Develop a relationship with nature with a sitting spot
Our worship last Sunday reminded us that not all the news about our planet is bad news, and that making connections with nature is one path to joy. As poet, writer, and farmer Wendell Berry says, being in nature provides respite from the “despair of the world.” One way that you can turn off your mind and all its chatter is to tune into your natural surroundings by frequenting a sitting spot.
Find a place that you are comfortable and can return to regularly. Settle in and listen, feel, breathe, and slip out of your head and into your body. Put your feet on the ground or sit on the ground. Close your eyes and listen; open your eyes and see. Notice the weather and the position of the sun at the particular time of day and season you are there.
Going to the same spot, you will notice the daily and seasonal changes. Birds and other animals will also get to know that you are there and a part of the place too. When winter comes, either bundle up and go to your spot if you are able or find a good spot from a window.
You will deepen your skills of observation and understanding of your particular place in the world and how you interact with it. On any given visit, you may feel sunshine or be chased away by rain, but you will be the richer for developing a deeper relationship to your spot of the earth. As poet William Butler Yeats wrote, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” Enjoy the pieces of magic in your sitting spots!
Our service last Sunday offered another poet’s reflection on the benefit of connecting with nature at times where despair tries to creep in. Our choir presented these words by Wendell Berry beautifully in song last Sunday:
“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.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
