The Cathedral of Wilderness

From Dean Ohlman 





Few people fail to be touched by a stunning photo of natural beauty or a gripping verbal description of natural events. But that is not enough for our souls. To truly grasp creation’s meaning, one must experience it. The wild highlights our finitude, vulnerability, and our utter and complete dependence upon the creating and sustaining power of God.

John Calvin called the natural world the “theater of God’s glory,” but it is even more than a theater; it’s a cathedral. And awareness of God’s holiness only occurs when we enter it with the right spirit. The word “cathedral” comes from the Latin term for “chair”: cathedra. Traditionally a cathedral is the sacred place where a church bishop has his chair of authority—his throne. While human bishops are supposed to keep us mindful of our stewardship role in the created order, too often the trappings and traditions of man hinder our capacity to hear the “still, small voice” of God in our urban churches.

How to Pick Up The Pieces Of Your Life

Every so often, whether it’s after a long hard spate of work, finishing a big project, ending a relationship or recovering from a crisis (big or small) I find myself repeating the same rituals of recovery. If at any point in the process I feel lost or unbound and ungrounded, I just have to get back into the order of this list and all becomes well again. Last week I took some time off from work to recover from a busy few months and it worked again. Maybe it will work for you, too?

Nature Nearby

I have to confess that if I had the opportunity I would go every other day to some exciting outdoor location, be it a bog, a marsh, a cypress swamp, a desert—or a national park or two! But few folks have that sort of opportunity—including me. What I really do, however, is only an occasional excursion surrounded in time by a lot of mundane activities: walking the dog, walking to work, walking the dog, going to the store, walking the dog, spending time with children and grandchildren, and walking the dog.

The Dying of the Trees

Dean Ohlman

“Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands…”

“O no, Dad, not again!”

That was my youthful reaction to my dad’s quoting of the one poem he remembered from eighth grade, the last grade he attended as a farm boy shortly before the First World War. It was the beginning of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s classic, “The Village Blacksmith,” a poem I eventually memorized myself in a time of nostalgia long after my dad’s journey to Glory. He’d quote it whenever any of us kids came home and recited poems we’d learned in school—and then he’d go on with, “You’re a poet and don’t know it; your feet show it—because they’re long fellows”: long feet being something that could be said about most of us boys of Dutch stock.

Making a Hiking Staff from an Ash Sapling

If you’ve been hanging around WOC for a while, you’ll know that one of my hobbies is making hiking sticks (“staves” to be proper, I guess). I make them from several tree species: maple, oak, hickory, white cedar, white pine, alder, aspen, and ash. Ash and hickory are favorites to make out of freshly cut saplings, in part because in the spring it’s a breeze to strip the bark from them—which is really just for aesthetics, not for any structural purpose. In fact, leaving the bark on makes them a bit stronger. Yet ash and hickory are still tough, stripped or not.

Theology of Beauty

From Dean Ohlman

I believe the key element in our recovering the lost theology of beauty—a loss that is evident in our often insensitive and utilitarian approach to the natural world—is to recognize that the beauty of the created world is evidence of the Creator himself. It’s significant that in the Genesis creation account the first fact mentioned about the trees of the garden was that they were “pleasing to the eye” (Gen. 2:9). Yes, they were “good for food,” but apparently what was most striking to the new dwellers of Eden was their beauty.