Nature as Restorative of the Human Spirit...the Woods on a Snowy Evening

 

For as long as I can recall I have loved to be outdoors and have found it to be tremendously restorative to my spirit and self as a whole. As the years have passed and the cares of life increased for me I have repeatedly let myself get too far from what I so desperately require for renewal. Reconnecting with the natural world has only ever proven to mean reconnection with what is deepest within me. 

The way the snow of late hangs heavy upon the evergreens in our backyard has reminded me once again to return to nature as part of a return to myself. Last evening, after a most delightful tromp through our little back woods with our two youngest children, I once again proved to myself that  despite my age and what the world might say, I am not yet too old to lie down in a bank of snow, to crawl under a thick canopy of fluffy, white snow- laden evergreen branches under a night sky and feel the cool caress of the earth wrapped around me in stillness and silence.

Looking back through some old notes I found a passage from a friend which speaks so eloquently to my own deep experience of nature as restorative.

Here is the short passage a friend of mine sent me in early 2009 from a memoir written in 1883 by Richard Jefferies called The Story of My Heart:

"There was a time when a weary restlessness came upon me, perhaps fro too-long-continued labour. It was like a drought, as if I had been absent for many years from the sources of life and hope. The inner nature was faint, and all was dry and tasteless. Then, some instinctive, uncontrollable feeling drove me to the sea.

Alone I went down to the sea. I stood where the foam came to my feet, and looked out over the sunlit waters....The life of the earth and the sea, the glow of the sun filled me. The wind came sweet and strong from the waves. I touched the surge with my hands, I lifted my face to the sun, I opened my lips to the wind....my soul was strong as the sea and prayed with the sea's might, "Give me fulness of life like to the sea and the sun, to the earth and the air; give me my inexpressible desire which dwells in me like a tide -- give it to me with all the force of the sea.

So deep was the inhalation of life that day, that it seemed to remain in me for years."  Richard Jefferies

And my early 2009 response to it: (I actually believe it was PEI's first celebration of Islander Day hence the reference when I wrote this response.)

"What an exquisitely beautiful piece of writing! So incredibly evocative of the mystics sense of God and self in the natural world! How many times I've felt that need so strong and desperate! Most often this occurs after a time of sustained alienation from self and beauty. I've been dragged by that "uncontrollable feeling" out into sub-zero temperatures just to lay on the ground and feel the icy winds and snow blow over my prostrate body and at other times to the woods to breathe deep the bracken, fern scented air. Over and over again I let myself get to that place of "weary restlessness" by something damned within my human nature... and not ever has nature failed to restore my slackened soul.

Summertime wildflowers, the slant of late afternoon sun on marshland in November, songbirds at the feeder in winter; all breaths of new life... good for the soul! Like Jefferies, I know well the desire to be in direct physical contact with the natural elements...the need to immerse oneself in the entirety of the experience. I find myself restored not unlike when I rest myself on my beloved's chest. Oh, what a glorious description his was! I love when someone writes so clearly that there is no time! That writing could have been spoken by anyone, at anytime on any beautiful shore! What a gift! On this day of celebrating being an Islander I am eternally grateful for this Island and it's never ending responsiveness to my pleadings for its beauty. "

May you too know well the restorative power the natural elements have on the spirit!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost 1874–1963 Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Beginner's Mind this New Year's day 2014

 

Morning has broken and all I can think this New Year day 2014 is how grateful I am for the gift of a day so filled with possibility. I didn't plan on writing anything this morning but upon looking out my living room window to the south, seeing how still and frozen everything is, how deeply the snow blankets all, and how the sun's bright gaze glimmers ten thousand sparkling diamonds all over the front lawn, I had to sit in the quiet of my own heart and let it all sink in.

Having lived forty years on this Earth now, I have both caused and experienced my fair share of hurt and pain and although it has taken considerable time and reflection to be able to recognize the role I myself have played as injured and injurious one, I can see  how easily we all fall into the trap of the blame game. I desperately want to raise our children in an environment of hope and joyful possibility, but know too well the perils of viewing the world from a perspective of dualism, and the hurt inevitable in blaming others for our pain.

