A class of students, invited to write about a favorite place in nature, produced eloquent and soaring affirmations beyond anything they had previously written previously in the course.

A group of adults, gathered for a meeting in a series on the philosophy of living, were asked to recall a favorite place in nature and to consider why it was meaningful to them.  The sharing that followed brought unprecedented warmth into the group.  The reader may wish to do the same before reading further.

            What is it about natural beauty that touches us so deeply?  How can we expand our appreciation?  If a child's delight in natural beauty is the beginning of this trail of appreciation, where does the trail end?  Should it not be possible to combine the experiences of a naturalist, philosopher, mystic, artist, and ecological activist?

            Imagine a film in which the camera first slowly takes in a beautiful scene, picking up the sounds of wind and water and insects and birds.  Footage may be taken at dawn, morning, midday, afternoon, sunset, evening, night; in spring, summer, autumn, winter; in fair weather and in storms.  After several minutes in the simplicity of this opening evocation, attention turns to geologic features, to meteorology, to the details of a particular shrub or tree, a bird's nest, an insect colony, some animal behavior, to rouse our recollection of the complexity that awaits us beyond the surface of what we notice first.  Commentary adds scientific description.  Then the camera goes back to the initial level of focus, completing the first of several cycles in the film.  Returning to the first scene, simple enjoyment harvests something of the previous foray into science.

            In another cycle, one sees artists' renditions of the scene or something like it; in another, words of poetry depict the scene.  A historical tableau could be constructed, recalling dramas of historic and prehistoric peoples.  What conflicts have transpired?  What exploitation, protection, and restoration of the land?  What sports and games have flourished there?  What have past peoples appreciated about this area?  What are the possibilities for the area in the future?

            After cycles featuring various aspects that add meaning to the scene, the film ends with the initial setting.  The realization dawns that the beauty of this scene tacitly reflects all these dimensions.  Perceptual enjoyment is more than the organism's physical response, since it now engages the entire self.  A film or a conference or a flight of imagination can all bring home the idea that an interdisciplinary approach enhances the appreciation of natural beauty.

            This chapter moves from simple to complex awareness of natural beauty.  We start with a beginner's lesson, a reminder of the range of experiences of natural beauty, the importance of taking time for such experiences, the significance of our favorite places in nature, and the contrast between the beautiful and the plain.  Finally, we consider how to enhance our appreciation of natural beauty through an interdisciplinary approach including the sciences, philosophy, religion, and the arts.

Initial experiences

            Think of walking among fragrant blossoms in spring, smelling the sweet, heavy air of a summer field after rain, seeing the brilliant reds and yellows of autumn leaves against the dark green of conifers, walking over newly fallen snow as bright sunlight illumines thinly iced tree branches, lying on sand dunes watching waves approach the shore, discovering an isolated cove where the beach is white and the water turquoise, riding horseback in the mountains, wading in a clear mountain stream, swimming in a river, coming across deer and staying with them in stillness for a long time, watching fog cascade over hills, gazing up the length of a giant Sequoia tree in a redwood forest, dozing on a thick bed of pine needles on the sunlit floor of a forest, striding through fields sprinkled with wildflowers, walking into the caress of a gentle breeze or the bracing tonic of a cool wind, running up hills and finding lakes.

            Experiences of natural beauty could be variously classified.  In some experiences a single sense is predominant, while other are more multidimensional.  Some find beauty on the micro level, some on the ordinary level, some on the macro level.  Some turn to the heavens, some to the earth.  Some experiences are more receptive, others more active.  The level of contrast between the focus and the background may be high or low.  Some experiences are particularly linked to natural cycles such as seasons of the year or times of the day.  Some are saturated with a sense of higher meaning and value, while others are more matter of fact.  Most are centered outside the self, but some are enjoyments of the self or of the self in relation to another. 

            Places of natural beauty stand out against a background of commonplace landscape.  A hardy soul can find an austere attractiveness in the endless dusty flatness of west Texas, but Yosemite Valley with its abrupt cliffs, waterfalls, green valley, trees, and sparkling river enchants the eye.  The value of the spectacular spots doesn't of course justify neglecting the aesthetic values of the surrounding territory, but a beautiful phenomenon--like anything we notice--inevitably has the structure of a figure-against-a-background. 

            An unappealing scene has beauties that disclose themselves on a different scale.  Shifting to a microscopic level, one finds wonders of biology and physics.  Shifting to the macroscopic scale, one finds wonders of the planet and the solar system.  The point of shifting scale is not to deny ugliness but to illustrate the freedom of a seeker after beauty and to suggest that, in well-chosen perspective, beauty is the last word.

            Spending time outdoors enhances positive personal qualities.  Backpackers tend to have a more simple and natural way of expressing themselves and doing things, a more natural attitude about the body and physical pleasure.  A layer of social artificiality is gone.  Physical effort disciplined by nature's rhythms keeps the mind from racing.  The greatest lives show a joy in natural living and an appreciation for the beauties of nature.  Their trust in nature and affirmation of the process of life combine with their commitment to improve existence on our polluted and disease-stricken planet on which hundreds of species become extinct every year.  Persons are greater than problems, and in spite of everything these people go on noticing, enjoying, and enhancing the beauty around them.  Beauty nourishes them for whatever tasks are theirs.

            One reason we enjoy natural beauty is that experiencing it promotes health.  Health of course is partly a gift of heredity and partly a matter of enjoying proper nutrition, rest, and exercise in a relatively unpolluted environment.  But health is to an unsuspected degree a consequence of a living in a way that integrates truth, beauty, and goodness.  Receptivity to natural beauty is not wholly passive, not just looking at photographs of picturesque sites.  While there is a contemplative side to enjoying beauty, there is also an active side.  The very effort to get to the vista is an essential phase of the temporal background of the experience.  The quickening of the pulse, the exertion of muscles, the filling of the lungs--these are all part of the total experience.

Cultivating appreciation: Taking time

            The first lesson in learning to appreciate some particularly beautiful natural scene is to take time to experience the scene and its qualities.  The hasty "experience" of the tourist does not suffice.  The vista sampled, the snapshot taken, the postcard purchased--none of these accomplishes the mission.  Time is required for the experience to sink in, to make a lasting impression, adding to your gallery of memories, as you gather treasures to recall in time of need.

