I was raised more or less as a Christian and I have often read in, and quoted from, Scripture. When I read the words of the Gospel, I believe I am reading wisdom. Yet since childhood I felt that there was more to worship than I was taught in church or could find in the Bible. Science, for example, demonstrably contradicts much that is in Scripture, but there is even more in Scripture which isn't something that can be addressed by scientific method. There is the humanism, the sense of wonder and mystery, and above all of history. While the history may be amenable to scientific method via archeology, and by reference to other sources, much of the rest of Scripture falls into the realm of philosophy. Yet through all of it is the testimony to the experience of divinity. It is full of the testimony of people relating their experiences of something far greater than themselves.
I've read pretty widely in the texts of other religions, but I can't say that I adhere to any of those faiths. Yet in all of those texts there is wisdom to be found.
I do believe that any person can learn to experience for themselves a Power that is both within and without, in all places at all times. An institution of faith or an establishment of religion may serve to aid or guide the person, but I don't think that this is required; a person can grow their own perceptions and concepts. Some would say that this isn't too different from the concepts of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and I'd agree with that.
For some people, it helps them to contemplate something outside of themselves. For some, they might contemplate a cross, or a Bible, or prayer beads, a mandala, or some such thing. For some, it helps to dress for the occasion. For some, it helps to be in a certain place, or a certain type of place, such as a synagogue, a church, or a mosque.
For me, the place that I find that place where the mystery is most evident to me, is in the natural world, such as remains of it.
Nature may be "red in tooth and claw", but have not we humans to a great degree separated ourselves from those dangers? Do we not have fire, and do we not use fire as our first tool with which we make most other tools? Have we not built walls between ourselves and nature? Have we not built so many walls that quite often we have paved over Nature, excluded it as much as possible from our lives? Yet do we not remain living creatures, whose lives depend on things which ultimately originate in no place other than Nature?
And where can we seek back to that original relationship? Some people find it under a roof, within four walls made of things shaped by the hands of man. Here's the feeling I'm trying to convey. This is where I find my Higher Power:
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
(That was from Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
Science tells us that evolution made trees, and I happen to agree. But who made evolution?
Evolution, some will say, is not a creation but a process of nature. But who made process?
Process just exists, some will say, it's the inevitable result of the existence of time. But who made time?
Nobody made time, some will say, it just happens. But did it always happen?
The details are a bit sketchy and assuredly the debates still rage, but science declares that there's a pretty good estimate for the time of the origin of the universe... a very long time ago.
And while time just happens, and while process is an inevitable result, and evolution may be inevitably a result of the existence of time and process, that tree was not inevitable. Yet it is inevitable that if you cut down that tree, that particular instance of that particular tree will never again be.
Nor will birds again nest in it, nor rain fall upon it, nor leaves unfurl after the long dark days of winter, nor flowers bloom on it.
This makes me unutterably sad.
Time passes, and children grow up, lovers meet, elders pass on, grandchildren become elders, and that's the circle of life. In the circle of life of a tree, it might be there through several cycles of the circle of life of human beings, as it were, an old friend of the family, and an old friend of all of the other living things that call it home, call it shade, call it a source of oxygen and a carbon-sink helping to maintain the ecology in which everything has co-evolved. Remove the tree, and perhaps other trees will fill in for the missing tree. Remove enough trees, and those things that require the tree will go elsewhere in hopes of finding the tree they need, or perhaps they'll just remain and perhaps die. Remove more than enough trees, and the things that need trees will never find what they require to live.
That would make me more than unutterably sad.
God, or evolution, or even a god that created evolution, or simple chance, or Divine Providence, have made the tree serve a purpose, even if all that the tree "desires" is to procreate more trees. Yet without anthropomorphizing overmuch, we could say that the tree has a purpose.
For me, the purpose a tree has also includes being a sort of a mandala, an object of concentration as I try to join with my spiritual higher power. It represents, to me, one of the finest works of Creation, or end results of billions of years of Evolution, or possibly both. It gives me a lot to think about, and when I don't want to think, but would rather feel, it feels a lot like a symbol of home, of life, of the circle of life, of permanence and impermanence. It symbolizes the interconnectedness of ecology, it symbolizes the interdependence of things, it's a symbol of life itself, of how the world was before the hands of man used fire as the first tool, and baked clay to smelt iron to make tools to cut stone to build walls, to build storehouses, to build cities and roads and build civilizations that reshape the very earth in increasingly dangerous ways... and still hasn't learned to say "enough is enough".
Trees, to me, symbolize earth-friendly living, and are a sign that someone, somewhere, is doing something right.
Contrast and compare -- if you would -- the difference between healthy trees in a healthy glade with a healthy native-ecology meadow, with the surrounding cityscape.
Of course, I'm referring to the "Rachel Carson Meadow" just off of University Boulevard in the Four Corners neighborhood of District 4. University Boulevard, with its traffic jams and aging housing stock, represents the world of man, the urge to pave, and to drive as fast as the law allows and traffic will permit on that pavement.
The smoking buses lumber past the little glade and meadow, lovingly maintained and kept free of invasive organisms through the volunteerism of many of the locals. The buses symbolize the Noise of a Great Machine, all turning gears and clanking parts, typical of the so-called "pinnacle" of human creation. The meadow and glade symbolize another creation, and another creator (God or Evolution, take your pick) which created the mankind that is symbolized by the buses. The meadow and the glade are quiet, mostly, and mostly they don't fume or clank.
The glade is a remnant, a refuge, a place to remind us that the turning gears and clanking and smoke are not natural things in a natural state, though we as humans become accustomed to our surroundings and all-too-often don't pause to reflect, to ask ourselves if we're doing the right thing.
The glade, the meadow, to people like me, is a place where we visit as others would visit a church.
Contrast and compare with the plans to raze all of this to the ground, to replace it with a soccer field.
To people like me, this has all of the offensiveness of someone making plans to bulldoze a temple and replace it with a casino.
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