"Holiness cannot be confined"

Dogwood, Cornus florida, taken April 2006, my backyard

"I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of our existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes. I know that holiness cannot be confined...holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass." Wendell Berry, Christianity and the Survival of Creation.

My prayers are with friends and family after the earthquake this week and the impending hurricane. As the rains come, just remember that "holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops".