Touchstones: Experiences in Nature as Encounters with the Divine
This essay originally appeared in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction(Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2018).
These days I need the woods. I need to steal away from everyday pressures and quagmires to wander and wonder within creation. While I cannot quite wholly explain why this feels so natural and important, I am coming to appreciate that experiences in nature restore my perspective. In the woods I encounter touchstones, signs of what is true and genuine that teach me how to remember and recognize the presence of the divine elsewhere.One evening I was surprised by the sound of something moving cautiously but steadily from a high knoll of cedars toward a lower stand of young pines. A snap of a twig and the rustling brush suggested a critter larger than the usual scurrying red squirrel. I crept in that direction under the cover of trees until I saw the first doe. She was large and watchful as she made her way even closer. Then, startled perhaps by my kneeling to the ground or the breeze carrying my scent to her, she stopped abruptly not 15 yards away. A second doe, along with three fawns, eased to a more casual stop. The leader pinned me with her gaze as the others began eating. Two of the fawns even laid down on the trail. For the next twenty minutes, I absorbed as a holy moment what must have seemed to these deer nothing more than an ordinary evening’s grazing and rest.I am not alone in appreciating moments like these. It is a marvel how quickly people can call to mind their own stirring experiences in nature and the passion with which they describe how swiftly such experiences attune them to the divine. What’s more, I find people are eager to explore how these outdoor experiences become touchstones that enable us to better recognize and respond to the divine in other aspects of our lives. When we as listeners and leaders befriend our own touchstone experiences in nature, we practice awakening to our selves and the world, and we prepare to accompany others who yearn to do the same.
Awakening to Our Selves and the World
It might be a stretch to claim that I saw the face of God revealed in five deer that evening in the woods, but I do know that I felt drawn into proximity with something natural and real, so stirring that it invited me out of my own inner workings for a time. My attention became caught up in an experience completely unlike my everyday figuring, intending, and striving. In these ways, I did sense the nearness of God and became more familiar with what truth and authenticity might be. For twenty minutes, I was apprenticed to a way of being grounded in a world far larger than my own managed self. This touchstone experience awakened me anew to perspectives I want to infuse my soul and my actions: one and many, life and death, purpose and mystery. That kind of awakening, I believe, teaches us how to recognize what is holy and to align our lives accordingly.
One and Many
The human body responds instinctively to natural beauty. I could not avoid following the sound of the deer, just like children are hushed by a bunny or turkey hobbling through the grass, and just like adults immediately chuckle at a barred owl’s curdled hoot and then lean in to the silence, waiting for the next call. Too often we pass by one another inattentively. Experiences in nature escort us into a sense of connectedness with all things, no longer pretending to be masters of our days, but accepting our place among guests journeying this land together. If you have ever waited quietly in the woods, you may have noticed things slowly coming alive again. Once the birds and squirrels decide you pose no threat, they return to their busyness. Waiting at edges like these reminds me that I am part of a larger order that continuously rustles and adventures.When I sit long enough, I also begin to imagine countless landscapes across the globe, each filled with native creatures and flora and fauna. While humans of varied races keep building their lives, the natural world beneath them and around them continues going about its day.[i]We are one of many creatures dwelling and finding sacred moments in one of many stunningly beautiful places. Such whiffs of wholesome vision, to the extent that they travel with me from the woods to other places, help me remain grounded in a perspective that is organic, connected and alive.
Life and Death
At least as I experience organizations and relationships, life comes more easily than death. We seem to gravitate toward what is enlivening like new projects and ideas that promise momentum, almost as quickly as we try to avoid clumsy conversations or long-anticipated endings. It is hard to say “no” to someone we respect or to close a program we have known to be fruitful until now. Exceptional individuals may have the gifts and fortitude to remain grounded and focused in both circumstances, but I, for one, rely often on experiences in nature to renew my capacities for the essential and challenging rhythms of life and death.I took the fawns to be delightful signs of these deer’s health and vigor. They brought joy and liveliness into my day. At the same time, those vulnerable beauties were being protected by mothers who held a strong sense of real dangers—like a bearded man kneeling too close for comfort. The elders snorted and stamped at me occasionally, as if to remind me of the wariness that has enabled them to survive more than one hunting season. The liveliness I was witnessing was juxtaposed with a natural sense of limitations. The sight of the young and the old deer, experiencing this moment in remarkably different ways, recommits me to appreciate life and death bound together as equally influential aspects of the same journey.
Purpose and Mystery
To observe creatures in their own habitat is to learn earthy purposefulness against the backdrop of galactic mystery. I saw the young deer taking in the setting sun with their mothers standing guard and I became convinced that these creatures are living fully into their being.[ii]Free of the trappings and burdens of modern human life, they cannot help but do the simple things they were made to do—to rise, to forage, to tread carefully through the forest, to reproduce, to rest, to do it all again. It is a simple life, but one integrated into the ecosystem’s well-being. I am inspired by their witness to attend to the simple yet essential things I am made to do within the wider mystery.What gives human choice and purposefulness its proper perspective is the experience of mystery. Nature whisks us to the threshold of wonder and humility and, as mystics across the religious traditions will attest, being welcomed like this into a sense of this mystery is sheer gift. We cannot power our way toward mystery any more than we can force our way into a forest and expect the wildlife to ignore our loud interruption and perform for us. Instead, we are caught up in awakening. We absorb, if only for a precious moment, the awareness of our modest yet invaluable place within a grace that holds all things together. This kind of grace-filled hopefulness and gratitude is what I want to carry out of the woods.Encounters with the divine do not require a full twenty minutes or five deer within a stone’s throw. A single bird call or crashing wave could do the same. Circumstances and durations are sure to vary as much as our locales and dispositions, but touchstone experiences tend to foster perspectives like these—one and many, life and death, purpose and mystery. And while these encounters with the divine offer personal inspiration and renewal, these touchstone experiences in nature also prepare us to accompany others.
