When new things break your heart.

The Christian theology of the Incarnation (or the Jesuit educated folks love to say, "God in all things") is, and has always been,  important part of my spiritual life.  I am moved by the idea that God is born into a shit stinking barn.  I am honored that God sat at table with his parents. I am edified that someone helped Jesus wipe his bottom.  This idea that God is one of us is a story of love: that all parts of our lives from the mundane to the messy, contain the holy and sacred as the profound and pretty parts of our lives.

I've been thinking though that this idea of "God in all things..." is bigger than God in my own human things.  I'm thinking about God deep down in the cellular level of life.

God in all parts of creation. Acting not in an anthropomorphic person way but God acting in a the ways that cells act.

What if I think about God in a tree: God in a tree is not offered to me in affirmation of my humanity or in drawing a bath or even in being like me.  God offers God self as a tree by just being a tree (or a rock, or a flower, or a bee or a crap shell)  God in a tree is not a human God acting like a tree but is God being a tree...Just as God was being a human in Jesus.

And God's self, as ever loving is a form of love.  God's presence in a tree or a cell or a bug is love.  God offers gift of love is in the shade, the air, the nuts, the beauty of autumn leaves or its hospitality to locusts or Japanese beetles.  God is not "acting like" a tree. God is fully tree.


I am thinking and stewing and praying on this idea daily.  Finding God in all things- not as God separate from these things but God in these things as they are.

Which is why I keep finding my heart broken.

We are in the Pacific Northwest right now. Though most of our time here has been with friends and family we have stolen away to do some traveling in national parks.  A couple of days ago we were on a simple, but popular, hike in Mt. Rainier National park.  I saw  a group of people collecting the tiny cones of the hemlock tree. They were gathering them like one picks berries.  In their picking up 100's of the hemlock cones my heart ached.  People had turned this sacred, cathedral like, place into a commodity.  They were literally gathering things to take away.  These seeds, meant to become trees or part of the soil they landed on were stolen away from where they came from.  Why? And Why so many? Are they better placed in a jar on someone's mantle.  To remember a vacation from?  And what if we all did that?  Do we take away the capacity for God's love and the trees being (not separate really) to be diminished by diminishing the capacity for these cones...I think that we do.

(My better self considers that these folks are one their own journey of being awed by the tiny cute cones.)

On this same trip we went into a weird store, here in Portland, that was full of beautiful colorful rocks, taxedermied animals such as chicks, frogs, snakes, deer etc.  It also had butterflies of all colors framed.  Skulls of all sorts of animals were on shelves.  Each of these animals and their parts was on one level profoundly beautiful, but on the other hand I was completely overwhelmed and disgusted that their beauty was for sale.  Someone is going to purchase these things to put on their wall in their modern condo.  Literally, and animal died and was taken away from it's habitat for your dead animal art. However all these bones are sourced I don't think I care.  Even in their finality we have taken away their right to become part of the earth.  They are part of "modern decor."

 Today, Sean and I were at the beach without the kids.  And I saw a beautiful round stone.  I picked it up to bring home for Miriam who would have thought it was beautiful.  And then I put it back.  I decided I would tell Miriam about the stone and about thinking about her.  Because something inside of me didn't feel right taking this stone.  It belonged there.  It's weathering was not yet done.

Does the rock contain God's love. Or better yet does the rock, not separate from Godself love me?  The rock I saw today did.  She offered her beauty. Her roundness. Her shiny black hardness was a gift to me.  How can offering oneself be anything but  a kind of love.  So to love her back I listened to my momentary gut instinct that said, "Leave this here."

The kids and I have been in the woods a lot this summer and we are practicing asking before we pick anything.  A couple of times that has meant that we haven't picked.  We also have thanked the trees for their cool shade in the humid heat of Indiana summer. I don't know if the tree hears me.  I don't know if nature can tell me weather or not we should pick something, but I do know that our way of taking things whenever we want is not fostering the kind of gratitude i wish to have in my life and wish to foster in my kids.


We are bringing home some treasures from our trip. We picked up a couple of crab shells and a rock or two from Vashon Island.  Each time we picked something up though we asked, "can we bring you with us." and each time we listened.  For a bird or a gut feeling or something.  Each time we looked around and saw other shells and other rocks and it seemed okay. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.  But we are trying to honor that the world around us has a voice.

Another thing happened on this trip;  Manon, a dear friend of mine, said to me, "Rachel, your bees love you." and deep in my heart I heard how profound the idea of the natural world loving us.  Because I love them.  I love them with the silly passion of humans.  I love them with the wild abandon of a newlywed.  But they too love me.  Because like me they pulse with life.  Because like me they are created to and for love.  Maybe Love is all around.  And this year has been one where I have not felt loveable.  I have felt unworthy of anything.  I have barely believed in my right for oxygen some days.  But what if, what if, the air is a gift and even on those most hopeless days my bodies instinct for breathing and the air I take in say to me more quietly than breath itself, "You are beloved..."

What if If the lily that grows in the front just wants to be admired.  What if the beets in the garden long to be nibbled...


All of these thoughts are spurned by a profoundly beautiful book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book is a pardigm shifter for me...You should read it.  As soon as possible.  Then we can talk about it!  Or listen to an interview here: as she was interviewed on On Being