When I was a teenager growing up in Cardiff, Wales, I would often go on walks to the hills that surrounded the city. It was a beautiful area of farms, meadows and heavy woodland. One particular wood held a special significance for me because in the deep shade of its forest canopy there were three little streams that came together at a single point. I loved to visit this place of convergence and just sit and contemplate the little rivulets flowing together under their cover of ferns and woodland flowers.
What made this place so significant for me? It was long before I knew anything of meditation or spiritual awareness. It certainly had little to compare to the church services I attended. And yet something in my soul responded to the quiet beauty of this ordinary place, and I felt as though I were beholding a part of nature's mystery and order. Arising from my simple watchfulness, I always felt renewed and ready to go back to the world of football games, school and girlfriends with a greater sense of possibility. Today I would probably call my time gazing at the streams in the wood mystical experiences, moments of recognition where inside and outside, Spirit and matter are one.
I believe we have all experienced similar moments of connection with nature and place. When such a connection is made we realize that wholeness or holiness is all around us and within us. It interpenetrates the world we live in. So often, the busyness and complexities of our lives take up most of our energy. Times of connection and attunement seem like pleasant but unrealistic dreams.
Yet these are not unrealistic aims. Coming into relationship with nature and finding a sense of place in our environment are not luxuries or the special preserve of nature mystics and poets like Wordsworth, Thoreau or W. B. Yeats. They are essential components to living a purposeful and contented life.
Study after study has demonstrated that children from urban settings who have been introduced to nature, to trees, and even to pets are better adjusted and less violent than those who have not.
In his 1992 book The Voice of the Earth, professor, historian and author Theodore Roszak coined the word ecopsychology to describe a worldview that connects psychology and ecology. In his view, mental health cannot be understood simply in the narrow context of the modern world and the man-made environment. True mental and spiritual health arises in the wider world and through humankind's affinity with the variety, harmony and beauty of nature.
This reconnection to a deep order of things can begin quite simply with a walk. As the great naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir, wrote, “I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
The deeper sanity and peace offered by the natural world are gaining currency in the mainstream press also. As I was writing this article, I picked up a copy of USA Today and, as if by synchronicity, the headline in the Life section read “A holy place big as all outdoors—believers connect with God outside religious structures.” Yes! In the article that followed, Rabbi Jamie Korngold, author of God in the Wilderness, wrote, “You can make yourself so breathless with wonder and exhaustion that you can't say no to God”. This visceral approach grounds us in the vitalities of the body. One's breath and heartbeat are God's rhythms coursing through our bodies. The body of the universe (outside) and our physical bodies (inside) become one.
Rabbi Korngold was talking about skiing and hiking in the mountains, but I strongly believe that the divine is found not only in special places of spectacular beauty, but in our ordinary, everyday environments. In support of this, Rabbi Korngold further comments, “You can have a similar awe experience watching rain on a city windowsill. You can have it with every breath. You can get spiritual endorphins going in your own backyard.”
There is obviously a place for the Sedonas and the Yellowstones and other power places on our planet. But God is not limited to those places. Just as it is important to preserve our national parks and wilderness areas, it is also important to protect the integrity of our cities, towns, farms and fields. Seeing everything as a commodity, a piece of raw land to be developed, impoverishes our souls just as it degrades the sanctity of the land. Native Americans were overwhelmed not so much by the guns and the sheer number of settlers during the westward expansion of the 19th century as by these settlers' worldview of nature as object. This view was incomprehensible to the native peoples. Just as it broke their spirit of integration and interconnectedness, it threatens to break our spirit too, unless we reclaim the sanctity of nature.
How do we accomplish this? The first step is to become involved with nature where you live. Going for a walk and noticing what is around you can be revelatory. No matter where you live you can observe the phases of the moon, for example, and enjoy the delicate sliver of the new moon in the early evening sky and the triumphant glow of the full moon's silver orb.
There were times as a Unity ministerial student when I had simply had enough of classroom learning, and I would step out into the lakeside trails at Unity Village for a long, renewing walk and, as Wordsworth wrote, “Let Nature be my teacher.” I always returned with a better attitude and a sense of having received something valuable to bring to my studies.
Like the moon, all of nature moves with a rhythm and harmony that is intimately tied to our own internal rhythm. Observing this order of things is deeply satisfying and contributes, as Theodore Roszak would say, to our mental and emotional health. Keep a journal and notice the patterns and rhythms that occur and reoccur in your life.
In the garden at the church where I minister in Fort Worth, we look forward to the annual migration of the monarch butterflies and hummingbirds. At my home, I welcome the exuberant antics of the cedar waxwings in winter and the arrival of exotic bugs and beetles in summer. (I live in Texas, after all, where exotic insect species flourish.) A bird table or feeder can add a new dimension to your backyard and can attract birds that you did not know existed.
Look around your local environment for forgotten or undeveloped gems. Fort Worth offers a 160-acre area of rolling hills close to downtown that is now, quite miraculously, preserved as a natural area of prairie and open woods. It contains over 500 flowering plants and is a haven for wildlife. This area was a lover's haunt and a dumping ground until its intrinsic worth was recognized by the "Friends of Tandy Hills,” who prevailed upon the local government to protect it. Now it is a place available to all to experience the beauty of God's creation.
Many cities have tree ordinances and some have a heritage tree program that protects fine tree specimens in the city's neighborhoods. Check out the provisions in your own municipality. At an individual level, you can work to get your own backyard designated as a wildlife habitat through the National Wildlife Federation.
In Wales, the land of my birth, there are many vestiges of the sacred in nature and a deep remembrance of things being divine. A few miles from my hometown is an ancient well dedicated to St. Mary. I believe it was a sacred spring long before Christianity and its origins are lost in prehistory. Around the well are hawthorn trees, whose flowers and fruit represent Christ's life and sacrifice. To this day, those seeking healing or transformation leave items of clothing fastened to the branches of these trees, so many handkerchiefs and slips of cloth flutter in the wind above this bubbling well. Is there magic in this place? Do the waters have a healing quality? Perhaps, perhaps not.
For thousands of years, people have come into relationship with the water and the wind and the trees through their prayers, their presence and their offerings. Their intentions have sanctified this place, so the presence of God is more keenly felt. When inside and outside are combined at the place of our focus, at the still point of our opened hearts, then miracles of healing are possible.
So this is our work, our joyous responsibility as human beings involved in a larger creation. Not to journey to Wales to pay homage at a holy well (although that might be fun too!) but to acknowledge and appreciate the presence of Spirit in the grass growing beneath our feet, in our own place where heaven and earth meet in the magnificent interplay of the human with the divine.