            It takes time to feel rhythms.  There is a rhythm in any phenomenon, in the course of a day or the seasons of the year.  A sunset comes to a peak of radiance and then it begins to fade.  Some rhythms pertain to the experiencer.  Each experience has its gradual or sudden onset, its culmination, and its phase of decline.  In addition, the appreciative mind cannot respond fully for long.  After a while, fatigue sets in, and the art of experiencing does not strain to sustain the experience unnaturally.  Comprehending beauty involves recognizing something akin to melody insofar the movement of experience follows some primary focus of attention.  There is melody in the flight of a bird as well as in the song of the bird.  And comprehending beauty involves being able to grasp harmonies in complex appearances.

            Taking time for natural beauty makes a difference in your perceptions at other times.  You may start noticing more what is going on in the sky and how the seasons are changing.  You may begin to wake up, not merely with the sense of awaking in this room or in this house, but on this continental landmass, for example.  You may start observing the moods of nature more and their influence on people.  You may notice how normal living is pervaded by other background pleasures that go unnoticed, including breathing fresh air and our ability to move as we desire and the mind's resting in the comfort provided by the supporting brain when the posture is erect.

Natural sciences and aesthetic appreciation

            Experience of nature begins in perception of what is there and what is happening.  In perception, lures to scientific and aesthetic exploration commingle.  There is always more to experience than our senses can take in at any given moment.  The very delight in phenomena attracts scientific inquiry, and each success of scientific understanding enables the growth of appreciation. 

            Of course, scientific and aesthetic attitudes toward a landscape are different.  Science narrates the invisible structure of the trees and the geologic history of the hills, counts the populations of species, measures annual rainfall, and explores relationships within ecosystems.  Aesthetic appreciation follows the visible structure of a landscape, its present look and feel, the balance of horizontal and vertical vectors and curves, and the sights and sounds and smells as they are felt by the experiencer.

            Sometimes the scientific and aesthetic attitudes seem antagonistic; an aesthetic response does not suffice when science is required, nor can science satisfy the soul when it craves the beauty of nature.  Too high a proportion of science crowds out aesthetic enjoyment.  Science makes possible reductionistic analyses of the aesthetic response.  It has been argued that the response of awe to the starry sky is basically due to the way the receptive eye is gently and approximately equally stimulated over the entire retina.  This stimulation results in a sublime sense of space, an experience that underlies and gives emotional power to the idea of infinity.  It has been argued that the pleasure we take in the prospect afforded by a high promontory is rooted in the organism's evolutionary biologic interest in overlooks from which an animal can watch for prey and observe its enemies.  Every such observation tells part of the story, but not necessarily the heart of the story of our experience of the beauties of nature.

            Nevertheless, with the qualifications just noted, the landscape is the locus of aesthetic enjoyment and a better understanding of the landscape makes for a better aesthetic experience.  Background scientific knowledge enhances aesthetic perception in various ways.  The first way is simply to draw careful attention to what would otherwise be missed.  For example, learning about insects that one initially finds repulsive make it possible to prize them aesthetically by drawing observation to the more microscopic level where the details of the tiny creatures can be seen.

            Figuring out how an island formed in a river just downstream from a dry creek bed through which water and silt once poured into the river gives a context for savoring the island as a phenomenon.  One feels pleasure in having understood a moment of cosmic process; and there is something attractive in the very laws of gravity and inertia.  These intellectual pleasures add to the delight in perceivable beauty.

            Even modest information about the geologic history of an area can add a remarkable dimension to one's present experience.  Usually a landscape seems static, except for such transient events as the blowing of grasses.  Usually when we say "now" we refer to a narrow stretch of time.  But a sense of process over long periods of time--when the region was, say, under water or when the glaciers of the ice age retreated leaving boulders in newly carved valleys--imparts a dynamic sense to the landscape and vastly expands the dimensions of our sense of the present.

            Watch a sunset sometime keeping in mind that it is the earth's rotation that is responsible for the phenomenon.  One can in fact experience a sunset as a consequence of the earth's turning, and this yields an uncanny sense of one's own motion as the earth turns silently with absolutely no felt trace of bumpiness or acceleration or pressure.  The earth, along with its stability as a foundation we take for granted, involves us in a gentle dynamism of irresistible motion.

            Scientific information can alter the perception of beauty.  A scene with small patches of woods separated by cultivated fields and small villages might have seemed fully delightful until you learn about the need of some species for connected patches of forest, so that a habitat large enough for the species remains available.  In the light of that, one may well find more beauty in a scene where wooded corridors connect larger forested areas.  Visual appeal is linked to other kinds of appeal.

            Science discloses pattern in nature.  The organism's perceptual response is so attracted to pattern that it cannot sustain attention and awareness when confronted with something that it can only perceive as sheer consistency of texture or an uncoordinated jumble of data.  Something must emerge into prominence for perception to occur.  This is a pervasive trait that attunes an infant to the human face, especially the face of the mother.  Perception is in the business of adequately rendering relevant features of the environment.  It attunes a predator to its prey, an animal to its mate.  The environment is not an incoherent mass of equi-significant detail, but an arena with at least biological significance to each type of creature.  Some figure must detach itself as of greater moment than what thus becomes its background.  What broader significance might there be to our orientation to pattern?  And how far can mathematics and physics go in giving an account of pattern in nature?

            How much unsuspected pattern pervades the world around us?  A magnificent oak tree viewed from a distance approximates the shape of a parabola.  As incalculable as the shapes of waves may be, they give the impression of an implicit mathematics and physics.  Seashells and sunflower heads manifest a curve that can be generated from the Fibonacci series of numbers--1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on, in which the next member of the series is the sum of the previous two.  The mathematics of fractals, where large-scale patterns are repeated on smaller scales, have drawn attention to the pattern in the seemingly random shape of a coastline.

            Science gives mathematical accounts of patterns, but nature is always more complex than the mathematical description.  The attractiveness of the thin sliver of moon depends on the spherical appearance of the moon and the shadow cast by the earth, though neither body is a perfect sphere.  Nature shows a combination of regularity and irregularity, and the combination is essential to natural beauty.

