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For what can be known about God is plain … because God has shown it…. Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible nature, namely, God’s eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. —Paul to the Romans (1:20)

If you would learn more, ask the cattle,
Seek information from the birds of the air.
The creeping things of earth will give you lessons,
And the fishes of the sea will tell you all.
There is not a single creature that does not know
That everything is of God’s making. 
God holds in power the soul of every living thing,
And the breath of every human body.
                                                                                                                       —Book of Job 12:7-10 [1]

“To accept our place as simple human beings—beings who share a world with every seen and unseen creature in this vast community of creation—is to embrace our deepest spirituality.” 
                  ― Randy Woodley, Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth

Summer is a good time to let go of our business, get out of our busy minds, to replenish our soul, and simply be.  To simply be with God in creation.  Dig our toes into the sand, our hands into the earth, sleep, plant and watch life grow.  To tend gardens, laugh with our children, play, look up at clouds, at stars, to become children again in our hearts.  A time let the beauty of God’s world bless us, with sunsets, clouds, peace, sunlight, flowers, singing, coolness of deep forest, green moss, singing brooks, small things, tiny creatures.  

God always and forever comes as one who is totally hidden and yet perfectly revealed in the same moment or event. The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first Bible is nature itself, written approximately 14 billion years before the Bible of words. God initially speaks through what is, as Paul affirms above.

My friends.  I am taking the summer off writing.  I am letting my busy brain drain of have to’s and musts, of talking, of planning.  I plan to sit and be.  Just be.  Pay attention to the words of the psalmist,  Be still and know that I am God. [ Psm 46:10 ]  To be still with the gift of life, creation, creatures,  the mystery of birth,  of God’s beauty in and through God’s unimaginable imagination.  

I invite each of you to stillness in creation, to listening in nature each day through the summer.  Listen, to the silence, the birds, the wind.  I invite you to sit/walk in nature each day, to soak yourself in the greater energy of creation, to soak yourself in God.    I invite you play, to dream, to waste time, to laugh, to be silly, to become a child again.  To watch a bumble bee, an ant, a bird soar in the sky, to kiss a tree, to lay out beside a river and fall asleep, to simply be, sinking deeply into the earth.

Do you remember being a child watching a caterpillar wiggle across the earth?  Watching an ant hill busy with a billion ants?  Laying on the grass watching the clouds passing overhead?  Looking up at the stars at night and feeling so very small.  God speaks through the wonder of life.  We just need to send down roots, to simply being.  

I will be simply being, each day reading Randy Woodley’s book,  Becoming Rooted , as meditation for the day.  We have so much to learn from our indigenous brothers and sisters.  

Blessings, see you in the fall…..

Praying 

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

by Mary Oliver

 

Photo by Rosalind Chang on Unsplash