Healing Through Nature

I realize how much I love nature. While I haven't been out much during the pandemic, as I look out my window from my desk, I notice how happy the birds and the white butterflies make me. When I open my curtains in the morning, and close them at night, I realize that while I can oftentimes be melancholic, I love being awake to experience the sun and moon, and would love to never have to sleep. I see now that while I struggle to be "happy" in life, I actually love God's creation, and there never seems to be enough time in a day to appreciate each hour. And every season offers something beautiful to delight my senses.

I believe that nature can heal us. When I was able to experience an enchanted day in the forest three years ago almost to the day, which is permanently marked on my body despite my successful walk amongst the rooted trees, stones and hills, only to trip once I got home on my way up the porch, with a nice little dent in my shin now, I felt like a new person. Materialism didn't hold as much weight on me, and I got to experience the rejuvenation that even just one day in nature could do for me. It was a beautiful day, and while the relationship that permitted that experience shortly thereafter crashed and burned and can never return, I can separate that from the memories I wish to cherish, which is growth for me and for which  I am so grateful.

When I am connected to nature, I am in a position to be open to God and to others. I am less selfish when I am in tune with the plants and the animals, because I can see the beauty of the world, and it edges out the pity parties in my mind. The things I think matter, that I decide make or break me, are meaningless. I can experience this healing and the choosing of healthy priorities when I am aware of life on earth, and in so I can fully show up for life and participate, with some sincere happiness. This is the miracle of nature. 💖

Off the grid, July 29, 2017. One of the most healing experiences of my life.

God as a Perfect Parent

I've been meditating on the type of "parent" God is. Being a Catholic, I use Jesus' example of God, and so refer to God as a "He", and as a "Father". Since Jesus and the Father are one, and Jesus comes to give love and peace unlike anything we have ever been shown on Earth, I began to wonder how that type of love would look. I think that this love would emulate the Prodigal Son, where it is not a reward and punishment based system. I have been introduced to Dr. David Jeremiah who preaches about heaven. He has a very nice composure and demeanour and it's interesting to think of the hereafter, something I haven't before really. After my mediation, I read his email which referenced the passing of the old world:

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10)

I thought about the Christians who I like to follow on social media, and who consistently teach a "saved by faith alone" doctrine, but whose lives would suggest other. Their "works" are actually hypervigilant, through the guise of correction of false-doctrine, afraid of a misstep that could lead to punishment. I sympathize, I am the same way, which is why they came into my mind. When I wanted to imagine a faith-based system, where our hearts guide us, even in its imperfection, to God, it's just too scary: all of their fear-based "warnings" creep into my mind. And they are convincing. All of the stories in the Old Testament of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and their kings and the punishments thrown on to the people on account of their kings, and the people's own transgressions of inappropriate worship, says to me that God governs on a system entirely run on earned blessings and deserved consequences.

But God's love is not like the world's love. Jesus said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:27). Therefore, I believe it takes radical faith to believe that God's love is not in fact fully represented until we meet Christ, and why as Catholics we call Jesus the completion of God's revelation to us. (Catechism). So I searched for any other view points on God's love not being a reward and punishment based system, and I found something interesting.

This article on "gentle parenting" suggests a way of parenting that makes a lot of sense, but also shows why it is so difficult to get away from our traditionally rigid and I believe damaging method, even with Christians who defend the faith in claiming that we are not in fact judged by works. I saw a lot of modern psychology in this article, which involves looking at the root of the behaviour, instead of what is apparent to the eye. But maybe why it is the most elusive is because it requires restraint and compassion - two characteristics that do not come naturally to us and need to be cultivated (and I believe that is the result of a reward and punishment system that is riddled in all sorts of trauma).

It's not so simple to untangle a lifetime of embedding that chronically threatens us either with pain or with not getting pleasure, and it's just as hard to divorce a belief that threatens eternal retribution as well. However there comes a point in our lives should we want to mature in our material and spiritual development, when we must take that leap of faith. The action that says, "Okay God, you say your love and your peace is unlike anything I have ever known, therefore it is not this cruel and dismissive method of discipline that is keeping me static and scared. I'm ready to know what you say to be true."

It takes a lot of strength, of my will working to merge with God's will, to take that first step into the unknown, but after that, I trust that I can ride on God's power. In believing that there is something so much greater than a fear-based approach to life, I can see how vengeance and evasion of responsibility permeate every level of society. But this is exactly where God is exceptional, and where we are given the ability to be released from that toxicity of manipulation through a false reward and destructive punishment system, into one of patience, support, and encouragement.

Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/monkeybusinessimages

My Bubble

I’ve been thinking a lot about the “social bubble” that we’ve been taught to use as a model as we reopen the economy and begin to go back out. Currently, I have seven people, plus potentially my hairdresser who I hugged yesterday, who in my mind is officially in my bubble, but I know I won't see for at least two weeks, so she is pending. We were friends before she became a hair stylist, and I am wondering now if we can become better friends post-pandemic, and we already have plans to make plans.

