My wife and I just got home from five days of camping at Point Beach State Park, 70 miles north of Milwaukee, 3,000 acres of woods, 6 miles of pristine beaches, and the immense Lake Michigan, so wide that I can’t see the shoreline hidden beyond the eastern horizon.
One of the five Great Lakes which together hold one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, Lake Michigan alone holds 1,299,318,247,194,382 gallons.
Lake Michigan, geologists tell us, was created when two tectonic plates moved away from each other 1.2 billion years ago, creating a huge depression and then an enormous glacier finished the job during the most recent ice age by scraping it even deeper and then filling it with water when the temperature moderated at the end of the big chill.
I try to find words to describe how staring at the lake from a parking lot along the beach affects me, Searching for words what finally came to mind was “beautiful beyond words, holy, sacred space, inspiring reverence, making me feel small and vulnerable, blessed.
Words I never associate with the steel, glass, cement, density, and air pollution I experience in urban environments.
In 1972 the tallest structure in Manitowoc where I grew up was the grain elevator at the Rahr Malting Company. After that it was church steeples, so when I moved to Chicago that year to go to seminary, I was fascinated by the Chicago skyline.
I’d drive down to the point where the Shedd Aquarium stands and stare in amazement at what we humans — in this case architects and engineers — could create. We are created in God’s image, the Bible declares in the very first chapter, an affirmation that we are something special.
But big cities filled with humans, it turns out, are two-edged swords.
Recent statistics and studies published in 2024 highlight an increased risk of mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, and mood disorders. While urbanization offers economic and social opportunities, it also creates stressors linked to higher rates of mental illness.
The beauty and the immensity of nature, in contrast, stir my soul because, perhaps paradoxically, nature makes me feel small and vulnerable — in the way I felt as a little child in the presence of my parents who I had learned to trust would take care of me.
On a sunny day at Point Beach, a turquoise sky the color of Navajo jewelry meets the deep blue of the lake at the horizon, the white cumulus clouds, the white foam created by waves crashing in shallow water, the white herring gulls, the khaki tan sand of the beach 100 feet wide this year because of low water levels; the rich green of the forest which begins at the top of a 40-foot-high dune rising from the beach — colors the creative artist chose to complement each other in beauty as one of many ways to communicate divine love for creation.
I finally figured out why Point Beach is always a spiritual experience and the Chicago skyline is not. The skyline is an achievement and Point Beach is a gift. The buildings give glory to the humans who built them, whereas the sky, the sand on the beach, and the trees in the forest have been created by a force or forces whose origin is unfathomable to the reason and imagination of mortals.
Things spiritual are always inherently gifts, not achievements.
I watched an elderly couple slowly amble along the shore. Their aim was not to reach a destination but to just be in beauty. Call it spiritual loafing in which you don’t move very fast lest you miss the surprises the Creator has hidden along the way.
My wife and I often drive a gravel road that winds for a couple miles through a patch of woods, looking for deer. We drive five miles an hour because they are hard to spot in the woods.
We don’t always see even one because nature does not operate on our schedules. On the other hand, wisdom knows where to hang out, where surprises often do happen.
I don’t always see eagles when I canoe the Wisconsin River but my chances of being surprised by their majesty are much greater than if I hang out in Constitution Court.
Finally, some quotes from Henry David Thoreau:
Ah dear nature — the mere remembrance, after a short forgetfulness, of the pine woods! I come to it as a hungry man to a crust of bread. (Journal, 12 December 1851)
Ah! I need solitude. I have come forth to this hill at sunset to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon — to behold and commune with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness is an infinite encouragement. (Journal, 14 August 1854)
All nature is doing her best each moment to make us well — she exists for no other end. Do not resist her. With the least inclination to be well we should not be sick. (Journal, 23 August 1853)