When my life starts to fray at its edges, you can find me in the Holy Cathedral of Trees. Rain or shine, every day, I touch green! Nature is one of the marvelous ways God comes to my rescue—loves me well. My soul longs for what Mother Nature provides: sprawling beauty, landscapes of peace, and amazing chances for closeness with God. 

 

I can park my car at Percy Warner Park in Nashville, lace up my tennis shoes, and run some beautiful miles into its 3,000 acres of parkland away from all the “noise” of my life. My spirit relishes the pure, the still, the holy.

 

I love these moments when I feel outside of time. Or maybe more fully in time. I breathe. Those dirt paths take me back to the vulnerable, true me. Here is the purest church I know. It seems God always makes an appearance under the halo of leafy branches and birdsong. Sometimes, with a swish of my finger, CeCe Winans belts, “The Goodness of God” and I cannot help but join in. Other times, not a word is spoken. I came for peace that only comes from God and I receive it. 

 

C.S. Lewis wrote, “All of creation is BIG with God—every bush (could we perceive it) is a Burning Bush.” The world is brimming with divine presence. If only we were more aware! Martin Luther said, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” 

 

No wonder Jesus called people out to the sea, preached from grassy knolls, healed beneath fig trees, and prayed in flowering gardens. These scenes are where there is possibility, beauty, even a glimmer of heaven. 

 

We hunger for experiences of the eternal in the temporal and finite days of life. This world is filled with so much useless clatter, distracting us from the experiences that give higher meanings. It is more and more difficult to locate God in our crazy, mixed up, broken world. We need more holy hours. I have to literally run away to my Cathedral in the Trees to remember this world is still a place I can love. In the arms of Mother Nature, I find what I need to rise for another day refreshed in spirit. 

 

The English nature writer Richard Jeffries proclaimed, “Every blade of grass, each leaf, each separate floret and petal is an inscription speaking hope.” It is a gift to study creation for its wisdom and repositories of hope. God is always reaching out to us. At our fingertips is a message of love painted with raindrops and shooting stars, twirling vines and perfumed gardenias, leaping whales and singing conch shells. These are gifts offered to everyone, no rules, only invitations to experience the Deep Things of God. 

 

At this very moment, I am looking out my office window at a Peliated woodpecker with its plume of red feathers, inspiring a regal Indian chief’s headdress, hammering away on a two hundred year old maple. The divine message is received: Keep pecking! My spirit lifts. 

 

Creator of the Heavens and the Earth,

I have been standing upright

when I should have been kneeling.

Glory everywhere.

Ah! The poetry of creation,

every breath should be a thank you.

Amen.

 

I hope you have a blessed week.

 

The piano music of Andrea Vanzo feels heaven sent. Seeing him live in London last year was a holy experience. Enjoy!