Rev Rex A E Hunt, MSc(Hons)
Spirit of Life Unitarian Fellowship
Kirribilli NSW

World Environment Day is 5 June 2024
I dedicate this Address/Sermon to the memory of German scientist and naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt (1769 - 1859), who is credited with ‘inventing’ nature, and whose life-time of work influenced such people as: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Jefferson, Simon Bolivar, Charles Darwin, David Thoreau, Ernst Haeckel, and John Muir

THE LANDSCAPE IS… AUSTRALIA’S NATURAL WONDER

The capacity of the natural world to inspire a religious response from humans
has long been recognised.

Likewise, in several essays, philosopher and naturalist Jerome Stone has said
that taking nature to heart does not leave a person with any fewer spiritual benefits
than taking to heart the teachings of supernaturalist traditions.

Later in this frequently used quotation Stone’s language becomes even more direct:
“If we can go to special places, built by humans, which are designated as sacred, surely we can go to special places, shaped naturally, which are recognised as sacred…”

As you would have recalled by now from some of my previous Addresses,
an umbrella title given to this philosophy of life is called Religious Naturalism (RN).
Being a religious naturalist is appreciating and caring about
the wonders and beauty of life,
and trying to learn to act in ways that contribute to well-being.

More than two centuries ago, the English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) wrote four of the most often quoted lines in English literature…
They are the opening lines of his 1803 poem Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour…

As many a naturalist and biologist has claimed, with Blake,
to indeed see a world in a grain of sand,
“to peer so deeply into the nature of any one thing that the riches of the Universe begin to be revealed—that is the essence of science as a quest… for understanding one’s deepest nature.”

With this in mind, and with help from learned friends,
I offer a more humble ‘peer’ around the face of the earth…
the Australian landscape earth, that is.

oo0oo

Ancient and Dry Landscape
We live on the third piece of debris from the Sun.
A tiny world of rock and metal with a thin veneer of organic matter on the surface,
a tiny fraction of which we happen to constitute.

Part of that debris is Australia - an ancient and distinctive land,
with animals and plant life that are quite remarkable in their own right.

It is a land unlike any other, weathered to an unimaginable flatness
with a consequent vastness of sky, space and light.

Although most people consider the Australian continent
to be one solid landmass, geologist tell us
it is actually more like a giant jigsaw puzzle of at least three former continents
that has been put together over many millions of years.

Ancient, yes!
The world's oldest rock, a 4.3 billion year old zircon crystal,
has been uncovered in Western Australia's Jack Hills region, 800 kms north of Perth.

According to Nature Geoscience, this discovery demonstrates
that the Earth's crust formed soon after our planet formed,
with the zircon crystal being a remnant of this.

All with a huge, prehuman memory.
And with an outback where nature reigns supreme!
Space, and freedom. Unspoiled beauty.
Except of course for open-cut mining and former nuclear weapon sites!

But it is also shrouded in mystery and presence
especially as experienced by Indigenous/First Peoples of Australia.

For Australia’s First Peoples landscape was a ritual, mythic, ceremonial landscape.
“[F]or tens of millennia before the name Australia was applied to the country there was a clan-by-clan, ceremonial-group by ceremonial-group map of the country”.

The Walpiri people of Central Australia have a special word for ‘earth’.
They call it jukurrpa, Dreaming. It is said the Dreaming
“binds people, flora, fauna and natural phenomena into one enormous inter-functioning world… At particular ceremonial sites [they] re-enacted the journey and acts of creation of a particular hero ancestor, and by doing that they sustained the earth.”.

It’s worth also noting that when the First Fleet arrived
the continent was in the midst of one of the most significant El Nino events in recorded history.

But Australia is also more than this.
More than a collection of deserts rimmed by a narrow coastal strip.
It may have a dry heart
But it also has a green soul.

oo0oo

Green Landscape
For the first 20 years of colonisation both artists and botanists were wrestling with the landscape.
In letters and sketches many were unable, initially,
to appreciate the beauty and diverse range of environments of the Australian bush.