Mindfulness meditation is what my husband and I come back to time and again as a powerful way to remind ourselves to tread the middle way. Last eve, after cancelling our much anticipated New Year's Eve fete due to my contracting an infection which required treatment, I was feeling weak from the medication, ill and very disappointed, not to mention badly for all of those family and friends whose NYE plans hinged on our party. In a not very wise move I lashed out at someone I love, unjustly questioning their motives and viewing their actions as a vie for control. Ugly yes, and unfortunately true. The beauty of the middle way is that as soon as we stray off the path into a need to control outcomes, or into the belief that our notions of how things should be are more valid than another's, we can, without a moments hesitation, return to following our breath to a non-judgmental awareness of what thoughts and physical sensations we are experiencing at that very moment. 

When I took some deep breaths and acknowledged my own response to the already unfortunate circumstances we were experiencing, my husband gently reminded me of my very favourite Rumi poem which was most helpful. 

Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas

of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.

I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language
- even the phrase "each other" -
do not make any sense. 

mevlana jelaluddin rumi - 13th century 

 I believe that the greatest gift we can give ourselves, each other and our world is the opportunity to begin again, fresh in each new moment. This requires of us a willingness to let go of old ways of thinking and being, to resist the lure of falling into old traps of judgement, fear and anxiousness and to embrace each new thought and action as a fresh response to circumstances. Reminding ourselves that although a given situation might seem exceedingly familiar, it is nonetheless new to us as each new scenario unfolds, can prove most helpful in developing self awareness.

The  Zen Buddhists call this the practice of beginner's mind and Jesus Christ  himself was known for reminding his disciples to see the world as little children. There is great wisdom in the advice of these sages.

 Think of someone you know whom you consider jaded. Perhaps it is a loved one, a co-worker, maybe even yourself. The general attitude of someone who is jaded is the exact opposite of the attitude of someone practicing beginners mind. A jaded person feels that they can predict outcomes based on past experiences and they carry the expectation of negative outcomes as a feature of the jaded personality. Perhaps this person has had negative outcomes to deal with in the past, but developing the habit of projecting negative outcomes onto the blank canvas of the future or present moments only serves to foster an attitude which becomes self fulfilling in which the jaded person trains themselves to look for the worst in any given situation. This can also be said for those troubled by an anxious heart. They cast a fearful outlook which is unable to trust in the possible goodness which might spring forth from new circumstances.

 “Be humble: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”
― Shunryu Suzuki
 
The beginning of the new year carries much potential for personal growth and change for each of us. Many people consider making new year resolutions. What if our resolution was to try and walk into each moment of our lives as little children with beginners mind; as though it were a blank canvas, an expansive shoreline unmarred by footprints or as I gazed out upon this frigid morning, a pristine blanket of white snow? I truly think the possibilities for welcoming a childlike sense of love and wonder into our hearts are endless and that the healing power latent in such love and wonder would cure much of what ails the modern world. Imagine the possibilities!

Happy New Year 2014 
Love Jill

This Falling Night...a call to Love Dec 31st, 2013

Nocturne in Black and Gold- The Falling Rocket

New Year's Eve 2013


This Falling Night

To drive away the misery of this falling night
when light is gone too soon and voices wane
I cast a desperate net towards dwindling light
to capture the memory of words I once profaned:
 
"Sweet dove with gently beating heart, my dear
Your soft caress is all I need to know
and the despairing thoughts that bring forth fear
are fast diminished by your loving soul.

I'll love you through the long, dark winters night
and then I'll love you back around again
Our touch and bated breath will stall the lessening light
with songs of truth that seem to know no end"-
 
Sing softly those sweet words into my ear...
Please tell them to me one more time, again
Convince me of the words I need to hear
That by our love the darkness we will fend!
(And that true love, despite the world, won't end!)

Love Jill

Gretel Ehrlich, and the Landscape of Home

Last night I couldn't get to sleep and so picked up a book of essays in an attempt to bring sleep to me. In doing so I read something I was so moved and unsettled by (an essay on climate change and spirituality) that there was no hope of sleep after reading it. So much for sleep besides, what does one person's sleep one night matter anyway? More importantly the questions that remain with me are what does Gretel Ehrlich's essay The Future of Ice mean for me, for my little Island in the Gulf, and for the floating sphere we all call home?

Born and raised on a small Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, I am an Islander through and through. Like many other young people I left in my twenties  to attempt to expand my universe. Although I did my best while away to try to find landscapes in the interior of Ontario that I could fall in love with, I was constantly heartsick for my Prince Edward Island home. I recall  driving one bleak November day in Ontario and coming unexpectedly upon a lake and almost driving into it I was so happy to see a relatively large body of water. I didn’t realize how desperately I was missing the landscape of home; as much as I was missing the people and familiar routines.