Interpretation and nature

            This section is the first of four that address philosophical issues, broadly speaking, in the aesthetics of nature.  Nature stimulates the quest for meaning and creative design without ever satisfying it in an intellectually definitive way.  Experience is suggestive.  Watch the sun come up behind a range of mountains.  Before the sun itself is visible, the gradual process looks like the unfolding of a slow-motion explosion.  In the sudden moment of discontinuity you see a light shape whiter and brighter than yellow, which quickly rises to spill its basket of golden dust into the waking valley.  The sense of something akin to generosity in the sun's pouring forth is spontaneous.  Can this sense be explained in terms of the biologic needs of the creature for light and warmth?  How much is the feeling dependent on the comfort of being safe from the harshness of the sun?  What role do the cultural connotations of gold and white play in the experience?  What degree of reciprocal influence exists between the sense of the sun's generosity and religious ideas of a generous Creator?  In the experience of beauty these questions are neither posed nor answered, but wonder stirs the soul root of such questioning.  Comprehending natural beauty involves sensitivity to the way a scene almost speaks.

            Given a human craving to find natural reflections of spiritual principles, what shall we make of the ideas that arise in a contemplative moment in nature?  It is all too easy to read lessons into landscape and to see allegories in the seasons.  Suppose you are wandering in the woods, wrestling with a problem, and you come across a quiet stream.  As you watch the water in openness, its gradual, winding flow comes to symbolize the patience you need at this time in your life, and you quietly rejoice that nature has conveyed this insight.  Caution counsels that realizations like this, however relevant they may be to the individual's need of the moment, and however charmingly they may be symbolized in the natural setting, may be more safely interpreted as the mind's harvest not only from nature but also from the confluence of subconscious and superconscious sources.  When storm clouds darken the water and sunlight enters the scene most directly only through a small hole in the upper layer of clouds, reflected from there to the upper surface of a lower layer of broken clouds, only to bounce back up to the undersurface of the higher layer, and thence to reflect a pillar of light straight down onto the waves--the observer can be in awe without translating the scene into religious allegory.

            The very interpretation of nature as a self-contained, autonomous realm independent of mind and spirit arose when early modern science separated itself from some of the religious and philosophic ideas associated with older science.  The modern scientific concept of nature as devoid of purpose encouraged the study of nature's mechanisms.  However, once the mechanistic thinking of the European "Enlightenment" had claimed the whole of nature for itself, Romantic aesthetic sensibility reopened the question of nature's relation to mind and spirit.  Nature became a symbol of untold depth, where conscious, subconscious, and superconscious converge.

            For many of us, then, experiences of nature have profound religious overtones.  The experience of beauty nevertheless offers a much-needed vacation from religious thinking, and philosophy and theology should not over-interpret.  On the broad spectrum of responses to natural beauty, it is wise to avoid the extreme of indifference and the extreme of nature worship.

            There is a temptation to impose our interpretations on nature as though they were insights.  The variety of human experiences and interpretations of nature suggests that nature is comparatively passive to interpretation and that interpretation is influenced by convictions taken from other parts of one's philosophy or religion.  The truth of these interpretations depends more on the truth of the associated philosophy or religion than on a simple ability to discern meaning in nature.  Nature, then, is neither a meaningless chaos nor a text to be read.  Nature's meaningfulness is its mysterious stimulus to interpretation.

            The happy situation is that the experience of beauty is not primarily a discourse.  Even the most active and thorough aesthetic exploration of a scene serves mainly to deepen the quiet of beholding.  Even the remarks between friends taking a walk to enjoy nature, as one mentions something noteworthy to the other, occur in a cycles in which noticing precedes and culminates each remark.  Enjoying the beauties of nature is a vacation from science, philosophy, theology, and ethics, and to shift into such topics abandons aesthetic experience.  It is in quiet receptivity that other areas of activity tacitly convey their contributions to the experience.

            From an interdisciplinary perspective, comprehension of beauty thus involves description of what is perceived, acknowledgement of the influences of areas of concern (science, religion, etc.) that are distinct but indirectly relevant, and confession of the incompleteness of one's grasp.

Our favorite places

            What are the characteristics of people's favorite places in nature as they report them?  The testimonies I have heard and read converge on a number of themes.  The appeal to the senses is only part of the story.  Often such a place is a protected location or refuge, somehow sheltered.  Where one feels secure, a wide-open space will serve as well, a beach, a mountain summit.  Adventuresome types prefer open seas, the face of a cliff, or wilderness areas shared with other predators.

            The very expression "a place in nature" implies separation from ordinary society, relative solitude.  People's favorite places offer a vacation from the daily pressure of other people's expectations, from social emotions, from the stress of refereeing the contest between egoistic and altruistic impulses--in short, from other human beings.  Sometimes favored spots are places to go with a friend or with family.  At the limit, for people among a crowd of strangers watching a sunset, the viewers have an unhindered view of the sunset.

            To be sure, solitude is partial, even when we are all by ourselves.  The place of relative solitude is such precisely in relation to the society from which we have temporarily removed ourselves and to which we will return.  Moreover, in solitude we continue to be social beings, and our reflections go on in the language of our culture.

            Many people seek solitude in nature in order to commune.  A favorite place in nature is a place to get more deeply in touch with what is truest in oneself.  It is a place for spiritual communion.  The ambiguity of the word "commune" mirrors fittingly the indefinite and vague experience, so little verbal, so little busy with thoughts, so open to inspiration without any straining or striving, without any clear sense of the source from which inspiration is sought.  It is a place to put things in perspective.  The perplexing problems of the passing hour recede in their urgency.  One recovers a sense that one is not, after all, the center of the universe; and, remarkably, this recovery of perspective does not normally bring a feeling that one's own life is negligible, meaningless, superfluous, or useless.  Indeed, one often returns from a time of communing in nature with a refreshed sense of purpose.  It is a prescription for groups suffering from tension to go for a vacation in nature, putting aside all conversation about troubling issues.

            To be sure, nature functions in many ways other than through its beauty, and favorite places in nature need not be particularly beautiful.        

Nevertheless, the beauty of a scene is a value that is distinguishable from other dimensions associated with the experience.  The engine of the mind is not turned off, but neither is it engaged with the gears of the scientific, philosophic, and religious intellect.  Practical goals are laid down for a while, as the harmony of physical contrasts absorbs attention.

