Back near the beginning of the month I took a couple days off from walking to rest and rejuvenate. I stayed with friends of Ann’s in the village Kirkby Malham. It sits in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.
(If you’ve seen any of the episodes of “All Creatures Great and Small” on PBS – which you should! – this is exactly what it looks like. And I do mean exactly, because this area is where the exterior shots were filmed.)
Read moreSheep have been one of the constants of this long walk. I have no clue how many I’ve seen, but it must be thousands or even tens of thousands by this point.
Which, of course, has me thinking about the Good Shepherd and the sheep of his flock.
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“There is no creature so little and so vile as not to manifest the goodness of God.” (Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Book 2, ch. 4)
Really, Thomas?
When I was young, I questioned whether the goodness of God was manifest in gnats flying around me on a summer afternoon. (I was also not a big fan of worms, but they could usually be avoided.) Lots of other insects were not on my ‘good list’ even if they might be on God’s. Yellow jackets in the rotting apples on the ground under the tree or sipping from our soda cans at a picnic. Crickets in our cellar. Mosquitoes.
Read moreDoing what it does and being what it is for all these years, it has stood there. It was old when our grandparents were just born. It was old even before that.
Read moreThomas à Kempis, in his classic “The Imitation of Christ,” has this interesting line: “Few are improved by sickness; so also they that go much on pilgrimage seldom grow in sanctity.” (Book 1, ch. 23)
Read moreBonus blog post to share a short video of some wild ponies I encountered as I crossed the Black Mountains yesterday. They apparently roam freely up on the moors. I was walking that ridge for hours before I met any other people.
Read more“If all things are his, you ought to keep your peace and let God administer all as he wishes. If he takes that which belongs to him, he is not dealing unjustly with you.”
Luther, Martin. “An Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer for Simple Laymen” (1519) Luther’s Works Vol. 42. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969, page 32
Comment: Sometimes our prayers are complaints to God about what we don’t have and what we have lost for one reason or another. Luther tells us to instead let God be God in these matters. God, as creator and ruler of everything there is, has the right to shuffle around resources, taking from one and giving to another. He’s in charge, we aren’t.
“In fact, God seems silent, but he reveals himself and speaks to us through the marvels of creation. It is enough to pay attention like a child to the splendors of nature. For nature speaks to us about God.”
Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 197
“But, it is important to note, close attention to creatures, as also to oneself, will bring with it an understanding of the damage to which they have all been subjected, and so it will provoke lament as well as delight. Lament is the knower’s response to damage just as admiring delight is the knower’s response to creatures being as they should be. Both are instances of knowing’s participation in the known.”
Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 137.
Comment: “Creatures” in this commonplace refers really to any other created being – animal, vegetable, or mineral – coming across your field of notice.
“By the reading of Scripture I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green, light is sharper on the outlines of the forest and the hills and the whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music in the earth beneath my feet.” (8 August 1949)
Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981. (originally published 1953), p. 115-116.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 