Cultivating a Pagan's appreciation for the Bible

"Mother is the one who notices, and tells naught. She started it all, reading the Psalms and various Family Classics aloud to Leah and me. Mother has a pagan's appreciation for the Bible, being devoted to such phrases as "purge me with hyssop," and "strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round," and "thou hast put off my sackcloth and girded me with gladness." Likely she would run through the fields dressed in sackcloth, hunting hyssop amongst the wild bulls, if not obligated to the higher plane of Motherhood." -Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

This is what I want to aspire to, in returning to church. I don't know if I'm capable of anything else. I do believe in my heart that the truest form of worship and faith is in praise of God's creation, in praise of nature, basically. It's what drew me to eclectic Wicca in the first place, the idea that everything, the rocks and trees and plants and animals and humans and stars and planets and the air that we breathe is all divine, it's all an expression of God. It's a good way of reconciling science and faith, really, like I talked about in my last post. If you can acknowledge that God created the world that we live in, with all its beauty and all its flaws, then you can also acknowledge that our work to understand the world, to protect it, to revel in it, is also worship, if you do it with the right spirit. I don't think that "nature-worship" is even inherently un-Christian, if you think of it less as worship and more as veneration. Like venerating an icon of a saint. It's not worshiping an idol, it's acknowledging that the object of veneration is a living, concrete expression of God's work in the world. I don't know if that's really a kosher form of Christianity (not the right word, but something like that), but it's what feels true to me. I can't shut myself in a church and in my home, away from nature, out of sight and mind, and call myself Christian, that feels like ignoring what God created.
I cleaned out my altar today, and removed the more obviously pagan parts of it - the charms I made, the salt, the configuration of elements - and reorganized it into a less denominational altar. It's still got sigils written on the back, I suppose maybe I'll find icons to cover those up. But I kept the beach rocks, driftwood, pearls, seashells. Right now the only thing distinguishing it as Christian is a clumsily macrame'd cross. Not much, but it's a stop-gap measure, until I can make or buy or find something better. It's enough, for now, for me. It's not a requirement of praying, it's just a conduit.
And it feels good to have it.