• clouds,  landscape,  mountains,  quotes

    Amazing Clouds

    March 13, 2024

    I was awaken earlier this morning with rain tapping on my bedroom window. And, more moisture coming later in the day. The temperature is in the mid 40’s but it feels colder with the high humidity. My weather app calls for a Winter Storm Watch until 6:oo am Friday morning. Snowfall of 4-9 inches with winds up to 50 mph is expected. I call that nasty! As you can see clouds are building up over the mountains this morning creating some dramatic scenes. We sure need the moisture! I met Mark for breakfast then stopped at Rigden Reservoir for images of the amazing clouds.

    “We must say of the universe that it is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.”

    Thomas Berry
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  • landscape,  natural areas,  Pineridge Natural Area,  quotes,  spirituality,  sunrises

    The Language of Nature

    November 23, 2023

    We need to move: from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world, from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in words to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us.

    Thomas Berry

    I awoke early and made the short trip to Pineridge Natural Area for the predawn colors. We’re expecting snow later today, as much as 4-10 inches by Saturday morning, so I was expecting to see some red sky. I was not disappointed. Almost no wind. Silence, which is such an integral part of the language of nature.

    Later, when I got to the coffee shop I felt a bit of regret as I may not have stayed as long as I could have. Seems my focus had moved on to enjoying a mocha rather than staying present and accepting all the gifts nature was wanting to share with me. Maybe I was intuitively aware of my spirit of alienation from the natural world over the past few days due of traveling. Maybe the divine in nature was asking me not to leave just yet. As I write this post I’m aware of my gratitude for the natural world that we are a part of, that is available to me, my ability to spend time within it and the amount of time I do spend in it. 

    I’ll end this post with a prayer on this Thanksgiving Day: I am thankful for family, friends, and those who are both. I pray for the healing of this wounded world and that we embrace the divinity of this natural world we share. Hoping you enjoy a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

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  • quotes,  reflections,  sunrises

    Reflections

    October 12, 2023

    “We must, however, reflect on what is happening. It is an urgent matter, especially for those of us who still live in a meaningful, even a numinous, earth community. We have not spoken. Nor even have we seen clearly what is happening. The issue goes far beyond economics, or commerce, or poetics, or an evening of pleasantries as we look out over a scenic view. Something is happening beyond all this. We are losing splendid and intimate modes of divine presence. We are, perhaps, losing ourselves.” 

    Thomas Berry

    As I began to write this post I became aware of how often I talk about going to the natural areas and the spiritual impact they have on me, as if nature is some distant place I must travel to. The reality is I live in nature, it is all around me, our city is built within nature. I too often fail to remember I live in nature, because I can easily get lost in the chaos of the city, overwhelmed by the buildings and noise we create. My thinking, and in many ways society, suggests we are to look elsewhere for those intimate modes of divine presence of nature. This shows a thinking of society’s separation from nature. I feel sadness, as well as anger, knowing that we are taking places of natural beauty, even if that’s a farmer’s land, and making it into a housing development, shopping mall or warehouse. We change the natural area into concrete, asphalt jungle that has almost no resemblance to its previous existence. I see where we are losing splendid and intimate modes of divine presence to the hands of investors for their financial gain rather than setting aside a farmer’s land as a natural sanctuary. I pray we, which also includes me, can change this way of thinking and believing. End of rant. Clouds have moved in and the wind has picked up as we await rain.

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  • clouds,  landscape,  natural areas,  panorama,  Pineridge Natural Area,  quotes,  sunrises,  Thomas Berry

    It’s Happening Now

    September 4, 2023

    The greatest of human discoveries in the future will be the discovery of human intimacy with all those other modes of being that live with us on this planet, inspire our art and literature, reveal that numinous world whence all things come into being, and with which we exchange the very substance of life.

    Thomas Berry

    A host of thoughts can run through my head while standing before this pre-dawn scene as I worked at capturing the image. This image is a panorama of 7 images using Lightroom Classic. I wanted the whole cloud bank in the image and my 16mm lens wasn’t wide enough so I decided to try a panorama. It works on this blog but not for printing purposes. When I came home and saw this panoramic image on my monitor my thoughts shifted from the craft of the image to the scene itself. It’s easy to look at this open field, even to the distant horizon, and see it as something separate from me. I’m here, it’s there. But that’s just not true. There is a multitude of ecosystems comprising this image and the world. Maybe that’s what makes this scene so appealing and beautiful to me. Because as Berry suggests there are other modes of being: birds of all sorts, insects, animals, the plants and of course, humans. For me the future of discovery Berry is talking about is happening now.

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  • fall season,  leaves,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons,  Thomas Berry

    Awe and Reverence

    November 12, 2022
    Light, shadows, shapes, patterns, colors of leaves

    There is an awe and reverence due to the stars in the heavens, the sun, and all heavenly bodies; to the seas and the continents; to all living forms of trees and flowers; to the myriad expressions of life in the sea; to the animals of the forests and the birds of the air.

    To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. 

    Thomas Berry

    The man made worlds of our homes, work cubicles, television, and phones, cannot fulfill that awe and reverence. Our separation has caused us to see nature apart from us. We no longer hear the divine voice in nature and therefore can and do commit violence against it. All of creation is the divine voice! How many of us stop and just listen to the voice of falling leaves. It was another cold morning in Colorado, 9 degrees at 6:45 am. Sun has set and it will be in the single digits again tonight. Hope you enjoy your day tomorrow!

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  • fall season,  leaves,  musings,  Plants,  quotes,  seasons,  Thomas Berry,  writing/reading

    They’re gone

    November 3, 2022

    Any being can benefit only if the larger context of its existence benefits. This law can be seen in the honey bee and the flower. Both benefit when the bee comes to drink the nectar of the flower: the flower is fertilised, the bee obtains what it needs for making its honey.

    The tree is nourished by the soil; the tree nourishes the soil with its leaves.

    It is the ancient law of reciprocity. Whoever gives must also receive.

    Thomas Berry

    One of the most beautiful experiences of fall for me is watching all those leaves being scattered everywhere by the winds. I also know some of you feel the same way. Where they land and how they land provides colors and patterns that are my eye candy or even Leaf Creatures. Sadly, they’re now gone, or at least most of them. The landscapers came through yesterday and spent hours blowing leaves around, mowing them up or bagging them up. Leaves have a purpose in life and part of that purpose is to decay on the ground and provide nutrients for more life. The purpose for those leaves has been altered.

    According to the EPA, yard trimmings, which include leaves, created about 35.4 million tons of waste in 2018. This analysis resulted in an estimate of 22.3 million tons of yard trimmings composted or wood waste mulched in 2018 with a 63 percent composting rate. In 2018, landfills received about 10.5 million tons of yard trimmings, which comprised 7.2 percent of all material specific waste landfilled. That composting rate is a good number, much more than I expected. But, no matter how you look at it that is a lot of yard trimmings.

    Removing leaves in the fall is a task that many homeowners perform without question. Whether the leaves absolutely need to be cleaned up at this time is debatable. From an ecological standpoint, the answer to this question is no. However, if someone intends to have and maintain a healthy lawn beneath their trees, they really should try to remove them before the winter or mulch them. I will not enter into that the debate because my vote would be to remove the lawns. Let’s have some good old dirt to track in the house, some wildflowers, and beautiful gardens. Enough of my ranting!

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