(Source: Wikipedia)

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. (http://esv.to/Eccles1.4)

After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood. Anne Morrow Lindbergh  (https://www.brainyquote.com)

I was four. The preschool I attended was connected to our church. It was my second year there, and it felt familiar, like home. There was a big room where we met and a nice playground.

The preschool had a swing set and we would love to swing higher and higher. I recall a competition to make the swing go full circle around the swing set. But we really weren’t “allowed to” swing that high. That of course made it even more fun. We could certainly make the swing set legs come of of the ground when we got the swings going really fast. The set was rusty and had one broken seat and a wobbly leg but it worked and we loved playing on the swings more than anything.

It was on one particular spring day, we all sat across from the swings under a beautiful flowering dogwood tree. The clouds were shaped like dragons and a cardinal was flitting around the tree. The teacher was telling us about God and nature and all things created by God. I still remember looking around and thinking: Yes, I understand that God made the pretty tree, the birds, the sky, the clouds, and yes, God made me. Did God make the swing set with the broken seat and rusty leg? Did God make the rules, the “not allowed tos”?

Singing “Jesus Loves Me” was next. The song made me happy but the “Jesus is the Son of God whom He loved so much He let Him die” story was far more perplexing than the “God who made Heaven and Nature sing” story. I do not remember if they told us the “Legend of the Dogwood” (appleseeds.org) which is an old tale about the dogwood tree being related to the tree they used for the cross, and the flowers representative of the thorns for Jesus’s crown. What I remember the most is how I felt.  I felt like I understood and didn’t understand at the same time. It was a scary and interesting place to be, in the churchyard with the dogwood tree and the broken swing . This is when I started to believe in God and question just about everything else.

My beliefs were formed early, but not in a “I’ve been saved by the grace of God and will never question anything ever again” sort of way. In third or fourth grade Sunday school, I remember the teacher talking to us again about how God made the heavens and the earth, how He made everything. I was shy, but not when it came to asking questions. I immediately raised my hand. She didn’t call on me at first, but finally I had the chance to ask: “If God made everything then who made God?”. A silence followed and the teacher looked a little stern. She said something to the effect of: “It’s not really our place to ask questions like that”. I guess the “not allowed tos” had caught up with me.

As I grew up and studied the earth and the Bible both, it was not always easy to reconcile my understanding of the physical world with that of the spiritual world. There are people who think science and religion are mutually exclusive, that we are “not allowed to” question things. I have never understood the science vs. religion arguments. To me it’s more like science is a part of my religion.

Because I studied earth science, the Book of Ecclesiastes resonates with me. It talks of humans toiling under the sun, of the seasons coming and going, of the earth outlasting most human endeavors. It reminds us there is a lot of futility in our efforts, or as it says “vanity”, or “striving after wind”. There is a vanity to many things we do, this post included. Studying earth science is humbling. Time is vast, the scale alone is overwhelming, and there are a lot of things that probably happened that were never preserved in the rock record.

Some things last longer. Some things will become a part of the earth and soil. Some things, like a planted tree will grow to impact future generations. Some things end up in the rock record. Other human made things like the swing set perhaps, are fun but fleeting. On a swing set you can spend a lot of energy but not really accomplish anything.

The dogwood tree could be hit by lightening or topple in a storm and die but it will have made lasting changes on the earth, in the soil and a difference to the grass, the birds, the air. I’d maintain that the dogwood tree had a bigger impact. It improved the richness of the earth. It even had the power to change me. The existence of something so lovely and perfect made me believe in something bigger than the churchyard – it helped me believe in God.

(Lwr, 10/20/2017)