Faith and Nature

So here it is for those of you that missed the cake cutting on Saturday. I asked a friend of mine, Kuczynska Kuczynska of What the Cake, to create a cake that would represent a mountain scene with a stream, trees and a campsite. I think her creation was quite amazing. I’m calling the mountain Mount Fondant. What do you think? I cut the first piece with trepidation. It seemed a travesty to destroy a piece of art, but once we got to munching on the moist fluffy cake it was hard to stop. And for those of you who were here, I want to thank you for joining me in rolling the “odometer” over to a new year. Can I stop counting now? I’m still in denial that I’ve reached the 60 mark. This past year has been challenging on many fronts, and I feel like I’ve been thrust into the crucible, where one is forced to examine what is of value and what is not. And what shows up is that when I stop and give up my own selfish desires and ambitions and pay attention the world around me life works. For most of my life it has been about me. My photography, my goals, my ambitions, my desires to travel and see the world. Now it’s time to stop and listen. To listen to friends, to listen to family members, to listen to the trees, to listen to the mountains, to listen to the weeds growing in the yard. Like Brother Lawrence who was content to practice the presence of God.

I walk before God simply, in faith, with humility and with love; and I apply myself diligently to do nothing and think nothing which may displease Him.

I’m reading Gary Snyder’s book Back on the Fire, which is a thought provoking collection of essays, I was particularly struck by the following from pages 34-35.

Gift economy? That might be another perspective on the meaning of ecology. We are living in the midst of a great potluck at which we are all the invited guests. And we are also eventually the meal. The Ainu, when they had venison for dinner, sang songs aloud to the deer spirits who were hanging about waiting for the performance. The deer visit human beings so that they might hear some songs. In Buddhist spiritual ecology, the first thing to give up is your ego- The ancient Vedic philosophers said that the gods like sacrifices, but of all sacrifices that which they most appreciate is your ego. This critical little point is the foundation of yogic and Buddhist askesis. Dogen famously said, “We study the self to forget the self. When you forget the self you become one with the ten thousand things.” (There is only one offering that is greater than the ego, and that is “enlightenment” itself.)

The being who has offered up her enlightenment is called a Bod-hisattva. In some of the Polynesian societies the Big Person, the most respected and powerful figure in the village, was the one who had nothing—whatever gift came to him or her was promptly given away again. This is the real heart of a gift economy, an economy that would save, not devour, the world. Gandhi once said, “For greed, all of nature is insufficient.” Art takes nothing from the world; it is a gift and an exchange. It leaves the world nourished.

“Ripples on the surface of the water— were silver salmon passing under—different
from the ripples caused by breezes”

A scudding plume on the wave—
a humpback whale is
breaking out in air up
gulping herring
—Nature not a book, but a performance, a high old culture

Ever-fresh events
scraped out, rubbed out, and used, used, again—
the braided channels of the rivers
hidden under fields of grass—

The vast wild
the house, alone.
The little house in the wild,
the wild in the house. Both forgotten.

No nature

Both together, one big empty house.

Join Jan Steffe and me for a six week course titled Finding Joy and Generosity in Creation.  The class will look to the natural world and our experiences within it to better understand living with joy and generosity while surrounded by pain and scarcity. In response, we hope to rejoice in our responsibility and commit to generously caring for the resources with which God as entrusted us. The course will be offered at First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, 2407 Dana Street, Berkeley, CA,  starting Sunday January 10,  2010 at 11:30.  You can download the Winter Institute Program here, or register for the class here.

A new year brings with hit hope and determination for change. I’d like to think that we can begin anew at any moment in time. Tomorrow, today, right now. And then why not embrace change now? Why wait for an event like a new year or a new decade. As part of my own renewal I received a book for Christmas, Earth Gospel, A Guide to Prayer for God’s Creation.  I’ve been working through this book, following the daily prayers and meditations.  For December 31 the meditation includes a familiar hymn:

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill me with life anew,
that I may love what thou dost love,
and do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
until my heart is pure,
until with thee I will one will,
to do and to endure.

Breathe on me, Breath of God,
fill I am wholly thine,
till all this earthly part of me
glows with thy fire divine.

I offer this hymn as a meditation for the new year. And the picture that I’ve chosen to go along with these words was captured on December 31 also, while exploring “The Bulb,” a local open-space area which has become a location for artists to create artwork from found objects and recycled junk. You can view more photos of The Bulb here.

