Beauty, says author Marilynne Robinson, is the “signature of God.” An important way to know God is to discern his signature in creations made to gladden the heart.
Imagine you’re preparing for a wilderness hike. You light a single candle as you assemble your maps, food, sleeping bag, tent, and so on.
Because of the light in the room, you do not notice the candle. Now imagine you turn off the light in the room. Now the candle shines clear and bright. It illuminates the room. It was not that the lit candle was invisible before, it was that the room’s artificial light obscured the lit candle’s natural light.
In some ways, we need to be in nature, away from the artificial light and the artificiality which crowds so much of modern life. There we can see God’s light, not as a single candle, but, as E.B. White put it, as “the combustion of stars.”
Digital screens can serve us, but they can’t substitute for the testimonies of nature and the natural world. AI cannot replace sunlight, wind, and natural wonder. Digital exchanges are at best a poor substitute or, at worst, a counterfeit for what we live through our senses, hearts, and minds.
Our physical and spiritual senses and abilities are God-given, in part so we can experience time, space, and physicality, including the stunning, revitalizing beauty of our physical world and environment.
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