Nature and Spirituality"

Photo by Jack Cohen on Unsplash

My last sermon was “Can a UU Be a Mystic.” I think it was an important sermon but I know I packed a lot of information into it. Some folks told me after the service it had their mind reeling. So, – this week, I decided to tone it down a bit and focus on the idea of nature and how truly living in nature - seeing it, hearing it, touching it and smelling it is truly a path to finding the spiritual side of your being. It is a way to connect with the magic and mystery of the universe and to that which you feel to be sacred. For some of us, it is the way to connect with the divine or the ultimate reality – defined in so many ways by human beings around the world.

As I said in my last sermon, I do believe UUs can certainly be mystics as we each search for truth and meaning through all of human knowledge and experience. I can think of no better way to find that mystical connection then in nature and there are countless ways to do it.

A walk along the beach, a sunrise, the beauty of a waterfall hidden amid a dense forest, the joy of new life; all these things can evoke the spiritual. They cause us to transcend ourselves and to transcend the moment. They force us to connect with the world and with the universe. They bring forth the sacred aspect of our human existence. After all, we ourselves are nature -reflecting upon itself.

So let me offer you some examples of moments that I have experienced in nature and from human history where I have felt profound connections with the sacred – in fact so much so, these thoughts and feelings and experiences over many years led me to take a leap of faith when I was 35 and leave my career behind – or so I thought at the time, and attend seminary at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. To begin with, I must talk about the sea – for the world’s oceans have always been a spiritual place for me as I have traveled upon them far and wide around the world for many years of my life to find spaces and places that have given me so many spiritual connections.

In my youth I was drawn to the sea and began sailing the world’s oceans on merchant ships when I was only 17. People have asked me if my many years at sea influenced my religious journey and my spirituality. The answer is yes: amazingly so. Many times at sea I have experienced a transcendent mystery, an awe, and a power that is truly not describable.

There have been times when I have stood alone on the bridgewing of a ship a thousand miles from any human shorebound soul and watched with awe as the sun disappeared over a distant horizon in a red blaze of glory – once, off the coast of southwest Africa for many twilight nights in a row when the “green flash” jetted into space as the sun dipped below the horizon and the veil of night soon revealed a starbound sky with thousands of stars stretching from horizon to horizon. It was as though my world teetered on the edge of forever.

I have watched with awe and even sometimes fear as an angry ocean tossed even my huge ship about in 50-foot seas as though it were merely a small toy boat. In all of these experiences, I have been constantly reminded of the fragility of my existence and of the sacredness of the earth and the cosmos which shines boldly bright in the darkness of an ocean night.

There were the times in Kenya and South Africa when I ventured on Safaris to see nature in its raw state – and to witness the incredible balance in the forces of nature that coursed through the very being of every creature I saw. It was a sobering experience to stare into the eyes of a female lion not three feet away from me as I sat in an open vehicle with no protection of any kind while she proceeded on her hunt for impalas. I certainly felt my human frailty and vulnerability. To see the balance and harmony in all that I saw in these untouched lands made me realize that it is we humans through our actions that so often we disturb this balance and in so doing, attack the sacred.

Indeed, traveling through the country of Swaziland (now called Eswatini), I witnessed poor rural areas of southern Africa and found myself asking questions on what defines happiness. If these people enjoy a bountiful living in terms of food and they are able to enjoy a sense of security by living their traditional lifestyle, why do I view them as poor when I see their villages and homes? Would they, indeed, be happier if we imparted to them the lifestyle we enjoy with big homes, cars, endless shopping sprees, and all the trappings of Western material life? Would they be happier? Or are they really the happier ones? I paused to wonder.

After spending time in the ancient Indian towns of Jaipur, Jodhpur, Chittaghar, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, Fatepor Sekri and numerous outlying fortresses and palaces built hundreds or thousands of years ago, I was in Ranthambore National Park in Rajasthan staring at an abandoned medieval hilltop city complete with fortresses and palaces built by the Rajputs in the 10th century – now standing silent. Just then a beautiful Bengal tiger ambled by, her look of curiosity bestowing a natural majesty as a predator with no enemies save human beings. All of India is filled with a spiritual presence in its lands, its rivers, its mountains and in its people. And sometime later riding an elephant through a swamp we were attacked by a mother rhinoceros but fortunately the elephant scared her away – an example of hierarchy in nature in this mystical land.

Seeing the people of Japan through their Shinto and Buddhist beliefs and practices I saw an intense spiritual reverence for nature which can be seen in their natural wonders, their parks, their mountains, and their well-tended gardens. The Japanese expression of “Wabi Sabi” embraces the beauty of nature - recognizing imperfections, transience, aging and change which they see in nature and people all around them.

Antarctica is a land of extremes. It is a land of incredible beauty and stark fury. It is a land of bitter cold and strangling loneliness. It is a land that many have tried but failed to understand. It is a land like no other and it is a land that in every way represents humanity’s struggle with nature and nature’s struggle with humanity. It is the final land frontier on earth and it is a place that although mostly untouched by the greed and corruption of humankind now lies potentially subject to reckless exploitation with the countless implications that this will bear.

