Learning to Love the Forest
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known”
In the work of seeking to reach deeper realities than the intellect and our senses can deliver, a kind of poetic, artistic knowing can serve us, can become a key to open the door into those greater depths.
Today we share with our readers a piece by Bill Hutchins, a friend and patron of the seminary and a long time architect and artist, that explores the artistic path he has been taking to learn to know – and love – a forest.
A walk in the Canadian Woods, Ontario, October 2020
Loving a Forest – Prologue/Logos
I am the light of the world; the one who follows me will walk not in darkness but in the light in which there is life
John 8:12
There’s a light grain seed inside,
You fill it with yourself, or it dies.
I’m caught in this curling energy! Your hair!
Whoever’s calm and sensible is insane!
– Rumi
I am so small, I can barely be seen.
How can this great Love be inside me?
– Rumi
The earth is a living, spiritual being. Humans share the same source that we can access through our light grain seed – the Christ. I believe the earth wants to be in relationship with me – I know this forest called me here from my life in Washington, DC – that I can engage with the forest, form relationship, fill it with myself and expand further into Christ’s light and love.
Guest Author, Bill Hutchins
Belief is a door into a deeper life, which holds much more than we can imagine. Teilhard de Chardin offered, You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience. The Christ is eternal and limitless, and yet, did he not show us love? Did he not show us how to make his “dwelling” among us, in the limited, mortal world of earth? We can live through Christ in us – our Indwelling – in many ways in both our homes, in matter and spirit, and we can especially practice this in a forest. Humanity has lived with nature for 50,000 generations – we are deeply one – it’s only been the last two or three generations that we have forgotten who we are.
I engage with the forest through two forms. I sit in a small place, a portal into the forest; or I go on ambles. For both ways, I listen, trying to be open to receive, and record voices. I then go home, sit down, light a candle, a door into the Holy Spirit, and begin writing. I wait for the door to open for the voices to fully embody.
Learning to Love a Forest is an account of a love affair, in the forest our Refuge (our home’s name) resides in. Beth and I recently moved here – she is the fourth generation in her family to live here – for the dusk of our lives. For the first fifteen years of our marriage, I didn’t even want to come here – nothing about all of this endless rolling greenness spoke to me. Then in the last five years a slow opening has risen in my heart, that allowed me to hear the forest calling me – come home! Now I’m falling in love with this place. I always trust when life takes me where I never thought I’d go.
Here are some ways I’m learning to love a forest –
• Settle into a drop-place in the forest, let my entry-ripples flow out as vibrations, uniting me as they penetrate the forest.
• The forest, and all of its beings, breathes – air unites us. Focus on my breathe, with deep inhales and exhales. Let the rhythm arise, that will come from the forest.
• Enter into mutual inner silence. As true for humans, a forest’s soul resides in silence. From this still place, life is born.
• Put my feet in the brook, let the water get to know me. Slowly our deeper currents align.
• Listen for the bird’s songs – they bring the Holy Spirit’s music to me. Sing with them!
• Or sing a hymn to the forest – holy vibrations unite us.
• Gaze into the forest depths. With soft eyes, dissolve into the swirl.
• Creatively engage with a forest – write, draw/paint, dance, sing, drum………
• Play as a child – explore, discover……..build a fairy home!
• Amble – a mindful, meditative walk. Ideally, barefoot.
The following poems illustrate these ways.
Forming a relationship with a forest asks for purity of our heart’s intention to love, and firmness of belief. We may not feel or see or hear anything, but as we begin to engage, the Holy Spirit brings us images/messages. While just sitting in a garden or forest brings us solace and some healing, loving a forest opens us into a deeper relationship with Christ.
A bird’s call says, “rejoice!” The wind in the trees says, “isn’t this exhilarating, living life!” The water flowing over the rocks in the brook says, “listen to my music!” A forest implores us to engage and live – invites us to penetrate into its hidden wonders, flashes of truth.
Expanding Love
Van Gogh Painted the Spirit Within
The forest weaves many brooks,
gently calling forth the land. Holding a baby,
precious life, all around calms.
Sitting on a small platform, a Threshold, floating
between worlds – the brook and the forest,
this world and Spirit.
With a soft gaze, seeing Spirit’s truth
through Van Gogh’s eyes.
All alive with a deep force.
Trees rise to the sun, leaves
holding out their hands, receive life.
The earth’s body holds all. Soft forms
with rounding boulders.
No recent creation.
The boulders came out of the earth’s inner being,
shaped by rain and wind and brook.
The brook’s quiet voice
cuts into the earth, revealing rocks and stories –
singing water pulled
over rock ledge after ledge after ledge.
The sun’s light penetrates
the tree’s fullness – rhythmic light-beams absorbed
by layers of leaves. Ground’s blanketing plants
purl with the wind.
A beam sneaks its way to me. I welcome it.
These rapt moments defy time.
A swarm of tiny white fairy-moths swirl
aimlessly in the light.
Are they feeding, mating, doing a sun-dance? I fly
with them, propelled
by desire and imagination.
The wind picks up, life flows into life
everywhere. I join –
standing, rooting,
arms as branches, hands as leaves.
I enter the universe’s spherical force.
Gazing, I revolve, becoming
a stroke in Starry Night.
Everything always changing –
light beams, clouds, leaves, water’s path.
I’m given a moment
with this brook, a ring in a tree’s growth.
Love has expanded.
Prodigal Son
After exploring my inner landscape,
not clear what’s next,
a summer-filled butterfly came to me.
Unbidden, I sang “hi!.” She bid me
return to the forest.
Truth’s messenger.
Earlier I saw a cloud of butterflies,
a sun orgy, a burst of joy. Ecstatic prophets.
The sky cleared, as did my path into the forest.
I put my feet in the brook – splashing
with the brook’s liquid peace
Home washed over me.
A calm day with little breeze, the trees greeted
me with shy waves.
We entered silence, deep companionship.
Something in me released, opened
from my inner landscape. I expanded
into the forest.
I didn’t realize what I was missing.
I am a son of the forest.
Union
Where does a flower end
and the sun begin?
In our heart.
When It’s Time
I’m a drop
of water, held
in a leaf after a storm, going
where the wind blows me
when it’s time
to leave. Seeking
Home,
absorbed in the earth.
Gratitude
The earth is 4.54 billion years old.
Some days I feel the age of the forest
and the mountains it resides. Once
taller than the Rockies, since calmed
by two Ice Ages. Now
gentle rolling old beings.
The forest, a comforting blanket.
Soil, the earth’s skin, thickening
since her first breaths,
creation’s dust.
Water,
older than the earth – arrived
on an asteroid – assumes
whatever shape asked, tirelessly
remaking itself.
Boulders burst onto the scene near
the beginning,
twice enduring
glacier’s grinding, the wind and water’s rubbing.
Becoming sand, particles of praise.
Trees, every age, though young, from sprouting
to returning into the earth. Each leaf
adoring the sun.
Ferns, with the wind, a Sufi dance.
Dinosaurs trampled them, while I tip-toe
thinking they can’t endure
my presence.
I am so small, in so many ways. How
is it I’m here?
Grace.
I don’t deserve to be here
where beauty and love and truth
permeates all. I can never stop
living in gratitude,
being a moon to our earth, reflecting Christ.
Bill Hutchins is an architect and artist living in Vermont with his wife, Beth. He is the author of Dwelling, a book that explores the spiritual question of home and how this could inform the way we build ‘homes’.
This is the ‘Arts Wednesday Blog’ of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. To learn more about what we are doing at the Seminary of The Christian Community, visit our patreon site for more content: The Light in Every Thing.
