Light Blue

Light blue is not a color you are likely to find among the life-giving produce in the grocery store. You'll find many shades of green:  lettuces, spinach, and green beans.  Do you like yellow?  If so, you'll find bananas, squash, and corn to add to your color palette.  A range of reddish tones is also available, from apples to plums to tomatoes.  I wish you luck, however, if you want to find produce that is light blue.  (The closest you might get is that peculiar sheen that clouds the dark blue of blueberries.)

Despite this oddity of evolution, I've decided that light blue (the kind we see in a luminescent blue sky) might be one of the most nourishing of colors.  What got me to thinking this way was not looking at the sky (although I do enjoying doing so) but singing and listening to the words of a hymn sung to the tune of Sibelius's "Finlandia."

Even though that tune's name makes it sound like the national anthem of Finland, and even though it's opening line also makes it sound like a national anthem, the hymn we sang was written by a hymn-writer named Lloyd Stone in 1934.  Titled "This Is My Song," it was a very appropriate part of the worship service.  Nevertheless, even though it does begin as a prayer ("O God"), it quickly turns to thoughts of nationhood:

"This is my home, the country where my heart is.

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine."

The danger that my love for my own country might turn into nationalistic self-centeredness is tempered, however, by the wider awareness of the next two lines:

"... other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine."

The next verse is where the role Nature -- as well as the color light blue -- come into play. My own emotion of love leads naturally to my feeling that the things I love have to be what is most wonderful.  That characteristic of passion is allowed for with the first lines of the next verse:

"My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine;"

But immediately, any tendency towards provincialism is countered by the expansiveness of that blue sky.  The next two lines ring with the wonderful recognition that:

"... other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine."

Yes, we, in each of our countries of the world, have our own species of plants, our own forms of produce. Different species and varieties have been developed for different soils and different climates.  But none of us can claim that the sky is exclusively ours.

When our spirits and souls need to be nourished by a wider vision and a wider love for other nations, light blue might be the color we need.  We may not be able to remember the words to "This Is My Song." But we can remember the spirit of its words each opportunity we have to notice that the sky is a luminescent light blue.

~~~

What helps you counter our human tendency toward provincialism?

You can read the song's entire lyrics at this external link: "This Is My Song."

Getting Wisdom from Mountains

When I think back to my American history classes in public school, I think that mountains got mentioned mostly as something challenging to be crossed.  First, there was European-Americans' discovery of the Cumberland Gap through the Appalachian Mountains.  Later, there was Lewis and Clark's challenge of getting over the immense Rockies if they were going to reach the Pacific Coast.

Today, when I browse in the works of a number of Chinese writers, I find them mentioning mountains more as a means for growing in wisdom.  True, the contrast might come from a difference in genre (literature contrasted with history).  But maybe there is also a difference between East and West.

Li Po

More than once do mountains raise their head in the poetry of the 8th-century Li Po, a romantic lover of simple life and fellowship.  My favorite is the deceptively simple four-line poem entitled "The Ching-ting Mountain":

"Flocks of birds have flown high and away;

A solitary drift of cloud, too, has gone, wandering on.

And I sit alone with the Ching-ting Peak, towering beyond.

We never grow tired of each other, the mountain and I."

Li Po's saying he sat alone with a mountain made me recall an Oriental painting on a book jacket for an anthology of writers about Nature.  The painting depicted a boy, seated in the branch of a tree, his back to the viewer, looking at a not too distant mountain.  What might I see as I look through that boy's eyes?

Several years back, my wife saw a film in which she got a good look at the great mountains of China, and she was surprised to discover that they do actually rise up, and up, and up -- just the way they do in traditional Chinese paintings.  Until then, she always thought the painters had been exaggerating for artistic effect.

In Chinese landscape paintings, mountains are frequently dominant. The early 20th-century writer Lin Yutang, who emigrated from China to the U.S., made an insightful observation about the smallness of the human figures in contrast to the mountains.  He wrote: "Nature... if it can cure nothing else... can cure man of megalomania... That is why Chinese paintings always paint human figures so small in a landscape."

My wife and I have had the joy of visiting the U.S. national parks that straddle the Rocky Mountains:  Rocky Mt. Natl. Park and Glacier Natl. Park.  When I recall those trips, I remember our driving the winding roads built by venturesome and hard-working laborers, thus allowing tourists today to venture in a way Lewis and Clark never could have.  I remember taking photographs from a number of lookout points.  The sights were beautiful.  However, if I struggle for words to state succinctly my impression of the mountains, almost comically I can come up only with the word "big."   Yet, I would not mind, like Li Po, having a chance to just sit for a while and contemplate a mountain.

