PRAYING WITH NATURE

(last year's beautiful sunflowers here at Ava)

 

PRAYING WITH NATURE

 

(Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, has more to tell us about praying with nature in her June MONASTIC WAY)

 

Nature teaches us many things.   It is coming to hear this language, that is beyond language, which is the language of the soul.

 

When we see things only en maase, in great, large, sweeping entities, we lose the mystery of life.  "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificient world in itself." (Henry Miller)

 

There is a call to nature in all of us -- the challenge of the mountains, the enormity of the ocean, the cry of the clouds, the stolidity of the trees -- that both calls us beyond ourselves and into ourselves.  Each of them is already in us, one more powerful than the other, attempting to teach us what we need to know.

 

Water calls us to explore the depth of the self.  It washes away, wave after wave, the seismic shocks of the day upon our souls.  It soothes the riled self.

 

Fire drives us out of ourselves, it touches the spark within us that leads us to create new worlds in the face of the years gone to ashes before us.

 

Earth, the vast expanse of the plains, the colors in a far away meadow, beckons us to explore, to know, to touch, to grow with the environment around us.  It makes us its own and teaches us what home is about.

 

Air, fresh and soft, teaches us how little it takes to live, to go on, to be pure of heart, to begin to live all over again, to believe.

 

What nature has to teach us, if we wll only take the time in this technological world to listen, is the very rhythm and richness of life.  "Climb the mountains and nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.  The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves." (John Muir)

 

We live, most of us, in a boxed-in world, secure from the wind, away from the water, shadowed from the sun, free from the rain, cemented a distance from the woods.  We live totally unnatural lives and wonder why we feel out of place here.  "Come forth into the light of things; let nature be your teacher."  (William Wordsworth)