It was the perfect cathedral, nestled beneath a cluster of oaks and sweet gums in the shadows of a giant pine with the bride and groom standing hand in hand in the shade of these arboreal overseers as the parson began the ceremony.

 

What struck me in the moments of silence throughout the wedding were the voices of nature’s choir.  Mockingbirds, cardinals, tanagers and tree frogs created a chorus to rival Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” or Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major.”

 

My chill bumps had chill bumps, and struggling for the words to describe what I felt, I kept landing on one word—sacred.  The place felt sacred.  The flora and fauna of this backyard in Bogue Chitto, under the bluest sky of evening, felt set apart for the higher purpose to which it had been called.

 

Driving home Sunday, I kept coming back to the sacred feeling that I had experienced Saturday evening.  Was it the wedding ceremony, the couple, the trees, the birds?  Was it a combination of all those things?

As a Christian, I firmly believe that a wedding—Holy Matrimony—is sacramental.  It’s right there with baptism, Holy Communion, confirmation and the rest.  However, that doesn’t explain being overwhelmed to the point of chill bumps from birdsong.

 

Somewhere along the drive between Brookhaven and Byram it hit me, thanks to a bit of spiritual reflection and the recollection of something I had recently come across in my reading.

 

As a serial reader, for better or for worse, I usually have a stack of three or more books that I’m working through.  One of the four that I’m currently reading is Joe Hutto’s “The Light in High Places:  A Naturalist Looks at Wyoming Wilderness—Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep, Cowboys, and Other Rare Species.”

 

While perhaps not as popular or as well-known as Hutto’s “Illumination in the Flatwoods,” it is, to steal his word, no less illuminating, especially when it comes to our relationship with the natural world.

 

Like Hutto, I believe that we have commoditized and thus cheapened our relationship with the world that surrounds us.  In his words, “Our culture creates the paradoxical illusion that the human species is somehow separated from the natural world, but it is only a clever and complex illusion.”

 

We need this place, and it is my belief that we were charged with caring for it, nurturing it, and not, as seems to have become our custom, using it up and throwing it away.  In Hutto’s words, “We are ultimately as bound to the mud as the toad.”  It is my fervent hope that we begin to realize this before it is too late.

 

Perhaps, that’s why I felt so moved in the quiet moments of the wedding Saturday afternoon.  In the midst of birdsong and scripture, I was hit with the realization of just how sacred this place, this Earth, this, to quote our indigenous brothers and sisters, “Turtle Island” was meant to be.

 

Hutto’s prophetic words brought that home for me:

 

“Sadly, many fail to grasp this most obvious perspective.  Now, it is time for us to make a dedicated effort to correct some of the damage we have wrought upon the land.  Not merely because these are our natural resources, a preposterously arrogant concept, or because as a species it serves our best interest in the most important ways imaginable, but perhaps more significantly because the world is an inherently sacred place….”

 

There is a sacred that abides within the ordinary.  That is the lesson that I’m left with after this weekend.  Birdsong, Holy Matrimony, trees and one of the most beautiful spring evenings I’ve ever experienced have led me to this realization, along with the writings of a brilliant naturalist.

 

Perhaps it’s why as an Episcopalian, my favorite vestments are green.  The green signifies the season of epiphany and ordinary time and is also used during Pentecost.  It is a symbol of life, hope and anticipation.  It is also associated with nature, growth and the flourishing of spiritual life in response to the presence of God.

 

As I write this looking out over the front pasture, the goats are grazing and the geese are bugging in the tall grass, a fresh rain is looming, and I am surrounded by a world of lush spring green—the sacred within the ordinary.

 

My wish for the bride and groom, Kinley Miller Thomas and Luke Thomas, is this—love, happiness and the ability to always see the sacred within the ordinary.

 

The bond that has been forged between you is extraordinary, it is ordained by God, and Saturday it was blessed, in the presence of family and friends, with birdsong and scripture in a cathedral to rival any in existence.  May God bless you both.

 

Until next time, here’s to seeing the sacred within the ordinary, to seeing that our world “is an inherently sacred place” and treating it as such, and here’s to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.