The Practice of Listening to God in Nature

Genesis 1:1-12; Mark 1:9-15: Jesus emerged from his journey into the wilderness of nature, a form of vision quest during which he wrestled with his calling and self-definition, with the conviction that we need to move toward what he called "the kingdom of God," based in the old biblical stories that God created us in love and desires us to be free. The mirror of nature helped Jesus to see the ways competing stories offer only captivity and self-destruction. Nature helps us remember that we are part of the web of life, not separate from it or above it.