Why do we not applaud the sun?

At one time, I accepted the idea that yoga is ‘a landing pad for satan’, but exploring that iteration of me is for another time. For now, it suffices to say that I’ve been going to yoga classes at our local leisure centre for a few months now without succumbing to any obvious signs of demonic possession. Perhaps the landing-lights of eastern mysticism are just too weak in a Welsh leisure centre at the weary end of the week for Lucifer to properly get his bearings; perhaps he is put off by the clicks, cracks, creaks and occasional groans of those of us whose bodies have not been lubricated by a lifetime of flowing ‘prana’ or ‘chi’ or whatever we’re calling the bundle of energy we’re awkwardly pretending to pulse between our hands before zapping it through the top of our heads and down through our feet to ground us with the earth below (though as the studio is on an upper floor I always imagine my soles ( not my soul) invisibly welded to the head of  the receptionist  below).

When the class draws to a close, and we awkwardly bow our stiff pelvises with a half-whispered ‘namaste’, the barely controlled breathing gives way to a sigh of relief as we break out of the somewhat strained awkwardness of the eastern-tinged woo and break into the politely and familiarly British awkwardness of a truncated ripple of applause.

Hand-clapping can mark a range of emotions from relief to joy, but, apart from the ironic slow-handclap it appears to be always positive and is also, it seems, universal. Babies clap their hands with delight, and I recall from my time as a happy-clappy type Christian, worship choruses based on Old Testament scriptures that insisted that the trees of the fields shall clap their hands, which is at least a plausible visual metaphor what with all those branches waving around like arms. Quite what Isaiah was on about when he had the rivers clapping their hands is less clear, but I’m prepared to run with the idea of creation rejoicing and delighting (so long as we never forget its — now increasingly plangent — groans). It seems to me that such images reflect a spiritual world view in which the divine permeates the whole of creation, which responds in turn to its creator.

I nearly deleted that last sentence. This wasn’t where I was going with this piece, and in any case I need some very heavy book-length caveats (books I am unqualified to write) around the words ‘spiritual’, ‘divine’ and ‘creation/creator.’ I find now that the rigid and austere separation of the creator God from His creation, and of humanity as a special and privileged central goal of that creation, separate from ‘nature’, is a perspective I have not been able to embrace in good faith for some time. But I’m a bit scared of writing about all that stuff.

All I really wanted here was to ask:

Why do we not applaud the sun?

I can’t recall the moment that prompted me to add this question as a note on my phone, but I guess it was a time, probably walking the dog, probably standing on the spit of dunes at the edge of the estuary towards sunset,  where I felt like applauding the sun, but felt constrained by convention from doing so. Why do we not, as a rule, allow that universal expression of delight, appreciation, praise, gratitude, thanks  and encouragement, be extended to the natural world, that so often delights and encourages us?

Why should we not applaud the sun?

That, really, is all I wanted to ask here. And like a baby clapping their hands at a dust-swirled shaft of light falling across their cot, I shouldn’t need to build a theological or ethical framework around the question.

I and my dog (whom I regard as a fellow person) are now going to go for a walk. She will have her own ideas of what is worth delighting in, and how that delight should be expressed and I will wait for her to indulge those pleasures proper to her doghood, even those that would provoke disgust if I didn’t turn away. As for me,  having no tail to wag, I shall stand on the dunes, looking across the estuary at the retreating tide (the second highest total range in the world, you know) and give it, and the scudding clouds, and, of course, the sun that illuminates them, the round of applause they so richly deserve.