Mother
nature
cradles me
to grave.

I did it today. Went back out. The snow, falling thick, tapping against my black umbrella, soaking my jeans. Bronze needles softening my tread. Smell of death, smell of cool life. Constancy of sound like a rushing creek… but it was only the trees tapping back patty-cake to the snow falling thick. And, yes, I breathed differently, as I always did during that year of every-day-outdoors. I am breathing differently still.

How you say this: “When I try to describe, analyze and explain what my spirit encounters in the presence of God sometimes I feel as though I’m binding up that experience by deigning to use mere words; other times I can hear myself elevating my experience to a mystical alternate plane of existence.”

This helps me understand both my attraction and my discomfort with some of the words May uses. Yes, these things seem to be beyond words. I find myself groping too. Recently one of the middle-schoolers I teach asked me why I believe in God and words just seemed too weak. How do we explain what it feels like to fall in love? What are the right words to peg a passion? Or how your heart melts the first time you hold your newborn?

Some things, as you say, just have to be experienced.

And, nature as grave? nature as cradle? Wow. Beautifully said.

Thanks for joining our discussion.

Joj0–how did I miss you? I like this one too.

I don’t know how May could adequately communicate what his spirit encountered in the wilderness. Certainly he felt flashes of verbal helplessness as he was trying to write this book. I’m grateful he took a stab at expressing it though- no matter what pronouns he settled on- because it’s been like listening to my own echo. (A much more articulate echo, at that.)

When I try to describe, analyze and explain what my spirit encounters in the presence of God sometimes I feel as though I’m binding up that experience by deigning to use mere words; other times I can hear myself elevating my experience to a mystical alternate plane of existence. Neither is the case, neither is exactly intentional. It’s kind of a “you just had to be there” situation. This road from the eye to the heart is occasionally a road on which turn offs and side trips to the intellect are difficult.

When May talks about realizing he left his sleeping bag at home, I enjoyed his intuitive approach to the problem. He changed from preparing for every imaginable eventuality (which keeps so very many of us from actually going into nature and having any kind of experience at all), to laughing at himself, shrugging his shoulders, and willingly moving into a new facet of his nature adventure- Camping Without A Sleeping Bag.
Nature can help us learn flexibility and intuitiveness.

Being in nature, for all it’s buzzing and activity, has quite a slowing power. The intuition pays off when I’m s-l-o-w and unhurried with myself and my environment, so I really think Mays hits the nail on the head here.

I sense myself responding to it, wanting to gently enter gentleness, desiring to be as hospitable to the wilderness as it is to me
Brilliant lines.
I wonder if mankind abuses nature because we don’t understand it’s hospitality; it’s gentleness. Obviously, nature is ferocious at times too, and it’s when nature becomes our grave that we seem to take the most notice. When it crushes our homes, floods our fields or inconveniences our weekend plans. Delivers us a bee sting, a rash, a frigid night without a sleeping bag, a sunburn.

But nature is our cradle as well.
How easy to ignore nature when it’s gentle and hospitable.

(I also wonder if mankind’s abuse of nature rises from the same “voiceless victim” perspective many abusers take toward the unborn, young children, the elderly, the handicapped and even the animal world.
Thinking that if the victim can’t tell anyone what’s happening, then somehow we can get away with it. )

Liz! I’m so glad you’ve joined us! I love your post.

Sam–Thanks for stopping by. Nancy’s comment made me smile. That slowing down thing is hard