Sometimes it’s important to bring our heads out of the heavens and make sure our feet are planted squarely on the earth. Barbara Brown Taylor does that for me with her books “An Altar in the World” and “Leaving Church.”

In the latter, she mentions the two books of God in Celtic theology. God’s little book is the Bible. God’s big book is Creation. You can find God in both places. Just as you must have your eyes open to read the Scriptures, you also have to have them open to see God in the world around you. In “An Altar in the World,” Brown encourages us to open our eyes with lines like this: “Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars.”

She also offers a correction to the tendency in most Christianity to put top billing on what one believes. For her, belief gives way to “behold.” “People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the Son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to Scripture.”

For Barbara, belief is not sufficient. We are told to “behold” the work of God!

My “shady oak tree” was on the edge of a meadow in New Hampshire. It was winter. I had decided to return to the camp where I had spent the summer for a few days of solitude. My heat was from the cabin fireplace; water for washing in buckets from the lake. One of those afternoons was sunny and warm, perfect for a walk on the snowy path up the hill to the meadow. Once there, my shady oak looked so lonely on the edge of the meadow and so inviting that I climbed it and sat timeless in its branches. Birds of various colors and songs joined me, and we had our own little heavenly choir right there on earth.

My “riverbank” is a creek. It’s Rapid Creek. It begins in the bowels of Pactola Reservoir and runs through the camp where I have been many summers. 

The creek runs cold! On a hot summer day, laying in the shallows or dunking in the holes is a baptismal experience as earthly as you can imagine. Those clear and cold waters make the blood run quick and wake the spirit. Those waters bring out the deer, the owls and the bears. They water the trees that turn the hills black. They provide the gift of life to all within reach. Those waters help make those hills holy.

My “tops of mountains” are multiple. They are the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Challenged by a friend and mentor to climb all of the 4,000-footers, I purchased my AMC (Appalacian Mountain Club) guide book and started climbing. There are still a few of the 48 unclimbed. They will need to wait for another lifetime, as will the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James). The most memorable climb was where we literally had our feet on the earth but our heads in the heavens, with the clouds below us. That holiness is still seen and felt so many years later.

Friends from other parts of the country often complain to me about driving across South Dakota, and the “long stretches of barren wilderness.” Those of us who have lived here for any length of time know this part of the earth differently. When you live here long enough you begin to see the various subtle shades of green or brown; the gentle rise and fall of the land; the relationship of trees to water; where you will see geese and where you’ll find meadowlarks; the stark contrast between ranches and farms; what is meant by east and west river. For those who live from and by it, this stretch of land takes on a holy quality. It’s the proverbial giving tree!

St. Bernard of Clairvaux tells us: “Vines and trees will teach you that which you will never learn from masters.” And again: “What I know of the divine sciences and the Holy Scriptures, I have learned in woods and fields. I have no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.”

Or Hildegard of Bingen: “The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.”

Or to quote Barbara one more time: “Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish – separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.”

If we can’t find God anymore, perhaps we need to turn off the television, computer and smart phone and step outside.