catapult magazine

Last week, I was walking around Belmont harbor here in Chicago and I noticed a slow group of large brown fish hanging out underneath the pier. As I walked further, I noticed a group of smaller brown fish zipping to and fro in the middle of the harbor. Then, a few steps further, I saw a stationary group of medium-sized brown fish with one medium-sized goldfish seemingly stuck in the middle of the brownfish school. I wondered if the goldfish had perhaps been made the brownfish school’s leader because of its uniqueness, but then as I walked a little further I noticed a group of goldfish hanging out. They were considering how to get their leader back from the brownfish. It was then that I realized just how fishist fish are.

Yesterday, I went to the aquarium to do some more research and I found sharks swimming around in the same tank with very little, highly edible, fish. The little fish didn’t seem to notice the imminent danger. I sure have alot to learn about fish.

I’ve been in agreement with John Calvin about the importance of creational revelation for some time now, but these fish have got me thinking that maybe I shouldn’t limit my watchful gaze to books, movies, tv, books etc. Perhaps I can understand Jesus’ parables about God’s kingdom better if I really examined how seeds work, how weeds are hard to spot until harvest time, how sheep behave etc.
The other week, I heard an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” about a revered stage actor who decided to sail alone across the Pacific Ocean. Terry Gross asked him how this experience influenced his art. For instance, what does one think about while sailing by oneself across the Ocean? He said one thinks about his equipment, whether there’s a leak in the boat, how to make the most of the wind before it ceases or becomes too strong. One learns to respect nature, to give to it and take from it in the right way, he said.
Since there’s always so much on my mind (Nietzsche says we have evolved into modern men with ever-thinking machines atop our shoulders), I was titillated by the thought of having such spare and focused thoughts as this guy trying to make it in the arms of the Ocean. Living in the city, I sometimes wonder if I’ve been avoiding having a relationship with nature, a real relationship, one where I am faced with nature and my own limitations within it. I know I’ve come to terms with the environment in my own way (I pay rent, electric, gas and water bills to keep the “elements” at a safe distance), but I wonder what might be revealed to me if I put the books away and studied God’s nature as it can be experienced in the creative forces around and within me.

I know I have to be careful, though, not to set nature up as some thing outside civilization or culture. The apartment I live in is nature. Finding the right beat to go with a good melody is me facing nature (in all its fury) and the limitations that are involved in the making of good rock’n’roll. If you’ve ever heard Bach’s “Ich ruf dir, Herr Jesu Christ” or seen a Tarkovsky film, God’s nature is there—shiny, slow, dark and bright.

Maybe what is so surprising about seeing nature in this way is that it has just as much educational value (if not more) than books. Nature doesn’t teach the same content or the same things as books, but it really teaches. Yesterday, Kristin came home from a piano pedagogy lecture (presented by a former professor at Goshen College) at Northwestern University. The guy talked about how important it is for a piano performer to pay attention to nature. A performer must be aware of the influence of gravity, the rhythmic pulse of the human heart, the way certain emotions are felt in the body. When you rise up higher in the scale, it is more natural to struggle up to the top and to fall with gravity back down the keys. And a piece of music must breathe like humans breathe if it is to speak to humans. And a good song or piece of music has the right balance of tension and resolve to keep us comfortable. Good music and good performance fits with how we are used to experiencing things. In Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy from (out of) the Spirit of Music”, Nietzsche points out the Dionysian power of someone yelling at the top of their voice (rock music) as opposed to the reasoned discourse of reasonable, in control, voices (“classical period” of music and Modern scientific objective method). It doesn’t matter so much what the person is saying, the content they’re trying to teach us, because the message is in the voice itself, in the nature of high pitches coming out of the impassioned human voice.

The other day, I saw a commercial for SBC that assures us that SBC is the company for our world—a world that waits for no one. We all are drumming our fingers impatiently, the commercial says. Checking our watches. Waiting for our orders to be delivered on time.

The last few weeks, I’ve been checking up on a few of the trees on our street, noting how stubborn, stupid and slow they are. It’s obvious that spring is just around the corner—it was 60 degrees just last week!—yet the ends of the twigs continue their slow-paced swelling and the trees don’t seem to care that I’m waiting on them to celebrate what my own calendar (yet another tree product) has already clearly declared.

It?s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there…so that creation need not play to an empty house.

from [i:738b688510]Pilgrim at Tinker Creek[/i:738b688510]

and one more from the same place:

It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexaustible tale.

Yeah, it’s so humbling how nature works without us. Like Jesus says about the Kingdom of God, it grows like crops in a field even as the farmer sleeps at night.

A similar sentiment can be found in a new book called “Rats”. The author watched a bunch of rats in an alley in New York City and studied up on their behaviors in order to understand why human beings empathize with and revere dolphins and whales, but disdain and are disgusted by rats. He found there’s a whole world of activity that goes on after dark in the alleys of our big cities. The author explains that he had to learn to look for rats, because they’re not always easy to spot unless you’re looking for them. He also talked about their connections to humans. He said that rats develop a taste for the same kinds of foods that people eat in certain ethnic neighborhoods. Rats in Chinatown need different bait than rats in Little Italy. Also, if you look at a map of humans who are bitten by rats, you can use this as an indicator of which neighborhoods are most neglected by the city. In other words, we might be able to see which people are most in need of government resources just by looking at rat populations. I’m glad someone took the time to look at rats for all of us who try our best not to see them.

I was looking for rats last night as I biked along Lake Michigan. It was a location where I had almost run over two rats crossing the bike path last summer, so I knew there would be some in the bushes. This time, with my eyes wide open, I saw five or six running in and out of the bushes. I also saw a squirrel. Rats are so much uglier than squirrels but I can’t figure out why. It might be the difference in tails. Or the way rats move. But they’re both furry little rodents. As I swallowed the lump of disgust in my throat at the sight of the rats, I thought that finding beauty in nature is sometimes hard work.