            Enjoying the beauties of nature in relative solitude has such satisfying appeal that people commonly experience the universe there as a friendly place.  There is a sense of being embraced in something wonderful beyond measure, being part of something grand, a sense of invitation and welcome.  The commingling of affirmation arising within oneself and the joy in what we perceive seem in such moments to disclose a deeper truth and goodness than we usually notice.  Enjoyment gives way to rejoicing.

Myth #1: Beauty is merely subjective

            To appreciate the significance of beauty, it helps to be free of two widespread myths about values.  The first is that beauty is merely subjective. 

            The experience of natural beauty suggests important lessons about value that need clarifying today.  One commonly hears, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  On the one hand, the statement is obvious.  On the other hand, it is used to state something that is less obvious.  People disagree about values, about beauty.  Moreover the phrase about the eye of the beholder is designed to assert that value is subjective--relative to the individual or group doing the evaluating.  A deeper look indicates that natural beauty illustrates the truth that value is real.

            There is a universal pull in the experience of beauty.  In an age where community differences are exalted in opposition to the ideal of universal humanity, the cross-cultural kinship of appreciative minds enjoying the beauties of nature provides access to common ground.  In the presence of beauty we feel that we are not merely responding to something that happens to satisfy our personal preferences, but we want to share our discovery, and we feel that we are enjoying something that should appeal to everyone (or everyone with a comparable preparation for the experience).  Though some prefer the mountains to the seashore, the beauties of each kind of place are widely recognized.  The sublimity of the night sky has evoked awe and reverence in countless souls.  How can a person not feel the pull of the ineffable in the sky?

            Of course, in support of the thesis that beauty is real it is not enough to point out that there are places of beauty such as the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls that are sought out by travelers from all over the world.  There are personal and cultural differences, and they are not to be minimized.  Culture affects the extent to which nature is regarded as the home of ancestral spirits, the Creator's handiwork, a realm for mystical and allegorical interpretation, a stock of raw materials for human exploitation, a place for recreation and character building, or a precious support system for endangered life-forms.  Nevertheless, when the stories of difference are told in sufficient fullness, difference does not seem like an ultimate, raw datum, merely a matter of subjective preferences.  Rather, differences are intelligible as responses to the complexity of the landscape of values.  For example, tourists flock to the beaches of Bali, somewhat to the surprise of the Balinese themselves, who traditionally regard the mountain at the center of their island as the dwelling place of the gods.  There is a logic to the Balinese preference.  From the mountain comes the pure water of the rivers that become more dirty downstream as they are used by more people as the rivers flow finally into the sea. 

            Another example of the logic of cultural difference in aesthetic perception is that Europeans did not appreciate the beauty of mountains and forests during the centuries when these were fearsome places.  Factors of geography and climate put travelers at risk, and thieves would lie in wait.  As Christianity demoted nature spirits to demons, the woods became more frightful.  However, as poets, philosophers, and painters joined in conversation about the sublime and the beautiful and the picturesque, and when the lake country in England was celebrated in verse, aesthetic appreciation of nature flourished.  This story illustrates the long cultural evolution required for values to be appreciated.

            Our talk of the development of European sensitivity to the beauties of nature is consistent with the following thesis.  People's aesthetic evaluations will converge so that, at the culmination of human evolution, everyone will agree.  The convergence thesis, however, despite its merits, overlooks the fact that there are different personality types.  The ministry of beauty in the personality is fulfilled by different experiences for different persons.  One function of beauty, for example, is to facilitate relaxation and enjoyment; but some people need more complex or subtle stimuli than others to satisfy this need.  Another function of beauty is to symbolize qualities of sublime living: one person gains this value by beholding a mountain, another by climbing it.

Myth #2: Beauty is incomprehensible

            How far can we understand beauty?  If natural science supplies the paradigm of comprehension, then we cannot comprehend beauty.  In determining that an animal is a rabbit, a biologist applies an idea to an example; precision and certainty are normal.  In telling whether something is beautiful, however, a person needs a sense of judgment that does not proceed in the same way.

            To comprehend beauty does not require a complete, systematic, and authoritative exposition of beauty.  It does not mean that words can substitute for experience.  It does not mean that humans can construct an equally beautiful replica on the basis of our knowledge of the laws of the phenomenon.  It does not require an exhaustive inventory of the subconscious and superconscious moments of our experience.

            To affirm that we can comprehend beauty means that we can recognize and express the features of a beautiful phenomenon, its tensions and unity.  In nature, that which is beautiful appeals to us by contrast with what is less beautiful.  After miles and miles of highway through endlessly flat, treeless, dusty plains, the look of forested foothills and flowing water comes as a relief.  After a long hike in the shadows of a forest path, emerging into a sunny clearing brings a lift.  Without the contrasting background, neither the forest nor the clearing would be so attractive.  Fashion design relies on contrast with previous styles.  There is, nevertheless, a harmony of contrasts intrinsic to the scene that occasions the recognition of beauty.

            After emphasizing the fact that the appreciation of beauty goes beyond discourse, it is time to balance that thought with the recognition that language does bring beauty to light.  Just perusing the letters of Vincent Van Gogh, for example, heightens the reader's sense of natural beauty.  Art history teaches a discipline of describing that conducts careful noticing, for example, of contrasts and their unification, of line and curve, of light and shadow, of horizontal and vertical, of color and tone and mood.  Great appreciation goes hand in hand with the capacity to convey the realization of value to others, intelligibly.  Thus we move back and forth between the simplicity of wonder to an articulate expression of thorough appreciation.

Religion and nature

            The first thesis of the religious attitude to natural beauty is to affirm that the beauties of nature reveal divinity more directly than do ugliness, monotony, violence, and disease.  Though every moment has its reason for existing as a passing moment, not every moment reflects equally helpfully the high source and destiny of the evolving whole.

