When did nature first stop you in your tracks? When did nature call to you to draw closer and experience the joyful mystery and wonder of creation?
The first time I remember being overwhelmed by the beauty of nature was more than sixty years ago. A young boy of six or seven, I was walking home from school, which meant I walked out the school house door, strode around a corner, passed one house and I had arrived. That spring day I looked up to see a tree limb that spanned the sidewalk, and there they were – two brilliant yellow male goldfinches shimmering in the afternoon sun. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my young life. They dazzled me. The yellow was luminous sunshine, a color I’d never seen in nature before. I stopped and stared in happy bewilderment.
I had forgotten that memory until recently. The catalyst for calling it to consciousness was the book, The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy, by Michael McCarthy. Part memoir, part environmental treatise, this book’s primary thesis is that our bond with nature, though strained by five hundred generations’ worth of urban living, cannot be broken for it was forged in “fifty thousand generations of living in the natural world before the farmers broke the sod and hacked down the forest.” (p. 122)
Nature is part of what it means to be human. “At the deepest psychological level it remains our home, with all the intense emotional attachment which that implies – passionate feelings of belonging, of yearning and of love.” (p. 61)
So, when I walk in the woods, I’m doing more than walking in the woods. I’m clearing my mind. I’m slowing down. I’m connecting with what is deep within. And as a spiritual practice, such walks can, from time to time, help me become aware both of my desire to belong and the fact that I do belong. They guide me toward union with nature so that I don’t see things out there and me in here. I am part and parcel of God’s good creation.
Thomas Merton taught that to learn to pray we should get a camera and take pictures of small things. When I spend time with my camera shooting photos of flowers, I slow down. Again, when I slow down and focus not so much on nature but in nature, I see more than I had seen before. I am more aware of beauty in small places. I see the tender strength in an iris bud and the anticipation of new life embedded in nature. And if it is embedded in nature, it is embedded in me.
Suggested Spiritual Exercise
.
Most folks have cameras in their phones these days. I suggest you take your camera and find a flower. If flowers are not available, try a leaf or a small bush. Don’t rush. First sit and look. What textures do you see? How does the light fall? Where are the shadows? What colors and color variations do you see? What perspectives are available to you – looking from under the flower, directly over the flower, etc.? Having become more familiar with this flower or leaf, take at least five closeup shots trying to capture from different angles the light, color and textures you have seen. Again, don’t rush it. Enjoy this small part of nature. It is not separate from you. It is a part of who you are. See and appreciate what nature is offering. You may even be surprised by joy.
The experience of union with nature, which this discipline (as well as long walks in the woods) can help to foster, breathes new life into us and invites prayers of gratitude for our God-given creation.
Prayer
Dear Mother earth,
Who day by day unfolds rich blessing on our way,
O Praise God! Alleluia!
The fruits and flowers that verdant grow,
Let them his praise abundant show.
O praise God, O praise God, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
- St. Francis
