Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from The View from Lazy Point.

God be in my head—and in my understanding

Matthew 7: 12

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

In his fourth book, The View from Lazy Point, Carl Safina’s spiritual take on nature emerges with heightened clarity. The book opens with a quote from Howard’s End, by E. M. Forrester: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon… Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.”

Toward the end of the book, Safina writes of his understanding of what it means to be religious in the best sense. “Religare,” he writes, using the Latin, “means to re-tie, or to gather to bind…thus the word “religation”—reconnection—is one root of the word, “religion.” Albert Einstein said our task is to “widen our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Now Safina gets right to his point: “So what I guess I’m trying to say is that, though I’m a secular person and a scientist, I believe that our relationship with the living world must be mainly religious. But I don’t mean theological. I mean religious in the sense of reverent, revolutionary, spiritual, and inspired. Reverent because the world is unique, thus holy. Revolutionary in making a break with the drift and downdraft of outdated, maladaptive modes of thought. Spiritual in seeking attainment of a higher realm of human being. Inspired in the aspiration to connect crucial truths with wider communities. Religious in precisely this way: connection, with a sense of purpose” (The View from Lazy Point, 324–225).

This is a sense of “religious” that I can embrace. And it seems to comport with the great religious figures of the ages, including my personal favorite, the teacher of the Sermon on the Mount. In this midrash on Torah, he called for a radical embrace of non-rivalrous love with these words—the words, not of a Hallmark Card, but of his narrow path that leads to life, in contrast with the wide path that leads to destruction: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”

This phrase, “the law and the prophets” referred to the Bible that Jesus knew. In other words, if our reading of sacred text violates the rule of empathy-love, then it is a bad reading of sacred text. Worse than that, it violates the crucial meaning of religion: “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.” And his.

And Safina’s religious love of the wild and its inhabitants enhances my reading of this rule for reading the law and the prophets (his bible) aright: in everything do to others as you would have them do to you. Others, that’s an important word. In the Abrahamic faiths, God is the ultimate Other. That is, God is “set apart” from all else, uncreated, unique. Just as Safina defines holy as “unique.” To love the ultimate other, we must love the proximate others. And who is to say that this word, “others” is limited to human others? Could it not refer as well to “others than us humans”—that is to all living creatures? Albert Einstein’s expanding circle of compassion is one that embraces compassion toward ourselves, our loved ones, our groups, our nation and the others of our species with whom we don’t identify in these ways. But it doesn’t end there. It encompasses “all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” This is what the indigenous nations who came here long before the Europeans arrived have been trying to tell whoever will listen for centuries now. As the Sermoner on the Mount might say it, “Those who have ears, let them hear.”

For our meditation, as you listen to the sounds of the rainforest in the background, place your focus on the chest, where the heart resides. Imagine the heart throbbing with the same quality of life that animates the rain forest—in fact, that animates the universe since the time of the Big Bang. Imagine this animating power as an orb of light encompassing your heart, inclining your heart to love yourself and to love your loved ones. Then imagine the orb of light expanding until it encompasses your entire body, the room in which you find yourself today, and beyond as far as you can imagine. Or if you prefer, just listen to the birds.

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply call to mind your loved ones (of any species, plants included) lifting them in the embrace of remembered love, to the Source of All Being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: we are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from his latest, Becoming Wild.

God be in my head—and in my understanding

John 5: 19

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”

In Becoming Wild, Carl Safina explores the mysteries or beauty and culture. For example, how is that we seem to share a sense of what is beautiful not only within our own species, but also, often, with other species? Within a given animal culture, how does the sense of what is beautiful coalesce around certain things and not others?

It turns out that animals are prone to imitate each other. And not just by copying gestures and external behaviors, but in what René Girard called mimetic desire.

Safina writes: “Animals are often attracted to what they see other animals attracted to. This means that what an animal sees as attractive is also subject to cultural influence and social learning. If that seems subtle, don’t be fooled. It’s the big show-stopping dance number, with implications that reverberate across Life, through time, and to the far horizons.

It’s obviously true for us humans that we’re attracted to what we see others attracted to. Turns out, the social power of mere preference is astonishingly widespread. Female guppies like brightly colored males, but they can learn to like drab males if they observe many females mating with them…This tendency to ‘mate with someone who looks like the one you’ve seen others mate with’ has been documented in fish called mollies; It’s even been documented in fruit flies.” (Becoming Wild, 188–189)

We share big stretches of our DNA code with things like lettuce and fruit flies. Imitative desire is a truth about ourselves that we prefer not to face, but the advertising industry knows better. It runs deep in our DNA.

