Can “Indoorsy” People Get Spiritual Nourishment from Nature?

Hello dear readers,

Thank you for exploring the theme of The Divine and the Natural World with me this month and for your wonderful query responses.

I would describe myself as “indoorsy.” As I was curating the messages for this month, I worried that I was underqualified to facilitate growth in readers’ spiritual connection with nature. All my colleagues at Thee Quaker Project seemed to have tapped into something that I was missing: Jon Watts (our Executive Director) spends his vacations hiking and his free time clearing trails outside his house; Georgia Sparling (our Podcast Producer) is a kayaker and a cyclist; Hannah Mayer (our Operations Coordinator) is an environmental activist and loves to take her four-year-old camping. But Victoria Loorz calls disconnection from the land “a deep loneliness… like a heavy fog.” I had to stop and think, is that how I feel? 

I realized that being in nature does give me spiritual nurture, even if I don’t seek it out all the time. Seeing myself as a tiny part of a whole earth community keeps me humble and gives me perspective. The outdoors has a quiet that’s different from silence, which invites me to regulate the rhythm of my body. And the immediacy of nature encourages me to set my urgent life aside and be present, if just for a moment. 

Tomorrow we will begin a month of messages on the theme of Speaking Truth to Power, examining how Friends throughout history have stood up to authority and worked for justice. We will read stories about Quakers who advocated for what was right despite opposition from kings, presidents, and institutions. We will also investigate how Friends maintain their integrity when they are the ones in power. 

In friendship,

Maeve Sutherland
Editor of the Daily Quaker Message

Reader Responses

How do you keep up your energy to make a difference in the face of climate crisis?

What spiritual practices give you strength?

I love to walk in "my" woods. I call them mine only because they surround where I live. Yesterday, in freezing temperatures and whipping winds I took myself into the woods. There I breathed deeply and remembered my own smallness and the world's greatness. This remembrance feeds me and helps me look only at what I can do now. To me, walking quietly in the woods is a spiritual practice of renewal.

Ellen S. Center Conway, NH, USA
Doing it alongside my soul sisters & brothers …with SPIRIT, LOVE, PEACE & INTEGRITY!

Heather O., Lower Gwynedd, PA, USA

This Week’s Messages

Mon Jan 20

This Marvelous, Beautiful, Savage World

“This is a marvelous world, full of beauty and splendour; it is also an unrelenting and savage world, and we are not the only living things prone to dominate if given the chance. In our fumbling, chaotic way, we do also make gardens, irrigate the desert, fly to the moon and compose symphonies. Some of us are trying to save species other than ourselves…” …
Tue Jan 21

Come Into the Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me / and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds …
Wed Jan 22

Where Our Wealth Lies

“Our [Quaker] testimonies against war and inequality have been aimed at persuading people, and reminding ourselves, as to where their wealth lies: in the discovery of a common identity and a common cause with other human beings.” …
Thu Jan 23

Truth Springs Up Out of the Earth

“So then, there is the sweet communion…. the sweet joy and refreshment in the Lord our righteousness, who causeth righteousness to drop down from heaven, and truth to spring up out of the earth. And so our Father is felt blessing us, blessing our land, blessing our habitations, delighting in us and over us to do us good; and our land yields its increase to the Lord of Life, who hath redeemed it and planted the precious plants and seeds of life in it.” …
Fri Jan 24

It Is a Stony Road Ahead but Our Faith Will Uphold Us

“Our planet is seriously ill and we can feel the pain. We have been reminded of the many ways in which the future health of the earth is under threat as a result of our selfishness, ignorance and greed.  Our Earth needs attention, respect, love, care and prayer. In comfortable Britain we are largely insulated from the effects of the environmental crisis. It is the poor of the world who suffer first.” …
Sat Jan 25

The Kind of World We Long for So Much It Hurts

“Whatever situation we face, we can choose our response. When facing overwhelming challenges, we might feel that our actions don’t count for much. Yet the kind of responses we make, and the degree to which we believe they count, are shaped by the way we think and feel about hope.” …

Banner image: Gillian Pokalo

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Author

  • Maeve Sutherland

    Maeve Sutherland is a communications professional who never recovered from her wonderful childhood at a Quaker elementary school. She has spent her career helping nonprofits share their stories, from schools and universities, to museums, to radio stations. As a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Maeve spent a year living in “Peaceable Kingdoms,” pacifist intentional communities around the world, where she learned that everyone has a role to play in shaping a better world. She worked as a freelance social media manager before joining Thee Quaker Project. After returning to Quakerism as a young adult, Maeve now attends Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Philadelphia.

    View all posts