Pathways to Nature, Pathways to Spirit

In March 2020, the COVID pandemic hit, and I was six months pregnant. I was suddenly, like the rest of the world, confined to my own home, which fortunately had a small yard and gardens. Tending the gardens and taking daily neighborhood walks with a nearby friend became my primary activities outside of remote work. Despite the terror of the unknowns of the pandemic, the climbing death count, and the worry of what my local hospital might be like when my due date rolled around, we had never noticed such a beautiful spring. Each day, a new tree rose into blossom. Each day, a new dooryard flower bed came into bloom. Time for society had seemed to stop, but nature kept its phenological march. Isolated from my friends, Friends, students, colleagues, and family members, nature became my dearest companion.

It was during these walks, both before and after my daughter was born, that I decided to further my education. I had found a passion to protect nature and a desire to share my love for it, and so I began a master’s program in conservation ecology and community. Worried about climate change and biodiversity loss, I read scientific articles about how to promote the changes in behavior required to address these massive global challenges. One thing that popped out to me was that fear was an unpredictable motivator for action. Fear can inspire action, but it can also lead to despair and giving up. But when people feel deeply connected to nature, when they have the emotional sense beyond the technical fact that they can’t live without it, when they love nature, they will go to almost any length to protect it.

For a course project, I enjoyed recording a podcast with two artist friends. Calling it Pathways to Nature, it was inspired by the work of the Nature Connectedness Research Group of the University of Derby in the United Kingdom. The group conducted large studies of children and adults on what the behavioral outcomes of nature connectedness are, and what the conditions are that foster those feelings. They found that feeling connected to nature gives people a sense of well-being, that life is worthwhile, and that there are five pathways that enhance those feelings: connecting to nature via the senses, emotion, beauty, meaning, and compassion. The five pathways to nature connectedness refer to ways of paying attention to the interaction between nature and ourselves.

Senses

Noticing nature with our whole body and our senses is a simple way to drop into the present moment. Leaves are dancing in the wind and we zip our jacket up a little higher. We feel the kiss of movement on our skin, smell the smells, and hear the sounds dancing around in every distance. Attuning to present moment conditions gets us into our bodies and out of our heads, connecting to the world with our bodies and hearts, not just minds or through screens. Noticing our own aliveness connects us to the life all around us.

One practice is to find a nature spot. It could be in a park or a backyard. Get into a comfortable position. Take a few deep breaths. Sit quietly for a moment. Consider closing your eyes to focus on the other senses first. Then tune into your skin. What do you feel? Take a few more breaths, a few more moments, and tune into your sense of smell. What different smells are around you? Open your mouth and notice if you taste anything. Take a few more silent breaths, and tune into the sounds around you, near and far. Finally, gently open your eyes and gaze around you, noticing what you see.

Emotion

Nature makes us feel good. I have noticed that when I’m feeling down, even a short walk in the park or in my neighborhood, giving attention to the plants and critters, can give me a profound mood shift. Noticing the emotional benefits we get from nature is self-reinforcing. When we realize that nature makes us feel good, we want more of it. Nature walks, which combine bodily movement and breathing while noticing nature, feel as effective as therapy, or maybe more so. As a Friend at my meeting said, “Walks in the woods renew our souls.”

In addition to shifting negative emotions, nature has the power to generate positive ones. I’ve been discussing awe and wonder with various friends lately. There are few places besides nature that I experience those powerful, positive emotions. My artist friends remind me that art, music, and poetry can inspire awe. My Quaker friends mention awe at being in the presence of babies or during the passage of life. But for me, awe is most readily felt paddling on the water, watching the full moon rise over the Mississippi River, seeing epic mountain or canyon vistas, or watching the murmuration of birds.

A practice for noticing nature’s emotional power is simply to notice our emotional state before, during, and after nature contact. Just bringing some gentle awareness to nature’s effect on our emotional state helps us appreciate it and reinforces its impact on our lives.

Beauty

We live in a beautiful world! In my classroom, I framed a large print of these words painted on a wooden sign surrounded by lush tropical greens. A classmate took the photo at the Belize Zoo, where I studied abroad as part of my master’s program. The trip was life-changing, as much for the opening to beauty and my heart to love as for the intellectual endeavor.

There is a theory called the biophilia hypothesis that states humans are wired—literally evolved—to love life and nature, and thus find it beautiful. To tap into this pathway, we can practice fine-tuning our awareness to beauty, to pause and take it in. Taking pictures may be a way to stop and capture the moment, save it for later or share with others, as long as the photography doesn’t distance us from the experience. The beauty pathway can go two ways: taking in and appreciating beauty or channeling beauty through the creation of art to share. Media like photography and painting are classic nature art media, but my favorite nature art is gently manipulating nature itself, as with the art of Andy Goldsworthy. He makes rock cairns and leaf art, lines up sticks, and makes sculpture from ice. His work is ephemeral, though he records it with photography.

