Initially,
When I started collecting these thoughts,
I was dictating them into my phone.
And when I did this,
It was a.
.
.
Peaceful day on a forest trail.
I could hear birdsong.
Which is always good for my soul.
There was ferns lining the trail,
Tall trees rising above me,
And I was on a path in Bellingham,
Washington.
Where there were ocean spray bushes blooming everywhere.
And these bushes are beautiful in their own sort of understated way.
And I'd never really noticed them before.
And yet,
In the middle of all that beauty,
I noticed that I was worrying.
I was thinking about a project that I was working on and I was worried about how people were going to respond to it.
And then something sort of profound occurred to me.
I had this thought,
I'm not sure why I made this connection,
But the thought was,
Maybe worry is a symptom of forgetting that I belong.
And I had some sort of penny drop and I began to get a divine download,
As some people call it.
Ever since that moment.
Right on the heels of that.
I noticed the impulse to pull out my phone and check to see if anyone had commented and I was seeking reassurance.
I was trying to look for evidence that everything was okay.
And then.
.
.
Like the prodigal son,
I came to my senses.
And I looked up.
And I looked at the beauty again that was surrounding me.
And I realized that most of it seemed to function without worry.
And I know I'm giving it human qualities when I say that,
But nature definitely is a teacher.
The birds of the air and the lilies of the field.
Don't seem to get anxious about proving their worth.
They simply participate in life.
And maybe that's the invitation,
And I've heard it outside before.
I've heard the words,
The wisdom just seemed to arise.
Like the Nike commercial.
Just do it.
Just live.
Just participate.
Just breathe.
And in this case,
Let the waves of worry come and go,
Like waves hitting the seashore and then retreating and disappearing into the sea.
Worry,
At least for me,
Often comes from believing that I'm not enough.
That I need to try harder in order to be accepted.
That somehow I'm separate from the flow of life.
And responsible for holding everything together on my own.
But,
As you probably know,
Worry rarely helps.
It seldom changes the outcome.
And more often,
It pulls me away from the life that is right here.
I think the forest offers another way.
We look at an old cedar and call it magnificent.
We see sunlight moving through leaves and call it beautiful.
We watch ocean waves rise and crash,
And we feel awe.
But perhaps part of what we're recognizing.
Is also within us.
That same life that moves through the trees moves through you and I.
That same energy we see in sunlight,
Oceans,
Mountains,
And sky isn't separate from the life that's in our own bodies.
We're not outside of creation looking in.
We belong to it.
Richard Rohr has famously said,
Everything belongs.
And contemplation and wisdom and meditation and mindfulness,
They all help us begin to see this.
These types of practices teach us to hold paradox,
Beauty and suffering,
Growth and decay,
Life and death,
Not as separate realities,
But as part of one sacred whole.
There's a bunch of heron nests near me,
Probably 20-something nests,
And they had a bunch of babies this spring.
And it was really cool.
And you could,
Eventually you could hear them squawking and just the whole process is amazing.
All of a sudden the herons show up and start to fill the nests and lay their eggs.
And then the babies arrive.
And it's all very beautiful.
And a few weeks ago,
Some eagles came in and raided the place and took some of the babies away and of course ate them.
And it went from beautiful to whatever that was,
Whatever you might call that.
But you know,
As I talk to people along the path that I regularly see there,
Everybody just kind of goes,
Well,
That's nature.
It just shows us the beauty and sort of,
I guess you could call it the horror,
Depending on how it affects you.
But yeah,
There's just the beauty and just the circle of life,
I guess you could call it.
It's not pretty,
But it is a part of life.
At the same time,
I have these different feelings.
Like when I'm in the wilderness,
I don't feel welcome to someone separate from nature.
I feel welcomed as someone who belongs to it.
Even life and death,
I'm experiencing that too.
This past week I spoke with Victoria Lures,
She's the founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality,
And she kept returning to the word relationship.
And the more I thought about it,
Especially on the trails I walk regularly,
This felt really true to me.
I have a relationship with this forest near my house.
And even with certain trees,
And that might sound strange,
But spend enough time outdoors and it becomes hard not to feel it too.
There's a kind of conversation that happens beyond words.
You feel seen,
You feel held,
You feel welcomed.
And sometimes you feel challenged by the wisdom that seems to arise.
And lately,
And this I suppose is the point that I've been trying to get to,
Is that when worry rises in me,
I've been returning to the simple word or the simple phrase,
I belong.
Not as a way of denying anxiety.
But a way of remembering what is also true.
I belong to this living world.
I belong to the flow of life.
I belong even when I forget that I belong.
So today,
Whether you're outside or indoors,
Walking a forest trail,
Or sitting in whatever state you're in right where you are,
May you remember this.
You're not separate from this beautiful world.
You belong.
You are held by the same life that moves through forests,
Oceans,
Mountains,
Birds,
And stars.
And when worry comes,
As it surely will,
May you gently return to this Truth.
You belong.