Suddenly off the land, a tongue of ice – an immense mass of ice hundreds of feet high – a glacier - moving ever so slowly with determined gravitational effort to reach the sea. A mass so filled with hues of deep blue it shown as a great jewel, perhaps one from earth’s hidden crown. And it groaned and it cracked and it thundered. And when it spoke, it’s voice echoed amidst the canyons and mountains of the bay and its voice was power. It was the earth speaking. It was the earth reminding us of who we are – how little we are in relation to the immense majesty of creation. And its voice was heard by other glaciers and some responded mightily in paralyzing sounds of piercing cracks and thunder.

To see this – a privilege beyond compare – a feeling of connection with earth – a feeling of respect – a feeling of awe - a feeling of reverence – a feeling of a tiny window of life, my life – against a backdrop of forever. This place, a cathedral of the sacred – a testimony to the elegance and majesty of creation.

Antarctica a haunting and enchanting place and one that captures an awe and a respect – a place where one touches the majesty of earth and creation in the most profound of ways. It is a sacred place filled with reminders of how our earth and ourselves are so interconnected.

A naturalist told me that he was flying on a plane a few years before and he asked the person next to him if he had ever been to Antarctica. The person said, “Well he’d seen it but he’d never been there – and he said it was a great jewel of white surrounded by the deep blue waters of the oceans. It was, he said, a grand sight along with the rest of our tiny earth – so fragile against the backdrop of an infinite star filled universe.” At first the naturalist thought this passenger was crazy and then he discovered who he was – the last human being to walk on the moon.

Looming in the distance as my ship approached the treacherous shore at the bottom of the world were fires rising from the sea – the result of flaring off of natural gas. When Magellan first found these straits in 1520, he called them the “Land of Fire,” “Tierra del Fuego” – probably because he saw the same thing or saw the campfires of the Yamana people who lived in this windswept land of cold so far from other people. Magnificent snow-capped mountains, fiords, and ice blue glaciers adorn this lonely land, the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, a twisting voyage of false channels and dangerous rocky shoals – a reminder of the challenges of life and the risks so many humans endure.

A few hundred miles to the south, the barren Staten Island just next to Cape Horn, The tiny chapel on the island where I sat and said a silent prayer for the 10,000 to 20,000 mariners who dared to transit this deadly passage on their way around South America and succumbed to any angry ocean. The lighthouse perched on a rocky craig on Cape Horn, a lonesome sentinel warding off the ships that still risk this most dangerous journey. And all about, a feeling of nature’s power and majesty and the sometimes foolhardiness of humans who challenge its majesty.

While the natural world itself can evoke intense spiritual feelings, another way to spiritual truth is human spaces that have found their way into holy lore. Near the Aegean shores of the Roman province of New Asia (modern day Turkiye), I walked the roads of Ephesus, built some 3000 years ago - once lying on the shorefront, but the city is inland now, some miles from the sea. Ephesus, the city where St. Paul penned his epistles to the Ephesians 2000 years ago, calling for unity among Jews and Christians and asking them to follow the examples of Jesus. The city now a ruin but the ghosts of its Roman past still haunt its temple ruins built to define human’s strivings toward the divine.

Further to the south, I wandered in an afternoon into the Garden of Gethsemane, outside the walls of Jerusalem, the place where Jesus meditated and prayed just before his execution. Within the garden a 1700-year-old church with a Christmas eve mass in progress. And as I sat alone in a pew with only a few attendees present, the late afternoon sun poured through the blue stain glass windows casting a holy light on the proceedings and shining in the faces of the elderly priests. Not far away – other celebrations in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the middle of old Jerusalem, the stone steps to the rock called “Mount Calvery” where Jesus is remembered to have been crucified worn smooth by the pilgrims who ventured here in faith for 1700 years.

I sat on the steps of the Parthenon on the acropolis at 6:00 AM one twilight morning, permission granted by a kindly sentry at the gate. I was the only person there as the morning sun rose in splendor in the east and cast eerie shadows on this sacred mount, a place of sacrifice and homage to Athena and the ancient gods of Greece. A testament to human’s desire to understand the unknown – the forces of nature, the destiny of an individual’s life, a hope for a bright tomorrow and a plea for safety and security in one’s life. Here too the ghosts of the past seemed to roam about the temples and the marketplace – the Agora below.

Pitcarin Island – one of the remotest places I have ever seen. Set alone in the southern Pacific ocean, the island is over 500 miles from the nearest island and over 1300 miles from Tahiti. A lush tropical island with foreboding shorelines; the island was settled by the mutineers from the HMS Bounty, the small ship captained by William Bligh when he was sent on a mission in 1787, to obtain breadfruit trees from Tahiti and transport them to British Caribbean islands as a source of protein for slaves on the sugar plantations. After the mutineers had cast Captain Bligh adrift, they sailed the Bounty to Pitcarin along with their Tahitian wives. Sadly, the mutineers soon killed each other but the wives and children survived and their descendants still live in this, a very remote place – a people living in the past, invaded by the present. The memory of seeing the island from afar and understanding its history still haunts me. The mutineers living in a natural paradise but refusing to forgo violence and hatred.