Perhaps the ephemerality of nature is what underscores its beauty. That flowers decay is what makes them precious. Every sunset is different, and it only lasts a few minutes each day. I notice the beauty of clouds and the big skies of the Midwest, even when I’m driving on the interstate.

A practice my artist friends use for noticing beauty in nature involves zooming in and out with our awareness, noticing expanse to details, the macro to the micro. We can do this with our eyes or our ears. It is an artistic practice as well as one of connecting and centering ourselves amid nature and the beauty around us.

Meaning

The fourth pathway is meaning. How do we make meaning from nature? What do natural phenomena mean in our lives? As our lives, cultures, and language are built around nature, we reflect nature in our metaphors. We have roots that run deep, and we sow the seeds of our intentions. Our holiday celebrations are built around seasonal events, like northern hemisphere cultures lighting lights and coming together with friends and family around the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year.

In addition to the cultural meanings of nature, there are deeply personal ones. For example, people assign natural events as a messenger. One Friend at my meeting said, “My mother loved cardinals. Whenever I see cardinals, I think of my mother saying hello.” We associate aspects of nature with the people we knew who connected with that aspect. Once at a memorial for a Friend’s wife, the widower spoke about his wife’s love for trees in all seasons: whether they be full of blossoms in the spring; lush green of summer; turning red and gold in fall; or in winter, the lace of bare branches against the sky. I’d never even met his wife, but I feel connected to her life when I see the lace of trees against the sky in the winter. The metaphor has given the image meaning for me, which connects me to the awe of the passage of life.

To activate the meaning pathway, notice what nature means to you. I love the practice of dedicating oneself to a small-but-daily noticing of nature, whether it be committing to watching the sunset every single day, or simply noticing a particular nature spot whenever you’re near it. I say hello to the redbud tree in front of my house as I walk to my car each morning. Noticing what’s different about the tree, or myself in that moment, helps connect me to the cycles of nature. When it’s covered in crunchy-sour purple-pink flowers, it means it’s my birthday season.

Compassion

The final pathway, compassion, is about service to nature, taking care of what has taken care of us. Caring for nature with collective action, such as a community garden workday, is even more powerful because while we are acting in service to nature, we connect with other humans and the part of them that is connecting to nature. Working together reinforces nature’s value; that it is worth taking care of.

Many friends and Friends I know garden and talk about what joy it gives them to tend the earth. These friends prefer gentle, organic practices that foster biodiversity and allow for nature’s whims. Giving away the surplus food or flowers produced from nature builds community. I have been a gardener for over 20 years, and it is tending gardens and arranging flowers from them that put me in the flow state more than anything else. I lose myself and all sense of time. One of my deep joys and therapies is to cut and arrange flower bouquets for memorial meetings held in our meetinghouse.

The loving-kindness meditation comes from the Buddhist tradition, and it involves centering the mind and progressively extending loving-kindness, or compassion, from the self outward. In the podcast we recorded together, Sarah Paulsen led a version of this meditation, repeating the phrases, “May I be peaceful; may I be kind; may I be free from suffering; and may I live with ease,” shifting the “I” to “they” as we progressed from focusing on ourselves to a loved one, a neutral party, a person or issue that challenges us, and finally extended a loving-kindness blessing to the earth itself: “May you be peaceful; may you be kind; and may you live with ease.”

All of the pathways to connect to nature involve noticing nature through various lenses. What we pay attention to increases in significance in our lives. Noticing how nature shows up in your spiritual life can increase your moments of connection with the Divine as much as your connection to nature. Over the years, I have noticed when Friends share their moments of feeling deep spiritual awareness, they are just as often in the woods, a park, or their gardens as in a gathered meeting.

The nature moment from last year I cherish most was paddling around the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge during a solo excursion from Illinois Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions. The marshy lakes adjoining the Illinois River host over 200 species of birds and are filled with wildflowers in June. I took a break from the business meetings and workshops and headed on my own out onto the water, seated on a borrowed paddleboard. I was primed by my settled-down attitude from yearly meeting to connect with nature as Spirit. Sometimes the state of silence is loud! There are buzzing bugs, croaking frogs, birds calling, and water splashing. I moderated my temperature by hanging my legs over the sides, sunk in the cool water. I laughed at myself getting turned around and stuck in some reeds. I watched life: waterfowl family life, photosynthesis, and the synthesis of the ecosystem. My connection to the earth and Spirit, restored.