Man can know all about God's creation by examining its phenomena, by dissecting and experimenting and this is all good. But it is misleading, because with this kind of knowledge you do not really know the beings you know. You only know about them.
-- Thomas Merton - "A Search For Solitude"
Most of our contact with nature is in passing. We drive by. We take a glimpse. We get a quick emotional "fix". Nothing more. We are not connecting. There is no true immersion. We are not totally engaged in the moment. We are ready to move on rather than linger a while. We are preoccupied with "stuff" in our lives. The result is a very limiting experience that prevents us from seeing nature as it truly is.
Thomas Berry said "No matter what we touch, an atom or a cell, we cannot explain it without knowledge of the wide universe… all things are part of the universe, and are connected to each other to form one whole unity".
A forest is entered, not viewed. We do not really engage a forest until we are well within it both physically, aesthetically, and spiritually. Engaging nature means "knowing" rather than just "knowing about". "Knowing" means observing and understanding both the object and its interrelationship with its surroundings. One whole unity.
This interconnectivity unites and connects ecosystems. In "knowing" a pattern's content and how it connects, we define the form, pattern, and behavior within which an object or organism successfully resides. We achieve a unity with nature .
Gregory Bateson's student, Stephen Nachmanovitch, describes "knowing" as "seeing the symmetry and segmentation of a leaf or a culture as the immanent presence of some overall pattern - and beyond that, a pattern of patterns".
Active engagement with nature usually requires some sort of direct physical encounter with nature's patterns along with a sensitivity to the content of natural objects and their connecting patterns. An act of observing and considering with attention by being aware of what is. It requires an openness to all experience, an allowing of all mental phenomena, and being a somewhat detached observer of one's own inner experience.
In addition to the physical encounters associated with seeing and touching, active engagement also requires listening. The Still Voice beautifully describes this practice as paraphraed below:
"Listen to the song of birds and the soft movement of the wind among the branches. If you listen even more deeply you will hear the inner sound of all life, the inner music of the flowers and the trees, and the very breath of the earth, rhythmic and beautiful. And deeper still, beneath all this music and movement, there is profound and utter silence.... deep, deep, silence and stillness. Listen to the silence. Within the silence is the harmony of the Creator."
This contemplative activity of employing all of our senses allows the intricacies of interrelationships to become clear. We come to "know" those patterns that we sense.
Bateson asks these contemplative questions: How are you related to this creature? What pattern connects you to it? What is the pattern that connects all living creatures? These questions help us in "knowing" nature and nature's patterns.
Claude Levi-Strauss explains the act of intimately engaging nature in a different way:
"…Every landscape appears first of all as a vast chaos which leaves one free to choose the meaning one wants to give it. But ..., the most majestic meaning of all is surely that which precedes, commands and, to a large extent explains the others. . . . When the miracle occurs, as it sometimes does; when, on one side and the other of the hidden crack [in the rock], there are suddenly to be found cheek-by-jowl two green plants of hidden species, each of which has chosen the most favorable soil; and when at the same time two ammonites with unevenly intricate involutions can be glimpsed in the rocks, thus testifying in their own way to a gap of several tens of thousands of years. Suddenly space and time become one. The living diversity of the moment juxtaposes and perpetuates the ages. Thought and emotion move into a new dimension where every drop of sweat, every muscular movement, every gasp of breath becomes symbolic of a past history, the development of which is reproduced in my body, at the same time as my thought embraces its significance. I feel myself to be steeped in a more dense intelligibility, within which centuries and distances answer each other and speak with one and the same voice."
Allison Hawthorne Deming, in her poem "The Web", beautifully portrays the connectivity of patterns at all levels.
I do a lot of nature photography primarily because it forces me to engage nature at a deeper level. When I'm traveling in my camper, I always have my camera at my side and observe the following rules:
- Avoid major highways.
- Drive less than 50 miles per hour.
- Drive less than 250 miles in a given day.
- Avoid public campgrounds. Instead, camp on public lands far away from people.
- Sit for long periods in total silence observing and listening without distraction.
These little "rules" lay the groundwork that let nature's patterns come to me. The rewards that come from the these contemplative encounters with nature are the joys of first hand exploration and discovery. The aesthetic becomes the pathway to the spiritual joy of connecting with nature -- knowing nature intimately. In turn, the aesthetic connection becomes the conduit to the analytical.
Joseph H. Kupfer has written a wonderful paper called "Engaging Nature Aesthetically". Beholding nature comes in many forms that involve different activities. Some of his ways of engaging nature are:
- Acting with nature -- "…aesthetic features revealed only through our active intercourse with nature. Natural phenomena are the medium of our movement. Direct encounter with individual shapes, colors, fragrances, and textures. Our aesthetic experience includes appreciation of the shift in perspective itself, from long-range floral vista to more intimate perception " .
- Looking into nature -- "Fact gathering on an aesthetic level. Enveloping oneself in the unfamiliar. Becoming investigative. The aesthetic experience of acting in nature is overlaid with the spice of novelty, discovery, and exploration.. sounds, textures, and odors are invested with the quality of revelation. They unfold for us and before us. "
- Acting "against" nature -- Overcoming natural obstacles like hiking but engaging at the same time. The familiar is altered. The balance between doing and undergoing. The action and its consequence is joined in perception. The harmony and interactivity between activity and receptivity.
This document is a draft of work in progress. Please post your comments, thoughts, and suggestions:
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