Sacred Tabernacles [part 1 of 9]: Navigating Nature's Sacredness
by Jennifer Sabatier
This blog series explores the inherent sacredness of the natural world, our desecration of the earth, and our relationship to nature.
Sacred Tabernacles was originally written as a journal article in August 2019. The journal article is published here in a series of blog entries and has been updated to include our current circumstances of COVID-19 pandemic.
In the current ecological crisis and global pandemic, we find ourselves in disorienting liminal spaces between an old world view and a new one we cannot yet see. In this betwixt and between space we are living in, I suggest various portals as a way back into a healthier relationship with nature. Some of these passages toward reconciling our relationship with nature include meditation, language, ritual, ancestors, stories, and dreams.
Re-sacralizing place and stepping through any number of portals to re-engage with nature are radical acts of creative transgression that deepen our relationship with the landscape and shape our new paradigm.
Navigating the Sacredness of the Natural World
The inherently sacred natural world waits to be ignited by our reverence.
In an interview, philosopher/poet, John O’Donohue expresses the human side of the relationship with nature when he says “connecting to the elemental can be a way of coming into rhythm with the universe” (Tippett, 2008, np). When we consciously connect to the intrinsic beauty and innate aliveness within another being, landscape, or skyscape, we bring forth the sacred.
Perhaps it is a reflection of our own divine nature that pulls us like magnets to particular places.
It is normal to find ourselves attracted or attached to a landscape or place. As modern people, we have often answered that call in terms of a vacation to a favorite shoreline or mountain top, ‘to get away from it all’. This desire to get away begs the questions: What are we getting away from? What are we trying to escape? Could we find our place and the same relief with nature without having to make a great journey? Once we arrive at the sea or vista, do we participate in co-creation and exchange with the natural world? Or do we just take it in, get what we need, and return home again?
Traveling and moving about in public is generally more difficult if not impossible due to the viral pandemic limiting our old behaviors of flying, driving, and cruising. Many of us have canceled our annual trips, flights, and rentals in an effort to both flatten the curve of Coronavirus and protect our dwindling savings accounts.
Finding our way into a deeper relationship with nature may become more localized and regular, daily even, given our circumstances. The inherent desire that we all feel to be among trees, water, and sky is growing louder than the distractions of modern life, particularly in an environment that may be quieter and slower since we have been ordered to or chosen to stay-at-home.
Despite the enormous gap between modern people and the natural world, exacerbated by our generalized lack of participation, Mother Earth offers up the possibility of continuously experiencing sacredness. Her hand is open to us at all moments. However, it is not until we open our hearts, minds, and bodies to her holding us that we feel buoyant in her care.
With their daily lives embedded in the local landscape, our ancient ancestors participated in deep connection to place, living a more balanced existence with the rest of nature. In the current moment of destruction and dishevelment of our world, (ecologically, socially, economically, politically) we are far-removed from the level of participation indigenous people enjoyed with Mother Nature. Yet, our ancestral ways live in our bones, and we can find our way if we recognize this connection to our lineage.
Mythologist, author, and storyteller, Michael Meade describes a path of transcendence to reconnect both with the ways of our ancestors and to our place within the natural world. Meade describes three specific phases of the collective rite of passage addressing the current cultural and climate crises: 1) separation from the predominant worldview, 2) movement through the liminal space, and 3) transformative return or arrival with a new understanding of self and nature. Meade suggests that we have already separated from the old worldview or paradigm (Meade, 2019). In our separateness from the predominant paradigm, we embark on uncharted waters of ecological and cultural crises.
Mead explains that in this liminal space, there is “no clear clear way to navigate to ports of safety…. We are between our old way of understanding nature…[without] clarity about where we might wind up. … we have to leave our old world views behind … to begin to perceive the world with different eyes that can foresee how to bring nature and culture back into balance” (Meade, 2019).
Letting go of one paradigm without yet knowing the bounds of our new world view, we struggle in this place of between, without firm ground or clear path forward. The betwixt space, the “unsteady threshold between what is passing and what has not yet come into view … a place of not knowing. [It] has in it challenge … ordeal and sometimes suffering” (Meade, 2019). In our state of unknowing, we long for what is below the threshold where we currently stand. “[C]aught between … one realm and another” (Meade, 2019), we are freer or more desperate to explore this deeper layer of subliminal space.
If indeed we are in a liminal space, then the discomfort we are all feeling in this uncertainty also offers us hope. It is time to put down the maps layered in contradicting headlines, and listen to what we know in our bones and our hearts. We are in the territory, and it is time to trust that we know the way to our own remembering.
Tending the place where we are with presence is an act of engaging with our world. Being where we are, tolerating the discomfort instead of getting away from it, is an opportunity to reconnect to our landscape—the place where we live.
As we walk the territory, we just may begin to remember the ways of the indigenous ancestors of our biology and of the landscape. These ancestors are our companions on this passage and pilgrimage of our own transformation.