Sometimes imitative desire drives what we would call evil. Someone in a crowd starts chanting “lock her up!” and soon everyone is joining in. It’s how crowds can turn into mobs, imitative desire. But it can also work for good. I grew up in Detroit, with lots of time outdoors, but with very little exposure to the wild. Camping was a stretch. I thought farmland was what “nature” looked like. OK, I’ve been to Yosemite and been awestruck. But my experience of the wild is impoverished. And yet, through the writings Carl Safina and others who love the wild, I mean really love the wild, and the creatures who make their home there, I have come to love it too, by imitative desire. For which I am thankful. In this case, I know the world better, thanks to imitative desire.

For our meditation, as you listen to the sounds of the rainforest in the background, let your mind drift to any experience of creatures with whom we humans share this glorious planet. Do any particular creatures whose presence delights you come to mind? What do they like that you could like better by imitative desire? Maybe it’s your dog, who gets all excited when you come home—maybe your dog’s desire could help you like yourself better. Or maybe it’s the birds who seem to treat every new morning like a celebration event. Maybe they could help you take delight in a new day, even before your morning coffee. Over the next minute let your mind wander into the realm of imitative desire, to awaken your own attractions to the manifold wonders of this world.

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones (of whatever species) calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the Source of All Being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from his latest, Becoming Wild.

God be in my head—and in my understanding

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed (Mark 1: 35).

But Jesus himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray (Luke 5: 16).

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Carl Safina got up, left the house and went to a solitary place—in this case, a remote island in Peruvian Amazon, populated by birds. There, Safina describes an experience that some would call prayer. His own words now: “As the night’s shades rise and the eyelids of morning begin to open, the world retells its creation story. I was expecting something like the explosive dawn chorus of springtime in the Northeast. But here the sun comes up slower. And so does the chorus. It starts with chanting. Dawn’s main meditation soundtrack begins with razor-billed curassows…As the curassows coo their oms into the ravine, their meditative tolls get overlaid by three soft, insistently plaintive whistles, the timorous affirmations of an undulated tinamou. These two calls somehow reach each other inside my mind, meshing into one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. The slow rhythm is like the whole forest breathing… While the sky is still blue-gray, degrees of illumination cue others to appear on the soundstage. Oropendolas begin calling, their notes sounding like big drops of thick liquid. Motmots begin adding their rhythmic tom-tom beats. Their notes so meditative and soothing that they set my mind adrift, like a boat in long swells. Rise. Subside. I am afloat on an emerald sea amid shoals of birds. The volume comes up, comes up, until we are wrapped in a shimmering surround of songs and calls, some melodic, some emphatic. It literally dawns on me that countless generations of singers who’ve continually come and gone have performed this soundtrack of renewed existence daily here for countless thousands of years. And if all had been as it was supposed to be, there’d be no end in sight (Becoming Wild, pp. 153–154).

Later he writes, addressing us: “How long and rich a morning can be if you bring yourself fully to it. Come to a decent place. Bring nothing to tempt your attention away. Immerse in the timelessness of reality. Attention paid is repaid with interest (pp. 179).

And so I wonder: What if spirituality isn’t straining to believe something? What if spirituality is relaxing into the timelessness of reality and paying attention? As Moses told the Hebrews newly liberated from their bondage, “Hear, O Israel.” Or these words by another teacher: “Those who have ears, let them hear.”

For our meditation: picture yourself in a forest filled with life. Imagine that it is early in the morning, while it is still dark. You’ve found a comfortable spot to rest and wait. Imagine that you’ve drifted off to sleep in the quiet that sometimes marks even the forest before the inhabitants of the forest, the monks and nuns and priests of creation, have arisen to greet the dawn. They begin their celebration of the new day and at first you incorporate their sounds into a pleasant dream. But then you awake to discover a strange beauty beyond your wildest dreams. Over the next minute, go ahead.

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from his latest, Becoming Wild, with a special focus on the first word of that title.

God be in my head—and in my understanding

Exodus 3 (Robert Alter translation)

And the Lord’s messenger appeared to Moses in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush, and he saw, and look, the bush was burning with fire and the bush was not consumed…And the Lord said, “I indeed have seen the abuse of My people that is in Egypt and its outcry because of its taskmasters. I have heard, for I know its pain…and now go, that I may send you to Pharaoh and bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt…And Moses said to God, “Look, when I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is his name?’, what shall I say to them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh’ I-Will-Be-Who-I-Will-Be.”

