Remembering We Are Part of Nature: An Earth Church Update

There is something grounding about paying attention to the turning of the year.

The first signs of spring. The fullness of summer. The subtle shift in the light as autumn approaches. The quiet and rest of winter. These changes are always happening around us, but it can be easy to move through our busy lives without really noticing them.

Earth Church gives me a reason to notice.

Earth Church is a community within the Wild Church Network that gathers on the fourth Sunday of each month. We don’t meet within four walls in the way people might traditionally picture a church. The land is our gathering place, and what we do together changes from month to month and season to season.

Sometimes we gather to celebrate one of the seasonal turning points of the year. Sometimes we simply walk the land, paying attention to what is around us and sharing what we notice and what it brings up within us. Sometimes there are drums and singing. Sometimes there is conversation, reflection, laughter, or silence.

There is no need for every gathering to look exactly the same. In many ways, that is part of what I love about it.

Remembering That We Are Part of Nature

For me, Earth Church is about connection—connection to the natural world, connection to other people, and connection to something deeper within myself.

Modern life can make it surprisingly easy to feel separate from nature. We spend so much of our time indoors, looking at screens, following schedules and moving from one obligation to another. The seasons change whether we notice them or not.

When I intentionally pay attention to the rhythms of the natural world, I am reminded that I am part of those rhythms too. Nature has seasons of growth and abundance, but it also has seasons of letting go, rest, darkness and renewal. There is something comforting about remembering that our own lives have seasons as well.

We don’t always have to be producing, achieving or moving forward. Sometimes there is value simply in being present.

Finding Community on the Land

Earth Church is also about the people. There is something special about gathering with others without needing to have all the answers. We can walk together, share what we are experiencing, listen to one another, sing, drum, celebrate or simply stand quietly beneath the trees.

We come with different stories and different perspectives, but for a little while we are all paying attention to the same earth beneath our feet and the same sky above us.

That creates a kind of connection that can be difficult to describe.

I think sometimes what we need most is not another place telling us what to think. We need places where we can slow down enough to listen—to the land, to one another, and to ourselves.

Spirit Quest

In two weeks, our community will gather for our annual Spirit Quest retreat. It is an opportunity to step even further away from the routines and noise of everyday life and spend intentional time in nature and in community.

I find myself looking forward to it not because I know exactly what I will experience, but because I don’t.

That is part of the gift.

When we slow down and make space, something often emerges that we couldn’t have planned. Maybe it is an insight. Maybe it is a conversation. Maybe it is simply the realization that we have been moving too quickly and need to remember how to be still.