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Today's
quotation:
Humanity’s attempts to override nature have
separated us from our source and destroyed what can save us. A
camera can point to the glory of a pristine forest, but cannot create
it. No smartphone is smart enough to spin a planet into orbit. God
speaks to us daily, but we rarely take the time to listen. Nature is
my church. When I walk in nature I know the Tao. No building,
altar, or ritual is necessary. Human beings have created magnificent,
awe-inspiring cathedrals, but none can surpass the wonder of a starry night.
Alan Cohen
The Tao Made
Easy
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Today's
Meditation:
When we get
caught up in our daily lives and jobs and families and
tasks, it's very easy to lose track of our connection with
nature, and not to notice that we've broken that
connection by focusing so much on everything that has
nothing to do with nature. And this is a shame
because our connection with the natural world can add a
great deal to our lives in very positive ways, if we only
make the effort to maintain that connection as well as we
can.
It's
very easy to consider the things that human beings have
made to be extremely important. We travel in our
cars and we work in our buildings and we live in our
houses and we shop in malls and strip malls. For
many of us, nature is no more than an afterthought,
something that we reserve for the weekends-- perhaps a nice
Saturday walk in the woods, but really no more than
that. And when we minimize our contact with nature,
we minimize the positive effects that we gain by making
nature a part of who we are, and vice-versa.
There
are plenty of studies that tell us some of the important
effects that nature can have on us: lower stress
levels, lower blood pressure, greater feelings of
well-being, quicker healing from injuries and illnesses--
the list of physical and emotional benefits is
very long, and you can read any of numerous articles on
the benefits of nature on our health simply by typing
"benefits of nature" into any search
engine. The question is, do we get any advantage
from nature if we don't actively maintain our relationship
with it?
Of
course, you don't need to go camping for three weeks in a
wilderness areas full of grizzly bears, eating only the
berries that you find there, to get the benefits of our
connections with nature. You can feel those benefits
by finding natural areas near you-- even simple parks with
plenty of trees-- and spending time there.
Connections need to be maintained, and our connection with
nature is one that's easy to neglect if we don't make a
serious effort to keep it up.
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