I went into this reflection paper with a very different plan than what actually transpired. As usual God’s plan is better than anything I could have come up with.
It’s only been the last 5-6 years that I’ve been back in civilization as I only half jokingly like to call it. Before then I lived in a tiny town in Ontario that no one had ever heard of. Our yard was very much like the nature preserve where I ended up walking with a friend.
Walking the preserve and being among all the huge trees I was reminded of what I had relearned in my past home. The forest is my center. It’s where I can take a full breath, slow down and stop.
But there are few spaces that are easily accessed by everyone. If you don’t drive and/or have mobility issues then being able to just go on a whim to a green space like this is impossible. Our green spaces feel like they’re almost for the select few or the approved crowd as they’re never easily accessed, traveled to by foot as they are not usually close to where most people live. And honestly some have felt similarly about religion for a long time.
I couldn’t physically access a church building for most of my life, but I could go outside. That’s where God first found me. When I was too old for bible stories, but not welcome in the church, I took to trails accessible enough for me.
It felt very much like today. Peaceful. Even with the screams of happy children nearby. The forest reminded me today of the many gifts God gives us. We’re all so quick to think of the earth and its natural resources etc. But the forest reminded me that he also gives each of us an imagination. Walking through the forest is my most favorite time to use it.
The mind and its many gifts including imagination are as valuable a gift from God as any other. I believe the heart and mind come together and bring us back to God. This is why I can find God in the forest. There are no distractions to take us out of the moment, or people to claim that we don’t belong. In the forest we are all equally children or creatures made by God.
The squirrel is looking for their dinner, the mama duck with her babies in the water, with papa duck on guard nearby. May apples leaves shining in the sun sneaking through the treetops. People walking through the paths. All are welcome.
It got me thinking of how tied people become to their parishes. It's like they believe the church Sanctuary is the only space to find God. Or that God only finds you if you’re wearing all the hats and doing all the things. The forest reminded me where I found God for the first time, taking me back to my roots.
And maybe it was needed because in the forest I lost the ties to the parish and the to-do list it gives me, taking me from God rather than to God. I find myself pondering questions I hadn't thought of before as well as reminding me that while I may be of the parish my heart must remain with Jesus and not trapped within the busyness of the parish. As I looked around my parish later I wondered who had yet to realize as I have how important that question is to ask ourselves regularly.
Further it got me thinking of people like myself who probably have never seen most, if any of these sites. Disabled people tend to be very small bubbles and unless you're lucky enough to land in a place where people reach out and love in mind blowing ways you don't often see what's beyond the area you can walk.
It's part of why I struggle with labels like spiritual, religious, and spiritual but not religious. Some of us were spiritual first because the church gave us no choice and many still have no choice. Accessibility (and sometimes acceptance) is better but it's still sorely lacking.
Spirituality is deeply personal and because of this it's always accessible. Religion sometimes feels like leaders are so busy checking off boxes that we forget why and for whom we do this and when we do we also exclude people whether intentional or not.
Nature pops up where it finds itself (If humans let it) and it welcomes all of us because God is in nature as much as He and the Holy Spirit are in all of us.
He's in the bird calls that cast my eyes to the sky, he's in the chatter of the chipmunks racing by and also in the woman with whom I shared a greeting walking by.
I find myself wondering how I, as someone who was found by God first in the forest and the trees, found myself trapped in tethered by a parish and wondering if it's just me alone and feeling that way.
God created the Earth and gave us the church but never said that either were of more importance than our personal relationship with him.
The forest is the space that always brings me back to that. It reminded me that God must be first in everything we do, and why we do it. Our first ministry is our relationship with God.
For me, it's also the reminder that there must always be the spiritual in the religious. In those practices I took up before I could access the church. The time in nature when it’s just God, and I in nature where it all began. It’s in the silence and the stillness where God's voice is heard, where he stomps out the noise that tries to drag me away from him.
Church is great, and has its place. But the busyness does not. As I look around at the church in my part of town I see a lack of the spiritual, and a lack of connection to creation in people. Even those who have said they’ve found God in nature in the past are scared to speak of it in the church. Which to me says there's still a divide in the church between spirituality and religion and whether spirituality is “acceptable” or not. I believe that spirituality and religion go hand in hand.