For the last couple of weeks, I have been sitting on the new deck my husband built, watching hummingbirds finally discover the feeders I put out for them this summer. They are beginning their migration south, so I get new birds every week or two. The males seem to have departed, while the females fight over the feeders, even though there are two available. These fierce but tiny birds are a source of wonder.
In the same vein, I recently sat on my friend’s covered deck drinking the coffee I’m still trying to give up. The rain was gently falling on a beautiful Japanese maple that had grown quite large. It was the centerpiece of the backyard. Close by were two nearly perfect spiderwebs coated with rain droplets. The orb weaver spider hid under the awning until the rain lifted and the sun came out later in the morning.
Moments like these in some sense bring us back to the Garden of Eden where we lived as stewards in intimate communion with God. I have no doubt Adam and Eve were initially struck with the wonder of His Creation until the moment they grasped at power and fell. This wonder is in increasingly short supply because we no longer see the need to stop and reflect on His Creation.
We see Creation in purely utilitarian and consumer-driven ways. This is why our neighborhoods feel empty as a tomb. Everyone is inside their homes staring at the incessant glow of screens. We no longer hear the chatter, laughter, and make-believe battles of children on our streets. There is no returning home at dusk after a long day building a fort with the neighbor kids. There are very few little girls running through fields of wildflowers catching butterflies. All summer, I was saddened by how silent the neighborhoods are in my area. There was the occasional group of kids roaming about, but it was not the norm.
Another connection I made recently I mentioned to my husband while we were driving to pick up our daughter from the all-day farm school she attends each week. The Interstate where we live is under constant construction. They are adding more lanes because, even though we live in a rural region in the Appalachian Mountains, the Interstate serves as a major truck shipping route on the East Coast. There are fatal car accidents involving semi-trucks along this route near us on a regular basis.
I pointed out to my husband that we are blasting and flattening the hillside in the name of progress, but it never occurs to us that maybe we should stop buying so much. We wouldn’t have the traffic issues we have if we stopped relying on constant consumption. I was also lecturing myself as I pointed out this truth. All the semi-trucks on the road with us were FedEx, Amazon, and lumber deliveries. What I suggested would be unthinkable to our culture that sees the earth as something to consume rather than to steward and reverence as an image into the heart of God.
As we spend our days bent over our phones in a manner that disturbingly mimics prayer, as we are inundated with new technologies and the technocratic paradigm of a left-brain dominated world, we can forget that Creation is meant to be a source of prayer and contemplation of God. It is a chance to enter the harmony, rhythm, order, and stillness of God.
When we stop to watch a hummingbird alight on a feeder, or gaze at the swallows gliding over our homes in the evenings, or marvel at a glorious sunset, we are brought outside of ourselves. There is an upward motion of the soul, and with it, our body. It is a vertical movement towards God that leads us to glorify Him. We worship not the creation, but the Creator.
Creation gives us glimpses into the heart of God. The pagans worshipped the earth by deifying various aspects of nature while Christians seek to worship the God who holds everything in being. My husband and I were praying Lauds—Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours—together one morning recently. While we offered praise to God, a clan of sparrows decided to take a bath in the birdbath I put out for them. They were playing, splashing, and shaking off water with gusto. Rather than being a distraction in prayer, it demonstrated to me the playfulness of God. This interplay raised my heart and mind to God. This is what Creation is meant to do.
If we as Catholics never spend time contemplating Creation and how it leads us deeper into the heart of the Most Holy Trinity, we will not be able to counter the prevailing Gnostic errors of our day. We will not understand why we should consider whether or not all progress is a good thing. Progress is not a Christian virtue. Being able to buy whatever we want when we want is not virtue; it is vice. Handing every task over to technology does not make us holier; it can in fact make us lazier. Our bodies are not an impediment; they are intimately united to our soul and our human nature. We are body and soul. To say otherwise is heresy that goes to the very heart of the Incarnation. Being distracted all the time leads us to ignore the flesh-and-blood people the Lord has given to us. Ignoring the beauty of Creation around us leads us to destroy and take what we want rather than properly discern the best way to steward the Creation the Lord has given to us.
Spending time in silence and contemplation of Creation can center us in this chaotic, fast-paced, and technological age. We need to stop every single day and sit with God. We need to stop scrolling, running, grasping, controlling, and seeking power. We are meant to receive from the Father who loves us. This world is not here for our personal projects and self-fulfillment. We should be asking for God’s will in our endeavors. This world is the training ground for holiness and living in intimacy with God. If we don’t like spending time with God in intimate prayer and contemplation of Him and the beauty He provides here and now, then we will not like heaven.
C.S. Lewis talks about this in his allegorical tale, The Great Divorce. In the story, people who live in hell are given an opportunity to take a bus to visit heaven. As they arrive in the most glorious and beautiful place imaginable, Lewis points out the very reasons for the discontent of those in hell. When they arrive in heaven, they don’t want to be there because they think they are too good for it, they have plans for improving it (the utopian dream of progress), they are attached to particular sins, grasp at control, cannot forgive, and the list goes on.
This is a very real danger for all of us. As Americans, we think that we are in charge and in control of our destiny. We seldom turn to God to ask Him what His will is for our lives. We haven’t even sought in prayer to ask whether the emerging technologies may harm our souls and progress in holiness. Instead, we’ve jumped on every bandwagon possible. This comes from a culture that does not stop to meditate, contemplate, and to sit in the stillness of God, whether before the Lord in His Real Presence or sitting quietly in our own backyards, entering His love through the early morning light falling upon the leaves overhead.
A people who cannot stop and rest in the wonder of God and who does not seek His will is in danger of following the prevailing zeitgeist over a cliff. It is no secret that Catholics do not pray enough. Certain strains of leadership within the Church reduced the spiritual life to activism and social justice while divorcing the higher need for prayer. The Lord Himself makes it plain that our prayer lives must come first, or we will not bear much fruit nor grow in intimacy with Him. We won’t be able to discern each new technology as we should; instead, we will be swept away in the dam that has broken open.
If you struggle to foster a sense of wonder, turn to your children or grandchildren. They will awaken wonder within you once more. It is not completely lost from your own childhood. It is simply dormant. Children are pure and open to the grandeur and beauty of Creation. They intuit the heart of the Father in every dandelion or toad. We have stopped wondering, which is leading to disordered grasping. The Lord wants us to receive. He wants to give to us, but He cannot do so if we grasp at power, control, ease, comfort, or a desire to exploit.
The Garden of Eden is not simply a myth or story to gloss over. It tells us something very deep about ourselves and our relationship with God. It reminds us of our vocation on this earth and reveals to us what grasping for power and dominance does to us and our relationship with God. There is something deeply imbedded within us that is awakened when we stop grasping and start receiving from God through His Creation.
All of us would draw closer to the Lord if we set our smartphones down each day and simply sat outside, waiting for the Lord to communicate His goodness to us. Our children would be less distracted and less anxious. Our culture would slow down and stop its all-consuming addiction to progress and material possessions. Through the grace of God, we would start to see the harmony, order, beauty, goodness, truth, and good things the Lord ultimately wants to give to us. We’d even start desiring less consumption and desiring God more.
Photo by Christian Linnemann on Unsplash
