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Nature and the Soul

A few days ago, as I drove around Îsle d’Orléans outside Quebec City (near Montmorency Falls and Sainte Anne de Beaupré), I was pleased to see so many families enjoying themselves outdoors. Apple orchards, one after another, were busy with families clambering in and out of tractor-drawn wagons taking them to and from the u-pick orchards. Seeing people, young and old, escaping the world of electronic gadgetry to enjoy the outdoor was telling on a number of levels. Why were they there and there in such numbers? It was sunny and warm. It was Thanksgiving weekend. But was there more going on?

“Why is it,” I asked myself, “that the great outdoors seem to feed peoples’ souls more than organized religion?” Why do so many people feel a deeper connectedness to the Sacred biking through a park or walking on a trail than sitting in a church pew? I concluded that these people in the apple orchards were not simply looking for apples; they were—without knowing it—searching for and discovering their souls. The inner world of Spirit (their souls) and the outer world of matter (apples) were coming together at a subconscious level. The late Fr. Thomas Berry (1914-2009) said it better than I am saying it when he wrote, “The universe and the human soul find their fulfillment in each other.” Bill Plotkin, an American psychologist, incorporated another level to the way he treated his patients.

Since 1980, he traded in the confines of an office for the vastness of the outdoors. This psychologist/wilderness guide directs people not only through mountain ranges of the American West but, more to the point, into the inner wilderness of their soul. In one of his books, Soul craft, Plotkin says that the discovery of our souls is always a downward pull. It’s a journey of descent, a journey meant for all of us and not just for heroes and heroines of mythology. Fearing the risk of losing what we have, most of us just want more…more of the stuff that doesn’t feed the soul. Soul work is not for the fainthearted. Before we can ascend into the world of Spirit (moving upward toward God) we must descend into the Soul, our true self.

I suppose when Jesus said “follow me” he meant downward into a sharing in his death before he meant upward into a sharing in his resurrection. Nature plays a key role in the downward movement into our souls. Finding our soul is both our greatest longing and our greatest terror according to Bill Plotkin. It takes courage to do soul work. We are not here to save the world. We have a Saviour, Jesus, who did that. We are here to find our place in the cosmos and from there offer our unique gift to the world. We are here to love and serve. Theologian Frederick Buechner said this in an eloquent way: “Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meet.”

Plotkin writes in Soul craft that, “Your soul is your true nature. Your soul can also be thought of as your true place in nature.” He goes on to write: “It is no surprise, even in the contemporary world, that profound encounters with soul often occur during solitary wilderness sojourns, just as they did for the founders of the major religions: Moses on Mount Sinai, Jesus in the desert for forty days, Muhammed in a cave outside Mecca, Buddha under the bodhi tree…Many people fill their days with a thousand and one distractions in an attempt to muffle the cry of their souls…When we become alienated from soul—our inner nature—we lose respect four outer nature, resulting in pollution and degradation of the environment.”

Go for a walk. Pick apples. Discover your soul.

-Fr. Phil