~~~

Have your traveled in mountains?  What were your impressions?

(The Li Po poem, trans. by Shigeyoshi Obata, is from The Works of Li Po, by Obata, © 1922.)

(The Lin Yutang quotation is fromThe Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang, © 1937.)

(The drawing of Li Po is in the Public Domain, its copyright having expired.)

Humans a Part of Nature... But...

On a recent morning, when I stopped outdoors just before daybreak, I thought for a moment that I was in a painting by the 20th-century painter René Magritte.  No, it was not one of his more obviously surrealistic paintings, such as those in which men in bowler hats float across the sky, or a window frame encloses a brick wall.  Instead, it was as if I were in one of his more subtle paintings that merge reality and unreality in the way they portray a house between trees with the sky and clouds above.

At first, the painting appears perfectly realistic, until you realize the clever way Magritte has played with light.  Part of the front of the house is illuminated by an artificial light near the door, in just the way it would appear at night.  But above, the sky is light blue, just as if it were day.  It's neither night nor day but impossibly both!

That illusion is so similar to the light I saw as I stepped outside just before daybreak.  What first caught my eye were the white clouds above the house across the street, along with a couple stars visible above the clouds in the night sky.  As I turned my head upward, I saw that the same very white clouds formed a ring all around me, a nearby treetop blocking only a small part of my view of them.  Straight above me was a large opening in the white clouds, revealing the dark night sky with a few more stars visible.

But how could this be?  If the sky told me it was night, how could the clouds be so white?  The reason was that they were illuminated by all the artificial lights of city, which I could not see directly.  Just like Magritte's painting, what appeared to be totally natural was, in fact, a fusion of the natural and the artificial.

To me, this experience stands as a metaphor of who we human beings are in relationship to the natural world:  Our human lives are part of both natural processes and our humanly-created cultures.  We are in one way a part of Nature, and in another way not.  In trying to describe who we are, drawing upon our contemporary scientific knowledge about biological and cultural evolution, some contemporary writers are increasingly using the word "emergent."  We humans, relying so much upon our cultural artifacts, are an emergent species.

Another metaphor that proves helpful to me in understanding our human emergence is that of a strikingly colored flower on the tip of the stem of a plant.  Just like the colorful flower, we stand out as something different, even though we would die if we were cut off from the plant.

Back in the 2nd century, the Christian theologian Irenaeus also spoke about human emergence, without confining God's spirit to the human realm.  Irenaeus  wrote:  "God sleeps in a stone, dreams in a flower, moves in an animal, and wakes in man."

