Tag: Nature

A Compass For Our Changing World

We’re a few days into another new year, and nobody knows what the next 12 months will bring. What we do know is this: the world is changing fast. Culture is changing. Economics are changing. Demographics are changing. Beliefs are changing. As the world shifts around us, there’s plenty of disagreement about which of these changes are moving us forward, which are holding us back, and what the path of progress should look like. That’s a vital question. Years ago, C.S. Lewis made an important point about it:

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Finding A Bigger Story

This is a guest post written by my friend, Isabel Quinlan. She shared her story with our local Bible study group last week, and I asked her to write it up for you as well. Isabel writes a blog at https://isabelquinlanblog.wordpress.com

“Ruairí wants to go in there” my 2 year old said excitedly, prodding the picture of a farm in the board book i was reading him. I had a jolt of realisation, struck by the profound nature of stories. My 2 year old doesn’t yet know that this little farm is fictitious, but he instinctively knows that stories contain little worlds. Little imaginary offshoots of our own world.

I grew up with a Christian worldview. A view of our world as the creation of a being outside it, a 3D offshoot of his imagination. Through my teens my view changed. Like many other young people in Ireland at the time, I shed the narrative of a creator and dove into atheism, and began to view our world not as an imaginative creation spoken into physical existence, but rather as a collection of matter, governed by laws of physics.

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He Didn’t Have To Promise

What do we have that God didn’t give us?

Our bodies are the work of his hands. Our hearts beat with his gift of life. Our lungs fill with his air. Our minds are aware with his gift of consciousness. Our strength and abilities come from him. Even the abilities we work hard to develop ourselves come from him, because what are we developing except his gifts, using the strength and life he gave us?

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How Satellites Changed How I See The World

I grew up on the edge of a new world. I was the first of my friend group to own a mobile phone—an indestructible Nokia that could call and text, but I didn’t use it to text because that was expensive and who would I text anyway? No internet. No satellite navigation system. 

I was 16. My parents gave me the phone because we lived in the country and I had just gotten plastic proof of my adulthood: a full driver’s licence. I drove our little Toyota pickup truck with a tape deck that was so old the tapes would play faster or slower according to the engine rpms—so the tempo of the music changed every time I changed gears. It was hilarious. And really annoying. That truck was mostly reliable, but only mostly. I remember it breaking down on top of a mountain and how thankful I was that I could just barely coast into the driveway of the first house after miles of forest. I didn’t know the people there, but they helped me. I couldn’t always depend on the car, or the phone signal, so I had to depend on strangers. Gradually, as the cellular towers sprang up and the satellite networks became more reliable, our family breakdown stories changed. Helpful strangers began to feature less often in them.

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Days Like Blackberries

It’s blackberry season in Ireland right now, and our family has a yearly tradition of picking them. They’re not hard to find. The vines are growing in the hedges along the roads, reaching out into the paths in the woods, climbing over the old stone walls in the fields, and all of them covering themselves in juicy, plump, sweet little berries. Like candy, except healthier, and with thornier packaging. And free! They just grow, right out of the ground, in loads of public places where we can pick and eat and keep as many as we want. Last weekend we got almost four pounds on one family walk which are now (thanks to my wife) three jars of delicious homemade jam. Can you believe we live in a world where there are jam-bushes growing wild? 

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The Sheep Don’t Know

A cliff rises above the sea, jagged, wild, immovable. The waves, far below, break against it with noisy violence. This is where the ocean ends and the patchwork fields begin, suddenly. In the fields, there are sheep. As I walk past, one of them looks up at me as he chews a disinterested mouthful of grass. He has eyes, so he can see the same view I see. He has ears, so he can hear the waves, and the gulls crying out above him.

I am only visiting, and part of me envies this sheep his home and his everyday sights and sounds. I look up and wonder what the gull’s eyes are seeing as he soars over all of this on the power of the wind. I wonder if I were a gull, could I ever get used to that feeling enough to focus on feeding myself? I think I might be a skinny gull. But I think I would be filled with the thrill of wonder.

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Playing In Power

It has taken me more than four decades of living to fully appreciate this, but a good wetsuit is a wonderful thing. Long sleeves, long legs, thick and tight and warm. The ocean is never warm in this part of the world. But a good wetsuit can give you a couple of millimetres of protection and believe me those millimetres are everything.

When I’m suited up, I walk confidently into the water. I’m ready to catch some waves. My son is beside me but our bodyboards collide and we’re laughing as my daughter flies past us on a fast one. We cheer her on, pick up our boards, and go again. And again. And again.

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