Tag: Nature

Nurturing Nature

Local Fungi, Vaults Velvety Sea of Moss

From the creation, learn to admire the Lord! Indeed the magnitude and beauty of creation display a God who is artificer of the universe. He has made the mode of creation to be our best teacher. ~ St. John Chrysostom

If we lose our sense of wonder before the beauty of nature… this suggests that we have at the same time lost our sense of God’s grace. ~ Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

That green leaf on the tree which you needlessly plucked – it was not wrong, only rather a pity for the little leaf. The heart that has learned to love feels sorry for every created thing. ~ St. Silouan

Crystalline Cantatas

Beautiful Star Mosaic by Melania

If we could hear stars sing their crystalline cantatas of praise to the Creator, our hearts would be so effused with such Divine sweetness and yearning; it would be unbearably impossible to not join in chorus of jubilation with them.

What sort of praise can I give Thee? I have never heard the song of the Cherubim, a joy reserved for the spirits above. But I know the praises that nature sings to Thee. In winter, I have beheld how silently in the moonlight the whole earth offers Thee prayer, clad in its white mantle of snow, sparkling like diamonds. I have seen how the rising sun rejoices in Thee, how the song of the birds is a chorus of praise to Thee. I have heard the mysterious mutterings of the forests about Thee, and the winds singing Thy praise as they stir the waters. I have understood how the choirs of stars proclaim Thy glory as they move forever in the depths of infinite space. What is my poor worship! All nature obeys Thee, I do not. Yet while I live, I see Thy love, I long to thank Thee, and call upon Thy name. ~ Ikos 12, (The Akathist Hymn: Glory to God for All Things)

The firmament has the stars for its beauty, and dispassion has the virtues for its adornments. ~ St. John of the Ladder

Nature is the Secret Gospel

Scripture Art Photo by Juliana

I love seeing raindrops reflect like jewels on flowers and leaves. They’re mysterious, beautiful, and the centre of each drop contains a single speck of cloud dust.

Like the sphere of our own world, every raindrop is globe-shaped, and holds a microcosm of Earth’s history within. All water on Earth is – and always has been – continually recycled through the hydrosphere of our oceans, rivers, lakes and clouds.

Raindrops remind us everything’s connected.

Who knows… Perhaps a raindrop that falls on us today was once part of the Jordan River, surrounding Christ where He stood to be baptised?

Maybe that fluffy snowflake melting on our nose could have at one time, splashed against the bow of The Ark during the Great Flood?

Perchance this morning’s dew which sits serenely on a rose petal, once glistened in Eden’s Garden?

Raindrops are ancient and possess the numinous beauty of Creation. Water is life, and blessed water is Holy Water.

Let us keep looking up… for the heavens declare the glory of God!

…Accept the fountain of my tears, Thou who dost gather the waters of the sea to clouds... ~ Hymn of Kassiani

For when the ground soaks up rain that often falls on it and continues producing vegetation useful to those for whom it is cultivated, it receives a blessing from God. ~ Hebrews 6:7

…All things become opportunities for us to be joined  more closely with everything and everyone. They become occasions for thanksgiving and prayer.  Live in the midst of everything, nature and universe.  Nature is the secret Gospel. But when one does not possess inner grace, nature is of no benefit. Nature awakens  us, but it cannot bring us into Paradise. ~ St. Porphyrios (Wounded by Love)

The Great Mystery of Him

Wild Backyard Poppy

…Whenever you discern something… which is a revelation of harmony and beauty, emphasize it and help it to flower. Strengthen it and encourage it to live. ~ Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

In love did He bring the world into existence; in love does He guide it during this its temporal existence; in love is He going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of Him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised. And since in the New World the Creator’s love rules over all rational nature, the wonder at His mysteries that will be revealed then will captivate to itself the intellect of all rational beings whom He has created so that they might have delight in Him, whether they be evil or whether they be just. ~ St. Isaac of Syria

The soul leaves all surface appearances, not only those that can be grasped by the senses but also those which the mind itself seems to see, and it keeps going deeper until by the operation of the spirit it penetrates the invisible and incomprehensible, and it is there that it sees God. The true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge… ~ St. Gregory of Nyssa

The Voice of Flowers

Fragrant Wild Sweet Pea and Lavender

Take delight in all things that surround us. All things teach us and lead us to God. All things around us are droplets of the love of God – both things animate and inanimate, the plants and the animals, the birds and the mountains, the sea and the sunset and the starry sky. They are little loves through which we attain to the great Love that is Christ. Flowers, for example, have their own grace; they teach us with their fragrance and with their magnificence. They speak to us of the love of God. They scatter their fragrance and their beauty on sinners and on the righteous. ~ St. Porphyrios

Echoes of Eden

Arbutus tree and wild golden yarrow flowers overlooking Finlayson Arm, BC. (Old English name for Yarrow was “Our Saviour’s Back.”)

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. ~ Psalm 121: 1-2

Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the rivers clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity. ~ Psalm 98: 7-9

I want creation to penetrate you with so much admiration that everywhere, wherever you may be, the least plant may bring to you the clear remembrance of the Creator. A single plant, a blade of grass, or one speck of dust is sufficient to occupy all your intelligence in beholding the art with which it has been made. ~ St. Basil the Great

The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God. ~ St. John of Damascus

Some people, to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Note it. Read it. God, Whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, He set before your eyes the things He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? ~ St. Augustine

God speaks to us through nature. We may hear His still, small voice, in the seas, the rivers, the mountains and hills; in refreshing breezes and warm sunshine. Long ago, God placed us in the Garden, to tend it, to dress it, and to keep it. Continuing the privilege of being His stewards of the land, we recognize the immense importance of protecting God’s wondrous Gift of Nature. Sometimes we may receive an unexpected blessing, and folded like petals close beneath our hearts, we are sweetly swathed in the unfading Echoes of Eden.

From creation, learn to admire the Lord! Indeed the magnitude and beauty of creation display a God who is the artificer of the universe. He has made the mode of creation to be our best teacher. ~ St. John Chrysostom

Great Sea of Being

God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated [alluded] by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily. ~ St. Gregory the Theologian

The Heavens Declare

Central Vault – Cross in Starry Sky, 5th century church; Mausoleo Galla Placidia – Ravenna, Italy in 2006

Whether we acknowledge that God exists or deny it, still He exists. He ceaselessly declares concerning Himself through the book written by His finger: nature…

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaimeth the work of His hands. (Psalm 18:1)…

“I asked the luminaries of heaven;” says one church writer: “Are you God? And they answered: No. I asked the air: Are you God? And it answered: No. I asked the forests and groves: Are you not God? And they answered: No. And then all things cried out together unanimously in a loud voice: No, we are not God, but we were created by Him!”

~ St. John Maximovitch, Shanghai – 1937

Clouds of Compassion

Rain cannot fall without a cloud, and we cannot please God without a good conscience. ~ St. Mark the Ascetic

Compassion for others and sympathy for their failings will bring the heart closer to the heart of God, than any form of judging. ~ St. Hesychius the Presbyter

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