            If we distinguish the creation from the Creator, can we still regard the beauty of physical harmony as a quality of divinity?  Yes, on two conditions.  First, one must remember that, while the mind's sense of harmony arises from material perception, it is the soul that feels beauty.  When people speak of awe in the face of natural beauty, they are registering the soul's response.  Sheer overwhelming force, for example, may arouse terror, but awe is a response of a different order.  Second, beauty itself must be distinguished from any particular beautiful phenomenon.  There is, in general, a distinction is between what has value and what is value.  A true statement is not truth itself, and yet to grasp a truth is also to grasp (be grasped by) truth.  A good action is not goodness itself, and yet goodness is in a good action.  And a beautiful scene is not beauty itself, although beauty is present in physical harmony.  Beauty blesses us in a way analogous to the way living truth blesses us in that in beauty divinity reaches out to give pleasure to the material creature.  Truth, beauty, and goodness are gifts that encourage us in our adventure.

            Since Moses had prohibited the making of images of creatures in works of art to combat idolatry, Jewish artistic genius had to flow into the channel of poetry, and it did.  "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge."  From a literary standpoint, such an affirmation might be considered an act of imagination; from a philosophic standpoint, a possibility or a postulate.  But faith experiences creation as the handiwork of God.  Nature can be taken as product or as process, and the process, originating in the creative, ordering, and sustaining act of the Creator, is what the psalmist feels. 

            In nature we see repeating cycles, and we also see growth to maturity.  Which phenomenon makes a better metaphor for human existence in the cosmos?  One of the key choices in religion, cosmology, philosophy of history, and philosophy of nature, is a choice about priority among these phenomena.  Shall we regard human development as merely a phase in the organic process of birth and death, or shall we see nature's cycles as serving, in part, to support the full development of adults?   If destruction and death are just as fundamental as creation and life, then growth to maturity is merely a phase preceding old age and organic failure.  But if the promise of everlasting life and the quest for perfection are (objectively) meaningful, then growth to maturity is an earth-scale version of a cosmic drama in which we pursue an eternal destiny.  The literature of the religions of the world abounds in appealing depictions of visions of realms to which believers look forward.  For faith, earthly beauty anticipates heavenly beauty.

The religion of nature

            Those who regard natural beauty as a gift from the Creator are challenged today by a rekindled religion of nature.  The very distinction between the Creator and creation, it is argued, devalues nature and paves the way for environmental abuse.  Look at the religion of the West and the West's history of environmental abuse, they say.  Western religion has promoted a concept of God as beyond and above nature, a transcendent, supernatural God.  The result has been to devalue nature.  Western religion has taught that human beings--but not other animals--are made in the image of God; and this teaching has led to mistreatment of animals.  As all sides of this debate can agree, we can discern a thread of perfection in nature.  The conclusion, so the argument runs, is that we should regard the earth as a divinity and every creature as (equally) sacred.  People do not abuse what they worship.  Since all sides to this discussion may agree that a thread of perfection can be discerned in nature, why should we resist the generalization that nature is perfect?  Critics of the history of environmental abuse in the West, however, do not show that abuse is caused by devotion to the Creator rather than by lack of stewardship that devotion to the Creator should promote.  The fact that Christianity has been a dominant religion does not mean that most professed Christians practice the real thing.  The argument, moreover, does not address pollution in nonwestern countries.

            Consider the strong, positive factors in the religion of nature: experiential enthusiasm, incisive criticism of flagrant abuses, a call for people to be responsible members of a greater whole, a changed lifestyle, and an agenda that mobilizes young people.  These are powerful ingredients in any religion.

            The revival of the religion of nature is understandable.  Traditional religion fails to hold the minds and hearts of many people.  Ecological problems become more severe while personal habits and business as usual continue to produce sad consequences.  Moreover, nothing is more natural than for the mind to associate a sense of sacredness with the entire context in which a spiritual experience arises.  Since nature has so widely been an arena for spiritual experiences in cultures all over the world, it is not surprising that nature or natural forces, processes, phenomena, or places should become objects of worship.

            In fact, however, recognition of a Creator should enhance care for the creation, as Amerindian religion demonstrates most dramatically.  In addition, recognition of the position of humankind in evolution should enhance appreciation for our animal ancestors.  They are not merely members of the food chain but the path evolution took on the way to us.  Religious regard for the creation as such has inspired sublime poetry and song around the world celebrating the beauties of nature, and many environmental activists believe in a Creator.  It is not necessary to worship something in order to value it and care for it properly.

            It is not necessary to deny divine transcendence in order to affirm divine immanence.  So long as we do not think of God as limited by space, there is no reason why an infinite being cannot be utterly beyond the creation and at the same time omnipresent in creation.  The religion of nature has done well to criticize anthropocentrism, but is has fallen victim to another error that could be called visiblism--a disproportionate regard for what is visible, a failure of faith and imagination to grasp the invisible spirit world alongside the living things we can see.  Mature religion can let the experience of natural beauty lead us beyond to the unseen Creator and to the spirit gift dwelling within.  Mature religion can realistically recognize both nature's beauty and its ugliness, and it can interpret the story of evil and sin that partly explain nature's present condition.  A religion that energizes the family of humankind can mobilize the cooperation needed to accomplish what needs to be done on the ecological agenda.  Thus nature can responsibly be regarded as an arena for worship, but not an object of worship.

The arts and natural beauty

            Once I asked an artist friend to take a walk with me along a path in the woods to show me what she sees as an artist.  She pointed out colors, textures, moods, and qualities of shape and spatial relationship that I could barely discern even when she told me what to look for.  Another friend, guiding my family through the Tate Gallery in London, remarked, "We didn't realize how beautiful our English countryside was until the painters showed us."  I can believe it.  Artists--of every sort--are custodians of beauty.

            A United Nations consultant on the preservation of endangered sites, such as Angor Wat in Cambodia, and the author of a work of connoisseurship on the beauties of nature, Christopher Tunnard testifies that the contemplative appreciation of the beauty of landscape is enhanced, above all, by geological and biological knowledge and by a knowledge of the history of painting.  Artists devote extraordinary gifts to observing, feeling, and expressing natural beauty, and the non-specialist should expect to have something to learn from them.  Painters' interpretations expand our aesthetic vocabulary as observers.  Moreover, there are landscapes that invite comparison with particular styles of painting.  To convey a mystic luminosity in landscape, some painters laid a white glaze underneath their forest greens, earthen browns, and atmospheric rosy pinks.  The brightness of the glaze, rarely if ever directly visible, suggested the limited sense in which the divine is present in nature.

