The Beauty of Nature

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In Diane Ackerman’s chapter on vision, she talks a great deal about the nature. The beauty of nature, how certain species use light to attract mates or shed light on predators, and how we and other species depend on light to be healthy. 


At one point she talks about a trip to the beach in California with friends. She says: 

“Nothing need be said. We all understand the visual nourishment we share. … The cottony blue sky and the dark-blue sea meet as a line sharp as a razor’s edge. Why is it so thrilling to see a tree hold pieces of sky in its branches, and hear waves crash against a rocky shore, blowing spray high into the air, as the seagulls creak?” (Ackerman, 240).


It made me think about how people can call looking at the beauty of nature a religious experience. Had I had one? When I was in Ireland I visited the Cliffs of Moher. I felt like I could stare at them for hours, even days, because I was so in awe of them. They were so powerful, yet so calm. They were like a protective mother. Withstanding the harsh ocean wind and waves, but also growing flowers and home to sea birds. Was standing there in such awe a religious experience? What does it mean to have a religious experience and how do you know if you’re having one?

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausFebruary 12, 2018 at 8:35 AM

    Great question, Grace! And evocative description! Sometimes I think it's as simple as calling an experience "religious" that makes it so. Except you clearly felt something extraordinary looking at the beauty of nature before you wondered whether to call it religious of not. I think words like "religious" (and "God," and "spiritual" are kind of a marker or signal, signifying that we want to associate our experience with certain groups of people and certain categories of experience - awesome, extraordinary, affective, maybe even revelatory experiences. What would it mean to you to call it "religious"? Or to refrain from calling it "religious"? Sometimes it can feel as if calling something "religious" is reductive, when the experience seems so much much more than "just religious."

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  2. UnknownMay 9, 2018 at 2:33 PM

    Grace, I found this part of the book to be extremely applicable to myself and my experiences with nature. I also have trouble sometimes determining what makes something religious. I sometimes think that if something like nature is religious, then I am saying that it has a higher meaning. In my own experiences with nature I have had a similar experience as you had at the Cliff's of Moher where you felt completely entranced by what you were seeing. I was paddling in a canoe in northern Canada and I couldn't stop staring at the reflections on the shoreline in the water. recalling the is memory I do not know if this a is a religious experience, but it was more than just your average memory.

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