{"id":1597,"date":"2016-08-31T22:41:51","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T02:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1597"},"modified":"2016-09-02T11:27:57","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T15:27:57","slug":"poetry-and-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1597","title":{"rendered":"Poetry and Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lion's<\/a>

Lion’s Head, Bruce Trail<\/p><\/div>\n

I apologize to my merry band of faithful readers for not posting for a bit.\u00a0 I have been away, with limited time to write, and limited access to the internet (not a bad thing).\u00a0 I took this last week, without much aforethought before students descend upon our humble campus and classes begin, to help my brother and his father-in-law build a shed (which was more like a small, one room house, and will in the end be quite splendid) for a couple of days.\u00a0 Then I spent two days \u00a0exploring a bit of the Bruce Peninsula, hiking some of the most scenic sections of the Bruce Trail, and swimming in the glorious, cerulean and pristine waters of Georgian Bay, with azure sky above.\u00a0 As I floated off one rocky beach, I was thinking, one could scarcely get closer to paradise, on a natural level.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two thoughts come to mind as I return back to ‘reality’:\u00a0 Building something from scratch, like a humble shed, \"shed\"<\/a>instead of buying a resin-type made-in-China from a hardware store and plonking it down, is an immensely satisfying experience.\u00a0 Aristotle was well aware of this, as he made clear in his Poetics<\/em>, a title derived from the Greek verb ‘poieo<\/em>‘, to ‘create’ or to ‘make’.\u00a0 Aristotle saw ‘poetry’, in the broad sense of any intellectual, creative activity, as one of the highest activities of Man (besides contemplation). \u00a0There is more to ‘poetry’, therefore, than what we now would consider ‘poetry’ (rhyming, or at least metrical, verse). \u00a0We find poetry in any creative endeavour:\u00a0 writing, drawing, drama, music, fashion, film or, yes, even building sheds.\u00a0 The more we pour ourselves into any creative work, by definition, the more poetic it is.\u00a0 After all the work I have seen on the building with which I began this paragraph, what a poetic shed it shall be.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course, the greatest ‘poet’ is the Creator Himself.\u00a0 This struck home to me, as I pondered the vistas over Georgian Bay, the limestone cliffs plunging into the clear water, with the waves lapping the shore, the limitless forests, the crisp, clean air.\u00a0 G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the least explored area is one’s own backyard.\u00a0 There is nothing wrong, and much that is right, with travelling occasionally far afield, to broaden one’s horizons, but there is also much to be said for experiencing the beauty of one’s own area.\u00a0 And I would highly recommend to readers to explore some of the natural wonders of Ontario, not least the Bruce Peninsula, but also our innumerable lakes, rivers, trails, views found within a few hours of where you are reading this, many of them only lightly touched by human civilization (and this applies to those of you, wherever you may live, for all of Canada has its own particular scenery).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Poetry and nature are two very profound and effective ways of approaching God, especially if accompanied by the most direct way, prayer.\u00a0 For, if<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

all creation shows forth the glory of God, and the firmament declares His handiwork<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

so too, all of our creations, including all of our moral decisions which, as John Paul II taught, create who we ourselves are and will become, should also declared God’s glory, in the end in which all of us are called to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I apologize to my merry band of faithful readers for not posting for a bit.\u00a0 I have been away, with limited time to write, and limited access to the internet (not a bad thing).\u00a0 I took this last week, without much aforethought before students descend upon our humble campus and classes begin, to help my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}