1 For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth over and around us lies,
God of all, to you we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.
2 For the beauty of each hour of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower, sun and moon, and stars of light, R
Voices United 226
We have artwork in our bathrooms -- doesn't everybody? The two pieces I've included in this Groundling blog entry are in our downstairs bathroom, so lots of guests may have noticed them while doing...whatever they were doing.
I saw one in the gift shop of the Royal British Columbia Museum one year while attending an excellent annual event called Epiphany Explorations at First Metropolitan United Church, in Victoria. The next year I bought another of these elegant representations of what most of us would call seaweed but our biologist daughter-in-law would call aquatic plants.
Why would gently waving plants of the ocean be worthy of my attention? Because to my eye they are beautiful, as so much of the natural world is. And while I'm partial to a lovely sunset, or the sight of a range of mountains, or waves crashing on a shore, my breath has been taken away by seeing extraordinarily ordinary creatures such as these plants.
Some writers have pondered why it is that humans are captivated by natural beauty since it didn't evolve for our human edification or delight. While I don't quarrel with the theory of evolution I do believe in a Creator God as well. Why can't evolution be intentionally glorious? This said I do appreciate these thoughts from Ella Frances Sanders in Everything, Beautiful because they are also an invitation to humility:
We must not forget, though, while oohing and aahing about the natural world, that none of it has evolved for us. That it is, in many ways, a marvelous coincidence that we would find any of it beautiful at all: flowers are not here purely for us to behold, trees do not grow because of us (more like in spite of at this point), and as far as I know, there are no measurable benefits to gazing at clouds. We, too, have evolved, have learned and been conditioned to appreciate many natural sceneries and forms, although I’m not sure that the same could be said the other way around—if you asked a tree, would it find you beautiful? If we could understand the discussions of sea creatures, would they have anything to say about the beauty of humans?
The beauty of Creation constantly stops me in my tracks and leads me into praise. Through the centuries many theologians, even those who seem most intellectual and stern -- think John Calvin -- look to the beauty of the natural world and concede that awe and amazement are of God and bear witness to God.
I have no idea whether the COP15 conference in Montreal invites its thousands of participants to celebrate beauty as they begin each earnest session to fashion a statement on biodiversity, including the life of our seas and oceans. Perhaps if that happened there would be a change of heart and mind.
3 For the joy of human love, brother, sister, parent, child,
friends on earth, and friends above, for all gentle thoughts and mild, R
4 For each perfect gift sublime to our race so freely given,
graces human and divine, flowers of earth and buds of heaven, R
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