Accompanying Others
Listeners and leaders who are shaped by the outdoors share the privileged responsibility of helping others recognize and savor their experiences in nature as encounters with the divine. There is no magic formula for getting this right, except the practice of savoring such experiences ourselves. Over time we gain attentiveness and language that help us name our experiences and give them expression through our lives. To whatever degree we have practiced the patterns ourselves, listeners and leaders can guide others as they grow in their capacity to honor, learn, and embrace.
Honor
We serve people well when we begin by helping them honor their own experience. Especially when it comes to experiences in nature, it can be all too easy for a person to dismiss a moment as insignificant or to assume that someone else’s encounter would have been more profound. They might say, “A real [birder, forester, hunter, or outdoorswoman] would have been so much better at this than me.” Statements like these become disempowering when we defer our own unique sense of the divine to others we presume to be more expert, or when we pass by a gift, pressing down the trail looking for something better.[iii]Increasingly, as a spiritual director and retreat leader, I am seeing the importance of helping people slow down on the trail to honor their experience in nature. Like a guide coming upon tracks in the mud, we can call attention to and cultivate curiosity about the things we find together. We can stoop down with those we serve and invite them to settle in to wonder. Our role is not to become another intimidating expert, but to be a faithful companion who models ways to honor that this particular track on this singular day may be offering an encounter with the divine.
Learn
Once a person has begun to honor an experience in nature as something sacred, the process of learning can begin. Having knelt down and acknowledged that this is a moment worthy of attention, we then tune in our senses to explore the experience itself. Describe the moment. What do you see, hear, feel? How do you notice your body responding? Surely some encounters will remain beyond words, but the learning process includes the adventure of trying to name the raw material of a potential touchstone.With the raw material in hand we can begin to wonder, What am I being invited to see? What does this mean for me and for how I live? This is not necessarily a brief process. We may continue to learn from touchstone experiences for the remainder of our days, and while spiritual direction might help us practice reflecting upon the story, I am confident that encounters like these often offer more than can be contained in any single session. The reader may notice, for example, that I continue to draw wisdom and inspiration from my time with the five deer in the woods and I am grateful to have conversation partners who help me stay at that process of learning from the encounter.
Embrace
There is at least one more movement that brings balance to our need to honor an experience in nature and to learn from it as an encounter with the divine. The movement is to embrace. This act might happen at any stage of storytelling or exploration because it mirrors the spontaneity of awakening to purposefulness and mystery. To embrace, in this context, is almost an involuntary response to waves of grace, not unlike the way we cannot help but stop or creep closer when we hear a sound in the woods. All becomes quiet as we embrace the moment with our full attention and readiness.In the course of conversation about an experience in nature, a person might be led to embrace more fully their sense of calling and personal agency. I have seen this happen when a person’s encounter with the divine in nature leads them to say, “I now know what I need to do.” Listeners and leaders can then be helpful in clarifying newfound purpose or in celebrating renewed perspective and motivation. I have also seen a person led to a kind of embrace that looks more like resting in the contemplative beauty of an encounter with the divine. In those moments, our role as companions is to help hold the space, to join her or him in silence, and to model heart-felt gratitude. I trust our own contemplation in the woods (or field, or stream, or meadow) prepares us especially well for this.On the best of days, when we as listeners and leaders have helped others to honor, learn from, and embrace their holy experiences in nature, what difference does it make for our lives and our world? What are we hoping to accomplish by encouraging people to slow down and savor the beauty they experience in creation and to harvest the wisdom they encounter there? My sense is that we are participating in one of the most important revolutions of our time.
Becoming Touchstones
On a separate occasion with members of the same family of deer, I failed to be fully present. I heard them before I saw them, but I did not carefully, respectfully make myself ready. Instead, I fumbled for a camera thinking I should take a picture of them for my kids. This arguably good intention had the effect you might imagine. The deer came briefly into view and then bounded away. This second encounter lacked the contemplative substance that had touched me so deeply in the first, and offers a caution for our future.Listeners and leaders are not seeking to equip people to capture, confine, or bind up experiences of the divine in nature or to distill from them nuggets of truth to be dispensed into other settings. We do not go to the woods, or the beach, or the mountains to steal and re-purpose wisdom. The real revolution, I believe, is this: we go into the woods to be changed, to become increasingly grounded in the divine. What we want most to offer our children is not some collection of pixels, but a modeled sense of being. We want to become touchstones ourselves that help them find their own sense of the divine and of their own physical and spiritual belonging in this world.Imagine a world in which an increasing number of people are tuned into the divine made visible in nature. Imagine listeners and leaders who are increasingly committed to helping those same people savor and share their encounters as good and beautiful touchstones.[iv]There would be poets, artists, elders, teachers, and advocates fostering these values for the sake of future generations. We, my friends, are already here.
For a rich reflection on this sentiment, see Tom Hennen’s poem “The Life of a Day” from
Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems
(Port Townsend, Washington, USA: Copper Canyon Press, 1997).
I suspect that this idea may not be unlike Duns Scotus’s (1266-1308) notion of “this-ness” and would welcome comment from those who have studied his philosophy in greater detail. Email
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Participants in the workshop
Into the Woods: Harvesting Nature’s Wisdom for Listening and Leading
helped compile an initial list of role models and resources well worth further exploration.