Circling the Isle of Stones

Nature taught me how to pray in feeling and movement. I prayed the rosary with my family every lent, but my walks around our island on Hubley Lake every summer taught me how to embody prayer. The rosary became a rote practice. My walks upon the stones encircling the island became a living prayer.

As I walked the stones, I had to be aware of the best place to step. My perspective changed as I went round. The land behind the island was different than the beaches across from it. Always the water lapped at the stones and gurgled as it found its way between them. Some days the lake was blue and sometimes it was gray. A reflection of sky and mood it surrounded me. And I took it all in as I stepped from stone to stone.

Water and stone. Stone and water. Prayer and Nature take us within but they also bring us out of our shell and into the world invoking gratitude and wonder. With each step came peace. With each step wonder grew at the expanse of water, the landscape of wind-worn trees, the chatter of birds and the ever changing sky. My circling brought the environment to me in ways speeding through it in a boat could not. Only know do I realize how much I became a part of the environment as it became a part of me.

The prayer of that place rests inside me still. Even though I’m thousands of miles from the island I can reach for that rosary of moments encircling a land of memories. For me Nature is not just a place in time but the prayer of Spirit cast in my heart forever.


Words to the poem in the picture:

The Camp (An island of memories anchored by stones my soul knows by heart.)

My foot lands on the next stone

and the next.

In this way I walk around the Camp,

an island rimmed with stone

on Hubley Lake’s rocky waters.

Round and round I go

Blue grey water eases in

and out of crevices.

I hear the glop, glop

as it hits rock.

Life breathes in and out

as I walk counter clock-wise

around this home

away from home.

Cabin

wood burning stove

well

outhouse

dock

boat house

all ancient

to an eight-year old’s

sense of time…

and here time has slipped

back to a past

where tiny porcelain dolls

with painted faces and

movable limbs play

in a tiny church.

Here the past is layered

in the scent of wood smoke

and the memories of others.

Round and round I go

I look across rippled waters

see another island. Wonder

who walks its paths.

A whole other world

only a boat ride away.

I continue my rounds.

Why Nature is My Guru

Photo by Seaq68 on pixabay

Nature can teach us many things about life and ourselves. It is a teacher if we’re willing to listen, but this post isn’t about how Nature can be our teacher. It’s my story of how Nature became my guru.

In order for a guru/student relationship to work, there must be love. From an early age I felt as though I was safe in Nature. I trusted Its presence. I loved being surrounded by It and felt loved by It.

My first sense of the spiritual was in Nature and not in a church though visiting Sainte Anne de Beaupré in Quebec City as a child brought me to a higher order of spiritual feeling. It was those early ventures into the woods that first captured my spiritual imagination. It wasn’t the awe I felt in the cathedral but a quiet, peaceful feeling. Nature embraced me and I embraced It.

I was I very sensitive child. The noise of the playground was a bit much sometimes. The woods behind the school yard provided solace and even healing. I felt alone in a crowd but the crowded forest of trees and rocks and birds felt like one being holding me. There was no noise, only soft whispers of wind and birdsong. The solid boulder, rough with lichen upon which I sat grounded me. These woods were a peaceful sanctuary and the Being all around me was a greater teacher than those in the school.

For me Nature is so full of the Presence of Being, but as I got older, I paid less and less attention to Its love and teachings. In my late 20s I discovered Paganism, and made an attempt to listen and bring Nature into my life again. It was touch and go and I never really reached that deep relationship I once had as a child.

About 10 years ago, in my late 30s I began to bring Nature back into my life in a more visceral way. My husband and I acquired a mountain cabin in Green Valley Lake. I spent time walking in the woods behind the cabins across from us. For the first time since I was a child I began to relax into Nature’s Presence. I had grown somewhat fearful of being out in the woods because it had been years since I spent any time in a forest or with Nature at all except a little time in a park now and then.

I walked and got to know this particular land. I opened to it and it opened to me. But then the fire came and burned much of it. It was too painful to spend time there anymore. Nature receded to the background of my awareness again.

Lately I am a watcher in the window rather than a walker in the woods. Seeing the trees sway in the wind outside my office window does feed my soul to some degree, but I’ve lost touch with Nature’s heart. This blog is an attempt to bring my awareness back to Nature and regain the connection I felt as a child.

Nature is our greatest teacher. We need only to pay attention to Its rhythms as they express in the cycles of sun, moon, trees, plants, animals and our bodies.

We are Nature just as we are Spirit. I am earth, water, fire and the air that passes through me. I am clay, my blood a river, my heart the fire and I am inspired by the air I breathe.

Nature is my guru. It teaches me through all I do and experience. And when I am tired, it holds me and lets me know I am not alone. It will always hold me. Even as I transform, I will eventually leave behind what is Nature’s, my body. Even as I become identified with my soul, I will also become the wind in the trees and the soil that brings forth new life. I and Nature will always be together in the One Spirit that is all.

The Teachings of Place and Climate

Manzanita on the Sandberg Loop Trail, northwestern L.A. County (David Lockeretz)

Fall here in Southern California often brings hot winds and soaring temperatures. And these bring fires. In the land of what must seem like eternal summer to some, summer holds fast to its last days as if to rage against the dying of the light.

In another life, another world, fall was about a touch of coolness in the air, blustery winds and a mix of warm days and early frosts. Fall sneaks in before the Equinox in Nova Scotia. The tips of leaves begin turning color in August and the air is sometimes just a little nippy before Labor Day. Fall on that tiny peninsula is a brilliant precursor to winter’s eagerness to coat all in white and bring on nature’s dark night.

Both environments have taught me much. As I’ve embodied this environment, as it has come into my soul over the last 16 years, I’ve learned about persistence and how important it is to make the most of the time you have. And in Nova Scotia I learned to embrace the inevitable. I’ve learned to sense the subtle signs of change, to enjoy the journey and to let go into those dark nights with the eagerness of winter, knowing that spring is on the other side.

Plants Grow Overnight…So Do I

Have you ever noticed that your plants seem to grow an inch or so overnight? My husband planted some Chinese peas and squash this spring and it seems that the plants have growth spurts overnight. Indeed they did because according to discoveries made a couple ofyears ago many plants do have a growth spurt just before dawn.

Since I've been noticing this lately what is it that Nature is trying to teach me?

I too grow overnight, not physically anymore, though healing does go on, but I grow psychologically overnight. I notice that my most intense dreams happen in the predawn hours. In fact this may be the time I do the most growing since I am processing what I learned through the day.

Perhaps it is time to pay more attention to those dreams, to begin writing them down again. Those dreams could be the food I need to continue on this path.

Listen to the Trees...

Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.

― Vera Nazarian