North American Indians lived close to the earth. To them, there was and is no separation of the sacred and the profane as in western thought. No sacred scriptures are necessary to connect and communicate with the sacred. One need only live and experience the cycles of life and use one’s senses to see and feel and hear and touch and smell the wonder of the surrounding world. As for a God or gods, in most cases, Indian tribes see nature and the divine as one. There isn’t a distinct or separate or transcendent God but a force manifest in many spiritual entities that permeate all of creation and are infused in the cycles of nature.

For many North American Indians, the sacred spirits or forces of creation are imbedded in all things from mountains and rivers to animals and plants. The stories of the spirits vary depending on a tribe’s particular location and geography and source of food.

As the Lakota Sioux Indian Black Elk who lived from 1863 to1950 stated: “Peace comes within the oneness of men, when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers and when they realize that at the center of the Universe dwells Wakan-Tanka and that this center is really everywhere; it is within each of us.” (Curiously, it is written that Jesus said the same thing).

On my way to seminary at age so long ago, I took some 9 weeks and drove 13,000 miles inside the United States, mostly traveling on back roads. Along the way, I visited many tribal reservations trying to see and understand the Indian way of life – past and present. At one point, I was drawn to visit Canyon de Chelly on the Navajo/Hopi reservation in Arizona. Canyon de Chelly is a National Park on the reservation but it is not frequently visited because it is on Navajo/Hopi land.

After staying overnight in the Navajo town of Tuba City, I visited the Canyon. At first, I couldn’t see it from the road but after a time, a feeling made me stop and walk to the edge of the high plateau I was on. Then I saw it. The sight below was breathtaking. A mini grand canyon with all the rich desert colors of orange and brown, yellow and black with a lush green valley and a dry river bed below.

A few Navajo hogans of dried mud and earth provided evidence of farming quarters where the Navajo lived during the farming season. And standing within a huge cavern inside the opposite mountain was an abandoned town – a cliff dwelling left by the Anasazi – the ancient ones who lived there some 1000 years before. Taking some time, I managed to climb down into the Canyon and over to the cliff dwelling. I sat in awe and felt the sun, the clear sky, the green valley, the presence of the Anasazi. Suddenly a breeze sprang up in the valley and I heard in the wind, gentle singing of female voices. No words – just singing. I was transfixed in the moment. I felt lifted beyond time and space. Magnificent and alone. After many moments, the singing ended. I took a deep breath and began the long trek back to my car.

And then, of course, there is Cape Cod. Though many who come to live here, those who were born here but refuse to leave, and those who are drawn here may not realize it, but they love it here because Cape Cod and the sea that surrounds it is a spiritual place – mostly untouched by the fast-paced life and human problems that plague so many cities. If you take the time and find your own special places here on Cape Cod it can nurture your spiritual being – just as nature’s wonders in all the world can do.

Something inside my being must have known this because I was drawn to buying a place here on Cape Cod some 40 years ago as I sailed around the world on the thousand-foot container ship “American Virginia” – strangely “Virginia” being the name of my future wife who I did not yet know. It was in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean that I started pulling out charts of Cape Cod and wondering what it would be like to live here. Over and over, I pondered about Cape Cod until only days after I left the ship, I bought my house in Brewster (the Town of the sea captains.). Since that time, I always found the Cape to be a place of spiritual renewal for me – being in nature close to the sea – bringing me so near to the sacred.

For those who are unable to travel to places in nature or even to walk the many spaces and places here on Cape Cod where humans can find that spiritual connection – there is still a way to see and feel that connection. Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube and other streaming services can help you with this. Currently, along with my wife, Virgina, we have been watching “The Americas” narrated by Tom Hanks. We have also watched “Planet Earth” I and II, The “Frozen Earth”, “The Blue Planet” and “Our Planet” narrated by David Attenborough. “The Story of All of Us,” is also a valuable series to watch as are a number of other series on nature, astronomy, and our understanding of the universe. YouTube has many videos and documentaries on Cape Cod and its many special places. All of these programs can be profoundly spiritual and as emotionally uplifting as Gregorian chant in an ancient cathedral.

In all of nature, the spiritual and the sacred are hiding in plain sight but you have to take the time to look at it, see it, smell it, touch it and hear it to experience it.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson (a Unitarian minister) noted in his Essay “The Over-Soul:”

. . . that great nature in which we rest . . . that Unity, that Over-Soul, within which every human's particular being is contained and made one with all the other. . . We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within humans is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.

Reverend Christopher McMahon

UUMH

April 27, 2025