“Sacred writings are bound in two volumes – that of creation and that of the Holy Scriptures… Visible creatures are like a book in which we read the knowledge of God. One has every right to call God’s creatures God’s ‘works,’ for they express the divine mind just as effects manifest their cause. ‘The works of the Lord are the words of the Lord.’ (Eccles. 42.15).” ~Thomas Aquinas

In our men’s work we hear often from Fr. Richard Rohr, a quote from one of our early spiritual father’s that the Nature is the first Scripture and the Bible is the second. If we can’t be in right relation with the first, we will never be in right relation with the second. I tend to agree.

It seems that it is so easy to formulate our spirituality from the books we read, the people we listen to, and the doctrines we hold… but do we stop and pause long enough to hear of the mystery that comes to us from the natural world? This is the purest and most distinct-from-ego revelation of the divine that we can encounter. It seems to make sense to start there.