The Language of Rivers and Stars
While the children were off school this Easter our family took a trip to explore Mizen Head, the southernmost tip of Ireland. It’s a remote peninsula where the rocky, wild terrain is dotted with cottages of white or pale yellow and the land is a patchwork of squares and rectangles divided by low stone walls. Clusters of sheep and cows surround tiny villages with steeples in the middle and strings of houses and pubs and shops that might be out of eggs if you get there too late. At the southern point where the land runs out there’s an old signal station that’s become a tourist attraction, reached by a footbridge that stretches between impassable sea cliffs. When we walked across and looked down we saw three seals far below us, relaxing in a rocky inlet surrounded by towering, jagged rocks while the seagulls soared above our heads. In the far distance, we could just make out the shape of Fastnet Rock, a tiny island of stone where people managed—somehow—to build a lighthouse to warn those at sea of the ship-shattering dangers around them. At our feet the just-blooming sea-pinks waved in the breeze and I wondered again how these flowers manage—and even seem to prefer—to grow in places where there is so little soil and so much violent wind from the ever-turbulent ocean.
In a place like Mizen Head, the voice of nature is loud. I don’t just mean the steady crash of waves against the cliffs, the crying seagulls, or the blustery wind—I mean the mysterious power of nature to bypass all of our distractions and defences and speak directly to our souls without needing any words of prose or poetry and without needing any permission. As David wrote in Psalm 19,
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.”
At Mizen Head I felt small against the towering cliffs. I was intimidated at times by the invisible, unstoppable force of the wind. In the sea-pinks I saw living, fragile artistry thriving and blooming in challenging conditions, and above them I saw the seagulls nesting in places no wingless creature could reach. I saw the seals’ sleek bodies playfully enjoying the calmer waters of the inlet, and the vast expanse of the ocean stretching out to the horizon and beyond. My eyes were made to see these things, my ears to hear these crashes and cries, my senses to feel them—and my heart was made to respond. David finishes his Psalm with a prayer—not a prayer of thanks for God’s powerful voice in nature (although that would be appropriate), but a prayer about his own words of response:
“May these words of my mouth and this
meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
This voice that speaks to me in wind and water, in grass and flower and rock is the voice of God himself, the Creator of all things. He made me able to hear his voice, and he also gave me a voice of my own. How will I use it? What cry can I add to the sea and the seagulls? I can, and I must, cry out in praise.
My new book, The Language of Rivers and Stars, officially releases tomorrow, the 1st of May. In it, I explore how we can better understand and respond to God’s voice in nature with the help of God’s voice in scripture. You can order it now from your favourite bookstore.
