Archive for March, 2012

22 Mar

The Means by Which We Know God

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Birds, Botany, Ecology, Education, Religion, Spirituality in Nature. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

I have been in love with the Creator and with His creation all of my life. This past Tuesday I had the opportunity to attend a class on forest ecology and sat amazed for three and a half hours pondering how God in His wisdom assembled the ecosystems that function with such intricacy throughout creation. Psalm 112:2 says, “Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.”

While there’s a lot of discussion regarding the matter of origins and how it all came to be, my increasing preference is to focus on the question of “why” it all came to be. The “how” question only seems to divide people including believers, and in all honesty, the Church hasn’t always been the leaders in scientific thought and discovery. Remember Galileo?

Recently I came across this statement from the Belgic Confession (doctrinal standard of the 14th century Reformed Churches in Belgium and Netherlands) that affirms in a deep theological way, the answer to the question – “Why did God create the universe?”

Here is how it reads:

Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God

We know him by two means:

  • First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power, and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20 “All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.”
  • Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.

John Stott, a leading evangelical thinker, writer, lecturer, and although unknown to many, an avid naturalist and ornithologist, summarized it by saying, “It is through God’s creation that we see his glory; it is by his Word [Bible] that we come understand his grace.”

In a recent gathering, a friend shared how he has been searching for proof of God’s existence for the past year. He has been asking God to show him a sign, to do something so he could be sure of his existence. It’s sad to think that God has demonstrated his glory to us in such extravagant ways and yet we miss the point. As one participant in the discussion put it, “For years I tried to follow the big bang theory to the very end of its logical course and when I did I still could not answer the question – but then who created the first hydrogen atom?”

I’ll tell you what, turn off the television tonight and step outside your back door. Look up at the sky and try to fathom the fact that no other planet in all the universe has been found that supports life as we know it here on earth. Then ask yourself why, not how. Why did God create an entire universe in which it appears earth may be the only planet on which life, as we know it, can be supported? And just why did he cause us to ponder questions like this? Finally, what conclusion do you think he intends us to draw?

21 Mar

Some of My Favorite Spring Wildflowers – Part 3

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Native Plants and Flowers, Spirituality in Nature, Wildflowers and Plants. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

The Provincial Flower of Ontario

Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, I suppose I have to pick the White Trillium – trillium rhomboideum grandiflorum - as my final favorite native spring wildflower. When I was growing up in the Niagara Falls area, the hardwood forests would be blanketed with white and red trilliums each March and April. Ontario chose the trillium as its provincial flower in 1937. My cub scout uniform even bore a patch with the idyllic three-petaled blossom on its right-side. Its name is somewhat self-descriptive. “Tri” meaning three-petaled, and “lium” referring to its being part of the lily family.

Threatened in many parts of the Midwest, they do not transplant well or tolerate being picked. This work is left to ants that collect trillium seeds to eat their elaisomes (fleshy structures that are attached to the seeds of many plant species) and distribute the seeds to new locations. Vespid wasps do this this by entering the berries and carrying off the seeds. Deer also eat the flowers and foliage, passing the seeds through their digestive tracts and helping distribute the seeds across long distances. However, increasing deer populations can ultimately destroy trillium populations.

In Matthew 6:28 Jesus asked, “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin.” The passage invites us to ponder how much God cares for the lowly flowers of the field. Without any effort on our part, they reappear each year in all their glory. If He takes care of them, we can certainly trust that He’ll care even more for us.

So what are some of your favorite spring wildflowers?

20 Mar

Some of My Favorite Spring Wildflowers – Part 2

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Botany, Native Plants and Flowers, Wildflowers and Plants. Tagged: , , , , .

Virginia Bluebells from my Garden

I haven’t been able to get a photo of this year’s Virginia Bluebells – mertensia virginica – from my garden, but have this photo from last year. Although they don’t appear as early as Bloodroot or Trout Lily, they do show up well before the month of May. Related to the Forget-me-not, the “Virginia” Bluebell is believed to called such because of where they were first identified, but can be found as far north as Minnesota.

I planted mine as bareroot stock as they are threatened in many parts of the Midwest. Slowly they have been forming colonies in my flower beds. We just love the way they transform from pink buds to an electric blue. They also attract butterflies, skippers, hummingbirds, moths and neighbors.

19 Mar

Some of My Favorite Spring Wildflowers – Part 1

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Education, Native Plants and Flowers, Religion, Spirituality in Nature, Wildflowers and Plants. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Bloodroot photographed near my home yesterday

Maurice McClew, a Steuben County attorney and avid Indiana Naturalist of the past century once quoted Isaiah 52:7 in his journal, “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings”. He was not referring to your typical messenger, but to the wildflowers of spring that announce the coming of spring.

