"Toute la nature crie qu'il existe"

Title translation: "All nature cries out that He exists." -Voltaire

step outside, close your eyes, stand completely still, barefoot in the grass.
feel the gentle sun rays seep behind your eyes, filling the space with a warm red orange light.
wait for the smallest of breezes, like a soft hand plucking the loose strand of hair from behind your ear to barely brush your cheek.
let your mind empty out as your head fills with the sound of the earth moving around you. a bird twittering, a cricket sighing, the faint rumble of tires on the highway a few miles away.
smile at the small hole in the soundscape, the silence left by absent cicadas, signaling a surprising mid-August reprieve from oppressive summer humidity.
calf muscle twitches unexpectedly as an unassuming ant moseys up the back of your left leg. keep your eyes closed, but lift your right foot to casually brush him off.
breathe deep, pushing out your stomach to fill all the corners of your body with outside air.
drop your head, open your eyes, just barely, to see the blur of colors between eyelash fringe.
open wide, focus and then narrow again, taking in the detail in blades of grass between your toes.
then head tipped back to drink in the sky, a perfect circle of blue and white at once right above you and at the same time, untouchably distant.

it's times like these when I want to stretch out on the ground and pull the sky down over me like a blanket and just listen to the earth's heartbeat as she spins and turns through days and seasons, constantly repositioning herself around the sun. and then rise above, to run my hand along the ridge of worn mountains and dip my fingers in the churning seas, stopping to rest in a forest to watch a seed grow from tiny sprout to a towering tree, in real time.

it's times like these when the glory of being alive sinks in, a delicious sensation of feeling, hearing, smelling, seeing, tasting everything and nothing at the same time. when every shade of color ever created by God and named by man is right in front of your eyes if you look hard enough. when the tiniest details are magnified and the biggest, most obvious things disappear.

it's times like these when I realize it's a blessing and a curse, my deep love for this earth.
a blessing in that when all else is lost, Nature is there to lay a comforting hand on my soul. in that, even when it rains for days, when there's casing of ice and snow on everything aboveground, when tremors, winds, and waves rip through cities and homes and lives, I cannot be angry.
but a curse in that I am far too attached to my temporal dwelling and often unwittingly fall into the trap of worshipping Creation and not her Creator. that I forget the most beautiful, most worthy landscape is entirely unattainable by human power and might: God's kingdom.

but then what a heartbreakingly lovely thought occurs: if this is the magnificence made for our physical dwelling, think how much more exhilarating and incomparable Eternity must be!

and these are the things I think about, with my chin resting on my knees, in a backyard on a golden Tuesday afternoon in August.