            Artists lead people beyond the tendency to crystallize emotions.  It is so easy to imagine standard types of situation calling for standard emotional responses.  One strives to rejoice, for example, when it would be far more honest and effective to start with a very different feeling and move toward a different shade of culmination in the experience.  Artists challenge stereotyped, conventional responses, lead us to open ourselves, for example, to the freshness of life in a desert.  Years ago, walking with a romantic companion in the hills, having anticipated that nature would smile upon our excursion and show off its familiar attractions, I expressed frustration over the cloudy day and cold wind and lack of sunshine.  My friend responded that Japanese people learn to appreciate all the aspects of nature.  Indeed, painters have taught humanity to appreciate qualities of fog and smoke and wilderness, have noticed the green in the human face, the ways in which the two eyes differ, the link between the earth we tread and the personal history implicit in a pair of shoes.

            Asian painters have often depicted mountains at whose base we begin with familiar human habitations from which a narrow, winding path leads higher and higher into a peak obscured by mist.  In the form of a scroll, the painting provides an occasion for friends to recount stories over the course of an evening.  Such art, as a background for natural experience, reminds us of our sociality as we venture into nature, of our increasing solitude as we continue our journey, of our humility before a vast universe, and of the limitations of our knowledge: the summit can only be inferred from below.

            The gifts of poets are hardly less than those of painters in expanding our sense of the import of natural beauty.  Musicians attune to nature.  Perfumes and gourmet delicacies also present natural beauty.  Massage brings pleasure, even to those who accept self-gratification only in connection with therapy.

Conclusion

            Again and again we return with profit to the simplest lessons for beginners, for those lessons contain the seeds to be unfolded at each step along our forward path.  The very openness for recreation, the very relaxation that permits us to seek anew a deepened acquaintance with experience capacity, the delight in simplicity.

            To deepen your initial experience with the beauties of nature, notice the variety of the beauties of nature; and take time to appreciate natural beauty, letting the beauty sink into your soul, so you can recall the lovely scene when you need an uplift.  To expand the comprehensiveness of your awareness of natural beauty, contemplate the mute near-significance to you of your favorite places in nature.  Bring in your understandings of science, philosophy, religion, and the arts.  Do not neglect the higher beauty of the gestalt in which the beautiful is nested in a contrasting environment of the plain.

            Inputs from every section of the matrix of truth, beauty, and goodness expand our awareness of the beauties of nature.  Conversely, appreciating natural beauty enhances the rest of our life.  If we look up, the daylight beauties of local soil and blood and native language yield to the starlight beauty of being one family, the family of God.

 Nature and Transformation 

            Seeking higher beauty beyond nature, idealism has sometimes missed the beauty of transformed participation in nature.  Plato taught that we may begin our quest for beauty on a physical level, with someone who has an attractive body.  However, if  we are truly seeking beauty, we will realize that all such bodies have something in common.  None of them is beauty; rather, they all have beauty.  Realizing that insight, we will calm down our excitement and passionate talk about the one body and move on to the next level.  Then we will recognize the beauty of soul, and we will see that a beautiful soul has beauty in a greater degree than a beautiful body.  We will be able to be attracted to someone with a beautiful soul even if the person has an ugly body.  For Plato there are higher levels, too--levels of social and political order, levels of knowledge and philosophy--that prepare one for the magnificent, dawning insight into true beauty, one, supreme, and eternal.  Despite his wonderful discoveries, Plato left out part of the story: how relating to nature can be transformative.

            This chapter, more autobiographical than the others, explores some blessings from steeping in the beauties of nature, the impact of realizing that we are part of nature, and transformations in our way of living as spiritual-and-natural beings.

Blessings and nature

            I will never forget the results of a two-week vacation devoted to natural beauty.  At times I had to concentrate as hard on sustaining my purpose for that vacation as on work.  I visited the San Francisco Bay area in the late summer, moderating the impulse to get in touch with old friends, staying with my mother, Louise Howard, a docent at the Stanford Museum and Gallery, and her husband, Fritz Howard, a master of the bonsai art of cultivating miniature trees.  There was much time for beaches, hikes in the hills, and meditating in the secluded patio surrounded with the growing trees.  Feeling the unseen presence of the skilled cultivator, patiently training those trees at every stage along the way from their common beginnings to their diverse and charming culminations, taking in the sunshine, enjoying a period of sustained receptivity--all these quiet activities facilitated a genuine refreshment of mind, soul, and body.  I returned home and began the semester with five weeks of effortlessly gracious encounter with those I met in the classroom and walking across the campus.  Experiencing others as brothers and sisters, utterly free of distracting desires or antagonisms, taught me that a deeply refreshed nervous system can sustain a high level of spiritual awareness.

            There is another direction in which one can experience surprising benefits from a simple natural act.  "Just take a deep breath," people are told, as a way to deal with frustration.  Letting the attention return for a moment to the body releases tension.  When our breathing is shallow and constrained, our posture is poor and our dignity is hobbled.  Countless meetings begin with the leader inviting the audience to take a few deep breaths.  It seems to be good psycho-physical practice.  Taking time for conscious breathing allows us to find our inner happiness again.

            Another story of the transformative effects of wholesome bodily living comes from a woman whose cats would sometimes fight with neighbor cats.  She found that as she learned to rest on her feet, letting her own tension go, she was able to bring peace into the situation in a way that would often defuse the tension of the cats.

            What stories would you add to this list?

