When I go out for walks with my camera I feel as if I am
Seeking the Holy
that is hiding in plain sight in the world. I find it equally in wild pockets of plants along the path and in cultivated gardens along the way. This morning I discovered a Wild Altar along the path where I often walk — a little still life created by nature that I found beautiful and meaningful.
There was a small tuft of white fur alongside some drying leaves, sticks, and mottled clover leaves. The scene is nothing and everything at the same time — holy and whole. It carries the mortal cycles of life and the eternal holiness of life in a few square inches.
To consider earth holy is to connect the lowest and most material to the most high and ethereal, to close the breach between matter and spirit. It subversively suggests that the whole world might potentially be holy and that the sacred can be underfoot rather than above.
― Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Earlier this week I found a newly fallen branch of green leaves on the path. Though it was dying because of a lack of water and nutrients, it still carried the life force within it. I carried it home and photographed it against a white background. Then I played with different ways to edit the photograph to represent the life force that I felt the small branch still carried.
Holiness Everywhere
You can find holiness almost anywhere you look in nature. And you can probably find it in man-made spaces as well, though there are some places where I still struggle to see the holy.
Everywhere I look, I see something holy.
― Carpe Jugulum
It is mostly in scenes of war, rampant consumerism, and cruelty that I find it difficult to see the holy. But I am certain that those places are holy as well. It is just that I need to look more deeply to find it.
Joy is finding the holy in the small and the sacred in the everyday.
―
Do you also experience holiness in the natural world? Maybe it’s time for a “seeking the holy” walk in nature. Slow down and pay attention to the beauty that hides in plain sight everywhere in nature.
Have a beautiful weekend before the predicted heat wave begins.
May you walk in beauty.
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