Today’s Life-Line is:
The ultimate concern of the human must be the integrity of the universe upon which the human depends in such an absolute manner . . .
Even our sense of the divine comes to us mainly, not through scriptural communication, but through the universe around us. The natural world is the fundamental locus for the meeting of the divine and the human. We need to look up at the stars at night and recover the primordial wonder that awakened in our souls when first we saw the stars ablaze in the heavens against the dark mystery of the night. We need to hear the song of the mockingbird thrown out to the universe from the topmost branch of the highest tree in the meadow. We need to experience the sweetness of the honeysuckle pervading the lowlands in the late summer evening.
In all these experiences communion takes place between ourselves and that numinous reality whence the universe came into being and by which it is sustained in its immense journey.
~ Thomas Berry
Sleeping on the screen porch, a wheezy child with stricken breath: the gentle night all around, the luminous stars above, the fragrance of sweet fern,, pine needles. Away far the melody of Owl calling, and somewhere the reply of the foghorn, down the east end of the Canal..then the night breeze, cool, gentle: God’ s Touch.
That’s it.