Being a part of nature

            Pursuing natural beauty leads beyond familiar attractions.  One afternoon, walking home from the bus stop, moving across a broad field in my customary way of refreshing myself with beauty, I was enjoying the field and the fresh air and the autumn leaves on the trees in the gentle afternoon sunshine.  I experimented by expanding my attention beyond the landscape to the sun as an object in space.  From an imagined perspective beyond the earth's atmosphere, the sun does not have its place in a blue sky.  I was stunned and frightened to picture the earth with its thin atmospheric envelope hanging in the infinite black of a night without context.  The earth no longer felt like home.  Then I understood the perspective of those for whom the discourse of science is ultimate.  I knew I needed to call on faith, but the voice of faith was abstract.  Feeling it wiser to let the experience run its course, I waited and thought about the Copernican revolution that exiled the earth from the center of the universe.  The next morning, refreshed by sleep and ready to worship, I returned to the theme of moving beyond self-centeredness and geocentrism in appreciating the beauties of nature.  I returned to the previous day's challenge of a perspective beyond the terrestrial and felt drawn into viewing the earth from above.  I thought about what my purpose on the earth might be and then reflected on the danger of narcissism in such a facile way of making the earth seem like home again.  A couple of weeks later, a second moment of horror invaded me in the midst of my walk home as I reflected on the familiar idea that I am a part of nature.  Not only is there continuity between nature and the physical body, but my very existence as an observer is a natural existence.  I felt strangled with a suddenly powerful feeling of mortality.  Again, I let this experience run its course, and came out with a deeper intention to make my mortal life a gift and a deeper sense of how universe beauty includes and transcends earthly beauty.  I had begun my adventure in natural beauty with favorite places and had enjoyed the night sky from a complacently terrestrial standpoint; but now the concept of universe beauty acquired a new depth, and I was ready to begin again.

            The first time I tried conscious breathing as a focused exercise at a Toronto Zen center, I had the sudden realization: "I am a windbag!"  It can be scary to see oneself as simply a bag of wind.  For all the humor in it, for all the needed self-deflation--Lao Tzu said, "He who feels pricked must once have been a bubble"--the experience, taken by itself, could be used as evidence for a thoroughgoing reductionism.  There was no soul, no spirit, no nothing except a physical expansion and contraction in a vast, impersonal environment of air and greyness utterly devoid of meaning.  Such an experience makes one realize that the choice gapes wide: What is more true--the reduction to the windbag or an integral experience in which the windbag moment finds its place in a broader context?  The very anxiety about that choice is an animal-origin reaction to a threat.  The mind is capable of better.  The "I am a windbag" insight has its mission in dialogue with other insights, bringing humor to release the attitude of a self-serious, professional man of words.  Nature and transformation: by letting our natural dimension interrogate our other dimensions, we integrate our lives.

            My conclusion is this.  I now enjoy walking perceptively in nature, feeling being part of nature and knowing that this participation involves my mortal flesh.  The beauties of nature are a gift and my mind that can enjoy them is a gift, and following the Giver promises an increase of beauty in this life and the next.

Levels of consciousness of natural beauty

            Levels-of-consciousness schemes are dangerous.  Sometimes authors use them to position their opponents' view low on the totem pole.  An arbitrary series of levels, if presented as a temporal sequence, falsifies biography and history.  And such schemes, if they purport to prove anything, substitute description for argument.  Nonetheless, these patterns may convey a certain logic--a connection of meanings--that organizes experience.  It is only in the latter sense that I propose the following list.  Here each "level" involves new insights and new modes of expression.

1.  Imagine that our "first" attitude toward nature is simple, openhearted, childlike enjoyment and delight in earth and sky, water and wind, and the life of the body.

2.  Then comes the experience of pain, and the heart responds with hurt and confusion and possibly feelings of cosmic alienation and religious anger.

3.  Then comes a philosophic synthesis, recognizing that nature is both a source of material blessings while, at the same time, we material creatures are inherently liable to a host of unwelcome events.  At this level a person says something like, "You have to take the bitter with the sweet" or "Life is hard, but if you accept this, you can find a certain happiness."

            Then each of the previous moments is taken up in a deeper way, and the circle is repeated.

4.  On the basis of the previous realizations, then, the person goes forward and comes to experience the beauty of nature once again.  This time the expressions of appreciation are deeper, despite their similarity to level one affirmations.  "When I consider the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the starts that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?"  Beauty is affirmed as a clearer window than pain to the ultimate character of the universe and its Source. 

5.  When pain comes, it is invested with meaning and experienced as suffering, a trial of persevering with God "to fulfill all righteousness."

6.  The philosophic mind now synthesizes the joyous experiences of beauty and the moments of suffering that deepen our faith.  The product of this synthesis is not an intellectual discourse but a steady attitude of gratitude for blessings and steadfastness in faith.

Changing our lives

            We know that our beautiful planet is suffering an ecological crisis due to the actions of human beings, but we are uncertain about how much we need to change our lives in order to do our part to restore a sustainable, liveable condition for ourselves and other beings.  There are so many facets of the problem to deal with.  Shall we restrain our reproduction?  Shall we join an environmental group?  How far shall we move toward a vegetarian diet?  We drive to work, passing a jogger here and a bicyclist there, and wonder: should we have ridden a bicycle or taken the bus today?  It feels so good, physically and ethically, to ride that bicycle.  To these and other such questions, I have no general answers, but I observe that sometimes we feel a nagging that is not merely socially conditioned.  The call of conscience signals a conflict calling us to live on a higher plane.  Sometimes a small adjustment, a minor course correction, is all we need; but sometimes we need a transformation.  The bigger the change we need, harder it is to let go of old habits, and many factors distract us from the change we must make.

            In what follows, I will address one abuse of natural beauty and human dignity with social observations and a story of my personal journey.  It can be taken as an essay on Jesus' word, "If the eye is generous, the whole body will be filled with light."

            Living in beauty is made more difficult by tendencies of modern civilization, where many people pursue beauty divorced from truth and goodness.  One tendency is a philosophic movement that I call "aestheticism."  The movement begins in skepticism: science is totally revisable, philosophy mere opinion, and religion an illusion; morality and ethics are techniques of social control.  Aestheticism then proposes beauty as the hope of the human spirit and as a foundation for all other values.  Another tendency I call vitalism.  Vitality is one of the genuine beauties of the body, but the appreciation of vitality is distorted in Fascism, past and present.  Vitality and values associated with it--health, vigor, and decisiveness--are exalted above moral and spiritual values.

            One of the beauties of the body is its capacity for enjoying pleasure.  Pleasure is a part of happiness, and, since parents express love by providing for their children's pleasures, pleasure early becomes a symbol of love.  Happily, there are many, many pleasures consistent with health and personal welfare; but millions of people only arrive at a healthy attitude to pleasure by the detours of corruption and self-denial.