Yesterday, my wife and I spent an hour or so walking through a nearby woodland and noticed the spring wildflowers, some that are only with us for just a very short time. Yet their arrival each year remind us that regardless of how cold our winters may or may not be, God is faithful and His creation reminds us of that. The markets may not return at the rates we would like, people may even disappoint us, but God demonstrates His reliability through the spring arrival of these marvelous beauties.

One of my favorite springtime wildflowers, a native to the Midwest, is Bloodroot or, sanguinary canadensis. It’s not a surprise that this glowing white flower is a member of the poppy family as its bloom is much larger than many spring wildflowers. Blooming from late February until May, it tends to grow in clusters or colonies.

So where does it get its common name? Well in the 1600s, French explorer Samuel de Champlain observed that the root makes a crimson dye. In fact, if you break one of its stalks, it will produce red juice.

Ants collect, eat and spread its seeds, butterflies seek its nectar but find none, but along with flies and beetles they help pollenate the plant.

So if you haven’t been for a walk in the woods yet, get out there. These marvels of springtime won’t last for long.

14 Mar

Songs for Paddlers

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Canoeing, Environmentalism, Paddling. Tagged: , , , , , .

 

Nashville songwriter, author and educator Jerry Vandiver recently released True And Deep – Songs for the Heart of the Paddler, an album of canoe country inspired songs. I first heard his music through the PaddlingLight website and fell in love. The songs capture the spirit of a canoe trip in the northwoods and the arrangement takes you on a journey that includes the excitement of canoeing a whitewater river on More Than A River to connecting with the ancient history in The Spirit Of Fishdance Lake. Catchy and humorous songs like Rock And Roots, Too Tired To Start A Fire and Camp Coffee will have you humming the day away while dreaming about your next trip. The last three songs on the album, Wabakimi, The Morning Fog Has Lifted and True and Deep are exactly the songs you want someone to play while you sit around a fire watching the seas of stars drift by.

Apparently, Jerry has lots of songwriting credits to his name; his songs have been recorded by artists such as Tim McGraw, Phil Vassar, Lonestar, Barbara Mandrell, Lee Greenwood and The Oak Ridge Boys to name a few. His songs appear on over 15 million records, and two of those albums are included in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

13 Mar

The Myth of $2.50 per Gallon of Gasoline

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Creation Care, Fossil Fuels, Free Markets. Tagged: , , , , .

There’s been a lot of talk recently about $2.50 a gallon gasoline and that it seems reasonable for us to expect this as Americans. There has also been a lot of  finger-pointing during the lead up to elections at those who are not be doing enough to control such costs. However, the fact is we continue to have the lowest prices for gasoline in the “free-world”.

In the United States, the government really has little to do with the price of gasoline. Drilling for more off shore oil, running more pipelines, or drilling in the Arctic will do little more than increase the volume of gasoline American petroleum producers have available to sell to Central America, the Caribbean, Brazil and China.

Consider this – we currently have an 8 percent surplus of petroleum during what has been a 10 year dip in demand. So why hasn’t this lowered the price of gasoline? Because we live in a free-market economy where the goal of every corporation is to maximize the return on investment of shareholders. So what they are doing is selling off surpluses in order to keep domestic prices up, increasing profitability and a return on investment. Legislate the opening of new domestic oil supplies and what do you think they will do? Lower our gas prices? No, they’ll sell off the new surplus and make even more money.

Face it, the petroleum corporations don’t pity the poor American citizens who pay at the pump. Consider the following graph from 2005 (selected because it’s the most extensive I could find). That year our average price per gallon was $2.19 in the United States. So if you more or less double the prices below, you’ll see we pay less than most countries around the world. The only places that pay less are countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and those prices have nothing to do with abundant access to oil – it’s because their governments own and operate their petroleum industry. They are not “free-markets”. Rather they are led by what we refer to as “tyrannical” dictators. In other countries, prices are set by “socialist” federal governments, as was the case when I lived in Spain during the early 90s.

Nation City Price in USD Regular/Gallon
Netherlands Amsterdam $6.48
Norway Oslo $6.27
Italy Milan $5.96
Denmark Copenhagen $5.93
Belgium Brussels $5.91
Sweden Stockholm $5.80
United Kingdom London $5.79
Germany Frankfurt $5.57
France Paris $5.54
Portugal Lisbon $5.35
Hungary Budapest $4.94
Luxembourg $4.82
Croatia Zagreb $4.81
Ireland Dublin $4.78
Switzerland Geneva $4.74
Spain Madrid $4.55
Japan Tokyo $4.24
Czech Republic Prague $4.19
Romania Bucharest $4.09
Andorra $4.08
Estonia Tallinn $3.62
Bulgaria Sofia $3.52
Brazil Brasilia $3.12
Cuba Havana $3.03
Taiwan Taipei $2.84
Lebanon Beirut $2.63
South Africa Johannesburg $2.62
Nicaragua Managua $2.61
Panama Panama City $2.19
Russia Moscow $2.10
Puerto Rico San Juan $1.74
Saudi Arabia Riyadh $0.91
Kuwait Kuwait City $0.78
Egypt Cairo $0.65
Nigeria Lagos $0.38
Venezuela Caracas $0.12