Contradictory responses abounded.
‘very romantic, beautifully formed by nature…’.
‘the worst country in the world…’.

The early colonists saw either beauty or usefulness.

By the late 1850s there was what can only be called a significant change.
Of primary fascination in Victoria, for instance, was the Dandenongs,
especially the gullies of tree ferns—survivors of Gondwanan—
and the huge mountain ash of Sherbroke Forest.

Likewise, Mount Wellington in Tasmania, the Blue Mountains in NSW,
and the wildflowers in WA, became centres of botanical exploration and research.
And wide-eyed appreciation.

Initially interest in tree ferns was on their height rather than their beauty.
(Many topping forty feet in some cases.)
On a visit to Hobart in 1839 Charles Darwin remarked:
In some of the dampest ravines, tree-ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner… The foliage of these trees, forming so many most elegant parasols, created a gloomy shade, like that of the first hour of night.

Others described their encounters with tree-ferns as entering
an ‘enchanted valley… exquisitely beautiful’…

The pursuit of scientific knowledge and aesthetic appreciation went hand-and-hand.
“The wonder of giant eucalypts, elegant tree ferns, and the smaller, dainty fern varieties, involved science and sentiment coming together and contributing to an Australian imaginative framework.”

Such search for wonder, a cultivated interest in nature, and
the ability to describe and present a scene’s noteworthiness,
provided a way of observing the ‘green’ landscape of Australia
in all its variety.

oo0oo

Ecological Beauty and Wonder
We are members of the great universe community.
We are not on the outside looking in:
we are within the universe,
awakening to the universe.

We participate in its life.
We are listening to Earth tell its story…

Yes, Earth—a pale blue dot—is our home within the universe.
One of the most striking and awe-inspiring nature photographic images of all time
is a picture of our very own Earth—known as the Pale Blue Dot—
taken on 14 February 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe,
from a record distance of roughly six billion kilometers.

Besides being an incredibly beautiful image,
“the Pale Blue Dot gives us some perspective on the scale of our world.”
What’s more, we all share that same Pale Blue Dot.

And we carry in our bodies the products of an alchemy, forged in stars billions of years ago.

Earth is a special planet.
But that same Earth is changing all the time.
It is dynamic.
It is our home and one that we should treat with reverence, care, and respect.
Especially in the face of the climate crisis.

The more we understand our Earth and its part in the 14 billion-year old cosmos,
the more reason we have to stand in awe and reverence
at the process which lured and shaped its evolution,
our evolution, wherein our existence is rooted…

Thus, the beauty of nature is a fundamental aspect
of the human relationship with the wider natural world.

When we walk along a sandy beach or trek into a desert,
survey the beauty of mountains, a tree fern gully, a summer sunset,
or experience a Birdsville luminous night sky—minus city light pollution,
the awe and wonder we experience is
nature awakening us to the heights and depths of reality
which we have neglected.

Religion is born out of a sense of wonder and awe.
We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of sacred
only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves.
The landscape.
The sky above, the earth below.
The grasses, the flowers, the forests, the fauna…

To develop an approach called ‘loving perception’.
To approach so-called lifeless rocks, not to conquer, but to touch
To see the world synthesised in a flower, a sea, or in a human being.
Catch glimpses of the whole of reality.
Contemplate your own life blended with the total movement of life.
“Envisaging the wider reaches of reality not only enlarges the scope of living, but it sensitizes our feel for life and beautifies its quality”.

So next time you go for a bush walk, pay attention. Appreciative awareness.
You will see life in action!
And when you see life in action, ask yourself:
what is there under the surface that makes life not a solo affair
but a dance between partners?

And what is there that links this specific instance of life to other lives
and to our whole Earth?

Unpredictable. Uncharted. Mindful connectedness.
If you keep asking, you will uncover wondrous things!

Bibliography
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Palka, John. “A Banquet for Butterflies and Bumblebees” 30 August 2020. <https://naturesdepths.com/
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Wulf, A. The Invention of Nature. Alexander von Humbolt’s New World. New York. Vintage Books, 2015