 Hello, my name is Brian Cannelly and I'm the editor of Tan Books Foundations of Science Curriculum. If you've already completed the unit on animals and you watched those videos, we're already acquainted. And you know what these videos are all about. But the great thing about this series is that it can be completed in any order. So perhaps this unit on plants is your first. If that's the case, let me give you a little background on our goals and purpose with these videos. We're going to be a little different from the book or the workbook. Obviously in those, we tried to teach you science, focusing in on the different kinds of plants we find all over planet Earth. But in this video series, we're going to shift our focus a bit. Here it will be my job to take something you learn from the text and use it to transition to a broader point about the world, more specifically about God and His truths that lay hidden all around us. We'll still be talking about plants, of course, and reviewing some of the things you learned in the text, but we'll use that discussion to make deeper points about God, about the Catholic faith, about saints, about virtues and vices, and so much more. The beauty of God's world is that everything, even the smallest things, point back to Him. And that includes a lot of the cool stuff we'll learn about in this text on plants. So let's dive in and talk about these green wonders and what they can teach us about the divine gardener who created them. Just like with all the other books in the Foundation series, this one starts with a broad overview of plants. It teaches us what a plant actually is. Of course, we sort of know that already, right? We know plants are those green things we see out our bedroom window or off the side of the highway. But to really understand nature, we have to go deeper than just this basic knowledge. So in this chapter, Dr. Tim taught us about some defining features that makes a plant a plant. I want to take a similar angle with the first video here and not talk about some specific feature of plants or even a specific type of plant, but rather talk about plant life in general and what it might teach us about God. To begin, let me ask you to picture yourself in two different places. The first is a hike with your family through the woods, perhaps deep in the mountains or through an enchanting forest. There's no one around except your mom, your dad, your siblings. Perhaps a few critters scurrying about or birds chirping in the trees. You are essentially immersed in nature. Okay, now secondly, I want you to picture yourself in a crowded grocery store parking lot. There's asphalt below your feet, horns are honking on the road, a bus is chugging along, lots of people are walking to their cars. There's this big brick store right in front of you with bright signs in their windows advertising their sales right next to a smelly trash can on the sidewalk. Now, maybe I'm presuming here, but my guess is that most of you would enjoy the first scene in the woods more than the second, unless maybe your mom had promised to buy you those lucky charms that day. What is the difference between these two settings, the hike through the forest and the trip to the grocery store? There's a lot of ways to go about answering that, but I think the simplest way is to zero in on two words, peace and adventure. Let's start with peace. There's a certain level of peace that we can find in the world of nature that we do not find in the world of men. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the grocery store, good and honest people work there and we need those stores to feed our families. But usually things that are created by mankind do not draw our hearts and minds to God, other than perhaps our churches and certain kinds of art. It's difficult to find God and commune with him on the cereal aisle. Not only that, our souls, our spiritual subconscious, if you will, can just sense when a place is sacred and when it's not. If we were just atoms and cells without a spiritual soul, as some people sadly think, then walking into the grocery store should be no different than walking into our churches or beautiful forest. But it's just not the same, is it? Our eyes appreciate beauty and likewise so do our souls. When we walk through the peace of that forest, we are immersed in God's creation and for that reason we feel drawn to him. In a sense, nature is like God's cathedral. It's like we're walking through the church that he constructed, just like we build our own man-made churches. Our souls are simultaneously calmed and raised up when we find ourselves in the peace of the natural world. What about adventure, though? It's impossible to not feel a sense of wonder and curiosity amidst nature. We want to explore, we want to find mysterious things. What kid doesn't want to romp through the woods and see what he or she can find? This sense of exploration reflects the deep and mysterious nature of God that we yearn to discover but never can because he is a boundless mystery. The wonders of nature call out to us and hint at the wonders of God. These two features, the peace and the adventure, can be sensed by everyone. Our desire for these things is innate, meaning we're born with it. Every kid, no matter when or where they might have lived, loves to get lost in the woods and explore. Our soul comes alive at the prospect of finding God somewhere out there amidst the trees. And I think this can be appreciated by even non-religious people, even if they don't explicitly admit that God is what they are seeking. They don't realize that their love of disappearing into the woods is a reflection of their soul yearning for something higher, something to somehow just a way to encounter that divine Creator. Now unfortunately, there can be a lot of misguided adoration for nature and the environment as well. Even though we might use the term mother nature in a casual sense, the earth is not some living deity who demands our worship. The pagans used to worship various elements of the earth, the sun, the seas, the wind, but we know better than that now. Let me read you something from the book of Wisdom from Scripture that will help point to this, to this, what we're talking about. This is Wisdom of Solomon chapter 13. If through delight in the beauty of these things, men assume them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord. For the author of beauty created them, and if men were amazed at their power in working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is he who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator. Again, that's Wisdom chapter 13 verses three through five. Now what is this teaching us? What is this telling us? Well, it's teaching us that we cannot place our worship in the beauty of created things. We don't bow down before a tree or a sunset. Rather, we appreciate them, that tree or that sunset or whatever it is, because they point us to the worship of the one who created them. So next time you go out into the woods, perhaps right after watching this, I want you to think about this. Yes, enjoy. Go enjoy yourself and explore nature. Find pretty things. Find scary things. Find interesting things. But in the back of your mind, never forget that you're walking through God's cathedral, and we must thank him for this beautiful gift that is nature. OK, that's it for today. Thanks for joining me on this first lesson. Make sure to come back, though, next time. We have a lot more to talk about, a lot more fun stuff to talk about, including photosynthesis, which is a amazing process that we'll get into next time. And we can use that as a way to see how God's grace moves through the body of Christ. Come back next time to see how I make that connection.