What I heard when I went Outside

Today I found myself driving by a Forest Preserve while I was alone, while I had 30 minutes to spare. Inertia fought hard, telling me to stay in the car, keep driving. I stopped.

When I was in college I used to take what I called an annual "Personal Day." I would skip a class (a big deal for me) in the earliest days of spring and wander around campus in the newly returned warmth, marveling at the signs of life. Wandering aimlessly, listening, watching, drinking in, learning.

Today I did that again.

Someone I've read recently - maybe Joseph Campbell - says that anything can be an object of meditation if you really look at it and really see it. I have found this to be so true. Every detail of life in its present moment is a wonder. The few sprigs of grass peeking through the brown; the countless naked twigs pointing towards the sun; even the airplane high above, leaving behind a double trail of white in its wake, a zipper in the sky. All of it enchanted me. Everywhere I looked was something that drew me in and enveloped me.

All of this somehow is speaking, teaching. There is wisdom here, pronounced so loudly without words. Wisdom we desperately need. Wisdom proclaiming the glory of God.

We so often see nature as apart from ourselves, Other. We go out to see nature like we go to the store or to the movies. And yet we are nature. Every rock and puddle and bug and plant is part of me. The sun's energy shines on our Earth, taken in by the plants that receive it and convert it into life and energy. These plants are then taken by us for food, or eaten by an animal which we then eat, and in a wondrous miracle of Creation the energy that builds and sustains my body's cells is the same that is in the flora and fauna - and soil and sunlight - of my environment. Yet how much do we know about the cycles of life that we are part of? How much at home do we feel in them?

Today I walked, listening, watching, learning. I heard the ground sing as my footprints left indents in the squishy rain-and-snow soaked ground. I watched a robin sit and sing regally in her tree. I heard a choir of frogs filling their swampy cathedral. I looked at the garbage littered here and there and contemplated that even these things will ultimately be returned to nature by the slow processes of nature; and I thought about the time involved in centuries of patient work that Creation does and how our lives are but a breath.

I looked at the new life awakening all around me, only a hint, just barely visible. I wonder what new life is being awakened within me.

Thank you.