Notice in the graph that the Netherlands pays more than anyone else, yet they are the home of “Royal Dutch” Shell. Certainly they could get a break on the price, couldn’t they? Now before you begin cursing the greedy corporations and their shareholders, take a look at your own pension investments, 401ks and mutual funds portfolios. What are you heavily invested in and why do you think your returns are bouncing back?

So what is the solution? Well, we could all immigrate to Venezuela; we could demand our government take over the petroleum industry, or we could throw in our lot with the petroleum corporations by buying shares and getting our cut of the insane profits.

However, one other option would be to continue finding ways to use less while we invest in and develop new resources for energy that do not depend on fossil fuels.

7 Mar

Earthbag Houses – “Dirt Cheap” Sustainable Housing

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Eco-Friendly Products, Energy Conservation, Forestry Conservation, Green Construction, Housing, Organic Living. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

The "Hobbit" not typical of their plans, but I just like it.

I would never have thought of this until my daughter sent me a link to a website featuring earthbag housing.

The website is called Earthbag Building and according to their contributors, building with earthbags (sometimes called sandbags) is both old and new. Sandbags have long been used, particularly by the military, for creating strong, protective barriers, or for flood control. The same reasons that make them useful for these applications carry over to creating housing. Since the walls are so substantial, they resist all kinds of severe weather (or even bullets) and also stand up to natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods. They can be erected simply and quickly with readily available components, for very little money.

Earthbag building fills a unique niche in the quest for sustainable architecture. The bags can be filled with local, natural materials, which lowers the embodied energy commonly associated with the manufacture and transportation of building materials.

Earthbags have the tremendous advantage of providing either thermal mass or insulation, depending on what the bags are filled with. When filled with soil they provide thermal mass, but when filled with lighter weight materials, such as crushed volcanic stone, perlite, vermiculite, or rice hulls, they provide insulation. The bags can even act as natural non-wicking, somewhat insulated foundations when they are filled with gravel.

Because the earthbags can be stacked in a wide variety of shapes, including domes, they have the potential to virtually eliminate the need for common tensile materials in the structure, especially the wood and steel often used for roofs. This not only saves more energy (and pollution), but also helps save our forests, which are increasingly necessary for sequestering carbon.

Another aspect of sustainability is found in the economy of this method. The fill material can be literally “dirt cheap,” especially if on-site soil is used. The earthbags themselves can often be purchased as misprints or recycled grain sacks, but even when new are not particularly expensive. For permanent housing the bags should be covered with some kind of plaster for protection, but this plaster can also be earthen and not particularly costly.

I have encounter adobe constructions as I’ve traveled overseas and in West Africa I’ve even found local using stick frameworks plastered with cow dung.

I guess you just never know what your house might be built with in the future.

6 Mar

My First Sighting of a Red-Winged Blackbird

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Birds, Botany, Creation Care, Education, Native Plants and Flowers, Recreation, Wetlands, Wildlife. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

On my way to work this morning, I experienced my first sighting of a Red-winged Blackbird. Now some may get excited about a groundhog seeing its shadow, but one of my first clues of spring’s coming is seeing these migratory friends return from their winter vacation in the south.

According to the Audubon Society, the flash of the male Red-winged Blackbird’s red shoulder patches and his exuberant “oak-a-ree!” song, heralds spring for most North Americans. This songbird’s genus name, Agelaius, means “flocker” and aptly describes the enormous masses it forms, often with other blackbirds, outside the breeding season.

