The simplistic beauty of waves washing up on a beach can provide enough inspirational material for any artist for a lifetime.
Beyond this, in the lulled space between washing waves, there is time to mull over thoughts that might normally get lost in the hurly burly of city traffic.
A couple of weeks ago someone criticised my online journal as sometimes being “too spiritual; too full of sermons”. This comment threw me about for a few days because, on the one hand, it is possibly true. On the other hand, I’m not so sure this is a bad thing. Why have a journal if I can’t write what I want to preach?
This morning I read the following passages from David James Duncan’s book ‘My Story as Told by Water’. It sums up fairly accurately how I feel about the subject of nature and spirituality.
“It’s a prickly topic, spirituality. Sloppy and pedantic talk about God is obnoxious and dangerous, and those who parade such talk have knocked the religion clean out of a lot of us, with no sense of loss. But reverence for life is not religion. Reverence for life is the basis of compassion, and of biological health. This is why, much as it may embarrass those of us trained in the agnostic sciences, I believe every life-loving human on Earth carries a far-from-agnostic obligation to remain primitive enough, and reverent enough, to stand up and say to any kind of political power or poll or public: Trees and mountains are holy. Rain and rivers are holy. Salmon are holy. For this reason alone I will fight with all my might to keep them alive.”
“…If we put our full conviction in such [spiritual] belief, if we feel no embarrassment over it, if we stand up and stand by it again and again, we might begin to discover a spirit-power in ourselves that moves from there out into our friends or kids, or into our scientific research, our art, our music or writing…”
David James Duncan
Or onto a web blog.
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