It’s easier to work towards preserving creation when you regularly experience the wonders of nature. Unfortunately, the pandemic has kept many of us locked up inside our homes, away from the natural world.
A recent column in EarthBeat (articles on the climate crisis, faith, and action from the National Catholic Reporter) by Barbara Fraser, offered six tips to connecting with nature when shut in:
- Open your eyes to the world around you
- Make it intentional
- Stop and look
- Write from the heart
- Stop and listen
- Remember that we are nature
Look out your window and observe what has always been around you: that tree that changes with the seasons, the flowers blooming in the Spring, the birds and squirrels. Listen for the songs of the birds, the barks of neighbor dogs, the chattering of people. Notice the cycle of the days: first light, clouds in the sky, the beauty of the rain, and of course, spectacular sunsets.
Many confined people find it helpful to record in a journal or to write some poetry. Don’t consider yourself a poet? “Try an ‘ABC’ poem: look around you and build a poem of things you see, hear or smell, in alphabetical order.”
And let’s not forget…
“We in the West live in a culture that thinks, feels and understands the human being as being outside of nature, of creation, as if we were some sort of special kingdom within another kingdom, as if we were not also earth and natural world,” Moeme Miranda, a Brazilian lay Franciscan told EarthBeat. “Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’ [paragraph] No. 2, has said we have forgotten that we are earth.”
Working together, we can help take care of our common home.
Paul Litwin
Saint Francis of Assisi at St John the Evangelist 