No individual human could survive without either Nature or human culture.  That is our dilemma. Maybe we can make it our joy.

~~~

In what ways do you think we are more than a part of Nature?  In what ways a part of Nature?

(The detail from the Magritte painting "The Empire of Light,"

 © 1950 Museum of Modern Art, is used here through Fair Use.)

The Harmony of Feathers

Even since I was a boy, I've picked up feathers.  I do not go about intentionally trying to find them, nor do I have any large or scientifically-arranged collection.  But ever since I was a child, I've had the habit of picking up that occasional feather I've come across on the ground.  In a way, it seemed to me such a waste to leave such a polished finished product just lying on the ground, unappreciated.  In another way, possessing a feather felt a bit like having a talisman because it seemed to be like a free and lucky find.

Humans have appreciated the beauty of birds' feathers since before recorded history.  Both native Americans and some Pacific cultures incorporated feathers into their ritual dress.  As I examine even a single one of my relatively simple feathers from a Blue Jay or Mockingbird, I can see why:  The feather's combination of rigidity and softness to the touch.  The feather's simple elegance of design with a striking contrast of colors.

Walt Whitman

Thinking about this matter of found feathers, the phrase that comes to my mind is "designedly dropped."  It's a phrase Walt Whitman uses as he reflects on the wonder of a handful of grass brought to him by a child who asks the child's perennial question, "What is this?"  Whitman, confessing to the reader that he cannot say ultimately what grass is (so wondrous it seems), contents himself with imaginative musings about what this natural object from the Creator might be.  This is where Whitman likens the Nature-object to God's initialed handkerchief "designedly dropped,  /  Bearing the owner's name... that we may see and remark, and say Whose?"

To me, this mystery of feathers (or of a blade of grass) goes right to the heart of our spiritual relation to Nature.  There is a paradox:  I know that God did not intentionally drop that feather on the path along which I was about to walk so that I might find it.  And I know that the symmetrical tidiness of the rows of thin branches projecting from a feather's stem was not created so that I might marvel.  Nor were the colored designs created in order that I might enjoy their beauty.

Nevertheless, our human brains and cultures evolved so that we might engage the world in a way that unites our minds and hearts with the fascinating features of the world.  I think one hymn writer spoke to this when that hymnist wrote of "the mystic harmony linking sense to sound and sight."

~~~

As a child, did you collect any objects from Nature?  Do you do so now?

(The lines from the hymn are from
  "For the Beauty of the Earth," lyrics by Folliott Sandford Pierpoint, 1864.)

(Portrait of Walt Whitman is in public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Being Sensitive or Not

"Don't be so sensitive!"  It's something that many a parent has told a child in order to deal with injured emotions.  It is for the very same reason that children are taught the verse, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."

What got me to reflecting upon this matter of sensitivity, however, was not any incident involving a child's tenderness.  Instead, I got to thinking about this matter because of a tiny fern-like plant, the Mimosa roemeriana.  It's common name is, in fact, the "sensitive briar," and it is indeed quite sensitive.

When I was growing up, the children in my neighborhood would sometimes keep a lookout for the plant growing snug against the ground, hidden in the grass at the edge of the driveway.  If its pink puffball of a bloom was not present, it could remain camouflaged from our sight in the grass.  But what delighted us was not that pink ball, but the plant's sensitivity to touch.  Even just touching the leaf lightly with a small twig could make the rows of leaflets on each side of the center spine fold in against each other.

We were never able to figure out how long it was before the leaflets would re-open. However, there is one thing I have figured out from my study of this world:  It is not just humans and the sensitive briar that are sensitive.  Every animal, plant, fungi, algae, and bacteria upon this planet is.

Buddhism employs the word "sentient" (from a similar Latin root as "sensitive") to help cultivate a compassion not just for humans but for all animals.  That's a worthy endeavor, especially because too much of Western Christianity has narrowed down its focus to the human sphere.

Nevertheless, even plants, fungi, algae, and bacteria are sensitive in their own way in that they are responsive to stimuli from outside their bodies.  Although the relatively quick responsiveness of insect-eating plants such as the Venus's-flytrap is visible to our naked eye, all plants are changing their metabolism and growth patterns as the sun shifts and the water level changes. And we humans are learning the hard way how even bacteria species adapt to the warfare of our antibiotics.

Indeed, if any species of life had not been sensitive to its environment, it would not have evolved into the species it is today.  It is as if at the inception of each species, Evolution had commanded, "Be sensitive!"

~~~

How do you try to find a middle ground between being overly sensitive and not sensitive enough?

(The green artwork is licensed under a Creative Commons

 Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Ade McO-Campbell.)