Half Dome, Merced River, Winter, Yosemite, 1938 — Ansel Adams

Today’s Bible reading

Read Psalm 8

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

More thoughts for meditation

Ansel Adams might be one of the first artists to whom the “environmental art” movement can be attributed. His sublime images of the American landscape from the turn-of-the-century made the vast, diverse land across North America accessible to the masses. Images such as the one of half-dome served to inspire many to travel to our National Parks and even hike and climb to be part of the majesty and experience awe first-hand.

Summer is a time when many of us hit those trails, whether by foot or vehicle to touch base with the experience of awe and wonder in majestic places. It is my hope that this compels our connection and drives us to seek beauty all around us while exposing us to the realities of God’s nature that we cannot control. The experience of the sublime is the experience that nature is all-powerful, and truly has dominion over us, no matter how hard we try to master it.

Mary Oliver writes in her poem, Dogfish:

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman’s boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eye and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don’t you?

I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life, I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don’t know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that goes,
don’t we?

Slowly

the dogfish tore open the soft basin of water.

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway

I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway, it is the same old story—
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

And look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.

Suggestions for action

Like Mary Oliver, like Ansel Adams, like so many others day-in and day-out, look at the world with awe and wonder. There is beauty in small places, there is beauty in the Sublime Landscape of God’s hand. Take it in this day, this week, this summer and see it as a call to stop wasting time. Appreciate the beauty that God created and bring it into your daily actions to keep urging action toward stewardship and engagement with the world.

Pray: “Lord help me look, help me to see the divine wonder in creation, help me wake up and dash into action, without delay”