Bernard Brady & Mark Neuzil
– We, the authors of this book, think Ishmael is correct; meditation and water are wedded..forever. And we think meditation is also wedded to forests and to mountains and to the sight of a soaring eagle and perhaps (at least for one of us) even to buzzing of mosquitoes. Some “thing” in nature or some “thing” about nature draws us out of ourselves and invites us to sit, stare, relax, and, often, pray.
– “Never have my thoughts been more devoutly raised to heaven,” wrote Priscilla Wakefield in the early nineteenth century…
– “I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening-point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but some place of queit where the universe can be contemplated with awe.” (Sigurd Olson)
– “Savor each portion of the reading, constantly listening for the ‘still, small voice’ of a word or phrase.” If an idea or word or phrase captures your attention, repeat it to yourself. Let the word or phrase roll through your mind. Come back to it and recall it later in the day. (Luke Dysinger is the quote)
– What is wisdom? How does on become wise? We all know poeple who are learned yet lack an ability to know the right thing to do in tough situations. We also know people who have little formal education whose opinions we value. The issue is a form of knowing that some people have as a result of experience—wisdom. As the poet Samuel Coleridge put it: “Common sense in uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
– Wisdom, highly valued in ancient times but perhaps undervalued today, ought to be sought and cultivated in our travels through nature.
– To see the beauty of God’s creation is a way to see the beauty of God.
– creation is good “in itself.” That is to say, its goodness precedes human nature and human reflection. Creation is good because God said it was good.
– Augustine and the nineteenth-century French saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897), among others, give us the image of nature as God’s book. We should “pick up and read” nature.
– Augustine uses the word confession in the New Testament sense, meaning a testimony or a declaration of faith. As he says, “So when you praise God, you are confessing to God.” Creation confesses to the greatness of God. And God’s goodness can be found in all things.
– Full of wonder then are all the things which men never think to wonder at, because…they are by habit become dull to the consideration of them. (Author unknown)
– That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. (Wendell Berry)
– When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left (Wendell Berry)
– Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is a common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper. (Wendell Berry)
– In Your goodness You have made us able to hear the music of the world. The voices of loved ones reveal to us that You are in our midst. A divine voice sings through all creation. (Traditional Jewish Prayer)
– Till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own. Till you delight in God for being good to all, you never enjoy the world. (Thomas Traherne)
– Others, in order to find God, will read a book. Well, as a matter of fact there is a certain great big book, the book of created nature. Look carefully at it top and bottom, observe it, read it. God did not make letters of ink for you to recognize him in; he set before your eyes all these things he had made. (Augustine of Hippo)
– I understood that if all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty, and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wild flowers. And so it is in the world of souls, Jesus’ garden… (Therese of Lisieux)
– Perfection consists in doing His will, in being what He wills us to be. (Therese of Lisieux)
– The fullness of joy is to see God in everything (Julian of Norwich)
– Encounters with nature are invitations to reassess our lives and our place in the world.
– Most recently, some scholars have examined the original Hebrew translations. The word image, they suggest, comes from the same root as the word viceroy. A viceroy is a person appointed by a king to rule over a province.
– By the same token, dominion is better understood as stewardship than domination. Humans are commissioned to take care of the earth, use it appropriately, keep it healthy and beautiful. The world, after all, belongs to God, not to us. It will endure long past our lives.
– Chief Seattle’s famous speech was embellished by newspaper and film makers.
– Responsibility has other ramifications. It also means being responsive to the needs and wishes of those with whom you are traveling. Responsible stewards, moreover, continue their concern for the well-being of the wilderness long after they have returned home.
– Technology feeds our needs and creates our needs.
– In our constant task of seeking of pleasure, we ignore the spiritual reality that surrounds us.
– When you prepare yourself for a canoe trip or walk in the park, do not forget to “pack” a disposition of openness to the beauty of the calm of a lake stretched out before you or the trees, birds, and flowers you will pass on your hike. Your disposition, not your course, will determine whether or not you are heading in a good direction.
– What is serious to men is often very trivial in the sight of God. What in God might appear to us as “play” is perhaps what God takes the most seriously. (Thomas Merton)
– We have forgotten who we are. We have alienated ourselves from the unfolding of the cosmos. We have become estranged from the movements of the earth. We have turned our backs on the cycles of life. We have forgotten who we are. We have sought only our own security. We have exploited simply for our own ends. We have distorted our knowledge. We have abused our power…We have forgotten who we are. We ask forgiveness. We ask for the gift of remembering. We ask for the strength to change. We join with the earth and with each other. To bring new life to the land. To restore the waters. To refresh the air. (UN Environment Programme)
– We rejoice in all life! We live in all things. All things live in us. We rejoice in al life! We live by the sun. We move with the stars. We rejoice in all life! We eat from the earth. We drink from the rain. We breathe the air. We rejoice in all life! (UN Environment Programme)
– This we know: The earth does not belong to humans; humans belong to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Humans did not weave the web of life, they are merely a strand in it. Whatever humans do to the web, they do to themselves. One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to God and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator. (Ted Perry, Chief Seattle’s Address)
– If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Father Zosima)
– Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Do not trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Father Zosima)
– We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers… (Pierre Tielhard de Chardin)
– Rightly speaking, there are no sacred or profane things, no pure or impure: there is only a direction and a bad direction—the direction of ascent, of amplifying unity, or greatest spiritual effort; and the direction of descent, of constricting egoism, of materializing enjoyment. (Pierre Tielhard de Chardin)
– Two men were fighting over a piece of land. Each claimed ownership and bolstered his claim with apparent proof. To resolve their differences, they agreed to put the case before the rabbi. The rabbi listened but could not come to a decision because both seemed to be right. Finally he said, “Since I cannot decide to whom this land belongs, let us ask the land.” He put his ear to the ground, and after a moment straightened up. “Gentlemen, the land says it belongs to neither of you—but that you belong to it.” (The Talmud)
– Actually, heaven has been a topic of considerable debate among Christians through the ages. There seem to be two general strands of thought on this matter: the first is that heaven is a particular state of “being.” According to this view, heaven refers to the fulfillment of human existence in God.