But my little Island home, although wonderful and where we have chosen to raise our own growing up family, doesn't feel so comfortable anymore. The ease of childhood's ignorance has long since worn of and I am left with a grating feeling in my throat when I speak certain words, an inability to get a full breath when certain words are uttered by others. The words I speak about are all related to development and environmental protection, and to the ways we use our land and waters here.

We, as a small Island community, have a responsibility towards the land and air and waters of our home and I do not think we are taking this responsibility seriously enough. As environmentalist David Suzuki says people who live on islands know there are limits to things. He is right in that many of us here have a lived sense of those limits and what we need for our survival. Yet why are we  continuing to allow government to be swayed by investors promising to bring jobs in genetically modified fisheries to our waters, why are we still considering hydraulic fracturing off our coastlines, and why are we not an entirely organic Island when far sighted and reasonable people believe it is a possibility that could become a reality if only the government and people of our land were to speak out, and let their voices be heard?

The essay I read last night was written by Gretel Ehrlich and is entitled The Future of Ice. It is a gorgeous piece of lyrical writing about spirit, place and the role our behaviours play in affecting the landscapes we live in. It was a read that made me want to get up out of my bed late on a wet, cold night and go outside to touch the earth at my own doorstep just so I could remember that I am alive; a living member of the world right now. Ehrlich's writing provides a glimpse into the fragile, changing nature of the North, somewhere we oft think of as the last true frontier, strong and wild and free. The witness she bears to the vulnerabilities the north is facing is startling and sadly too easily translatable to our planet as a whole. The words she uses, poetic. This woman truly loves  Earth and writes about her love in a way that makes you feel as though you've somehow entered into the love as well.

As I age, I am realizing that many of greatest truths I have known in my life I knew intimately as a young child still awed by the sensuousness of the world. Truths which for too many years since I have largley forgotten. Ehrlich's words shook those forgotten truths from me much the way a good hug reminds you that you need to hug people more often. Yet her words rang hauntingly as well, like a rattlesnake's ominous warning entering spaces you'd rather pretend do not exist, rattled and shaken just before it's too late.


     "How fragile we are.’We' being the humans and this mountain. My Inuit friends in Greenland use the word sila to describe weather: the power of nature, landscape, and human consciousness as one and the same. Every scar on the landscape is also a perturbation of the mind." 
Gretel Ehrlich

I have felt the desecration of our sacred lands and waters too oft as a perturbation of my own mind, and more times than I care to recall have felt the scorn of others for being too deep a feeler, too much a fool for the voiceless. Yet still I must ask: what are we doing to this wondrous world, to all its living creatures, to ourselves? Is it still possible for us to take pause, look deeply into the eyes of the world, and fall in love again? 


Over the last few years I have been drawn to writers whose use of language blends the temporal, with the spiritual often speaking in terms of the physical, bodily world. A good friend of mine, poet John MacKenzie , does this brilliantly. His imagery pulled from the natural world reminds us that we are passionate, breathing creatures of bone and flesh whose bodies are not separate from the landscapes and mindscapes we inhabit. 
A wonderful example of the intimate precision of his writing is exhibited here in a recent sestina he wrote:
The Winter Wings of Gulls

Perhaps, the greatest thing we could do in terms of slowing the progression of climate change is to slow ourselves, our frantic pace, our shallow breathing, and once again be mindful of our connection to the Earth. We then could be reminded of the wonders of the natural world, of the ways that place infuses spirit. Perhaps if we all recalled  the forgotten truths of our childhood, the long, slow creak of years when we drank time like warm milk and squeezed the breath into and out of our days. Those truths we knew in our bones back then, those truths that I knew so well and let retreat to the shadows for too many years of my own life. Thankfully I have been reminded that we are inextricably a part of a great and wonderful unfolding; a mystery of nature and of spirit that encompasses the whole. 

In a particular wintertime childhood memory of mine, I am lying in a snowbank outside of my house, alone on a blustery, snowy day. I was outside by myself as I was oft given to, but I knew in my heart that I wasn’t really alone, that in the great loneliness there was room for all.  I knew all of this and more at age five, lying well bundled in snow deep enough to mold around my little form, the wind blowing, lifting eddies and currents of crystalline snowflakes all around me. My breath, soft little exhales, made clouds above my face which disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, The sharp catch of cold in my little chest as I breathed the air back in reminded me to breath slowly, gently. I can still recall that feeling of being tucked in by the snow. The cold assurance that this was winter I was lying in, but the secure feeling that there was room for me in it. 

