Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
(Luke 5:16)

I bless the camp counselor who first sent me out into “the creation” for a personal quiet time alone.  It was at Camp Michawana in west-central Michigan.  My dad was on the board of the camp.  He had been since Lance Latham, the founder of AWANA, was compelled by a Michigan state land-use policy decision to move his Chicago-based youth camping program out of Michigan to Wisconsin in 1945. The camp program was conducted for about eight weeks each summer at facilities built in the thirties by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  It was set on the sandy shore of a shallow little lake.

The counselor believed it was beneficial for his boys to have a time of solitude and quietness with God for about a half hour each morning; so we were assigned to go into the woods to find our private spots.  The significance of his assignment is highlighted by the fact that some fifty years later, I could still take you to that spot.  Images of it remain vivid in my mind: A mossy hump at the base of a big white pine that leaned over the shore of Long Lake.  Some of the tree’s roots arched into the water where their shadows provided cover for shelter-seeking bass.  Turtles, frogs, and dragonflies were my companions as I sat there contemplating my Bible-study lesson for the day.  I realize now that the biblical principles I was consciously absorbing were virtually parallel in benefit to the spiritual values I was receiving unconsciously from being alone and receptive to the voice of God and to the influence of natural beauty.

Several years ago I picked up an old book titled Work, Play, and the Gospel, by Malcolm Spencer.  In his chapter on the beauty and life of the Spirit he speaks of the significance of natural beauty to our souls:

Grace is the word which we attach preeminently to that quality of the life of Jesus which makes us long to be like Him, and it is also the word we use to express that overflowing bounty of God which produces in man incalculable inflows of spiritual life.  We have but to awake to the beauty of things, and to believe that life is meant for discovery and reproduction of beauty, because God is like that, and from every corner of the world where beauty lurks, spiritual life and energy come flooding into our souls.

John Muir reminds us that “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”  This is  echoed by Marya Mannes:  “The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.”

Take some time today to tend to your soul by experiencing solitude, quietness, and dwelling on something beautiful from the hand of our Creator, be it the African violet on the window sill, the hummingbird at the feeder, or a walk in the park.

The title of today’s post is from a sticker printed by my long-time creation-care friend Peter Illyn, director of Restoring Eden.  It’s in reference to Luke 5:16 that speaks about Jesus going into the wilderness to pray.  When I looked up the verse in my Bible software, I discovered that several biblical translators found in the original language a sense that this was a regular occurrence for our Savior and Creator.  One translation says He “used to withdraw” to the wild places.  Others say He went there “habitually” or “constantly” or “often.”

I think we can assume that Jesus did do this regularly.  And I bless the camp counselor who first sent me out into “the creation” for a personal quiet time like that.  It was at Camp Michawana in west-central Michigan.  My dad was on the board of the camp.  He had been since Lance Latham, the founder of AWANA, was compelled by a Michigan state land-use policy decision to move his Chicago-based youth camping program out of Michigan to Wisconsin in 1945. The camp program was conducted for about eight weeks each summer at facilities built in the thirties by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  It was set on the sandy shore of a shallow little lake.

The counselor believed it was beneficial for his boys to have a time of solitude and quietness with God for about a half hour each morning; so we were assigned to go into the woods to find our private spots.  The significance of his assignment is highlighted by the fact that some fifty years later, I could still take you to that spot.  Images of it remain vivid in my mind: A mossy hump at the base of a big white pine that leaned over the shore of Long Lake.  Some of the tree’s roots arched into the water where their shadows provided cover for shelter-seeking bass.  Turtles, frogs, and dragonflies were my companions as I sat there contemplating my Bible-study lesson for the day.  I realize now that the biblical principles I was consciously absorbing were virtually parallel in benefit to the spiritual values I was receiving unconsciously from being alone and receptive to the voice of God in the wild.

Several years ago I picked up an old book titled Work, Play, and the Gospel, by Malcolm Spencer.  In his chapter on the beauty and life of the Spirit he speaks of the significance of natural beauty to our souls:

Grace is the word which we attach preeminently to that quality of the life of Jesus which makes us long to be like Him, and it is also the word we use to express that overflowing bounty of God which produces in man incalculable inflows of spiritual life.  We have but to awake to the beauty of things, and to believe that life is meant for discovery and reproduction of beauty, because God is like that, and from every corner of the world where beauty lurks, spiritual life and energy come flooding into our souls.

