landscape as prayer...

In a posthumous publication,

Walking in Wonder, John O'Donohue writes about many things - including the spirituality of landscapes. I have long known that I am enraptured by streams in a woodland. Small rivers can take my breath away, too. But I am especially awed upon finding an unanticipated stream flowing through the heart of the forest. Di tells me I become peculiarly silent upon such a discovery and continue our walk imbued with a serenity boarding on the mystical. Since taking stock of truly being grounded in the gentle hills of Western Massachusetts, certain trees have come to communicate a sacred wisdom to me, too. O'Donohue notes that there is a certain "symmetry in a tree."

Between its inner life and its outer life, between its rooted memory and its external active presence. A tree grows up and grows down at once and produced enough branches to incarnate its wild divinity. It doesn't limit itself - it reaches for the sky and it reaches for the source, all in one seamless kind of movement. 

He, like me, has come to trust that landscape "is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you." One of those shifts for me is how I pray. In addition to quiet contemplation and carefully constructed liturgical prayer, I have come to realize that simply being still outside - taking it all in without movement or comment - allows the earth itself to lead me into prayer. Imagine my delight upon finding O'Donohue's confirmation:

One of the lovely ways to pray is to take your body out into the landscape and to be still in it. Your body is made out of clay, so your body is actually a miniature landscape that has got up from under the earth and is now walking on the normal landscape. If you go out for (a period of time), your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.

I think of the Iona Community's Eucharistic Prayer wherein by celebrating holy communion we become "bone of your bone, O God, and flesh of your flesh." That is, we are not only embraced by Christ, but Mother Earth and Holy Spirit as well. O'Donohue adds: "I feel that landscape is always at prayer, and its prayer is seamless. It is always enfolded in the presence (of the sacred) Every stone, every field is a different place. When your eye becomes attentive to this panorama of differentiation, then you realize what a privilege it is to actually BE here."

Now that Hurricane Henri has mostly come and gone, leaving us with another 2" of precipitation, I look forward to a week of being outside. There are still a few carpentry repairs to be prayerfully made as well as sacramentally tending the yard and garden after the storm. By week's end we'll be ready to head into the city to celebrate the glorious 4th birth of blessed Anna.