Red-winged Blackbirds range across the entire continental United States, southward into the Caribbean and into Middle America as far south as El Salvador, and most of Canada (in the breeding season). Populations are most dense in the farmlands of the Midwest, Northeast, and far West. Generally, Red-winged Blackbirds winter wherever they can find open water and food.
Red-winged Blackbirds are habitat generalists, breeding in a variety of salt and fresh water habitats. They also use farmlands and the edges of woods in summer. Wintering flocks roost in wetlands with dense vegetation, and forage over wetlands, farmlands, and other open areas, including mud flats, residential yards, and parks. That’s why you may spot them perching on bullrushes in wetland areas.
But here’s something I didn’t know. They use many techniques to capture prey, most notably “gaping.” Here, the bird inserts its closed bill into leaves, mud, or a seed, then opens its bill to pry the material apart. During breeding, protein-rich insects make up the majority of the birds’ diet. Outside the breeding season, Red-winged Blackbirds mainly eat seeds.
Reproduction in Red-winged Blackbirds is complex, since both males and females make decisions that affect breeding. Males establish a territory and attract a mate by singing from a prominent perch and flashing their colorful shoulder patches. Females choose a mate, based in part on the quality of the territory. After the female selects a territory, the male chases her at top speeds, displaying in flight. Usually, more than one female breeds on a male’s territory.
The female Red-winged Blackbird selects the nest site, builds a cup of grasses, mud, and decayed vegetation, lined with fine grasses, and incubates 3 to 6 eggs. The pale blue-green or gray eggs are splotched and streaked with brown. After approximately 12 days, the helpless young hatch. Although males sometim es help, females are the primary caretakers of the fledglings, feeding them for up to 5 weeks.
Migrating in flocks of various sizes, Red-winged Blackbird populations are almost always on the move somewhere in their extensive range. Northern populations migrate to the southern United States, but winter as far north as New England. Southern populations are non-migratory.
I say “welcome” to our Red-winged Blackbird friends. More reliable the Punxsutawney Phil, you remind us that spring is not far behind.

2 Mar

The Biggest Week in American Birding – May 3-14

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Birds, Education, Water Conservation, Wetlands, Wildlife.

My friend, Bill “The Bird Man” has been telling me to come out to the Lake Erie shores in Ohio to take part in what is called the “The Biggest Week in American Birding“. No doubt the corridor that runs through Ohio, over Lake Erie to the Ontario side of the lake is one of the premiere bird spotting locations in all the world.

May 4-13, 2012, the Black Swamp Bird Observatory (BSBO) and their partners, will make every effort to  raise awareness and appreciation for birds and habitat conservation in a major way. Their bottom line is – they want to help people fall in love with birds, and this is a perfect place to do that!  They believe that connecting people to the joys of birding is the first step in building support for conservation; people care more about the things they love.

The staff, board, and volunteers at Black Swamp Bird Observatory are dedicated to bird conservation – and conservation requires funding.

In 2011, The Biggest Week helped raise more than $20,000 for local bird research, education, and conservation in NW Ohio. The festival also raised funds to purchase 200 copies of Guia de campo a las aves de Norteamerica, Spanish-language bird guide that serves as a valuable tool for diversity outreach programs in the desert southwest and northern Mexico where many of the multitude of warblers migrate during the winter months.

So, I’m looking at my calendar and planning to connect with Bill to see what he’s been talking about. I’m not a serious birder, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in learning more about the various species and the preservation of their habitat.

1 Mar

Lausanne Commitment to Creation Care – Evangelicals Speak Up

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Creation Care, Ecology, Environmental Missions, Environmentalism, Religion, Spirituality in Nature. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Although it would seem that many conservatives, particularly evangelical conservatives, view matters related to creation care as somewhat “left-leaning” or liberal, the Lausanne Movement on World Evangelization founded by Billy Graham, John Stott and many other notable evangelical leaders, developed a number of statements related to the care of creation during its recent congress in South Africa of which I had the privilege or serving as a delegate.

One such statement is the following, taken from the recently published Cape Town Commitment. I quote:

Our biblical mandate in relation to God’s creation is provided in The Cape Town Confession of Faith section 7 (a). All human beings are to be stewards of the rich abundance of God’s good creation. We are authorized to exercise godly dominion in using it for the sake of human welfare and needs, for example in farming, fishing, mining, energy generation, engineering, construction, trade, medicine. As we do so, we are also commanded to care for the earth and all its creatures, because the earth belongs to God, not to us. We do this for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the creator, owner, sustainer, redeemer and heir of all creation.

We lament over the widespread abuse and destruction of the earth’s resources, including its bio-diversity. Probably the most serious and urgent challenge faced by the physical world now is the threat of climate change. This will disproportionately affect those in poorer countries, for it is there that climate extremes will be most severe and where there is little capability to adapt to them. World poverty and climate change need to be addressed together and with equal urgency.

We encourage Christians worldwide to:

A) Adopt lifestyles that renounce habits of consumption that are destructive or polluting;

B) Exert legitimate means to persuade governments to put moral imperatives above political expediency on issues of environmental destruction and potential climate change;

C) Recognize and encourage the missional calling both of (i) Christians who engage in the proper use of the earth’s resources for human need and welfare through agriculture, industry and medicine, and (ii) Christians who engage in the protection and restoration of the earth’s habitats and species through conservation and advocacy. Both share the same goal for both serve the same Creator, Provider and Redeemer.

From the Cape Town Commitment - Part 2, Section IIB, 6 

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 75 other followers