not difficult to see that the created order has many things to teach us. Isaiah tells us that ...the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands’ (Isa. 55:12). The handiwork of the creator can speak to us and teach us if we will listen. Martin Buber tells the story of the rabbi who went to a pond every day at dawn to learn "the song with which the frogs praise God."
We begin the study of nature by paying attention. We see flowers or birds. We observe them carefully and prayerfully.
Last Sunday afternoon, about fifteen folks from Covenant took a tour of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens and discovered beauty in the identity and diversity of each one. We began in the upper gardens, which are not visible from MLK drive, and eventually descended to the lower level, observing details in the plants, statuary and highlighted cultural heroes. It is said that Cleveland has about 100 distinct ethnic communities, all of them immigrants at one time or another. There are 35 distinct gardens, and 12 in development, each of them maintained separately by various ethnic groups. The motto of the Cultural Gardens is Peace Through Mutual Understanding. Amen to that!
In The Brothers Karamazov Dostoevsky counsels, "Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day.”
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