You Enter Naked and Brave
“Once upon a time, all humans knew their lives, their food, their survival, their sense of meaning and kinship with God or the gods was connected with all their relations: the hawks and soil and ferns and mosquitoes. Like all the other wild creatures, they belong to the land, and they knew it. They were untamed and self-willed and listened to their own intrinsic authority. They were part of a grand conversation, a relationship of reciprocity and respect, connecting them with all the other beings and elements of life.
But there came a time when some of the people could no longer hear the conversation. An elixir fell over the poppy fields, like Dorothy entering Oz, causing them to fall asleep. The wax in their ears became hardened, and their hearts pretended that they were happier controlling the world than loving it. They rushed right past the burning bushes on the way to Importance, missing the message of the doe hiding in plain sight with her newborn fawn. They packed the bodies of sacred forest cathedrals onto trucks and shipped them to mills. They forgot that the thrush songs spelled out warnings and wisdom in octaves. Disconnected little by little, their voices went missing in the symphony of aliveness. The songs of the wild God cascading through the trees no longer guided their lives. And a deep loneliness sunk down upon the people like a heavy fog nobody could see.
The time has come to lift that veil of fog and return to intimate relationship with the living world. More and more of us are taking our place, once again, as full participants in the web of life, which we remember is held together by love.
There are no magic words to incant, no spiritual laws to memorize, no ruby-slippered heels to click three times. You don’t need to read a hundred new ecotheology books or leave the church or become an animist or pantheist. (But you can if you want to.) You simply need to learn how to listen. And allow your heart to be broken, just like you do every time you fall in love.
Because the holy is in your place too. You open the gates into this enchanted land, your home, with hands muddied from the soil outside your house and a raw, scabby, and unprotected heart.”
— Victoria Loorz, 2021
Wild-church pastor and eco-spiritual director
Reader Responses
How was the earth holy to you as a child?
What helps you re-experience that awe now?
Our family's cement block home was against a foothill in the trailing vein of anthracite coal in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. When I'd climb into the mountain with my friend Ruth to pick blackberries and blueberries, we'd stop to drink from what everybody called The Holy Spring. It was a bubbling brook - babbling too - that came out of the rock layer, nestled by several green mosses. At 79, I still feel the awe of that sheltered setting. I would want to linger there to eat my snack, but my native friends who had grown up with their grandparents nearby, expressed holy fear of the Holy Spring that had been blessed by the local priest. They wanted to press on. And so we hiked on singing, "We're off to see the Wizard..."
By the time I reached high school bulldozers in search of a surface seam of coal had destroyed our path to the Spring. The Spring itself flowed under uprooted conifers and acid-loving shrubs. Now I know that the Holy Spring, the rhododendron and mountain laurel under the unpolluted sky; the Baltimore orioles that swung in their woven nests and the huge boulder where I fled to escape from chores were all Sacred. All holy as part of the "seamless plenum" of the cosmos. This memory and time in my messy pollinator garden watching birds chatter over the seeds bring back awe and spur me to speak for the earth at local commissioner meetings.
Ruth H.S., Enola, PA, USA
I felt a strong connection to animals as a child and in my adolescent years made it my mission to tell others about the plight animals experience, particularly through the industrialisation of food. The connection between human and (non-human) animal suffering became increasingly clearer to me too, and in my small corner of the world, I fought for both. I lost my way over time, it's easy to do that when it feels like you are continuously swimming against the current, particularly in your formative years. But now through the eyes of my young children, committing to spending more time in nature, and through my Quaker practice, those values are beating loudly once again. We are all one and connected. Embracing this concept brings me closer to the peace that my heart needs!
Anne Marie N., Bakewell, Derbyshire, UK
This Week’s Messages
Discover the Uses of Uselessness
Every Blade of Grass Receives God’s Care
What Our Quaker Work Is Striving Toward
Set Your Urgent Life Aside
Our Life’s Task
Life Is Sweet in All Creatures
Banner image: Gillian Pokalo
Read the source of today’s quote
