Hey Friend
I love the outdoors! I have so many fond memories as a teenager going on camping trips, hiking, canoeing and just being in the woods. I love climbing trees. I love sitting around a campfire. I love watching a river flow. I even love seeing bugs and critters scurry along and do their thing. I love the moon at night and the sun rising in the morning. The crisp taste of air in the early morning is unmatched.
This week I was in a woods I’d never been before. There’s a uniqueness and similarity in every state and national park. Teddy Roosevelt gets a lot of recognition as the conservation president, but it began almost 70 years prior to him. After him, Woodrow Wilson was the one who actually established the National Park System. It’s not presidents I care about however, it’s preservation.
Walking on trails and looking out onto lakes that others have declared hallowed ground has a rejuvenating effect on my soul, which seems sacred. With so much happening in the world today, coupled with our relationships and thought life, we don’t just need an escape, we need daily renewal. Unless you live by one of these grand parks, accessing such an environment is unlikely.
How do we city dwellers find or create locations that replicate a similar experience? I’ve tried and unfortunately, I don’t think we can. Nature can’t effectively be virtually simulated at the moment. Not saying the future might not offer a Star Trek Holodeck possibility. But today, pictures of the great outdoors are our best efforts for serenity via landscapes and they don’t come close to capturing the same sensations.
In recent years there has been a movement in city governments to create bike paths, walking trails, build parks and expand outdoor opportunities.
Preservation fosters access to the sacred.
I’m not alone in my appreciation for nature’s ability to reinvigorate. Whether it’s a weekend at the lake, morning walks on a trail or a vacation to Garden of the Gods, Grand Canyon, Yosemite or the Appalachian Trail, we humans seem innately to know when in nature, we’re accessing something divine. The same is true if you’ve ever ventured to an ocean beach. The enormity and scope of something so majestic – beyond our capacity to create – we find speaks to our internal rhythms.
Those environments seem to create a pathway to peace. In our current season, Peace is certainly a Sacred respite. Tumultuous times exhaust us! The emotional bombardment at a continually increasing velocity wears our soul down.
It’s ironic that our hypersensitive culture dulls our sensitivity.
What other Sacred elements should we be consciously working to preserve?
Joy
Compassion
Generosity
Hope
Sincerity
Love
Though we can’t replicate nature, we can purposely incorporate patterns that preserve space for us…
Physical Space: Where oh where can we access daily within our proximity to exert and release energy?
Mental Space: Where oh where can our mind roam freely, considering both the serious and mundane?
Emotional Space: Where oh where can our dynamic range of feelings be expressed safely and openly?
Spiritual Space: Where oh where can our purpose be recalled and envisioned believing for the future?
Accessing these spaces certainly grants admission to the Sacred.
With full lives and so much activity filling our schedules, it might be that Time is the most sacred element of all. Go figure, it too is not something you or I can control, grasp or alter. We can utilize it to our advantage, but that’s about it.
Instigating Ideas
1. Go outside, be outside, stay outside.
2. Evaluate your calendar and label what practices preserve your access to the Sacred?
3. Create your own list of Sacred elements.
4. Identify rejuvenating activities.
With summer vacation season being altered by COVID we need to consider alternative ways to be refreshed. I’m hoping to find myself outside in the woods more frequently, whether at a local, state or national park.
I dare you to attempt a new pattern that enables you to preserve an identified Sacred element. Would love to hear what you shift around when you incorporate it and what internal aspect gets magnified. Please Share.