Awareness of the Beauty All Around Us
We get preoccupied with ourselves, the words we speak, the plans and projects we conceive, that we become immune to the glory of creation. We barely notice the cloud passing over the moon or the dewdrops clinging to the rose petals. The ice on the pond comes and goes. The wild blackberries ripen and wither. The blackbird nests outside our bedroom window, but we don't see her. We avoid the cold and the heat. We refrigerate ourselves in the summer and entomb ourselves in plastic in the winter. We rake up every leaf as fast as it falls. We are so accustomed to buying prepackaged meats and fish and fowl in supermarkets, we never think about the bounty of God's creation. We grow complacent and lead practical lives. We miss the experience of awe, reverence and wonder. (John Puls, A Spirituality of Comparison)
Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter-in a deer leaping across a meadow in the flight of an eagle, in the fire and water, in a rainbow after a summer storm, in a gentle doe streaking through a forest, in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, in a child licking a chocolate ice cream cone, in a woman with windblown hair, God intended for us to discover His loving presence in the world around us.___Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning
I don't know if any of you caught this too. Sunday afternoon I was watching a program on PBS comparing inner city children and children who live in the suburbs, in rural areas, in the country. It was amazing to see the differences as the children who were brought up in the country had such profound awareness of death and life and God's creation all around them. The inner city children had developed wonderful community and shared their lives and playtime together, the suburban children preferred indoor computers, play games rather than outdoor play. They had not developed an awareness of their surroundings, which was shown as they depicted in an assignment to build painted cardboard construction of their lives. And in their buildings and on the streets there were no people. The suburban children were aware of malls and shops and the buildings. The inner city children had doors that opened and closed on the buildings, with people on beds in hospitals, in the windows waving, etc.
A 7 or 8 year old boy who lived in the country said "In the morning when I open up the door and the warmth of the air hits my face and the birds are singing, and the sun is coming up, I just love it".
Even the keen awareness of life and death were missed by the suburban children as meat and produce were bought prepackaged in stores rather than experiencing the sacredness of life through watching an animal live and be slaughtered and expriencing and watching their own fruit and vegetables grow.
What must we do to get back to this and even more so, help our children to see this beauty which God has given us, this beautiful gift?
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