A Spirituality of Nature

Since moving mid-pandemic, early in 2021… this is what greets me from dawn to dusk out our back door. No buildings, no cars, only an occasional walker on the trail. I don’t need to drive anywhere to take a ‘nature bath’ as the Japanese have named it. I don’t even need to get dressed to abide in this sanctuary (as I sit here in my pj’s with an unobstructed view).

The sun falls first on the tops of those almost 4 story tall pines across the lake. When it does, the Ibis and Spoonbill leave their roosts in the thickets and take the opportunity to sun bathe before heading out for breakfast in the marsh grasses–a bounty of small fish and oysters. They will all return again within 5 minutes of sunset to start their ritual of getting ready for bed.

It took me a while to catch on to the rhythm of the place. I’d never experienced nature so up-close-and-personal growing up in the inner city of Chicago. Oh, there were a few weeks of lightning bugs in the summer. But I wasn’t a great observer of much else. Certainly not aware of the tides, as we must be here. Nor aware that the creeping and winged beings around us follow the course of the sun and moon. I do feel blessed by it all.

Thomas Merton wrote: “The sun, the clear morning, the quiet, the barely born butterfly … Solitude-when you get saturated with silence and landscape, then you need an interior work, psalms, scripture, meditation. But first the saturation. How much of this is simply restoration of one’s normal human balance? Like waking up, like convalesence after an illess. My life here in solitude is most real because it is most simple.” A YEAR WITH THOMAS MERTON, JUNE 30th, page 188.

How many years, did my life consist of the ‘work’ without the saturation? Thankfully, I didn’t know any better! It has only been within the past 30 years that I realized the value of “silence and landscape” and sought it out at a monaastery or two in thousand acres woods, with miles of secluded walking paths–proverbial rafts of nature to carry me for a while.

And now in this time called retirement I am blessed with this saturation on a daily basis, a gift that came as a surprise. One that took me a while to see, then to recognize and only now, only now begin to understand. And as it was for Merton, it is: “like waking up, like a convalesence after an illness…my life here in solitude is most real because it is most simple.”

I have taked A LOT about my found spirituality of nature with my spiritual director. In fact, I sought her out at a time when I wondered if I was veering too far off the path. (Old habits die hard). I’d say things like, I feel the breeze coming through the pines and am reminded of the gentleness of the Spirit… or, The constancy of the ebb and flow of the tides reminds me of God’s faithfulness… or, the colors of the sky at sunrise and sunset speak to me of the unnecessary beauty all around us… or, I really am learning to care for the bounty of nature. And she’d remind me that I could not learn any more by sitting in a building.

After too long without “Solitude which saturates with silence and landscape” I am beginning to feel full once more. It’s the feeling of taking a cold drink, when one didn’t realize they were thirsty, or eating before knowing one was really, really hungry. I am, after these two years in this lovely place, feeling satiated, and as though there is a ‘something more’ beyond taking it all in. What Merton says is — only possible once the restoration has returned one to one’s normal human balance.

I have of course already begun this ‘work’ without realizing that it was what I was doing. It was from my saturation in solitude that I agreed to convening small online gatherings for WCCM-USA, temporary spiritual communities for nourishment and fellowship. The beauty of this work is that it is not scheduled months or years in advance. I can offer programs from fullness, not schedule–from wholeness not demand–like the tides and the movement of sun and moon.

There is balance to this spirituality of nature. Just as there once was to much work and not enough solitude… now there can be too much solitude and not enough work. My true self lies in the balance. For all of us, our true self lies in the balance.

With much love and peace,

Kathleen — thecelticmonk