Take some time today to tend to your soul by experiencing and dwelling on something beautiful from the hand of our Creator, be it the African violet on the window sill, the hummingbird at the feeder, or a walk in the park.

See you outdoors,

Dean

In my last post I stirred up a good debate on the issue of technology.  Although my primary intent was to recommend the use of wild places as a place of retreat from the pressures and distractions of modern life so heavily influenced by rapid technological change, I believe some felt that by my reference to Jacques Ellul’s writing I was condemning modern technology and was recommending a return to some idyllic, but fictitious, “good ole days.”

So let me reiterate what I mentioned in comments I posted last fall:

No doubt the value of wilderness is almost more in what is not found there than in what is.  Consider what we typically do not find in a true uninhabited wilderness (uninhabited by humans, that is!):

. . . personal multipliers of power (vehicles, electricity, et. al.)
. . . markets and marketers
. . . external temptations
. . . false values
. . . lying words
. . . too many voices to attend to
. . . too many people to relate to
. . . racial, ethnic, and gender tensions
. . . personal deception and pretense (masks)
. . . meaningless entertainment
. . . continuous distraction
. . . an overload of news (information)
. . . an overload of human technology
. . . an overload of noise
. . . the need to talk incessantly
. . . daily routines and responsibilities clamoring for attention
. . . constant time pressure
. . . the sense that I am in control

Is there any person who cannot benefit from being relieved of these stresses from time to time?

Many of those stresses relate to modern technology; so let me say a few more words about the thoughts of Elull, a French Christian and professor of sociology at the University of Bordeaux who died in 1994.  His magnum opus was the sociology tome The Technological Society (1964), which was not a Christian publication (though containing many Christian and theological implications).  His book The Technological Bluff was published in 1990 by Christian publisher Eerdmans.  His major point in that book was a sort of twist on Emerson who said that “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind,” and held that, “Technology is in the saddle and rides mankind.”

His belief was that those of us living in the technology society, for all its many benefits, are so enamored of technology and technology is so pervasive in its influence that we have simply lost control over it—and lost even the will to control it.  Without critical, moral, wise, and godly oversight and direction, technology has a life of its own that has in many ways become a powerful extension of human evil.

So we have atomic energy and the atomic bomb; we have microwave ovens to cook and expensive electronic toys and TV to divert our thoughts and steal our time from the things of first importance; we have chain saws to harvest timber and do landscaping; and we have massive machines that literally mow down old growth forests and threaten entire ecosystems; we have TVs and computers for instant access to important information and access to more information than one can possibly grasp, pornography one click away from our online Bibles, and endless diversion.

TVA coal ash spill 2008

And all the while, God’s good earth suffers and we suffer for our lack of valuing it, understanding it, being good stewards of it, and neglecting being outdoors in it enough to be reminded of the power and glory of our Creator and be refreshed and renewed by the experience.

So here I am in my high-tech office employed as a blog author and writing this post, which shortly you will be reading via the Internet on your high-tech device in your high-tech home.  With a hunger within me for the simple, agrarian ways (thinking Wendell Berry and the Amish), I do this with a nagging sense of both guilt and angst—wishing often that I was not here but out there.  A technology captive with self-applied shackles.  Sigh.

See you outdoors!

Dean

One of the values of the wild is that helps put technology in its place.  One way to understand this is to imagine yourself on a remote wooded ridge—say somewhere in the Ozarks.  You’re suddenly engulfed by a violent thunderstorm, and while rushing to find shelter and safety, you find yourself in the company of two others in the same pursuit.  Together you find a large overhanging rock ledge and crawl under it for cover.  Finally at rest, you seek to begin a conversation but quickly find that verbal communication is hopeless—for the other two, because of some warp in time, are a French explorer from the late 1600′s and an Osage Indian from the 1200′s.

