My place in nature: Meeting the sacred through the natural world

A Nature Exercise and Prayer

Paired with “Earth as Teacher,” Loretto Magazine, Spring/Summer 2024

Choose a place in nature that you will be able to visit each day or each week. This could be an area of a local park or a wildlife center, a garden allotment or a space in your backyard. You will come to know this space by paying attention to the plants, animals and humans that inhabit it.  

Carol Lee Sanchez offers inspiration to those who wish to learn to view the world as our true home and all creatures as our relatives, “When we seek the beauty and wonder of creation, creation responds by bringing more beauty and wonder for us to be glad about and thankful for.” The Navajo people call this the Beauty Way, and all North American tribes have similar philosophies.

Where you live now was once home to your Native American ancestors hundreds or possibly thousands of years ago. Who were they? What is their history of the place where you live? That history is also your legacy. How did the Indigenous ancestors come to be in that place? Did they originate in the east or north and migrate? Maybe they originated in that very place. Answering these questions will give you a different perspective of your present land base. How did you come to this place? When did your family (parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents) arrive? Where did they originate? Write your own migration story. Trace the wanderings of your own people and, if you can, the reasons they or you finally settled in the place you now call home. Doing this can give you a stronger and more conscious connection to your present homeplace.

Next, identify prominent landmarks surrounding your homeplace (not human-made marks). According to their historical traditions, how did the Indigenous peoples relate to these landmarks? What significance was assigned to them (for example, special sacred places for receiving visions, for locating healing plants of the region)? Find out what the original plant and creature life in your region was — the ecological interaction and interdependence between plants, animals, insects, birds, air and winds, water and earth. What has changed about your environment since European contact? How have the creatures and plants adapted to the changes? Center yourself in the region where you make your home and introduce yourself to the spirits of your place. Greet the plant, creature, mineral, wind, water, earth and sky spirits. Make a song to them. Do this in a sacred manner and you may be surprised by what you will begin to notice happening around you. If your intention to become connected to your land base is sincere, the resulting experiences will be very rewarding and personally enriching. If you will follow through on a few of these suggestions, you will attune yourself to your homeplace, and if you make it a point to acknowledge your local non-human surroundings on a daily basis (preferably several times a day), your environment will begin to respond to you according to your thoughts. Welcome all your relatives into your immediate family.

Approach each day in a sacred manner and with a healthy sense of humor. Our relatives will help us if we ask them to help. They will forgive us if we ask for their forgiveness and make a serious commitment not to repeat our previous mistakes. If we “send our voices out to them,” as Wallace Black Elk suggests –— if we can believe they are our relatives — “they will instruct us as Earth Mother, Corn Mother, Water Sister, Rain God, the Thunder Beings and the Wind Brothers did for our ancestors, so long ago.” If we all open our hearts and minds to this rich legacy, we may discover many creative solutions to our ecological dilemmas.

With thanks to Sandra Hareld CoL, Ph.D., for her adaptation of an exercise originally developed by Carol Christ, Ph.D., for an ecofeminism class at California Institute of Integral Studies. Exercise used with permission.

Prayer:

The Light of God
by Susan Brecht

The light of God surrounds me,
guiding me on my path.

It opens my eyes to wonder,
as the world around me bursts into color.

It fills me with joy and awe
at the beauty of God’s creation.

Leaves shimmer and dance in the breeze
as the light of God shines on them.

The rocks above grace the skyline.

The light dances on the water
as it cascades down the mountain.

The light of God surrounds me,
as birds soar overhead,
and ground squirrels scamper across my path.

I see that all nature is filled with God’s light.
It is a part of everything.

The light of God allows all the worries and cares I carry with me
to fall away,
as I rest in the present moment,
at one with nature and God.

The light of God surrounds us all.
Open our eyes to see and give thanks.

Worship Words, used with permission.

To read all the articles in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Loretto Magazine, click here.