Smith: Returning to Nature
Posted By Vanessa on July 15, 2010
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
With these words, Smith takes us into Part 1 of 7 in his book, Honoring the Sacred Earth
When Smith writes of how it is “time for us to look at nature and see how it repairs itself and help it to ease its own wounds and pains,” I am vividly reminded of the BP oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico and how our arrogance, greed, and stupidity have so violently harmed the Earth and how we need a paradigm shift of the type being argued in this book to fix the damage (8).
At the end of each mini-section, Smith offers a Prayer and one or more Practical Exercises relevant to the topic (often a Meditation, usually guided). It is in these sections, especially in the Prayers, that I caught my first glimpse of Smith’s spiritual and emotional connection to Nature, and to the writing.
I’m not sure what happened, but after the first twenty pages of Smith’s book I could feel it changing – and for the better, I think. I really struggled with the first twenty – editing errors and a feeling that his passion was just not in his writing. I found myself thinking of Diane Ackerman and her vividly sensuous writing, and wondering where Smith’s prose was hiding, only being teased by his Prayers and Exercises.
But once I reached the section on Tuning In, BOOM!, there it was, in his discussions of the various art forms we could use to connect with and appreciate Nature and our own Creative potential. Thank goodness! Earlier in the book, he had suggested that we need to “be willing to engage all of your senses and emotions while working with nature” and in this section on painting, sculpting, writing, and music, his passion comes through clearly (13). Since then, there have been no errors I’ve caught, just beautiful and important prose.
He asks us to “lessen the distractions” of our daily lives and learn to sit silently in Nature, and then to engage mindfully with it (31). Nature can inspire us to create ourselves, he suggests, and while I believe he meant to create art, I was immediately struck with the idea of how we are given the opportunity to create, and re-create, our lives and ourselves as an ongoing process. How wonderful!
The exercise at the end of the section on Art is to find a new art form and use it to explore Nature, holding lightly to the products, but engaging deeply with the world around and inside of you. This is definitely going on my Future Generator form from Raymond Aaron’s Double Your Income Doing What You Love
In the next section, Smith asks us to see with the eyes of a child, making reference to his own experience as a father, and the inspiration and wisdom he has gained from raising his son.
Part 1 concludes with an introduction to the Celtic Wheel of the Year and a reminder that engaging with Nature and listening to her cycles is essential to our completion as humans and our longevity on Earth.
After a somewhat rocky start, this book has me and I am thoroughly looking forward to Part 2. As a bit of a tantalizer, here is his beautiful Prayer for Clear Sight:
Almighty God please allow me to see with the wonder and awe of a child every day. Let me awaken afresh and see things as if I’d never seen them before. Help me to appreciate everything around me and to hear your divine words and song in everything. Amen.
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