            Contemporary society suffers in crisis regarding sex, marriage, and the family.  The beauty of the human body is exploited as a stimulus for sexual desire.  Vanity, immaturity, confusion, lack of self-respect, the comforts of modern life, commercialism, acceptance of exploitation in the media, and hedonistic indulgence conspire with disease and aggression to make sex a major cause of suffering and the pet evil of a large proportion of our planet's burgeoning population.  More than two-thirds of the children in some groups are born out of wedlock; more than half of marriages in the United States now end in divorce, and the marriage rate is falling.  Moreover, in the face of this breakdown of civilization, many social scientists offer neutral, pluralistic, and facilitating messages.  High schools distribute condoms because they cannot restrain teenage sexual activity.  Health workers focus their efforts on women because it does so little good to try to get men to be responsible.  Rape has begun to be used as an instrument of military policy and ethnic degradation.  The problem is not new.  Confucius said that he never met a man whose desire for goodness was stronger than his sexual desire; and Sonnet 129 expresses Shakespeare' pessimism.

            The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

            Is lust in action; and till action, lust

            Is purjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,

            Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

            Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;

            Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

            Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait,

            On purpose laid to make the taker mad:

            Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;

            Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

            A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

            Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

               All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

               To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

            Will anything short of a spiritual renaissance have the power to reverse such trends?  The abuse of physical pleasure is so common that few believe in the potential for a world-wide moral and spiritual awakening that will empower self-mastery to replace self-indulgence.  Imagine a certain ideal: a healthy and mature couple, whose parents provided instruction in sex, wait until marriage for their experiential learning.  Apart from times when they practice birth control, they engage in sexual intercourse in the hope of conceiving a child.

Growing in self-mastery

            Before reading further, spend a minute bringing to mind the recollection of a time when you were functioning at your best.  Recall how unified it felt, as all the energies of the personality were harmoniously mobilized.  During that time, did you experience situations that you normally find challenging or tempting?  If so, how did you handle those situations when you were at your best?

            When we are not at our best, we fall into all sorts of appetites and emotions that are not beautiful.  Realizing this, and desiring to live in a better way, we experience a tension between--there are many ways to express it--the lower self and the higher self, our material emotions from the animal-origin nature and the higher intellectual, moral, and spiritual dimensions of the personality.

            Self-mastery is the condition of living in which the higher dimensions of the personality are the effective leaders.  Rationalist philosophy would say that our best thinking governs our actions rather than having our material emotions in the driver's seat.  Religious philosophy would add that our lives proceed from a motivation dominated by the divine spirit.

            How can we move beyond a cheapening pursuit of pleasure without engaging in civil war against our own impulses?  A variety of insights are summarized in a discussion from The Urantia Book, contrasting the religion of self-examination and self-denial with a different message of self-forgetfulness and self-control.

By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God.  Forget not--it is your personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of God that ensures your becoming partakers of the divine nature.

We have three options: foolish self-indulgence, overconscientious self-denial, and wise, transformed living.  Each cycle of decision and action strengthens one habit or another.  Habits involve the synaptic connections between neurons in the brain.  As you construct a new superhighway of a better habit of living next to the narrow and dangerous road of a bad habit, the old road eventually breaks up as the grasses of new life take over what is no longer in use.

            Spiritual living alters the very quality of perception.  It is natural for self-interest to govern perception.  However, dedication to the love of God and the service of others transforms perception.  Beauty becomes not only an object of experience but a quality of experiencing.  Perceiving is never neutral.  Perception is dominated either by a material or by a spiritual attitude, and there is a subtle difference between materially-centered perceiving and spiritually centered perceiving.  The center of gravity is always in one place or the other.  "If the eye is generous, the whole body is filled with light."

Conclusion

            We can call on beauty, and voilà: There is beauty as divine spirit presence, infusing its grace into perceiving from within.  Beauty, in other words, is a name for God as well as a name for a value that we can experience and live.  Vision proceeds from within, and when seeing is spiritually centered the visual experience participates in beauty.  To repeat a quote from Mencius, "A noble man steeps himself in the Way (tao) because he wishes to find it in himself.  When he finds it in himself, he will be at ease in it; when he is at ease in it, he can draw deeply upon it; when he can draw deeply upon it, he finds its source wherever he turns."

            The greatest beauty of the human body, then, is not on the level of perceptual appeal, and the greatest pleasures are not material.  The body's greatest beauty is its capacity to operate in smooth subordination to the purposes of spirit made effective by the decisions of mind.  The biochemical system of flesh and organs and hormones and neurons can integrate into a wider system including emotions and intellect and moral ideals, a system whose nucleus is the indwelling divine spirit.  The most essential function of the human body is to support a mind capable of receiving and responding to the spirit.  Through the mediation of mind, the body is the temple of the spirit.

            Therefore, spiritually infused perception is essential to living in beauty in a way integrated with truth and goodness.  Scientific and philosophic reflections open up helpful perspectives.  The power needed for success, however, comes from the spirit, which alone enables one to move beyond mere self-control to the spontaneity of self-mastery.  For the human will to struggle to resolve a conflict between the spirit and the flesh is ineffective.  Persistent and wholehearted decisions to align with spirit, however, are surprisingly powerful.  Momentary victories may be won by lesser techniques; but in order for the motto, "Mind over matter" to be graciously practiced, "Spirit over mind" must come first.  Those who nurture good habits or overcome bad habits know the joy and liberty of self-mastery; it is not a repressive, obsessive, moralistic, vigilant, negative campaign of force, but a harmony that arises when each element in the personality system functions in its proper place.

            This chapter has developed three main thoughts.  First, the beauties of nature are usually in the background, not the foreground, of our attention.  Spending focused time, however, steeping oneself in natural beauty, not only provides a pleasant background layer of awareness of our marvelous planet.  In addition, enjoying the hospitality of mother nature can energize our spiritual and social life. 

            Second, realizing that we are part of nature can have a heartening or shocking or humorous impact.  The realization makes us face our mortality.  It humbles our pride and heals our isolation.  The paradox of the human being is to be part of nature while in some way transcending nature.  A balanced philosophy acknowledges both.

Third, the beauties of nature include the pleasures of the body.  Modern civilization urgently needs to learn self-mastery, to find better ways of satisfying our natural urges.   The greatest beauty of the body is its capacity to integrate with a spiritual transformation.  Transformation goes beyond moral self-discipline to center our very perceptual life in the beauty of the divine presence.