Nature

The Robin is steadily flitting back and forth from its nest. Perhaps, there are babies? I saw my first gosling on Sunday speeding down the overflowing stream between two aggressive parents. Sam and I explore along Laurel Creek somewhat regularly, but on Sunday it was annoying/fun/hopeful to see the teen boy in the video game shirt rather in-adroitly playing in the creek (as if for the first time.) He may or may not have fallen in... Sam and I may or may not have laughed. 

This world is delightful: “Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see.” 

A polar vortex this weekend! We might get snow in May! This denizen of the great Northwoods has only experienced snow in May one other time and that was flakes dancing on the wind--there was no accumulation. Oh boy! What about all the people sleeping in tents? 

It is ALL a bit too much. 

This virus that ravages through some bodies ...laying absolute destruction ….and others it lilts through unnoticed. 

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can burn like a transmorgification. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. 

Nature is not enough. Nature is too much. 

I need the stories that begin with Jesus reading from a scroll announcing good news for the poor. I still need the theological poetry of Paul wherein he names that all creation is groaning awaiting a redemption that can only come when that scroll-reading Jesus becomes all-in-all: Behold a new heavens and a new earth! 

And yet, it is still all so beautiful or as Marilyn Robinson writes:

And I can’t believe that, when we have all been changed and put on incorruptibility, we will forget our fantastic condition of mortality and impermanence, the great bright dream of procreating and perishing that meant the whole world to us. In eternity this world will be Troy, I believe, and all that has passed here will be the epic of the universe, the ballad they sing in the streets. Because I don’t imagine any reality putting this one in the shade entirely, and I think piety forbids me to try.”