The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing–all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.
Thomas Berry
In my meditations outside in Idyllwild, California, before the sun was fully visible five doves alighted calmly on branches above me. I felt the visit of beloved family.
In The Dream of the Earth Thomas Berry writes of what he calls “spontaneities” which we had back before industrialization reaching to primordial times. These were our ways living as members of nature along with all other elements. We treated the earth more like part of ourselves than as mere resources of today’s consumer society.
When I sit calmly under those doves in an environment removed from urban pressures the spontaneities surface and I feel kinship with the doves, trees, boulders, the sun in motion coloring the sky.
It is possible to remember what we have had as do many Aboriginal peoples still, and to benefit from the restored perspective of our kinship with the Whole.
Try to integrate into your life quiet times in nature to restore that original intimacy with the Whole.
