Learning from a burning bush

I took a detour driving Aimée to school to show her the tree on fire. Not Moses' burning bush, but a blazing red maple near the corner of Rices Mill and Wharton. These are "a dime a dozen" in New England where I come from. But God makes a different fashion statement here in Pennsylvania --- not the paint-gun panache of primary colors, but a study in contrasts of muted yellows and browns, to let the occasional maple blast steal the show.

When I was a child I would steal away to the top of the large sliding board my grandfather built, and wait for Nature to speak to me in the pine grove. But C.S.Lewis is right:

"If you take nature as a teacher she will teach you exactly the lessons you had already decided to learn; this is only another way of saying that nature does not teach. The tendency to take her as a teacher is obviously very easily grafted on to the experience we call 'love of nature.' But it is only a graft. While we are actually subjected to them, the 'moods' and 'spirits' of nature point no morals. Overwhelming gaiety, insupportable grandeur, somber desolation are flung at you" (The Four Loves).

One day God saw fit to let me hear his voice in human Word. And now that I no longer place upon a tree demands that it could never meet, I am enabled to enjoy it for the thing it is.