A Christmas Message from Nature

This Week's Quotation:

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility.”

— Wendell Berry

A Christmas Message from Nature

 

Rev. Berry Behr, Interfaith Minister

Happy Holidays! December is a joyous time in more than one of the world’s faith traditions. Christians celebrate the birth of the Christ child, the arrival of Christ-consciousness on Earth, and a universal message of love. Jews light the Hanukkah candles, commemorate the Maccabees’ victory over the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BCE, and celebrate the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The New Year arrives too—a largely secular, even more inclusive celebration. Across the world, people mark this turning of the calendar through Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, Lunar New Year, Shinto New Year, and other traditions of renewal and hope. Amid these festivities, we often lose sight of the tragedies: the desperate, the lonely, the grieving ones. The fault lines in our families and communities can feel especially exposed, as the gap between expectation and reality widens.

This month I spent time with an international group of pilgrims in the bushveld of northeastern South Africa. Together we reflected on lessons of predation and consumerism. We admired the elegant, gentle prey animals and the dignity of their life-sacrifice within the greater ecological system. Our gracious hostess, Linda Tucker, spoke of prey animals as “Pray animals” or “Prayer animals.” Part of a prayer chain of Divine Design—life in constant conversation with itself and unconditional love in perpetual motion. Nature’s rhythm is gifting and receiving, thanksgiving and giving back. Consumerism creates overabundance and imbalance. Imbalance can become life-threatening. 

This festive season, we are invited to take no more than we need. To be mindful of waste in our own ecosystems is to protect them from the imbalances of a demanding, exhausting, exploitative world. Nature asks us to become conscious stewards of our resources, bring our individual God-given gifts in service to life, and offer the best of ourselves for the collective well-being. 

These timeless wisdoms are reflected in every religion and wisdom teaching. They are patiently repeated by the natural world every day. We, too, are part of that natural world. 

Mother Nature speaks clearly for open hearts to hear. Monitor lizards, unusually, made their presence known. They seemed to ask: Who is monitoring whom? What becomes possible when we track the changes required to move from being mesmerized by the “egosystem” of consumerism to participation in the ecosystem of Divine Design?

About Open Windows

We, the authors of this blog, dedicate it to the transparent exploration of the world's sacred scripture and enlightened spiritual thought. We believe that the original inspiration of all faiths comes from a common source, named and revered in a myriad of ways. With that understanding, the innumerable symbols, beliefs, and practices of faith cease to divide. They become open windows to a common reality that inspires and unifies us. We find deeper insight and nourishment in our own faith and from the expression of faith from others.

We hope these weekly quotations and meditations speak to your heart and soul.