nature's healing balm - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: stillness and awe


A friend and I were talking about a recent transition we had made. During that time, we both needed to find healing and a new direction. And we both took off to the outdoors to give ourselves a space to do so.

I have always found it nourishing and reaffirming to be out in the open prairie, or under a pitch black sky looking at the startling clarity of stars and planets. These are the things that prompt my thought to consider the largeness and tenderness of God.


But I also know that wherever I am, I have my thought. And thought can be aligned with God in any situation, under any condition, and in any place.

I love this prayer and promise from the Bible: "For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee."

The fortitude of mountains, the yielding and playful spontaneity of rivers, and the permanence of the very air we breathe teach us lessons about God. And the biggest lesson is that strength, spontaneity and permanence is everywhere God is, everywhere we are.

Click here for an incredible display of life on earth.

What prompts you to feel God's presence?



To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right!

breathless

Spiritual resource to share: moments that take your breath away

"All nature teaches of God's love to man...." Yes. This I know to be true. To take in the awe of a mountaintop, the stillness of a lake and the tenderness of a hummingbird, and then to realize that the same Creator of these intimate and infinitely lovely creations is the same Creator who has created us - and has created us in His/Her own image and likeness. Wow (but said in a hushed and curiously, quizzically, wondrous way)

w o w.

I have been cataloguing in my mind the many times when the natural world reminds me of God's love and when nature blows me away with its power, beauty and grace. There was the time:

While driving to pick up my son from school, I turned a corner on a lonely highway and startled two bald eagles. They flew up and continued flying - one on each side about five feet from my car. We kept moving together for a surprisingly long time, until they realized they couldn't gain on me and flew off.

When we lived on a small lake, our neighbors across the way raised white homing pigeons and trained them. On clear and warm days, I could watch these white birds flying together in circles above our lake.

In this same area, there was another couple who raised caribou and lived beyond the forest preserves from us. On cold and crisp nights in the dead of winter, I could hear caribou bellow out their soulful calls to one another.

In the spring, I walked my sons down our gravel road through the woods to their bus stop. Whenever the weather was warm enough for another bloom of mosquitoes to hatch, we could count on an army of dragonflies to swoop in and help us decrease the mosquito population. The dragonflies were so numerous, that we could stretch out our arms and the dragonflies would tickle as they landed on them. The sun glinted off their wings. We giggled all the way to the bus stop.

Our current home is fringed by a creek that joins two larger lakes. In the warmer months, a loon couple flies over from one lake to another in the morning and evening, giving their haunting calls which start and end our days.

Glittering snowfalls, booming ice on a lake, the crystal clarity of a star lit night, it just doesn't end! What have been some of your moments?



All photos by Gabe Korinek and copyrighted

To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.