Nature versus Image

For those of you who read my previous post, this is a picture I took many years ago at Sylvan Lake. It was taken from almost the exact location where I sat on the shore and first watched the Northern Lights. The colours in the picture are very similar to the moment I first witnessed the Aurora Borealis - thus looking north across the lake there were deep reds and purples to my left, the northern lights display direct in front of me, and a meteorite shower off to the right in the darkest part of the sky at that point. This picture shows gentle waves on the lake, the night I saw the northern lights for the first time the scene was perfectly still, the water acting like a huge mirror reflecting the incredible display in the heavens.

As my previous post indicated, that evening was as significant spiritual experiences for me. Many people have meaningful spiritual experiences when out in nature - and for good reason, because nature is real, and we all crave something real. Allow me to explain more fully.

Father Lucian Kemble was a Franciscan Friar who worked at the St. Michael's Retreat Centre near Lumsden (a small town close to Regina). Lucian was a keen observer of nature, being interested in both biology and astronomy. He was well known in amateur astronomy circles and even had a star system named in his honor. You can read about Lucian Kemble and the pattern of stars known as Kemble's Cascade here.

Lucian told me a few years before his death, that he was working on a paper about Spirituality and Image. His observation was that most of what people watch today is artificial, or reproduced, rather than the real thing. Television and computer images are often enhanced or edited in such a way as to present us an image that doesn't really exist in nature. And yet that is what we surround ourselves with, that becomes our reality. Such images, while beautiful and enticing, do not connect with us in the same way as something real. Lucian told me a story about a teenage girl who was out at St. Michael's on a school retreat. She was part of a group of students who went out to do some stargazing with Lucian one night. She asked if they would be able to see Jupiter. Lucian said yes it was in a part of the sky that was visible to them, then he adjusted the telescope to bring Jupiter into view. Lucian then invited the girl to have a look, she bent over and peered in the viewfinder. Eventually she stood up and began crying. Lucian, concerned that there was a problem, asked her what was wrong. Her reply was telling; "Nothing. It's just so real." The reality of seeing something in nature directly, experiencing a part of the universe personally, was deeply moving for that young woman.

I had seen fine photographs of Northern Lights before that night on the shore of Sylvan Lake so many years ago, but none of them impacted me the way seeing the real thing with my own eyes did. The real thing speaks to our souls like no image can. Lucian Kemble said that one of the reasons there was declining interest in faith in North America was partly due to our disconnection with the natural world. Lucian's concern was that the more we surrounded ourselves with images, and specifically unreal manipulated images, the less we would be open to the presence of God.

Francis Bacon once wrote "God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation." Combining these two books in a setting like a Church camp, where Bible study and being in the midst of nature happen at the same time, can nourish faith in a powerful way. That certainly happened to me as a teenager at Camp Kuriakos. Along with Father Lucian Kemble I can affirm that it is good for one's soul to be out in nature, to be out where things are real, and where God's quiet, gentle voice can be heard without the noise and distractions of machines.

It will most likely be a while before I will be able to see the Aurora Borealis again, we are currently at the quietest time in an eleven year solar cycle and it will probably be a half a decade before the Northern Lights will dance on a regular basis. In the meanwhile I will keep in touch with what is real by getting out from behind my computer desk and immersing myself in both books of God. Maybe when it warms up again I'll find myself sitting on the shore of a lake, listening, watching, praying... being.