Issue #4 - Question Beauty
Migrating Murder of Crows on Texas RM 1061.
Book Recommendation
Augustine's Sermons
St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." - Sermon 241, Easter 411 A.D.
Two rules:
1. any thought I have has probably been articulated more clearly by an ancient thinker, and
2. it's good to consult the dead; what a miracle is the written language. Although, I don't think Augustine would call himself dead.
Something I Wrote
A Sermon Under the Pastures: An Interview with Nathan Poole
I interviewed the fantastic Nathan Poole, so technically I only wrote the less-interesting half of this. However, Nathan's quote here pairs well with Augustine's challenge.
There was a moment in my life, when I was out walking my dog, that I suddenly became aware of the fact that I was surrounded by trees, but that all I had to understand them was a singular category, “tree.” As in there’s a tree, and there’s another tree. It made me sad. And yet, in spite of the fact that these life forms were not only sustaining life on our planet, and the most ubiquitous form of life there is, I had no way of differentiating one from the next. It occurred to me that I would like to be able to call them by their names.
In many ways, this is the experience of Christians in the South, where the culture is saturated but not centered, in religion. They are offered one modality of faith, and it flattens the world. It propagates and prosecutes willful blindness, in the same way I once looked out onto a forest and just saw trees, trees, more trees. It’s not that I have a problem with the word “God” but that I wanted the experience of God to not be essentially gnostic, as in, God is in heaven and I need him in order to get there. I wanted to understand all the facets, the various ways God can be experienced, here and now.
Read the rest here. It takes about 15 minutes.
Shout out to Fathom Magazine for publishing this one, and so many others of mine.
And here's my take on Augustine's challenge. I'm including a passage from my novel-in-progress:
The plains broke around Josiah as he limped barefoot over the rim of the coulee canyon. The Arkansas River had returned calmly to her banks after yesterday's flood. He considered that a boy had died there not twelve hours before, yet the river churned on without commemoration. He continued. A thorn in his heel consumed most of his cognizance, and he conversed with the barb as he walked along the edge of the road.
“God you hurt,” he told the thorn.
His left foot gained ground on his right wounded step. He rambled off the shoulder into mud and stems of prairie grass and weeds scripted in the pattern of yesterday's flood current. Sweptalong topsoil sifted from the grass at his passing. The ditch disappeared in his descent and the canyon wall rose up to confront him. Strata of orphaned sediment, orange sandstone and bone caliche, silted by the waves of an ancient sea compacted and cut through as the topography had tilted and drained the ocean. Occasional palimpsests etched in the stone: initials of lovers in transit, an abraded Jesus Saves, other inscrutable markings.
A cedar jutted from the cliffside above the floodmark, its gray trunk twisting prone to escape the wall’s shadow then crooking upwards to the sun. Josiah stopped again to consider the tree. The hulking base drew sap through a skeletal elbow. Roots clutched at the stony steep, fissuring the wall with set anchors. More roots reached down the cliffside like stilts.
“Why keep growing?” he asked the tree. He shifted his feet and the thorn called out.
-- Seth Wieck
In lieu of a drink recipe this week.
Question the Beauty of the Primordial Aquifer
Those who live in humid lands can afford to take water for granted. Arid-land dwellers know better. Where little rain falls, each drop is a benediction. A glass of water is a miracle...
Under the sand hills, under the short grass prairie, under the rich harvest of corn and wheat and cotton, lurks an ocean. There is enough water in it to fill Lake Erie. Nine times...
If the aquifer went dry...or perhaps we should say when the aquifer goes dry. That is not hypothetical doomsday speak; it is happening. Not overnight, not next week, but steadily, stealthily, and for the most part irreversibly. The bulk of the water here is what geologists call fossil water. -- Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the Great Plains, William Ashworth, 2006.
She responds: See, I am beautiful.
I hope y'all are well. Be safe, and God bless you.
I’m Seth Wieck. If you would like to read other things I’ve written, please consider buying my small collection of stories here. Or go to the Burrowing Owl if you're in Canyon/Amarillo.
Here's a random post from a decade of blogging over at sethwieck.com.
Did you like something in this issue? Maybe pass it on to someone else. Or did you despise something? Let me know by responding to the email.
This was issue #4 of “In Solitude, For Company.” Thank you for your company.