As a child growing up in the city, most of my surroundings were concrete—except for a nearby park and our tiny backyard, where my mom lovingly tended tomato plants, petunias and portulacas. My three brothers and I, eager to enjoy the outdoors, took our parents’ bribe of playtime if we finished our homework first.
The Catholic faith and its liturgies shaped our lives. We attended May and October devotions, Forty Hours, Stations of the Cross and Mass. Yet my earliest and deepest experiences of God came through nature. I sensed God’s love in the stars, God’s watchful eye in the full moon, God’s presence on the baseball diamond as I whispered confidences and God’s majesty in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. These encounters helped me recognize God’s presence in creation, which reflects its Creator. No wonder Jesus used the natural world to describe the Kingdom of God. He too spent much time outdoors, communing with the Father in sacred natural spaces.
My Cherokee ancestors also taught me reverence for creation, seeing the earth as our Mother and every gift from her as sacred. We show respect and care so that all creation may share her gifts. Jesus Himself chose the simple fruits of the earth—bread and wine—to become His Body and Blood. At every Mass, these ordinary elements are transformed into the Eucharist. God’s presence there is so real that I felt its absence as a young sister. Once, entering a church in the South Bronx with my spiritual director, I said, “This church feels so cold, so empty.” He replied, astonished, “Sister Judy, there is no Blessed Sacrament here.” That realization deepened my awareness of God’s presence in the Eucharist.
As a child, I believed these moments with God—in nature and in church—were given only to me. I was the center of the universe, the apple of His eye. With maturity, I came to see that God gives Himself to all and that each of us is the apple of His eye. We need only to receive Him and let His love take root and grow within us.
Perhaps the crisis of faith, faced by so many in today’s world, stems from the tendency to remain indoors, absorbed by electronic devices that distract us from the simple ways God reveals Himself. I pray that all can echo the words of Psalm 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”
