Nature’s Lessons – Nemo's Library

Nature’s Lessons on Faith: II. Tolstoy’s Oak Tree

Posted on October 16, 2024

At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of the birches that formed the forest, ten times as thick and twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as great as a man could embrace, and some of its branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands […]

Nature’s Lessons on Faith: I. In the Presence of Beauty

Posted on December 18, 2023; Last updated on October 16, 2024

Nature is transcendent. No work of art evokes more profound aesthetic feelings than nature. We feel the presence of the Artist, when we are confronted with, and immersed in, the beauty of His masterpiece. In that moment, what is seen becomes insignificant, compared with what is unseen. It is the Beauty that is unseen that we long to be part of, and be one with.