Explore how nature becomes a place to encounter God through wonder, attentiveness, and a contemplative gaze, plus practical steps to begin.
I was ambling along the Minnehaha Track on the outskirts of Fox (South Island) when suddenly there it was in front of me. I saw a tree sculpture. A human figure was hugging the trunk of the tree, and the trunk was in turn enveloping and nurturing the person.
As I contemplated the scene, it became a parable. It reminded me of James 4:8 – “Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.” It also spoke to me of how people and nature always thrive in a relationship of mutual manaakitanga: a two-way conduit of respect, care and protection.
Beyond these immediate insights, the incident is illustrative of how we may encounter and connect with God in the context of the natural world. Reading contemplatively and prayerfully, God’s presence in the Book of Creation has been practised informally for as long as we’ve walked on the earth. Many of the psalms, for example, come from someone deeply connected with God in creation.
Connecting With God in Nature
For me, contemplative meditation to connect and dialogue with Divine presence in a place, object or natural phenomenon (Jeremiah 23:24) and come to a deeper understanding of God through nature (Romans 1:20) has long been an important part of my spiritual journey. God communicates most meaningfully to my heart through the beauty, grandeur, space, silence, symbolism and parable of the natural world.
I connect with God in nature in two main ways.
Two Ways I Connect
- Analogy – the similarity of two things, the mutual resemblance and the transferring of information regarding one to the other. We move from what we see and know to what we do not see and do not know.
- Nature affects me. It touches my mind, will and emotions. It elicits such things as awe, love, serenity, joy, sorrow, humility, and much else.
Katrina’s Chapter: Fostering a Contemplative Gaze
In this realm, my wife, Katrina and I are on the same page. In 2023 she was invited to contribute a chapter to a forthcoming book on spiritual practices. The book has now been published. The title is “It Works”, edited by Philip and Angelika Halstead. Her chapter is called “Fostering A Contemplative Gaze Toward Nature”.
Katrina relates her growing awareness of how nature reveals the divine and has been an increasingly meaningful context for sacred encounters. For those who are open and perceptive of its messages, she says, creation bears God’s fingerprint or footprint. Spending quality time in nature can open our hearts and minds toward the Creator.
How do you engage with God’s creation as a spiritual practice? To answer that question, she describes the journey whereby this spiritual practice gradually emerged in her own life. She invites the reader to intentionally pursue and reflect, and offers many helpful practical guidelines arising out of her own experience. The key for her is gazing, noticing and responding. Habitual practice of these three things has huge transformative potential.
Katrina Outlines a Number of Vital Steps
- Nurture a desire for God to speak to you through nature.
- Wander in the outdoors.
- Solitude is desirable.
- Let go of any agenda you may have for the walk.
- Be flexible about your route and let your walk unfold.
- Begin with a sense of wonder.
- Have a posture of reverence.
- Be child-like in your approach.
- Be fully present in the moment of noticing.
- Reflect on your “nature noticing” afterwards.
- Read The Green Bible.
- Make friends with remarkable men and women of old, e.g. Hildegard, St. Francis.
- Read Māori whakatauki (proverbs).
- Learn about eco-spirituality.
- Expect to be changed.
For those who meet God more readily in the “cathedral of the outdoors” than within four walls (i.e. those whom Myra Perrine terms “naturalists” in her 2007 book “What’s Your God Language”), and those who are simply interested in pursuing “nature divina” more fully, Katrina’s chapter offers sage insight and counsel.
You may also be helped by joining one of the “W.I.N.G.S” (“Worship in Nature Groups”) in New Zealand, similar to growing movements around the world, variously known as “Forest Church”, “Church of the Wild”, etc.
Implications for Creation Care
All of the above has significant implications for creation care. God takes no pleasure in the accelerated melting of glaciers, the haunting cries of beleaguered whales, the undrinkable streams and rivers, and the howling winds of hurricanes.
The way we treat the environment either facilitates or frustrates, treasures or trashes, helps or hinders, the whole of creation being a participant in worship and being a place of worship. When we damage the environment, we are damaging not only a context for worship, and a source of inspiration for worship, but also some of the very phenomena that God created to render worship.
Tapping Into the Spiritual Benefits of Creation
Today, more than ever, we need to tap into the spiritual benefits to be derived from creation. Our noisy and frenetic lives can easily cause us to miss them.
However, to experience nature as sacramental ecology requires the ongoing practices of wonder and attentiveness. We need to develop a capacity for astonishment as well as using and refining our capacity to be watchful and mindful, of the natural world.
“It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we sense them. The least we can do is try to be there… so that creation need not play to an empty house.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1974), p.8
