Language and landscape

A few thoughts on the Book of Nature and its invitation into repair

“The earth is a revelation, offering itself to us daily in an astonishing array of beauty and suffering…. Soul returns to the world when we attend to the rhythms of nature, when we nourish our friendships with time and attention and in our daily participation with repairing the world.”

—Francis Weller, “The Wild Edge of Sorrow”

The seasonal rhythms of trees and plants in the Arnold Arboretum captivated my attention during my years in Boston. As the skeletal remains of winter shifted, I brushed the silvery velvet magnolia buds with my fingertips, and audibly gasped as crocuses and snowdrops pressed defiantly through ice and snow. Those blooms that seemed so fragile shocked me with their strength. Though I was worn down by the long winter and long days of work, buried under the perpetual grey of my own interior landscape, I pushed my body outdoors regardless of the weather. I was desperate for signs of life, and creation spoke the poetic language of hope that I most needed. As I paid attention to the subtle seasonal shifts, I found a sort of solace. Natures’ inherent acceptance of rhythm and change showed me how to accept my own. I began to breathe, realizing afresh that I was not alone.

As my familiarity with the trees and flowers in the Arboretum grew, I began to anticipate what came next, to hunt the signs of each season before they arrived. After years of walking there, the landscape was dear to me like an old friend, and I loved sharing its beauty with others who were less familiar. Some days I curled up on a bed of pine needles on the sunny hillside below the Conifer path, basking in the warm afternoon rays, drawing strength from the soil, or leaking quiet tears into the ground. Some days I grieved along with wilted daffodils, crushed unexpectedly by a late April snow. Some days I sought sanctuary with others under the cypress groves, soaking up the scent of the earth, mesmerized by this living, breathing fortress. The seasons made space for a wide range of experiences and emotions, and the landscape offered me language— hospitable metaphors that resonated with the dynamics of simply living.

A magical winter day in “The Arb,” as my friends and I affectionately called it

Years ago, my family spent time out at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Massive rock formations jutted upwards from the scrubby desert like huge tables (mesas). Centuries ago, indigenous peoples somehow carved homes into these rocks. Our awe at their ingenuity grew along with terror for ourselves as we hiked up the craggy cliffs towards the dwellings above. Pausing in a large hollowed rock on the cliff face, we sat with ten or so others on the upward pilgrimage. Looking out at the desert hill country far below, sheltered from the sun and wind in the cleft of that rock, I remember having a quiet epiphany: “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.” Ah, now I see. I want this shelter always.

The Book of Nature spoke loud and clear.¹

---

In his book, “The Wounded Healer,” Henri Nouwen compares the experience of human woundedness to the Grand Canyon: “a deep incision in the surface of our existence that has become an inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding.” True to form, it was his visual imagery that caught my attention. The churning currents of the Colorado River, its steady flow, its seasonal floods, and the accompanying patterns of granular wind have collectively gouged a captivating wound into the earth. Though dangerous and raw, it draws people from across the globe to witness the beauty of desolation and re-creation. And yet I imagine nobody really loves this treacherous, wounded landscape more than a seasoned park guide who has the gall to descend into the canyon, to repeatedly hike its nooks and crannies with deepening familiarity, to respect the untamed pulse of nature, and to grow intimately acquainted with each rugged river curve.

Guides spend time studying the land so that they can lead others through, calling attention to flora and fauna, giving geological and historical insights so that others can get a glimpse beyond the surface. The best guides help others to behold the earths complexities in all her scarred glory. Though I’m a stranger to the Grand Canyon, I can’t help but follow Nouwen’s metaphor a bit further. If an intimate knowledge of a specific place on the earth can be an act of love and service to others, can an intimate knowledge of our own wounded and healed interiors— descending into those treacherous and breathtaking canyons— be a way to love and serve one another, a way to steward what God has given to each of us?

“...The maker moves
in the unmade, stirring the water until 
it clouds, dark beneath the surface, 
stirring and darkening the soul until pain 
perceives new possibility. There is nothing 
to do but learn and wait, return to work 
on what remains. Seed will sprout in the scar. 
Though death is in the healing, it will heal.”

(From "The Slip," by Wendell Berry)

Photo by Tim Hart on Unsplash

What does nature teach about the beautiful risk of healing? About the paradoxical wisdom found in the cycle of life, death, and life again? I’m not talking about scripty slogans, empty words that gloss over the naked reality of pain, but about something raw and real; those things that hold grit, substance, and mystery. Carrion devour carcasses to generously feed their young. Fungi aid in the process of decomposition too, nourishing the ground as they lay waste to all manner of things, instinctually returning dust to dust. Living seeds sprout up undeterred through compacted layers of ice, ash, rock and decay, stubbornly ripening in the unlikeliest of places.

Nature is wracked with the wasting presence of decline, and yet nature consistently surprises us with the unexpected power of resurrection. Do we dare to enter our interior wildernesses with an awe and curiosity similar to how we enter the unknown places in Creation? Do we pay loving attention as we tread through the places that have been remade by suffering, expecting resurrection and repair to sprout surprisingly within ourselves? Maybe the Maker moves in the unmade— oh that we would have eyes to see, and the courage to attend his stirrings.

1. “Some people, in order 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 that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? Why, heaven and earth shout to you: ‘God made me!’” -St Augustine