After I graduated high school, I attended a gap year program called Impact 360 Fellows in Pine Mountain, Georgia. I sometimes tell people Georgia was the first place I ever saw the sky. In Almaty, the only thing I ever paid attention to were the mountains. The mountain that “Pine Mountain” boasted was an embarrassment in comparison to the Tien Shan mountains I knew. But Pine Mountain had plenty of sky. That year, I gawked at the clouds like inlanders stare at the sea. In the same way, the Georgia woods were a novelty to me, a city boy. I quickly fell into the habit of going out into the Pine Mountain woods every day because it delighted me. How could I have a place so beautiful in my backyard and not make use of it?
There was a little patch of woods behind my program’s campus and a short walking trail that looped through it. Every morning, I would get up early, even if it was dark, even if it was raining, and walk. I walked that trail as much as I could because it was beautiful, and it was the only place on campus where I could truly be alone. About fifteen minutes along the path I would come to a bridge that ran over a little creek. I liked to stop there to pace and pray out loud.
When I went out to pray, I liked to look up at the trees and listen to the leaves in the wind, or else watch the creek babble below me. I saw birds and deer and all kinds of bugs I had never seen in my life. Sometimes I forgot to pray as I watched and listened, which, I’m sure God did not mind. I think he loves when his children get distracted by beauty. I love how Simone Weil writes, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.”
It is interesting that when I think about places of note, what comes to mind for me are places of prayer. There are, of course, exotic tourist destinations I have visited. But those don’t mean as much to me because they have rarely been my own. Prayer seems to be the only time I am still enough to pay any attention to where I am. I am fully present when I pray, because in those moments I know that God likes to speak through what’s around me, like the trees and creeks and birds and deer, as he sometimes did in my Georgia woods.
One late evening early on in my gap year, in the middle of a crisis I wandered into the woods to be alone. I walked farther along the trail than I normally did and came into a clearing where the ground below me was clay and the trees pulled away so that when I looked up, I could see the sky fading into darkness above. I prayed about my problems, staring into the sky as the stars started to show. When I looked down again, I saw an image of a child clinging to my leg—my own daughter I believed. I was moved but prayed, God, how could anyone raise children in a world so filled with suffering?
At that moment, I heard God tell me to look up. When I did, I almost gasped aloud. The sun was setting over the horizon. The sky was orange as a peach and radiant. The trees formed long black silhouettes against the light. It was a glimpse of God’s glory. And I heard God tell me that beauty was what made the world worth living in, even amid our sufferings. And I prayed to him that night that if this was true, somehow, he would teach me how to see it. That way I could in turn show it to my children and make their lives a little more worthwhile.
I am still learning to see that beauty. The last few years, I have started to recognize the importance of active attention to the places where God has put us. Every place is teeming with unspeakable wonders. The beauty is hidden all around us and comes out at unexpected moments, through unsuspecting mediums, and in surprising ways. We are so seldom patient enough to watch for it and when we do glimpse it, inundated as we are with the novelties of the digital age, we are unwilling to do the slow work necessary to fully comprehend its value.
As I grow older, I hope that the places of prayer won’t be the only places in which I am present, or rather I hope that every place would become a place of prayer of sorts, as I hope every activity will become a form of prayer as I cultivate a more attentive life. That is to say, I want to love every place like I have loved those particular places where God has met me in prayer. The whole earth is full of his glory, and I want to see his glory every place I go.