How does a land-based species morph into one that resides in the ocean? As is the case with whales, whose flippers have the same boney structure of our hands and feet? As Safina writes in Becoming Wild, “Evolution isn’t the sudden appearance of a new species, nor of instant large mutations. Radical mutations are usually fatal. Evolutionary changes are a generally slow, advantageous riff on the average… For example, the evolution of whales from land mammals didn’t happen because a litter of land grazers were born with flippers instead of legs. That bridge-too-far mutation wouldn’t work. Rather, the first step was for a wet-land dwelling population to develop webbing between their toes, like a Labrador retriever’s, leading to a more aquatic life benefitting from having webbed feet like an otter’s, leading to flipper feet like a sea lion’s, then to flippers like a seal’s that remain like flexible hands in mittens with nails that can scratch an itch, then eventually to the stiff fin flippers of a whale. Elapsed time: several million years.”

In other words, evolution, that is to say the process that shapes all the life around us, is a case study in becoming—change over time.

The ancients must have had an intuition that life is a process of becoming. The mythic poem of Genesis speaks of different life forms as a top down and bottom up emerging: (“God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures…let the waters swarm with the swarm of living creatures”) As an aside, I have a friend who stood before the ocean with waves crashing, transfixed. Without the slightest self-consciousness, she began to wave her arms about like a conductor conducting a symphony, at one with the symphony. Let the earth bring forth living creatures, indeed. The title of Safina’s book begins with the word, “Becoming.” This word is tied to the most sacred word in all of the Hebrew Bible: the unspeakable Name given from within the burning bush to Moses. The four-letter Name is best translated according to Robert Alter, the pre-eminent translator of the Hebrew Bible, as “I will be who I will be.” Not, as was earlier thought, “I am who am.” The latter is a Name of Ultimate Being, but “I will be who I will be” is a Name of Ultimate Becoming.

Evolution is a becoming process. And the Mystery speaking from the burning bush to Moses is all about becoming. Like successive populations a land-based species living near the water undergoing “advantageous riffs on the average” until feet accumulate enough small changes over time to become the flipper of a whale. Elapsed time: several million years. If we participate in life which is a process of becoming, what good company—a divine presence whose name means “I will be who I will be” (and so, over time, will we.) What we are, what life is, is always and ever becoming—an understated way of saying beautiful.

Like the whales we hear singing in the oceans, celebrating, perhaps, not just their being, but also, their long becoming. Give a listen as they sing to their loved ones across vast distances. For the next minute, go ahead.

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all becoming.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel.

Note: for those new to our weekly Blue Ocean nature-themed meditation series, new episodes are published every 2–3 weeks, and only the new ones will appear on the Tuesday, nature-themed feed. Episodes of the Blue Ocean Daily Prayer series publish every day (Mon-Sat), and include repeats. 

God be in my head—and in my understanding

Ps 19: 1–6

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

Carl Safina’s writings including two central themes: First, that we can recognize traces of ourselves in other living creatures…or better sad, we can recognize traces of other living creatures in ourselves. In Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel, Safina says it time to move beyond the older orthodoxy of biology that said we can’t infer consciousness or emotion in non-human animals. That, it was thought, is the scientific crime of anthropomorphism—seeing human-like form in non-humans. But Safina says Darwin taught us differently. In Safina’s words, “Each newer thing is a slight tweak on something older. Everything humans do or possess came from somewhere. Before humans could be assembled, evolution needed to have most of the parts in stock, and those parts were developed for earlier models. We inherited them.” Elsewhere he writes that birds, dogs, whales, and many other creatures have all the hormones and neurotransmitters that we have to convey the experience of joy or love. We’re not the only species capable of these things, or of appreciating beauty for that matter.

So there are traces of other creatures in ourselves. That’s the first theme. And second is like unto it: The bounds of our compassion are limited by the horizons of our vision of unity. Safina offers an expansive vision of unity: “the greatest story,” he writes, “is that all life is one.” This calls for expanding what he calls the circle of compassion—to include the entire human family, but also to encompass the other creatures who are with us on this experimental planet throbbing with life.

Safina is echoing the mystics of every major spiritual tradition. In the Christian tradition, it’s the mystics who get into trouble with the church authorities for wanting, always, to expand the horizon of unity in order to extend the circle of compassion.

The songwriters of Israel had no problem with anthropomorphism. So we have this picture of the rising sun in Psalm 19, imagined as though it were a bridegroom waking up in the bridal chamber in the morning, leaping out of bed, with an extra spring in his step (we can only imagine why) and racing from one end of the sky to the other, before returning to sleep with his beloved. Classic anthropomorphism…and yet, science tells us we are profoundly connected to the sun; we are literally composed stardust—of carbon and other elements that came from exploding stars.

