Being close to nature makes us want to enter it -- to jump in the ocean waves, to stroll through the forest, to gaze at the sky. We want to taste, feel, embrace, smell, soak up, be-at-one-with every dancing, joyful cell that nature affords us. We want to camp under the stars, smell the fresh, clean and crisp air of the mountains, and surf the waves. Peace! Joy! Love (union with)! These are the things we were made for. Somehow, we remember Paradise, our original home, and we laugh with delight to connect once again with our natural surroundings.
Mankind and the earth share the same DNA. [One of my friends says, "We are made of stardust!"] But our present-day kinds of existence fail to connect us with our "home," as we collect our Starbucks from a drive-through window in the morning and attempt to enter the flow of traffic without spilling it all over our laps. We drive through a maze of concrete ramps and exits until we arrive at work, where, if we are fortunate, there is a patch of green grass between the parking lot and our office cubicle. The sky is above, but we often fail to catch a glimpse of it as we glance at our watch to see whether we are late for work.
It is not realistic to think that we can all begin our day with a leisurely cup of coffee as we gaze out over the landscape from our balconies. For many, if not most, people, that dream may never become a reality. Young beach bums may surf the waves for a living, but for most people, that choice is not viable. And yet, without connection, without spiritual renewal, our souls die, even as our bodies live. I recall one of my older students at Delgado, a black woman who grew up in Mississippi, and who could attend school only on rainy days; in good weather, she had to pick cotton in the fields. With so much yearning in her voice, as we walked across campus one day, she said, "Every time I pass a bench under a tree (as she gestured to a nearby scene next to the pond), I would give anything to sit there and read." Even to her mid-forties, this woman had never been given the opportunity to "commune with nature." And her mind, soul, and body craved the experience.
But here's the thing I want to notice: this woman had a beautiful interior landscape, one that spoke more eloquently than the words she verbalized. As little contact as the two of us shared, I loved her as much as I loved my closest friends. Our communion was not based on shared external experiences, for our life-experiences had been miles apart. But within her spirit and within my spirit, there was a common ground of understanding --oceans of love, forests of peace, mountains of joy, a sky of goodness, etc. We delighted in walking across the campus together, on our way back from class, even for a brief moment. In five minutes, we could enter the interior landscape of the other and feel refreshed, renewed, re-energized. God Himself was the "ground of our being," our interior landscape. And somehow, He always manages to introduce His friends to one another.
Yesterday, I wrote that we are designed to enter into the interior landscape of the Trinity__ the eternal motion of love and exchange between and among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Just as I know what keeps people from entering into communion with nature on a daily basis, so also I know what keeps us from entering into our interior landscapes -- the only place where peace, love, and joy is to be found. Thomas Aquinas observed that whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver, not the giver. That is why two people "receive" the same experience so very, very differently.
All of us operate out of either a blessed or a cursed interior landscape--we see things not as they are, but as we are. Jesus perceived the world and its people from the blessed consciousness of God's Presence Within; He felt as God; He wept as God; He relished and gathered as God. The Pharisees, seeing His joy, sneered: "Who does He think He is---God?" they asked one another. At His baptism, He heard the voice of the Father: "This is my beloved." As a result, that "belovedness" could flow from Him to everyone around Him.
As Ron Rolheiser points out in a recent article (March, 2011), most of us cannot receive the love of God. We cannot believe that God is "delighted" in us, that He actually wants to enter our interior landscape, as poor and dusty as it is. He wants to enter our "inner city" and make of it a paradise, a place where He can walk with us in the cool of the evening. The reason Jesus came was that He could not sit in heaven and wait for us to "clean up our act," and to be worthy of receiving the Father's love. If He walked with us in our poverty, if we allowed Him access to our inner (cursed) landscape, He knew He could change us from within, making us fit temples for the divine life of peace, of goodness, of joy.
St. Francis prayed, "Where there is hatred, let me sow Your love....." Like Johnny Appleseed, he went through the beautiful Italian landscapes changing interior views. Rolheiser's final paragraph is worth quoting:
Our negativity about others and the world speaks mostly of how bruised and wounded, ashamed and depressed, we are -- and how little we ourselves have ever heard anyone say to us: "In you, I take delight!"
In you I take delight, Gayle.
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