Nature’s Healing Power

Many years ago, I went to a collegial gathering in a beautiful retreat centre by the ocean. Our time together was meant to be a time of peace and renewal – a getaway from all the stresses and strains of ministry. But the day before I was to depart, I received the most devastating news imaginable – a terrible, terminal diagnosis of someone very dear to me.     (I want to add that at the time, the diagnosis was a certain death sentence, but incredibly, medical science caught up and today they are still alive and well and making a wonderful  contribution to this world. But of course, I had no way of knowing that back then.)  

I remember feeling overcome with anticipatory grief which I had little desire to share with colleagues. Despondent, I took myself to the water’s edge early in the morning for a long solitary walk by the sea to try and come to terms with what likely lay ahead. The beach in the early morning light was beautiful and after a while in deep contemplation, I raised my head to look around me at what the ocean had washed up on the shore. 

There were plenty of starfish and sea crabs scuttling back to the water along with a variety of birds fishing, bathing and soaring above my head. On closer inspection I could see so many forms of life in the water, on the sand and in the air. Some were sea creatures that days before, must have ventured too close to the shore and were now in the process of dying. I threw some back but knew it was too late for most. All manner of aquatic plants were thriving in the sea, and some were washed up on shore, drying in the sun. And of course, there were many gorgeous shells which once had housed life and were now simply a beautiful reminder of the creatures that once inhabited them.   

In beholding all this, it occurred to me that in nature’s healing hands, all forms of life and all stages of being, dying and being re-born were present and spread out before me. Life emerging, life thriving and life dying. Eggs, seeds, brand new life and the breakdown of what were once the bodies of myriad creatures; tiny fragile plants and the majestic sculpture of driftwood that years before, began life as a sapling and ended its life as a magnificent tree.   

It came to me as I was standing there surveying the wash of being born, living and dying, that death is not outside the cycle of life. It’s not an aberration, it’s a certainty. Every being, indeed, every form of life on our beloved planet, has a finite existence, a span of life, whether short or long, after which we are no more. Although I knew this intellectually, seeing it displayed in nature spread out before my feet was in some ways the most comforting ‘message’ I could have been given. Death is not outside the circle of life. 

Of course, death that is sudden, tragic, violent or before life’s natural span is certainly hardest to accept. The deaths of the young, death that comes without warning, death that is accidental, the result of negligence or malfeasance, is deliberately caused or self-chosen seem to defy the natural order and take tremendous effort to reconcile. But even for these most painful of losses, nature can offer solace, perspective and hope. 

A well-known study discovered that in shared hospital rooms, the patient closest to the window got well faster, and people in single rooms with a beautiful view of nature from their bed needed less pain medication, had shorter stays and less post-surgical complications than those looking at a brick wall or another part of the building.  

In my ministry practice, for years I have led simple ‘walking meditations’ in the forest. Since the trees, flowers and plants give us oxygen, when we breathe, we ‘breathe in gratitude’ saying, “Thank you.” When we breathe out, we give them the carbon dioxide they need, so we breathe out blessing saying, “Bless you.” This simple “Thank you/Bless you” meditation reminds us of our connection to all life and can be practiced anywhere. 

In nature, we see all life’s lessons reflected to us, the circle of day into night and the seasonal trip around the sun, and all remind us of our place in the natural cycle of life.