Yesterday, we spent a good long time with a praying mantis. She was perched on a bridge that floated above a beautiful meadow, surrounded by woodlands. The soft hills carried the song of the grass, as we walked among the towering walls of joe pie weed, sea oats and mustard green. The noise of the outside world and all its troubles faded away. We walked on. A pair of geese took a sudden lurchin
g flight from their pastural nest, joined by a couple of ring-necked ducks, all noisily sweeping through dried brush to land on the pond, just beyond.
It all made me think of God. It always does. The Bible holds such great wisdom for me but so does nature. I sometimes grapple with the readings of the Old Testament, understanding the historical place in which the parables sit, but in nature, I find no confusion. It is all very straight forward; I find God and His creation. If I sit long enough in a reverent silence of no agenda, I might hear His voice. It may come as an observation or thought too beautiful for myself alone to conjure, so I think of it as a God whisper.
But it is who I bring to nature, that helps me hear His voice – the person I become, informed in part, by the larger conversations I have in Christ. After mass this week, our priest led us on a discussion about our church. We spoke with each other, of the need for community, that practicing our religion, our faith, is not a solo act. We spoke of the need to commune-in-unity, as Father Paul put it, to share in what unifies us, to sing out our song of faith in our acts of love, literally, for each other, for our surrounding community and the larger world around us.
All that communing in our church, all that, I carried with me in my heart. It shaped the person that I took to the meadow, and so, as I sat quietly, listening to song of the grasses in the breeze of an ever-changing world, the constantly in-creation Creation of our Lord, it came to me that He was calling us to play with Him, collaborate with Him in creating this new future, that we have a responsibility in creating the next moments in life. It is not just a solo act, a sitting with my faith in God, in a field or woods or by a stream or on a trail that will get me there. These are all good important acts, necessary for me personally to spend time with my Lord, but in the end, I need community.
The grasses would not sing without reaching out and touching each other. A single blade swaying in the wind would make little sound at all, but in rubbing along together, as each blade is moved by the lofting breeze, the ups and down drafts of this day, they collaborate as one, to sing out a most beautiful song.
The whispered thought filled me up and made me cry for the joy of being in a church community, a diverse group of people who do not agree on everything but who have decided to rub along, communing over what unites us; Jesus’ message, to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love. May we all find community where we can reach out, rub along and sing!
