Nature Can Help Spirituality Remain REAL

There is a tendency in religion for various aspects of human experience to be ignored or denied. For the fundamentalist wing of each faith, the tendency is to deny the unity of all things, the value of silence, and the goodness of another person's religious tradition. For the mystical wing of those same religions, the temptation is to deny the individuality of things, the fact that one possesses a relative perspective even when experiencing the absolute, and a denial of the importance of ideas, words and theology in the life of the spirit. Contemplatives like myself have a tendency to live in denial about our experience of anger, even when others can still feel it. And all religious and spiritual traditions succumb to the temptation to deny the reality and sacredness of sexuality. 

Fortunately, however, frequent contact with Nature helps counteract these deficiencies by keeping us "real." Intense beauty, suffering, individuality, unity, sex, male and female realities, personality, non-personality, cooperation, competition - it's all there. Oh, and mosquitoes, rocks to smack your knee on, sunburn, frostbite, overpowering sunsets, and the beautiful Nature writings contained in the book you stashed in your backpack. It's all there!

Photos: (Yellow Senecio, pink Fireweed, White Cowbane, Black Lake and various waterfalls, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 1, 2015

Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you.

"Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you."

Henry David Thoreau

Photos: (Top) Alpine Bog Birch; (Middle) Waterfall, with Keyboard of the Winds and Pagoda Peak in the background; (Bottom) Subalpine Arnica and unnamed waterfall; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, September 1, 2015

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities . . .

"Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, - the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing people are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, - to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, - a temple open to the sky, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to process the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant . . . Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect. Think of admitting the details of a single case of the criminal court into our thoughts, to stalk profanely through their holy-of-holies for an hour, aye, for many hours! To make a very bar-room of the mind's inmost apartment, as if for so long the dust of the street had occupied us, - the very street itself, with all its travel, its bustle, and filth, had passed through our thoughts' shrine! Would it not be an intellectual and moral suicide? . . . We should exclude such trespassers from the only holy ground which can be sacred to us. It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers . . . If we have thus desecrated ourselves, - and who has not? - the remedy will be wariness and devotion to reconsecrate ourselves, and make once more a temple of the mind. We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and naive children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities . . . Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought that passes through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to deepen the ruts . . ."

Henry David Thoreau
"Life Without Principle"
1863

Photos: (Top) Rosy Paintbrush and Lulu Mountain, Never Summer Range, CO, August 4, 2015; (Middle) Colorado Columbine, Snow Lake, and Nokhu Crags, Never Summer Range, CO, August 4, 2015; (Bottom) Queen's Crown and waterfall, just below Sky Pond, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, August 15, 2015

Yosemite might well be called a church . . .

"I have not been at church a single time since leaving home [nine years earlier]. Yet this glorious Yosemite Valley might well be called a church . . . No temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life."

John Muir

Photos: (Top) Iron-stained glacier-polished granite at Lower Cathedral Lake, with Cathedral Peak in the background; (Middle) Cathedral Peak and Upper Cathedral Lake; (Bottom) Ferns and Vernal Falls. All three photos were taken in Yosemite National Park, CA on July 22 and 23, 2015

The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe.

"The pure conservative is fighting against the essence of the universe . . . [For] the very essence of real actuality - that is, of the completely real - is PROCESS."

Alfred North Whitehead
"Adventures of Ideas"

Photo: Cascades in Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park, WY, July 6, 2014

Waterfalls are the powerfully alluring hair of the Goddess!

For me, waterfalls are the "hair" of the Goddess - of Mother Earth, Sophia, Sacred Earth Woman, Gaia - and they never fail to lure me into a deeper love relationship with Her. The intense force of these roaring waterfalls during the Springtime melt speaks to me of the incredible power that a woman's hair - and physical presence, linked as it is to the Feminine Earth - has over my psyche, causing me to melt in passionate adoration, thereby fusing me with Her own vast reality. In the process, I realize that my appreciative gaze is actually the means by which SHE gazes on and admires Her amazing beauty, goodness and sacredness!

Photo: Serviceberry flowers, with Big Creek Falls in the background, Park Range, CO, June 19, 2015

All days are God's.

"We see no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, since to us all days are God's."

Ohiyesa
Santee Dakota

Photo: Limber Pine Cones and waterfall, Gem Lake Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, May 8, 2015

Listening to the talk rain makes . . .

"What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone in the forest, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. And as long as it talks I am going to listen."

Thomas Merton

We've had rain every day now for the past week, and waterfalls and streams are sprouting up in places where they are not usually present!

Photos: Ephemeral waterfalls and streams, (Top) west of Loveland and (Middle and Bottom) in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, May 8, 2015