NATURE: Healer and Nurturer
According to Alan Watts
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the “waves,” the universe “peoples.”
What a beautiful and fascinating concept. But how are we doing with peopleing the planet? Is it with care and love or devastation and dominance?
For some time I’ve been attempting to address the importance of my relationship with nature and how that informs my interaction with other people. Ensuring that the items I purchase are environmentally kind is one thing, but acknowledging the energy I send out into the community is an additional practice. It has been a humbling venture and still is.
I live in an area that is easily accessible to a vast assortment of parks and arboretums. When I have blocks of time I visit them. These are places of tranquility with benches on which to sit and relax, sculptures on which to meditate, small waterfalls to contemplate, ponds with koi fish and water lilies, numerous choices for a picnic lunch with a couple of friends, and trails that invite one to meander through tall pines and sturdy oaks.
In truth, nothing is needed just your bodily senses and keen awareness.
Perhaps if I share just one experience of how nature affected me you’ll get an idea of what I believe Alan Watts is talking about.
It’s an experience of communion.
During a particularly traumatic transition in my life—I took an excursion into nature. I left my cell phone, snacks, and journal in my car and decided to just see what would unfold without any props to entertain my mind.
The experience is memorable not only for its richness of solitary elegance but for the sheer speed with which time passed. I found a comfortable bench, propped my feet up on an opposite chair and looked toward the sky. Floating above me clouds in varying shapes with fluid, rounded edges, some appeared flat, others had holes or spaces in them, some were very large and connected to others with soft asymmetrical plumbs—they just floated above me. No two cloud shapes were the same. I sensed I was part of the movement but was apart from it at the same time. The sky was overcast so the sun would occasionally peep through and everything would be very bright for a brief time; the clouds just kept floating across my line of vision shading the sun, like a game of peek-a-boo.
Periodically a gentle breeze would rustle my hair and cool the skin on my face. My body relaxed into nature’s movement and all the while I was mesmerized by clouds and being very present in the activity. An indoor concert added to my aural senses with piano music, but mostly the experience was dedicated to clouds, sun, distant murmurings of birds, and rustling of leaves in the trees responding to the same breeze I felt through my hair and on my skin. I came out of that reverie two hours later filled with gratitude that I had met nature in such a subline way.
Author and theologian John Chryssavgis might describe my experience in these terms:
The breath of the Spirit brings out the sacramentality of nature and bestows on it the fragrance of resurrection.
I was different after what transpired that afternoon. In fact, the re-telling brought forth the wonder and awe of nature being part of me and I a part of it. There was a stillness and a spaciousness that filled me but also over flowed outside of me. When I got up to walk back to my car I felt lighter, more self-aware, and more in harmony with the environment.
The Gospel of Thomas has Jesus saying:
Blessed are the solitary and the elect, for you will find the Kingdom. Because you have issued from it, you will return to it again.
I recognize that in the times in which we are living creating these sacramental moments for ourselves is critical to maintaining a sense of equilibrium and garnishing our ability to re-direct our focus toward beauty, justice, and love. As many are beginning to voice, our connection with nature or I should say re-connecting with nature is primary in becoming aligned with all of life.
I’ll close with this from Friedrich Nietzsche—
Learn to become nature again yourselves and then with and in nature let yourselves be transformed.