– The second sense of heaven is that it is a divine place. Heaven is where God lives. It is our spiritual home, a place we go after death.
– Shangri-La (from the novel Lost Horizon, by James Hilton)
– Have you ever had the sense that you were in a special or sacred place? Have you ever felt that a particular place caused a sense of awe or wonder in your heart? Did that spot make you feel closer to God or connected to something much larger than yourself and your life?…The concept of a “thin place” or a “thin time” suggests that in certain places or at times the veil separating this world from the spiritual realm may be permeable or at least translucent.
– Don’t get discouraged, comrades—Christ failed too. (Edward Abbey)
– I know now as men accept the time clock of the wilderness, their lives become entirely different. It is one of the great compensations of primitive experience, and when one finally reaches the point where days are governed by daylight and dark, rather than by schedules, where one eats if hungry and sleeps when tired, and becomes completely immersed in the ancient rhythms, then one begins to live… (Sigurd Olsen)
– The creeks—Tinker and Carvin’s–are an active mystery, fresh every minute. Theirs is the mystery of the continuous creation and all the providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection. (Annie Dillard)
– I don’t think I can learn from a wild animal how to live in particular…but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasels lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. (Annie Dillard)
– wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever (Jude 1:12-13)
– My heart was dusty, parched for want of the rain of deep feeling; my mind arid and dry, for there is a dust which settles on the hearts as well as that which falls on a ledge. It is injurious to the mind as well as to the body to be always in one place and always surrounded by the same circumstances. (Richard Jefferies)
– The idea of a pasture—where humans and animals can rest and find respite—and of course the words pastoral and pastor all come from the Latin pastus, past participle of pascere, which means “to feed.”
– We can define pilgrimage as a trip to a holy place, a devotional journey motivated by the desire to seek penance, to offer thanksgiving, or to ask for divine assistance.
– A pilgrimage can be thought of as a journey to an inner destination. In seeking the divine, one often finds a new or renewed self.
– “Who to Rome goes, much labor, little profit knows; For God, on earth though long you’ve sought him, you’ll miss at Rome unless you’ve brought him.” (Ancient Irish Proverb)
– Perhaps the main reason people leave the busy world and head into the woods is for recreation. But what does recreation mean to be re-create the self, to refresh the self, to restore what was lost of forgotten?
– Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire…Then, when you’re no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn’t just a means to an end but a unique event in itself…to live for some future goal is shallow. It’s the side of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow. (Robert Pirsig)
– Time moves slowly, as it should, for it is apart of beauty that cannot be hurried if it is to be understood. (Sigurd Olson)
– We cannot all live in the wilderness, or even close to it, but we can, no matter where we spend our lives, remember the background which shaped this sense of the eternal rhythm, remember that days, no matter how frenzied their pace, can be calm and unhurried. Knowing we can be calm and unhurried, we can refuse to be caught in the so-called rat race and the tension, which kills God-like leisure. (Sigurd Olson)
– It is when we forget and divorce ourselves entirely from what man once knew that our lives may spin off without meaning. (Sigurd Olson)
– I wonder what it will mean for people to forget that food, like rain, is not a product but a process. (Barbara Kingsolver)
– What we lose in our great human exodus from the land is a rooted sense, as deep and intangible as religious faith, of why we need to hold on to the wild and beautiful places that once surrounded us. We seem to succumb so easily to the prevailing human tendency to pave such places over, build subdivisions upon them, and name them The Willows, or Peregrine’s Roost, or Elk Meadows, after whatever it was that got killed there. (Barbara Kingsolver)
– To be surrounded by a singing, mating, howling commotion of other species, all of which love their lives as much as we do ours, and none of which could possibly care less about our economic status or our running day calendar. Wilderness puts us in our place. It reminds us that our plans are small and somewhat absurd. It reminds us why, in those cases in which our plans might influence many future generations, we out to choose carefully. (Barbara Kingsolver)
– If your heart is straight with God, then every creature will be to you a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine (Thomas A Kempis)
– Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. (Meister Eckhart)
– And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?…Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin (Like 12:24-28)
– When we meet the ant on the sidewalk, we step over him. He is a creature, like ourselves; not made in the image of God, it is true, but equal with man as far as creation is concerned. That any and the man are both creatures. (Francis A Schaeffer)
– As a good trip often “depends” on the weather, so too a good life “depends” on the complex interactions of one life with others. We live in the vast and dynamic world not of our own making.
– Thankfulness is a basic religious response to life.
– Like wilderness, religious senses and feelings are not all “warm and fuzzy.” With an honest awareness of dependence, recognition, gratitude, and a heightened sense of responsibility comes another basic religious sense. It is the realization that one is not always living as one should be living.
– Hope as a renewed sense of possibility is often engendered by contacts with creation. The increased mental space afforded in such experiences can be an opportunity to broaden our vision. Meeting challenges can boast our self-confidence.
– In a phrase often attributed to President Herbert Hoover, a dedicated fly-fisherman, “God does not subtract from man’s allotted time on Earth the hours spent fishing.” All of this is to say that such periods offer opportunities to reaffirm or reconsider the direction of one’s life.