HEALING IN NATURE

I once read a quote by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) professor and author, who wrote: “I find too (do you?) that hard days drive one back on Nature. I don’t mean walks . . . but little sights and sounds seen at windows in odd moments.”
I only know that when the difficult and confusing press upon me… I too, head for nature. Even if it just our backyard where the bird feeder, trees, bushes, flowers and vines are growing. Getting a little further away to a river, creek, tall trees, meadows, rocks, wildflowers and wild grasses is even better. What I think happens in these experiences is we return to our Edenic beginning and our deepest DNA is enabled and repaired.
We can “listen with the ear of our heart,” as St. Benedict of Nursia (480-547) wrote in the ‘Prologue to the Rule of St. Benedict.’ With this kind of listening, we can hear the voice of the Father… and be healed in our natural world by simply being present.
A tall, straight Sugar Pine with its huge hanging pinecones waving gently in the breeze can repair a lot of damage and confusion that might be present in our inner person.
“Consider how the wildflowers grow: They don’t labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these.” Jesus