Blog 15, outside reading art piece The Garden of Earthly Delights


Blog 15, outside reading art piece The Garden of Earthly Delights

I chose this painting because it reminds me a lot of class and the union of nature and humans without separation before man became self-centered separated and drifted from the “I am Thou”


The third panel shows the damages of exploitation and darkness that come from a lack of true connection to the source and nature. 


Nature is a difficult word to unpack. Aristotle defined it as a principle or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself, and not accidentally." However, this use of nature in this context reminds me of the essence. Nature is a social construct and is often a word tossed around as areas separated from the world of human interaction. However, if most primal religious groups were involved in this discussion, they would not fully conceptualize separation because you can't separate from the grand life force. Nature is not a tiny fraction of the whole; it encompasses everything, including humans. When analyzing nature in comparison to the use of the word creation, the latter implies a creator with vivid inspiration. The more our world feels guided by intentionality and further proliferated through our collective existence, and finally, the more we feel part of the greater whole. Nature then comes back to the shared human experience, and I realize there is no actual separation to every perfectly placed blade of grass and every perfectly placed freckle on our face. Nature is a phenomenon that is simply all-encompassing.

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