|
Evening Stroll on Ferry Beach
* * *
We speak of nature as it. We speak as though nature is out there. We have forgotten what we speak of is that we are. We are strangers more to ourselves for this ignorance. We talk and talk and do and do but do not know ourselves.
The ecological crisis is more about our relationship with nature as part of nature than how we can better treat the environment. We need to awaken to the fact that we are the environment, as much as the trees, birds, rivers, rocks, skies, and other living beings. Simply put - nature is alive. Yet, how can we come to know nature as ourselves without being quiet enough to listen to her?
* * *
I stand on Ferry Beach, Saco, Maine, looking out at the ocean. The day is cold even for southern Maine in November. Today, it is too cold to take my thirty-minute walk along the shore; I'll do that tomorrow. However, I can stand here for a while and enjoy the beauty before and around me.
A small number of people walk along the shore. A young woman comes toward me. I see her in the distance. She gets near and passes by. She never looks up. I see something in her hand; it is a cell phone. She is talking. She goes to the end of the shore, turns around, walks back and past me again. The phone is stuck to her ear, still. Her face is down, still. She does not look at me, still. She is talking rapidly, still, as some say, ninety miles an hour. Sadness arises. I think, "All this beauty, and she is missing it."
* * *
-Bopjong (1932-2010) - Korean Zen Master -
"The Winter Forest," 1982.
Nowadays, of the many people who come up the mountain, some who sit on the porch and look down at the mountain below ask why it is so quiet here, or even worse, they say that they can't stand the quiet. They become uneasy, as if something were chasing them. Of course, these people are clever, bright people from the cities. In other words, they're urbanites who have become bound to the world of concepts. They're people who have become completely addicted to the confusion, the complexity, and the noise of urban life, people who have completely forgotten natural order and quiet. They're incapable of going somewhere and genuinely enjoying time by themselves. They can't stand on their own without expectations of something. They can't just be.
And since they can't endure the quiet of nature, they drown out the trickles of the streams and the clear, transparent songs of the birds with transistor radios. Some even bellow amid the mountains in an attempt to overcome their uneasiness. It's beyond me how such people can be considered lords of all creation. No longer even aware of who they are, modern people are becoming stranger and stranger.
*The Sound of Water, The Sound of Wind.
* * *
Even before an ocean, one can feel and hear the quiet in which the sound finds its home. Everything, everywhere, is wrapped in silence, even a noisy inner city. If the silence is in you, you can hear and feel it.
The beauty of nature is enhanced for us by dropping the distractions. What are we afraid of? That we cannot tolerate the glory of it all?
In silence and stillness,
nature enters us and we her -
though we have never been apart.
* * *
The ancient Hebrews sang the words below -
-Psalm 19.1-4
The skies are speaking forth God's majestic effulgence;
and the expanse proclaims God's handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares insight.
There is no talk, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet, their teaching goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
* * *
"God" can connote for us something we meet through nature and in which nature finds herself. Yet, if we do not listen with our heart to nature, how shall we hear the voice of this "glory" speaking forth?
* * *
We are not here to conquer nature. We are here to share with nature. In listening to nature, we listen to ourselves. In listening to ourselves, we can hear the Word resounding all around us.
If we do not listen, in Bopjong's words, we become "stranger and stranger." Why? We become a stranger to ourselves and to that in which we, as nature, find our being together with all other forms of life seen and unseen.
We are the great holy communion, together under a single sky and walking the same earth. The air we breathe is as holy as any religious rite and given as gift long before. Yet, where does the sky end and you begin? Where does the earth end and you begin? Nowhere.
* * *
*©Brian K. Wilcox, 2022.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
|
