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Most of us who live in Cook County love our natural surroundings—light on water, lichens and mosses on rocks, white pines and cedars.
Sometimes people ask me, “Do you ever get so you don’t even notice? Do you ever stop being awed by the nature around?” I think I can answer ‘no’ to that; I try to look at our beautiful world every day and see it with new eyes.
Last Thursday when Lake Superior was so wild, gale force winds pushing gravel across the parking lot at Artists Point, I was at Dappled Fern Fibers, and I placed my chair so I could see the waves crashing. The roar of the water was amazing.
Much as I loved watching the waves, I was struck by the procession of vehicles driving out to Artists Point. It was like high summer tourist season, a car, two trucks, two cars, a van…. making their way, their pilgrimage, out to see Lake Superior at her wildest.
I realized—these are not tourists, these are locals. We live here and we still gawk! We want to take pictures to share with those who can’t see her beauty! We still want to see the big lake close up and personal on stormy days!
This is crucial, not only from a quality-of-life perspective: it also matters from a spiritual perspective.
It was St. Augustine who defined sin as a turning inward. Not so much something wrong a person did, but a habit of the mind and heart—turning toward self rather than God. He writes about the scene in the Garden of Eden as a turning towards ego, reworking everything for our own ends, using creation, each other and even God for our own ends.
So many of the muddles in our world come from that inward, egoic turn—politicians who seem to care only about their re-election, people seeking more money at any price to the soul, environmental degradation, folks objectifying others so they can use them without conscience.
Anything that pulls us from that ego immersion to an outward focus is a necessary gift. Watching the crashing of waves on the lake, walking in the woods, growing with others in our faith communities, volunteering at the vaccination site or Ruby’s Pantry—any and all of these turn us outwards and thus away from our propensity toward self-centeredness.
Especially during this time of year, as the days get shorter and the nights longer, when our fatigue with wearing masks grows, when it’s not really snowy, but not sunny either— whatever we do to turn our focus away from our egos and toward the ‘other’ or The Other—is good for the soul.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.
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