During our Creation Series, Restoring Our Harmony with Creation, we invite you each week to try a new practice (or an old practice!). In all the activity of our schedules, we look forward to cultivating slower moments and movements to help us restore and reconnect with creation all around us!
If you are on social media, consider sharing about your experience or practice with the tag #naccrestoringharmony.
I am the child of parents who loved the land and cared for it in every way they possibly could. They terraced the fields so the wash of the falling rain could be encouraged to sink in instead of making gullies. They never used pesticides on their crops, never overgrazed the native grasses. Instead, they rotated their crops and their livestock, planting cover crops that enriched the fields, ran a manure spreader over the grass to aid in fertilization by using the chicken litter from the hen house and the “barn dirt” from the goat shed. So it is natural for me to care for my small piece of land enclosed by brick walls. The mini-ecosystem is warmed by heat radiating from the bricks that absorbed the sun’s light during the day.
When my friend, Nancy, lived with me, she found great solace in the beauty of the “Secret Garden” she planted and cared for so faithfully and, even though she wasn’t here long enough after she came home to take advantage of the view, I still positioned her hospice bed so she would be able to see out the patio doors and be comforted in her last days by the beauty of the birds and flowers she had maintained for so long.
Nature fills the heart and mind with song, if we take time to look and listen. Take out your earbuds on your morning walk. Listen to the calls of the geese or even the crows. Take time, in the afternoon to look at the clouds and the sun as it sets.I know some of you do because you generously share lovely photos on Facebook. Don’t forget to walk outside after dark and see how the moon rises and sets as it waxes and wanes.
“All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.” It may not have happened just like that but the sentiment is still wonderful to consider.
What a lovely reminder to explore, enjoy, and care for all of creation. Thank you for sharing this, Louise!