The storytellers of Genesis tell us that many other creatures than ourselves share “the breath of life” and evoke the delight of God and God’s blessing.

So, as we listen to the sounds of the rainforest over the next minute, try to feel the web of connections going on. The trees of the forest breathe in carbon dioxide and powered by the energy of the sun, breathe out oxygen, while the birds and the creatures of the forest that we hear, take in the oxygen thus released, and breathe out carbon dioxide. It’s a divine dance that surrounds us every moment of every day, a dance that we too participate in.

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina, this time from his latest, Becoming Wild.

Note: for those new to our weekly Blue Ocean nature-themed meditation series, new episodes are published every 2–3 weeks, and only the new ones will appear on the Tuesday, nature-themed feed. Episodes of the Blue Ocean Daily Prayer series publish every day (Mon-Sat), and include repeats. 

God be in my head—and in my understanding

Psalm 96: 1, 9, 12 (Robert Alter)

Sing to the Lord a new song!

Bow to the Lord in sacred grandeur

Let the field be glad and all that is in it,

In Becoming Wild, How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, Carl Safina tells of the extravagantly beautiful Macaws gathering in the rainforest, raising a joyful noise as they prepare to descend to a patch of clay, from which they extract salt which is so hard to find in the Amazon. These birds are in the same family as parrots, parakeets, lovebirds, and cockatoos. Safina describes them setting the forest ablaze with color: “Their hues and tints set the trees aglow,” he writes, “the spontaneous combustion of their reds, yellows, and blues making them the rainforest’s supreme firebirds.”

As I picture the scene that Safina conjures, the crescendoing chorus in the trees, the descent to the ground, hundreds of them now, arrayed in nature’s brightest colors, a pulsating assembly gathered in the outdoor cathedral for sacred feasting, bending beak to clay to pick out a salt-laced crumble, I think of words from Psalm 96: “Bow to the Lord in sacred grandeur, quake before him all the earth … then shall the forest gladly sing.”

Fire of the Spirit, life of the lives of creatures,

—Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century nun, writer, composer, mystic, visionary, polymath, regarded by many as a founder of scientific natural history in Europe.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.

Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature as a window into the divine with a reflection based on the writing of Carl Safina in Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel.

God be in my head—and in my understanding

“Hagar gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her, “You are the God who sees me.” (Genesis 16: 13)

Hagar, the mother of Ishmael, driven out of her community by Abraham and Sarah experienced the gaze of another intelligence in her exile, an intelligence related to but different than her own, and called it El-Roi, Hebrew for “You are the God who sees me.”

In Beyond Words, Carl Safina writes of the powerful effect the gaze of another intelligence has on humans—the gaze of a whale. Safina quotes a researcher who has spent years studying whales (and being studied by them in turn): “When you lock eyes with them, you get the sense that they’re looking at you. It’s a steady gaze. And you feel it. Much more powerful than a dog looking at you. A dog might want your attention. The whales, it’s a different feeling. It’s more like they’re searching inside you. There’s a personal relationship that they set up with eye contact. A lot transmits in a very brief time about the intent of both sides.” Carl Safina later writes, “Other animals seem to recognize in us a kind of kindred consciousness that we often fail to recognize in them.”

Perhaps we could pay more attention to our own cravings. Don’t we actually crave the gaze of another intelligence than our own? Don’t we sense that our own form of intelligence is limited, and we seek release into a wider, a different intelligence than our own? One wonders if this isn’t the intuition toward the gaze of a divine intelligence such as Hagar experienced, cast out from her community, only to be embraced by, but more to the point, seen by God, whom she then named, “The God who sees me.”

Back to our whales, though: “And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that crawls, which the water had swarmed forth of each kind…and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas”

As Carl Safina says, “sea monsters” is a fair translation of the Latin, cetacea, the biological order that includes whales, porpoises, and dolphins, creatures of extraordinary intelligence.

Perhaps the whales crave another intelligence than their own when they gaze at us.

Perhaps this is as good a call to prayer as any, the last sentence in Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel, “There is no better prayer to morning than to feel glad to know: the greatest story is that all life is one.”

As we attend again to the song of the humpback whale in our prayers today, remember the words of the prophet Zephaniah concerning God, who “will rejoice over you with song”—surely the song of another intelligence than our own, perhaps coming to us many different ways, through many different voices than our own.

O Divine Wisdom, who dwells within the holy of holies, and whose light shines through all things created, fill our hearts, O blessed One, with the hope of a blessed future. Make all things new, return wrong to right, and cause us to walk in the ways of justice without which there can be no peace. Amen.

Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all being.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.