@HomewithDean – Homily 09/01

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Let’s get honest, you and I, about nature …It’s Wednesday morning and I’m sitting at the dining room table writing some notes on excluding rodents from homes when our cat comes inside and proudly places at my feet a rodent he had just dispatched from the yard. Yes, irony. My notes on keeping rodents out of the house interrupted by a rodent brought into my house.And so you say, “See, that’s the kind of stuff that happens when nature gets too close. Things gets messy.”I feel you. I’ve heard all the nature complaints. Many from my own mouth. You don’t want the cat bringing in dead things. You don’t want rats scurrying about, or bird droppings on the patio, or rabbits eating your flowers, or squirrels building nests in your trees, or ants in the kitchen or spiders in the bathtub. I feel you. We think ourselves children of the civilized world. Nature is something nice to look at, or voluntarily make contact with, but we don’t want it touching us.We prefer Disney nature—bluebirds that land on our outstretched finger; sparrows carrying our freshly washed linens to the clothesline; mice with little vests and hats preparing our dinner and bushy squirrel tails sweeping up crumbs.In reality, nature can be, as Tennyson said, “red in tooth and claw.” Everything out there is struggling to survive. Trees are selfishly fighting to keep anything from growing under them. Roses grow wickedly sharp thorns. Bees fulfill their roles in the hive or suffer death at the hands of their sisters. We rarely know when one of our chickens is sick because the flock will often peck to death any weakness they perceive. And our songbirds. aren’t just flitting casually about the feeders. Look closer and you see they’re constantly fighting one another for best position. Meanwhile the squirrels and rats are obsessed with steeling that bird food, and keeping an eye on the cat who in turn is always keeping an eye on the dog.And I … I have encouraged it all. The whole endless messy struggle. I’ve not just tolerated it. I’ve welcomed it—beckoned it in and brought it close—and you deserve to know why I want you to do the same … Because we need it.Not just “need it” in the global environmental sense. We all know that’s true. That’s what wilderness funds are all about. I’ll donate money to preserve it, but I don’t need it touching me. But as it turns out, yes, yes I do. Our bodies, our minds, our emotions, have co-evolved with that beautiful mess for millions of years. And we’ve only tried to leave it behind for less than a hundred. It doesn’t work. The very best brain science has now confirmed that we need it all close by. We’re designed for it. Despite the mess, the more we separate ourselves from the rustling of leaves, the songs of birds, the chirps of crickets, the sound of moving of water, the hoots of owls, the yaps of coyotes, the smell of rich soil, the more we lose ourselves to the noise and stress and anxiety of our virtual realities instead of the soothing song of actual reality.The best news of all is, if you build it they will come. Nature abhors a vacuum. It wants back in. Your yard, your patio, your balcony—whatever you have to work with—can be reclaimed.Wendell Berry, Kentucky farmer and great American poet, put it like this: “There are no un-sacred places in the world; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”That’s how I see it too. Your home is not an un-sacred place, but it may be a desecrated one. As your builder and designer and friend, I want you to reclaim a desecrated place and make it sacred again. If not for the sake of the planet then for your own sake. A sacred place for you tothrive like you haven’t in a long time. I promise you, if you build it they will come. And when they do, you’ll be amazed how quickly they get to work building you a beautiful life.