The week before Christmas, in the beauty of the sun, I went on a walk out North Douglas to a secluded beach with my husband and our three children. From the beach, looking across Gastineau channel, we could see the snow-covered Chilkat mountains spanning the horizon and the choppy waves crashing on the shore. Coming out of the trees to walk to the beach, a cold winter wind met us, making the already brisk weather seem positively frigid. Though my husband and I both commented on it to each other, the kids were too caught up in the wonder of the place to even notice. They spent over an hour exploring the rocks, the logs, the icy tide pools and the thin lichen. They didn’t want to leave when we finally told them, through chattering teeth, that it was time to go.
There is something about the beauty of creation, which teaches us fundamentally about the goodness and grandeur of God. God, the Creator, reveals Godself to us in creation: in the miracle of a baby being born, the fury of a winter storm, the fragile beauty of a rainbow.
The sun and wind reminded me of another day, 10 years ago, when I was home on Spring Break from college. The Jesuit institution I attended was leading me to expand my vision of God, people and the world. I was being called out of the comfortable box I had created for myself to really grapple with questions of faith and life. In the midst of it all I wondered, knowing what I knew about the world, could I still believe in God? Knowing what I knew about my own failings and sinfulness, could I believe in a God who loved me? The week of spring break was cold, clear and sunny, and on one of the days I joined my parents for a cross-country ski on the frozen lake in front of Mendenhall Glacier. Out on the ice, skiing over a perfect layer of snow, the sky was an impossible shade of blue stretching out forever and the sun made the snow sparkle and illuminated the icebergs frozen into the lake. And suddenly I heard it, God, speaking to my questioning and bruised heart: ‘This is how much I love you.’
Today I still hold that memory dear. The knowledge that the God who created the heavens and the earth, tells us through the very beauty of creation, ‘See, this is how much I love you.’ No wonder my children wanted to set up camp and stay forever on the icy beach. In the smooth black rocks they found a place to climb, a lookout, a safe shelter. In the sun they knew the warmth of God’s love and in the water and wind the expansiveness of life. Everything told them what they already know in their inner wisdom: bask in the beauty of creation and you can touch the love of the Creator.
• Katy Beedle Rice is the Director of Religious Education at the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Comments (7)
Add commentBeautiful!
Thanks for a lovely reflection, Katy!
Living and not growing
There is a safer (and honest) way to appreciate the awe and wonder of our surroundings without the dangers that emanate from faith: it's called scientific naturalism and the exploring children described in this article know all about that (or did at one time).
Mike
Hey Mike
Shut Up
Advice from Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas is considered by many to be one of the greatest Catholic theologians. His great work, "Summa theologica" is a huge "summary of theology". The English translation is three very large volumes. I have read it both in English and the original Latin.
The introduction to this work has a passage that is important for all those interested in religion, whether they are believers or not, whether they believe there is a Creator-God of the universe or are atheists. That passage says, in a very free translation, that in speaking of God, it is not possible to say what God is; we can only speak of God in a "negative way" (via negativa). That is, if that being exists, He/She/ "It", we can only speak about that being indicating it cannot be explained in human words or concepts because it is far beyond anything we can comprehend.
Aquinas lived in the middle ages in Europe. Since his time, our knowledge of the universe has expanded to a point where its extent and immensity is really incomprehensible. We now know that our little planet, earth, is but a speck in the Milky Way galaxy, and that the Milky Way is just one of perhaps billions of galaxies. Distances in the universe are measured in "light years." That is, the distance light travels in a year. Light travels at about 156,000 miles each second. Multiply that by 365 days in a year - the distance can't be "Imagined" only calculated mathematically. If there is a Creator-God of the universe, as Aquinas points out, we can't really explain it in our limited language, using our limited concepts. All we can say is "God is not limited by......."
As humans we spend our lives on this little speck called "earth" and as Ms.Rice points out, even in this small arena, we can be filled with amazement and wonder of the place in which we live.
There is an important lesson to be learned. That is, we as humans are but specks upon a speck in the universe, but so far it is the only home we have, even as just a biological species. But we do have the ability to destroy our home, to bring our species to extinction, or find solutions to our problems.
In the time of Aquinas, the world population could probably be calculated in millions of people. Today the world population is approximately seven thousand million people - over seven billion. Humans are some of the greatest consumers of the resources of planet earth, and some say the greatest polluters of our planet. Like Ms. Rice, many people have religious beliefs, but those beliefs differ in many ways of thought, behavior and action regarding how we as humans should live. Somehow we have to find a way for humans to survive on planet earth, or we will perish as a species.
Today people of various religious beliefs, traditions and practices are no longer isolated in various parts of the world; they are coming together, living side by side with each other, living with and among those who say there is no Creator-God.
There is no way we will survive if we all say "It has to be my way or no way." It has to become "our way to survival".
I admire Ms. Rice's article because it points out how little many of us know about the wonders, the beauty, the horrors, the unexplained things right here on planet earth.
When one expands that vision out into an immense universe, one may have to agree with Aquinas that whether there is a Creator-God or not, whatever there is, is perhaps far beyond our comprehension
Scientific Naturalism
If you believe in Scientific Naturalism then you believe you know that the big bang + physics + chemistry inevitably resulted in evolution that led to this article being written.
Since you believe you that everything was inevitable after the big bang and nothing can change anything, why do you bother to post comments?
Prof. Olson, I have a bone to pick with your comment
Leaving aside Aquinas, with all due respect, your denouement (the inexplicability of existence) cannot find support in the article you claim to admire.
Why? The letter can't lend support to your claim that we know "little" about the universe because this article is actually overflowing with "answers."
If you review the letter again, Prof. Olson, you must agree that the author makes deep truth claims about the nature of reality. The fragile rainbow, the cold, a baby's birth, frozen lakes, and our nearby sun are all given an explanation: these are all gifts from a god (presumably the one called Yahweh).
As a trained logician, Prof. Olson, you know better than most that the argument constructed (premise and conclusion) is not a reasonable one. It may be persuasive for some because it uses emotion rather than facts, but you cannot infer that it is reasonable.
You would have torn me apart if I claimed on a quiz the following was a reasonable argument:
Rainbows
Rocks
Icebergs
___________
∴ Yahweh's gift
In all other discourses of human existence (law, medicine, philosophy, science, etc.) claims of this sort exact an immediate social price on the claimant ranging from rolling one's eyes, to being fired from a professorship.
Please understand, I am not attacking you, Prof. Olson. I actually agree with you that not everything is understood about the universe. I am simply questioning your claim of admiration regarding this author's letter since it clearly does not support the humility of ignorance you seem to rightly acknowledge.
I respectfully ask you to honestly reconsider why you essentially reward what is considered nonsense in all other fields of study when the discourse happens to turn to theology? Might there be reasonable evolutionary reasons for this?
Mike
MikeD, be logical..
Mike, when you have "faith" you can start believing God's miracles. Even to the most religious beings have a hard time believing, due to just by simple human ignorance! Yes we are ignorant, if you consider that there are answers somewhere out there in the universe, then humans, you and I are ignorant. If you can prove that you have some scientific credibility, and about evolution, then I will shut up and praise you. I am not saying I have credibility myself, but when true logical statements are made, I believe.
The universe has energy, there for the energy in the universe has a beginning, that energy requires a cause. Cause and effect.
God is eternal, he does not have a beginning, there for he does not need a cause.