Philip Chard's Out of My Mind column is sponsored by AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop, which offers online classes in all genres and abilities of creative writing, as well as coaching and editing services. You can read past columns here.
In the Donegal region of Ireland, a wild, raucous landscape swept by winds and storms from the North Atlantic, one senses the ancient legends drawn from and the deep mysteries present within nature that speak to the human spirit, even in our modern era. In such places, every day is Earth Day, reminding us not only of our physical dependence on the good graces of the planet we inhabit, but also of a deeply spiritual bond with the natural world that sustains our souls.
As I write these words, I sit in a rustic Irish cottage many years my elder, hearing the gale driven rains swooping off the rocky, heather strewn escarpment above. The air is pungent with a profusion of scents from the flowers that flourish everywhere, nurtured by the ancient soil and copious moisture from the sea. Outside my window to the west, shafts of sunlight pierce the low, brooding clouds racing over the landscape as the gloaming approaches. The distant bay shimmers in the dying light as the towering headlands stand in silent witness to both the seen and unseen.
My usually mesmerizing e-devices sit dormant, cut off from their digital tethers. My electronic leashes severed, I can muse and dawdle in a world without beeps and buzzes, a realm that allows a person to be just that—a sentient being—and not some transactional worker bee pecking away at tasks and timelines.
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In such a place, a sense of magic and mystery slowly returns. Fairies and leprechauns, angels and ancestors, the invisible hands of enigmatic forces and fates—all seem plausible if not certain. Superstition, derided as silly and naive, takes on a different meaning. I recall one derivation of that term from ancient Latin, meaning “standing in awe.” And, when beaten down by life or numbed by the human world of hyper-technology and objectification, it is nature’s version of awe and wonder that we so desperately require.
Wonders of the Natural World
We modern humans are smug in our certainties, but there is far more that we don't know than we do. When smitten by the wonders of the natural world, particularly in places less touched by man and modernity, this sense of awe can awaken once more. You won't find it in a video game, at a big screen cinema or on the latest and greatest technological marvel. These things have their places but fail to connect us to that which makes us human, that speaks to our spirits. They are not our true home.
Recently, scientists have heralded research showing the emotional and spiritual benefits of experiencing awe and wonder in nature, as if this is breaking news. Humans have recognized, honored and cultivated this capacity since well before recorded history. Only recently, in elevating technology to near-divine status, have many of us lost this most human of senses, this most essential of bonds.
In Donegal and countless environs that speak the language of nature, we find what can be known but not put into words. We remember something essential about who we are, something forgotten in the frenzy of life we have come to regard as normal. We realize, once again, that nature is home. So, the more we degrade and destroy these sacred natural places, the more we diminish our humanity.
The madness that permeates the human world is as much a function of this paradise lost as any of the political or economic disruptors that pundits shout about in their deafening drivel. Absent a heartfelt affinity for the beauty and miracles of the natural world, not only do the hidden presences and mysteries surrounding us grow silent, but also those in our souls.
Now, I'll leave my writing and walk out into this wild night, listening with my spirit to the voices in the sky, the soil and the sea. They know what many of us no longer remember.
So, on this Earth Day, or any day, join me in communion with what Native Americans call our “first mother.” Go home.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
Philip Chard's Out of My Mind column is sponsored by AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop, which offers online classes in all genres and abilities of creative writing, as well as coaching and editing services. You can read past columns here.
