While many of us remain indoors due to the Movement Control Order Dan Lawrence, our Primary School Counsellor, offers a moment to reflect on our connection with nature even if it's just through our windows today!
In wilderness is the preservation of the world - Henry D Thoreau
Henry Thoreau, the poet-philosopher and environmental scientist author of “Walden”, knew a fundamental truth of life on Earth; That human well-being and that of all creatures, depends upon a positive, practical connection with Nature and her unfettered wilderness.
Wilderness, the freedom of the natural world, calls humankind back to the enduring sanity and intelligence of wild things. When increasing our awareness of the underlying aliveness that throbs in natural habitats, we arrive in the very pulse of Nature and draw closer to the inherent emotional affiliation and unbroken awareness that exists between humans and other living organisms. Shoma Morita, the brilliant late Japanese eco-psychoanlayst, framed his restorative residential eco-psychotherapeutic model around a unique theory of peripheral consciousness that is omnipresent in Nature; For Morita true well-being relied upon recognizing that we find our true equilibrium when aligned with Nature as the true home of awareness.
Only by developing and maintaining a healthy relationship with Nature, one of deep respect and harmony, will we survive as a species. And only by intentionally resting our mind in Nature will we find respite from our busy minds. This is not another mindfulness practice, not a ‘self’ becoming more aware of Nature. Thoreau and Morita invite a sensing of and embedding oneself into the Nature that surrounds us at all times, small moment to small moment; We are to establish an ongoing, intimate and interactive exchange with Nature. It is only in the reality and resource of the wilderness that humans will discover the wisdom we need to survive.
How might you re-member yourself in Nature today? Look outside your window or take a short walk into the wilderness that surrounds us often unseen.
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The thought for the day is a short reflective writing relevant to the art of suffering well (enough) in difficult times, for parents and staff of Alice Smith. If it offers comfort amidst adversity, read the text and call it to mind when you need it (even if just a short phrase from the larger text), allowing it to soak into the marrow of your bones and merge with your breath. Remember, we are all in this together...
Take good care, Dan
