Artificial

When I looked out my window this morning I witnessed one of my favorite “simple” graces. Snow completely blotted out the sidewalk around my apartment. The pathway was invisible, revealing no trace of human activity; past or present. The morning was temporarily untouched by the common abuse of man. I was the first to walk over the fresh crunchy snow, tainting it with my shoe prints. I honestly felt a little sad for “ruining” it. Looking down at what I had done made me think of the irony that God must have found in this scene; “Another human leaves his mark on my Creation.” When you study theology you tend to find yourself internalizing the external. Daily encounters are met with theological musings that don’t “shut off.”

I started my Christmas shopping today. As a student, scholar, and teacher I like to give books as gifts. On my way to Borders through the Rosedale Mall I happened across one of those little “trinkety” shops, “Perfect Nature.” Within the shop was an array of stuffed animals, bamboo reeds in expensive vases, and LCD posters with nature scenes of landscapes, waterfalls, and animals. The more I thought about the snow from this morning and how perfect this unscathed “Creation” (to use a theological term) was—free of salt, footprints, and rubbish…the more I realized how artificial the “nature” was that this little shop was trying to peddle. Do we have an ideal for “perfect” Creation? It would certainly seem that this is the case. Certainly this Creation wouldn’t include cold, crisp, mornings that require us to shovel, scrape, and shiver in the dark as we warm up our cars. Certainly this Creation wouldn’t include sticky, humid, "mosquitoey" Minnesota nights – not to mention the arid, dry, summer days that scorch our favorite veggies and flowers in our little idealized pieces of nature: gardens. I left that shop after a few minutes of poking around. I challenge you to find intrinsic value in things that are uncomfortable—things that are raw, visceral, and earthy aspects of Creation. I’ll talk about this again sometime really soon. You’ll see.

-Dan