Ehrlich in her essay on The Future of Ice says:
“The sky borrows its radiance from ice, its adamantine clarity, and we spend lifetimes tracking down those elements within ourselves.”

Her essay speaks volumes about our need to make tracking down those elements that re-connect us with the living earth, with the spark of life inherent in all, a more urgent necessity in our lives. Her words an almost silent plea for us to care for each other and this planet with the same loving attention and awe with which we care for those we call our lovers. After all, the separateness we presume to be reality is only an illusion and the cost of being fooled by this is far, far too great. There is, after all, room for the whole of it.
Jill MacCormack

Trust and Allow

 What if you stopped trying so hard? Instead of pushing forward in your life like you are on a battle ground, why not take this precious moment and simply be true to your heart.Trust and allow.  Maybe make it an experiment. Think on something that you truly want to see become manifest in your life. Think about it in whatever way feels natural to you, be that in prayer, in meditation, in some form of quiet contemplation. Think of how you would like to be in your own life in accordance with naturalness. Think of how to create a natural or authentic way of living your life, yet allow yourself to be free from attempting to create the desired outcome through planning or controlling or manipulating any variables in your day. Simply go with the flow and let the universe be the director. See what happens. Did things strangely fall into place? Did you see or hear from someone you had been hoping to talk to or see? Did you experience an ease of entry into situations or circumstances that were almost eerily “just right”.

Whenever we quietly say yes to our true selves and stop trying so hard we align our souls with their destiny. In working towards a future of greater awareness for all, we naturally become that greater awareness by acknowledging its wondrous presence in our lives.

Sound hokey? Then it probably won’t amount to anything more than a laugh for you. Sound a little bit interesting? That tiny crack of interest is most likely all the openness you’ll need to begin seeing the power of increased consciousness and awareness of the universe becoming manifest through you.

Stop for a minute, be quiet, be fearless and let love do the rest... 
 let the river flow freely  

image from www.internationalrivers.org

Love everything...

Love everything...hate nothing...you are different from no one, different  from nothing in any truly important way...The most hated part of another is the most hated part of yourself...The most feared part of another is the most feared part of yourself... The most loved part of another is the most beloved part of yourself...There are no differences...there are no boundaries...just energy moving to and fro...Our minds create the differences, divide the world into good or bad...Our thoughts create the sense of dualism we live out of... Yet...anything truly is possible...when we let go into the freedom of love...


 So don't let the "bad thoughts" win by defining how you view self and other...there is no real self when we get to the heart of things...there is no real other either....The connection you feel, warm and fuzzy, when you allow yourself to let your guard down and smile, when you hug someone and your toes get warm...when you stop long enough to become present to the wonder of the world around you, when you feel  energy circulating, pulsing through the circuitry of the universe... this is your experiential awareness of the energy of life and it is a truly wondrous thing! Makes you forget that time or self or even place ever existed... it makes you wonder why you ever needed them to exist...Why do you?The best things in life happen when we forget the cares of the world, when we trust that what we need will become available to us...when we free ourselves from the bonds of self, the constricts of time and place, and allow ourselves to re-charge in the energy of simply trusting, allowing, in simply being...
John Tarrant, Director of the Pacific Zen Institute , poses the following question as an entry point into allowing ourselves to love the world as it is:
"What might the world look like if I loved it as it is, just as it is?" John Tarrant

 Stop for a minute...be quiet...be fearless... consider Tarrant's question for us and let love do the rest... Love me...you...everything...

Image courtesy of Digitalart/Freedigitalphotos.net

This Too Shall Pass

This too shall pass- a phrase our mother used throughout our growing up years to comfort us in our confusion, our sorrows. A simple phrase, yet it held a mighty power over us. No matter how dreadful things were, how unbearable a given situation seemed, time would take care of it, and us. And for those simple and complicated years it did. Still does.

Now fully grown, we keep this wisdom close to our hearts, but the sword is double sided. We are no longer children, living the freedoms (and prisons) only childhood can shelter us within. We sense the movement of time with greater urgency. Life's busyness has claimed us more and more as its own. Our parents are aging, us too. Friendships shift, people we love pass away. This too shall pass becomes more and more an awareness of the slipping away, the fading, the sliding, the ceaseless song of time; sad and beautiful love song that it is.
Jill MacCormack
Writing for Art in the Open 2013; the Creativity Project