Because your cell phone doesn’t work where you are, it’s a mere fascination to the other two, and your iPod, while it creates a sense of awe, soon goes the way of all battery-powered devices and your companions’ wonder ceases.  Your clothing, too, is a curiosity—as well as your eye-glasses.  But when the storm soon shows that it is but the precursor of a cold front bringing with it several inches of snow, other modern devices, like your classic Swiss Army “knifelet” becomes of little value, and the frustration of leaving that lighter in your car several miles away only adds to your distress.  What you discover is that the wild pretty much obliterates all the differences between the generations.  But you are also soon delighted that you are not caught in these circumstances with, say, “important people” like Oprah, Michael Jackson, or Donald Trump, who appear to have never have ventured more than a hundred yards away from a light switch and whose wilderness survival understanding could well be limited to the old joke that you start a fire by rubbing two boy scouts together.

I like to think that in the wilderness we meet our ancestors, because apart from our technology and heads full of technical knowledge, most of which is of little lasting significance, our common spiritual, emotional, physical, and relational needs have been the same since Adam left the Garden.  Further, the importance of the health and fruitfulness of the creation is as important now as it ever was.  They could not—and we cannot—remain healthy without good air, good water, good soil, adequate shelter, and health-giving foods—access to which modern technology may as much threaten as provide.

Dean and St. Francis

Having, as most of us do, a pride of the present, we find ourselves irrationally disconnected from the past—somehow thinking that no forebear would have much to offer us moderns.  Yet if we did find ourselves in a raging thunderstorm on a wilderness mountaintop, we’d quickly learn that we are fundamentally no different from any other person living today—or yesterday. The fears, desires, and temptations of the first human beings were at heart no different from ours.  The wild is one of the most important venues for compelling us to recognize what is most significant in life and what is common to all people of all ages.

In the same clothes, speaking the same language, I believe we’d find Saint Francis, William Penn, and John Muir certainly far wiser and astute companions on life’s journey than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.  Jacques Ellul reminds us of this in his book The Technological Bluff:

[Modern technology] causes us to live in a world of diversion and illusion. . . .  It finally sucks us into this world by banishing all our ancient reservations and fears.

So among its many other values, a walk in the wild links us in an unbroken chain with all who have gone before. Valuing and preserving our natural parks and wilderness areas will permit our descendants to do the same.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Few people fail to be touched by a stunning photo of natural beauty or a gripping verbal description of natural events.  But that is not enough for our souls.  To truly grasp creation’s meaning, one must experience it. The wild highlights our finitude, vulnerability, and our utter and complete dependence upon the creating and sustaining power of God.

John Calvin called the natural world the “theater of God’s glory,” but it is even more than a theater; it’s a cathedral.  And awareness of God’s holiness only occurs when we enter it with the right spirit.  The word “cathedral” comes from the Latin term for “chair”: cathedra.  Traditionally a cathedral is the sacred place where a church bishop has his chair of authority—his throne.  While human bishops are supposed to keep us mindful of our stewardship role in the created order, too often the trappings and traditions of man hinder our capacity to hear the “still, small voice” of God in our urban churches.

For that reason, it’s important for us to preserve and treasure the cathedral of wilderness where we see that God, the ultimate authority, is clearly on the throne and where His wordless revelation can still be clearly seen and understood (Romans 1:20).  When truly attentive people enter the wild, they immediately recognize the signs that this is holy ground—a place where to them a flaming autumn maple is no less evidence of God’s miracle-working power and presence than the burning bush was to Moses.

Also important is for us to recognize that in the wilderness sanctuary we’re not alone in the impulse to worship.  God’s other creatures worship there as well.  As the prophets Isaiah and David remind us, all created things in their own nature respond to God—even trees, rivers, and mountains. (Isa. 55:12; Psa. 98:8)  This amazing truth from the Old Testament is echoed in the Revelation where all God’s creatures are seen as worshiping the One who died in order that the cosmos may be redeemed: “Every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb [Jesus Christ], forever and ever!’” (Rev. 5:13)

Let this wonderful hymn, penned by the psalmist some three thousand years ago, resound in your heart whenever you worship in creation’s cathedral:

Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights! Praise Him, all His angels; praise Him, all His hosts! Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all you stars of light! Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever; He made a decree which shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all the depths; fire and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling His word; mountains and all hills; fruitful trees and all cedars; beasts and all cattle; creeping things and flying fowl; kings of the earth and all peoples; princes and all judges of the earth; both young men and maidens; old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for His name alone is exalted; His glory is above the earth and heaven (Psalm 148:1-13).

See you outdoors!

Dean