This bubble, and inadvertently adding someone to it who I don’t actually know very well, has really made me remember my pre-recovery days where I was very alone. In my opinion, this bubble idea is a fantasy. In what world do 10 people make a sort of social contract to engage only with each other for the next several months. I would love to have such a wonderful and loving circle of ride-or-die friends, but I don’t even know what 6 of the 7 people in my bubble spend the majority of their days doing, let alone rely on them for my safety and the safety of my high risk parents (who are in my bubble anyway!)

In what I believe to be a Utopian vision of sociality for the foreseeable future, I am reminded of when the apostle John wrote that we love God because He loved us first. The people in my social bubble who I ultimately don't know very well, and are really only in my bubble by circumstance, reminds me that while I feel alone a lot of the time, I still know a handful of people who, with God's will, can be  people of genuine reciprocal support and love in my life, if we make the effort for each other.

This is yet another fascinating awakening that has been presented to all of us in this pandemic - a novel opportunity to actually restructure our lives from the bottom up. Who do we want in our lives? Really? When our very lives, and the lives of those we love are at stake, who do we actually want to be around?

I truly hope that the people who are in my bubble today, and a few others who I hope to add by the time we have a cure where 60% of the population needs to be vaccinated in order for these protocols to be removed, are my forever people, my end of the world people. The new world we enter is my new space where I officially shed my old unregenerate self, and put on the robes of love and recovery, and where I finally begin to experience true love and kinship.

Love in Time of Conflict

Today I learnt about our ancestors relationship to caves. In caves they were protected from the weather and predators, and there they slept and prepared food and built communities. They healed and practiced sacred ceremonies, and beautiful moments and opportunities occurred in caves. But all I really know of caves is George Bush's comment on Bin Laden and his army being "cave dwellers", substandard and uncivilized. And this was the image of caves I have carried for almost twenty years. Coming to this new information today, presented from a place of honour and compassion, which for some reason has been a revelation, caused a piece of my heart to ache at the lies we are told by people in powers, and the dignity that is robbed from our history when we are in war.

And I see this same hatred today as we battle the coronavirus, and the hurtful messages I see on social media, as citizens become divided over how to navigate this terrain. I am able to see that people are hurt and afraid, and do not have the emotional flexibility to even be silent instead of being outright hurtful, so I can understand and put up boundaries instead of engaging. And for this I am so grateful to be able to detach and feel the strength of my own convictions and my own aspirations, which carries me through this uncomfortable time.

I am staying out of commentaries. In my opinion it is simply best to not make comments, because people are afraid, and they have their own ideas that, for better or for worse, gives them a feeling of control in a generally uncontrollable and unknowable situation. I don't feel a need to participate in any of the narration of this disease, and I don't believe anyone has all the answers. My intentions are to be a source of comfort to anyone who needs it. That was my intention from the moment the news of the virus broke in January, and it continues to be so. We need to care about each other, to support each other, and to remind each other that we are all still connected, no matter what.

Finding Peace in Exile

"Sending for Paul, they listened as he told them about faith in Christ Jesus. (And) he reasoned with them about righteousness and self-control and the coming of judgement." - Acts 24:24-5, NLT

As I go back to work during the pandemic, I once again experience a transformation in spirit, where new challenges bring about new understandings of life. I go in and out of feeling that we are in a war, and I confirm the teachings that we are in exile, or on a prison planet.

This is not to say that it need be doom and gloom, for we are hopeful in the coming of a new age, and a new earth. Rather, it is a reminder that life is not what it seems to be, and remembering that I don't want to perpetuate the illusion by being superficial. In today's morning meditation, I thought about my basic interests, all the things that take me away from God and spiritual improvement, the things that I truly want to spend my time on - viewing the apparently glamorous lifestyles of people on Instagram, royal family watching, celebrity news, and TikTok - all things that ultimately make me feel incomplete and insufficient, but that pull me in and lead to feelings of otherness.

And in the pandemic the big difficulties are greater than the momentary fears that I am missing out on life by what I view on social media, but rather as I move through the discomforts of wearing personal protective equipment as I go back to work, and listen to the murmur of conspiracies, I feel defeated. But when I set my sight on God instead of on Mammon, I have the strength to accept that maybe I really am a prisoner of war, in exile, and maybe that's as it needs to be at this time.

When I do the next right thing by not stealing time at work, when I practice self-control by eating responsibly both nutritionally and ethically, and when I remember that life might in fact be inherently suffering, but that there will be a time of judgement when all wrongs will be righted, being in exile is completely manageable. In fact, when I prioritize the fundamental duties of life, there are even moments of peace and joy.

Through discipline and connecting to God’s word, I do not feel that I have lost a war. As I move through the new difficulties of the economy reopening, I can understand that this is a temporary struggle, and this too shall pass. In the meantime, I am empowered to move through the challenges of a foreign way of life with grace, peace, and joy when I focus on what needs to be done in the present, instead of worrying about the future.

Return to Eden by Brad Thompson