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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

God in Nature

What the Sublime Can Teach Us about God and Ourselves

July 5, 2016 By Michelle

Hi, friends! Just back from ten days in Italy – Italy! – and I have SO much to tell you. But…it’s going to come slowly, that much I know already. So in the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote at the end of June for the Lincoln Journal Star about the importance of experiencing God in nature. Thanks for being patient with me as I recover from jag leg and get my head on straight. xo – Michelle

 

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A few weeks ago I stood at the edge of a deep chasm. Far below me a river frothed in a violent maelstrom, thundering over a rocky precipice and plunging into a deep pit carved ten thousand years ago. A fine mist rose in a rainbow of pastels, coating my face in a cool sheen as I peered into the abyss.

I’ve been coming to this sublime spot on the north shore of Lake Superior nearly every summer for the last twenty years, and this particular river never fails to make my heart beat fast.

The gorge is beautiful and magnificent, but it’s also a place to be respected and feared. People have died in this river, swept away by the powerful water in the blink of an eye. In fact, two days after I was there this June, a young man drowned while swimming near the mouth of the river, pinned under the rapids by the tumultuous current.

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Nowadays we tend to use the word “sublime” as a synonym for “amazing” or “awesome.” We declare a slice of flourless chocolate cake in a fancy restaurant or an oil painting on a gallery wall “sublime,” but in doing so, we misuse the word as it was originally intended.

Back in the late eighteenth century, “sublime” meant something vastly different. Most often used to describe an aspect of the natural world, the sublime encompassed an element of terror melded with beauty, a sense of bigness and mystery that prompted awe tinged with dread and fear.

I think it’s important to experience the sublime in its original sense from time to time. This might entail standing next to a roaring river like I did recently, or at the edge of a vast prairie as a thunderstorm rolls in, or at the base of a looming, snow-capped mountain, or any place in the natural world that reminds us of our smallness.

Every once in a while, we need to stand in the presence of that furious, awesome power and remember our place in the world, which isn’t nearly as important as we like to think it is.

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Most of us walk through our days assuming we are in control. We’ve orchestrated our everyday lives so that, for the most part, they are predictable and manageable. We like to steer our own ship, and we’ve defined God in a way that makes sense and fits neatly into our comfortable, clockwork daily existence.

The hard truth, though, is that this control we work so hard to maintain is an illusion. Perched on the edge of that roiling river, confronted with the fact that my life could be extinguished with one slip of my hiking boot on the crumbly, uneven trail, I felt small, powerless, and more than a little afraid. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but an important and even a necessary one.

The sublime not only forces us to acknowledge our own impermanence head on, it also insists we reconsider how we understand and define God.

The same God who created the serene brook burbling through the sunlit glade also created the water that roils through the gorge that makes my heart race with fear. If we are really honest, this might make us uneasy, because it means we don’t understand God and can’t control him, in spite of our best efforts. God’s ways are not our ways, and to experience the sublime in person is a powerful and necessary reminder of that.

 

Filed Under: surrender Tagged With: God and the sublime, God in Nature

Palm Fronds Sound Like Raindrops {A Day in the Florida Keys}

January 11, 2013 By Michelle

About six days into our vacation I realize the jaw pain is gone.

I’m sitting on a lounge chair, the palms blowing gently in the breeze. When I close my eyes, the rustling fronds sound like rain drops gently hitting cement. When I open them, I see blue sky, the sun blazing a strobe light of gemstones on the bay. A pelican glides in a figure eight, circling once, then twice, low over the water before arcing gracefully onto a mangrove bough.

I rest my book face down on the plastic table and wiggle my jaw back and forth from left to right. It’s true. The pain is gone. Every day for the last year I’ve awoken with a headache and stiffness in my jaw from clenching my teeth during the night. The dentist tells me she sees wear on my molars. After months of procrastination, I finally make an appointment to be fitted for a mouth guard after the first of the year.

And now, in the lounge chair, with a book in my lap and the salty breeze in my hair and two boys and their dad splitting coconuts at my feet, the pain is gone.

The iguana shakes his jowls, the tangerine skin like a scarf around his neck. He’s poised regal and prehistoric in the mangrove, surrounded by an entourage of pelicans and anhingas.

A motorboat hums in the distance. Hand shielding my eyes from the glare, I glimpse a boat trolling for barracuda across the bay.

The bikes at the rental shop wear red bows for Christmas. The palms fan their fronds like umbrellas. Noah swings, facing the sea.

Brad wrestles with the coconut husk, first with a hammer, then with a branch clipper, prying back brittle brown while the boys sit quietly on the hot cement, chins on knees. The outer shell discarded in shreds on the grass, he takes a saw to the inner nut, slicing it clean in two.

Coconut milk runs clear from a crack onto the pavement.

Noah drinks right from the shell, juice dripping down his cheek and onto his shirt. He holds the nut out for me to see – a core of pure white flesh encased deep in tough husk, like a pearl.

Every now and then I forget that God is always here, with us. Because sometimes it’s harder to see him, when children are shot and teachers die brave and news of a diagnosis literally takes your breath away. I need these days, reminders, when his presence is so obvious, it’s like a billboard on every corner. I need these days when it seems downright silly that I ever doubted.

The boys sit cross-legged in the grass, bowls of sliced coconut balanced in their laps while the iguana suns at the water’s edge, soaking up the last of the afternoon warmth. A pelican flaps his wings against the water, a sound like the soles of two tennis shoes clapped together, chunks of dried mud scattering into the backyard.

I close my eyes and feel the sun on my face.

For ever since the earth was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God has made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.” (Romans 1:20, NLT)

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Filed Under: doubt, gratitude, slow, small moments, Uncategorized Tagged With: Florida Keys, God in Nature

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

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