The Call Part One

It is unbelievably hard to write again since it has been so long since my last blog post. (Yes, I know I posted two "shorties" but that was just to get me going again.)  So many reasons, including a schedule that has almost overwhelmed me. First, work pulled me in several directions then family commitments insisted on my attention and probably most importantly I felt general disappointment with the "natural" area surrounding my home.

How could this be?  How could the woods and path on which I have walked and about which I have written for the past three years become a hinderance to writing.  
It concerns my call. Like most of us I am the subject of many callings.  I have always had a call to care for my family. I also have heard a call to understand God and serve the Church. Sometimes these two collide and conflict but I have usually been able to work out and conflicts between the two. Sometimes my family has been neglected and sometimes God has received the short end.  

The last few years, though, I have heard a third call.  I would name it,

"the call of the Wild,"  but that has already been used.  Perhaps it is the call of Nature . . . well, no, that doesn't sound right, does it? It is definitely the call of the woodland area around my home. Sometimes it called before daybreak; sometimes well after the sun had set.  The call was strong and it included the post note, "Oh, and  be sure to bring your camera."  I obeyed this call as much as possible and came to hear it as yet another call from God.  

I don't know how you see or how you name God.  It could be Allah, God, Jesus, Lord or some subatomic string-like name. Perhaps you don't name it at all.  Yes, I say "it" because I don't see

God as male or female.  God is so much more.  The "godness" that I am talking about is the force that is responsible for all the stuff I see, hear, touch, taste and feel. (and probably several other senses that I don't yet realize). This God is the "something" that connects us all - to God and to each other. I believe that it connects us to each person, animal and tree.  It connect us to every living thing, even to the ground on which we walk.

We may differ on how much intellect or on the degree of intention that emanates from God or how much God is involved in our lives but most of us feel that there is something. Even folks who claim no religious beliefs at all are learning through science that there is something that connects us. Again it is the degree of intent and intellect we attribute to that connection that leads us to - or not to- call it "God."

So back to my calling.  It is this connection that calls me. I yearn to know how the bird is connected to the seed and to the moth larvae that it finds on the tips of evergreens in the middle of a cold winter. 

What drives the flower bulbs to begin to swell during the coldest darkest time of the year; to push up through still frozen ground toward the sun that will begin to warm them long before true spring has arrived?
What will a male Eastern box turtle do when it meets a female Eastern box turtle? And is it really just by chance that they meet?
How do the coyote, the skunk and a dogwood adapt to the behavior of each other and how do they each react to me and my messy habits?
This is what calls me out of my snug home. It is what calls me to grab my camera and walk familiar paths over and over again.  I want to see how they change with the seasons. I like the feeling I get when I notice something new in a direction that I have looked dozens of times before.  
I like seeing something that was there all along but now I see it differently.
Like God.

God, Natural Law, the Uniting Force, the String that attaches us all together in an, as yet, unknown way, is out there.  God looks different in different seasons.
Looks different according to my moods or my interests.  God also looks different according to my ability and desire to see.  God, God's natural laws, are unchanging but what changes is our reaction.  We can change the creation but we can't change the laws about how it all runs - that which connects us.  We can't change God.