Sometimes the signs along the journey of life leave room for interpretation. Here’s a trail marker which normally points to the direction for hikers, but it has come off of it’s anchor and my daughter Amy has it pointing in a new direction. A reminder that perhaps one greater than us is at work here, but I’d prefer to feel the presence of the creator through the creation rather than the clouds. We found this sign along a trail on Ring Mountain,  a small nature preserve on the Tiburon peninsula.  What makes Ring Mountain special in my mind is that you can feel a sense of peace and solitude in nature while being surrounded by the bustling urban life of the Bay Area. From the top you have a view of San Francisco to the North, Mount Tamalpais to the South, and Mount Diablo to the Southeast.  The soils of Ring Mountain also make the location unique.  Rocks such as blue schist and green schist, and serpentine, discourage many of the local native plants and give rise to some unique plants such as the Tiburon Mariposa Lily which is only found in this preserve. Since we would occasionally visit the preserve on family hikes when our kids were small it’s fun to come back and reminisce about visiting the preserve in years past. More photos of the preserve are available here.

At a recent meeting with a group of friends the concept of wabi-sabi came up. I was fascinated with the idea that one can celebrate what’s imperfect. After all, don’t we want things to be prefect, finished, and complete? What if we can actually live with the idea that things are perfect as they are, incomplete, broken, or in process. A quick Google search let me to more information about wabi-sabi, the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection. Author Robyn Griggs Lawrence has written about wabi-sabi, with a book, The Wabi-Sabi House.

The day after Thanksgiving found us hiking on Angel Island. It was a blustery day, with the threat of rain showers as dark clouds drifted by the island. We felt a few drops but were spared the rain. We hiked the North Ridge trail to the top of the Island, Mount Livermore, which gives one a 360 degree panoramic view of the Bay Area. Angel Island is an island of peace and solitude surrounded by cities, San Francisco to the Southwest, Oakland and Berkeley to the East, Sausalito and Tiburon to the Northwest. We hiked through ferns and mossy oak woodlands on the Ridge Trail, returning through chaparral and the recent burn on the Sunset Trail. It was a good way to work of some of the extra calories from Thursday’s feast. It was also good to be reminded that one doesn’t have to travel far to find peace and solitude in the busy Bay Area. You can view more photos here.

With the Bay Bridge out of commission we opted for alternative means of transportation to make our way to Hunters Point today where a friend of ours was holding an open studio, along with hundreds of other artists. Here’s a photo of painter Carol Aust, Larry Hatfield and my wife Joann with one of Carol’s paintings. The painting shows two people on opposite sides of a chasm. I thought this was symbolic given the fact that the Bay Bridge is out, and we found alternate means across the chasm. Normally with three of us heading to San Francisco we would hop in the car and drive, but our mode of transportation today was BART to San Francisco where we picked up a City Car Share car to drive the short distance from  the Glen Park BART station to Hunter’s Point.  Traveling by train seems much more relaxing than driving and it’s more conducive to conversation, although sometimes the screech of the trains makes conversation difficult. Hunter’s Point is an old naval shipyard with some of the facilities now serving as artists studios.  I took a series of photos along the way. You can click here to re-enact our trip.

There’s a blustery fall wind blowing today, and wispy clouds, with a sense of foreboding. Change is in the air. Sycamore leaves reel down the street doing cartwheels driven by the wind, and the Chinese Pistache trees are turning color. Here’s an image taken while walking I was out walking the dog a couple or days ago.  There are two trees that catch the later afternoon sun and look ablaze.

As I walk up a neighboring street I see pumpkins on front porches. The apples on my apple tree are just about all picked. They’ve been sliced and dried or cooked and frozen to enjoy as savory hot apple sauce on a cold winter’s day. Fall is about change, and the coming adversity of winter. I found this quote from Arthur Golden

Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are.

People all over the world today are demonstrating as part of the International Day of Climate Action. You can follow many of the activities at 350.org. In thinking about climate change I was reminiscing about my own involvement in climate research and thought it might be fun to post a few photos I took some thirty years ago when I was working in the field of oceanography.  The photo you see here was taken in 1979 somewhere near the equator between Hawaii and Tahiti as part of an oceanographic expedition called FGGE, an acronym for the First GARP Global Experiment, GARP being an acronym for Global Atmospheric Research Project. You can find additional related images here.