Spiritual Journaling

When we hang out with nature something great in ourselves wakes up. We quickly feel more complete, strong, balanced, and beautiful. Nature in all her forms becomes an ally. She waits outside your door, ready at any moment to guide you safely home to all that is true and good about yourself.

“This process of attunement with Nature I found to be very revealing, for often the trees would seem to know me better than I knew myself.”

—FROM TREE WISDOM: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDEBOOK BY JACQUELINE MEMORY PATERSON

According to the legends and ancient knowledge of trees, willows represent woman’s strength. The ancient Celts knew the willow as the Tree of Enchantment and Mysteries. Sitting with a willow can increase your intuitive powers, help you remember your dreams, and give you feminine strength. Feminine qualities are considered the “yin” qualities in Taoism, those qualities that are receptive. Even young men need feminine qualities, just as young women need masculine qualities. Abiding with this particular tree will get you in touch with your own deep wisdom, because this tree is also associated with creativity, visions, and poetic abilities.

I can be so absent minded, it seems my head is not even part of my body. I’m anxious so much of the time. I can’t even remember all the things I need to get done. I shared this with my therapist and she told me to go find a willow tree to sit under, to visit, and to water. She asked that I not think too much about it, and just give it a try. She invited me to take my journal with me to write in. It just so happens I knew right where a big willow tree sits in a friend’s yard, near a lake. I came to the tree with a bottle of water. I sat under her and leaned my body against hers. I instantly felt the tree’s strength. Then her strength became my strength. Later, I almost fell asleep until a crow cawed at me. I felt surrounded by signs. I don’t even know what they all mean, except I felt God talking to me. I have never felt this in church. I’ve returned several times to sit with this willow tree and give her water.

“It is impossible to enter the world of trees without entering the world of Nature’s magic. When you start to communicate with trees, life itself becomes magic, for their spirits echo ages past and tell of life’s never-ending mysteries.”

—FROM TREE WISDOM BY JACQUELINE MEMORY PATERSON

You may want to read more about tree wisdom and choose other trees to sit under and write. A great book for this is The Wisdom of Trees: Mysteries, Magic, and Medicine by Jane Gifford.

Apple The apple tree is a tree of wisdom and healing. Many seek the medicinal powers of its fruit, flowers, and bark. Sit with the apple tree when you are seeking insight on how to heal. You may also receive poetic inspiration under the apple tree.

Beech The beech tree is a writer’s tree. Jane Gifford used this tree to glean some wisdom for her book. She tells us the beech “is a symbol for the written word and for the innate wisdom contained within it, and for ancient learning.” Sit under this great tree to consult oracles (see pages 59–61) for it helps you contact ancient wisdom.

Rowan The rowan tree (also known as mountain ash) is known for its ability to offer spiritual strength and awaken us to our place in the circle of life. If you feel alone and disconnected from the world, sit with a rowan.

Alder The alder tree is a masculine tree that holds protective energies and strengthens our inner confidence. Legend tells us that this tree is also considered a fairy tree—a good place to feel your own magic.

Hawthorn The hawthorn tree can strengthen the emotions of the heart, and open up your heart to love (in all the forms it takes). It can be a blessing tree for a love relationship. This would be a good tree to visit with a loved one, or to marry under.

Oak The oak tree’s energies will help you endure and give you strength. Oak is a masculine tree. Write and say a prayer under this tree. This tree is also known for its gifts of prophecy, so under an oak is another good place to consult an oracle.

“The central root of a tree is called the taproot. Besides providing the tree with nourishment, this taproot is the tree’s main ‘anchor.’ What is your main anchor? What gives you a sense of stability and a sense of ‘rootedness’?”

—FROM A NEW LEAF: IDEAS FOR WRITING INSPIRED BY TREES BY M. S. D. SAMSTON

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Give yourself a couple of hours. Find a nearby willow tree that you can sit with for at least half an hour. Take your journal with you, and some water for you and the tree. (The water is for thanking the tree.)

First sit with the tree as Anna did. Then listen and notice how you feel on the inside as you let her energy mingle with yours. What do you notice? Write this down. Notice any wildlife, a leaf falling to the ground, sounds and smells that present themselves while you sit there. Abide with the tree for a while, just noticing, before you begin to write.

When you are done journaling, and before leaving, thank the tree for its wisdom and offer her some water.

Each of us can uncover the divine (God, Spirit, the Tao) in nature; we simply need to notice that she is actually interacting with us. I tune in to the radio on my commute from work. Once, I listened to a station where people call in with their problems and the host offers some religious advice and a song. The producer of the show shared a story of how the house she lives in is being tapped by woodpeckers. The previous owner was not bothered by woodpeckers. In fact, the host has had all sorts of animals showing up in her house, including a family of raccoons. None of this happened with the previous owner. The host opened up this “problem” of the woodpeckers to the listening public.

“Listen to the voice of nature, for it holds treasures for you.”

—HURON PROVERB

One listener called in and related that he and his wife lived in a home where for the past six years a woodpecker woke them every day with his insistent tapping. The house was being damaged. Because the woodpecker is a protected species, they could not harm it in any way. They tried everything to get the bird to leave their house alone. Finally, the couple moved across town. Shortly after they were all unpacked, the sound of the woodpecker on their new home awakened them! They called and asked the present owners of their last home if there was a woodpecker chipping away at the house in the mornings. “No,” they replied, “we haven’t had any problems or sign of a woodpecker.”

I wanted to call the station to suggest that this couple consider the possibility that the woodpecker was trying to tell them something! As Jeremiah, a twenty-one-year-old college student of religious studies, writes: “If it is true that God is everywhere and in everything, doesn’t it make sense that the woodpecker could be a messenger?”

I looked up woodpecker in Jessica Dawn Palmer’s Animal Wisdom. This is what she writes: “The woodpecker is associated with storms, thunder, trees and tree magic, sacred circles and mother earth. It represents air, fire, water and earth, and as such woodpecker medicine is good ‘all-round’ medicine to have.” It pecks at us to remind us to get in touch with Mother Earth’s cycles. Palmer also warns that “woodpecker can … bode that the individual is out of sync or out of step (in their life or with mother nature). Whenever woodpecker arrives it is time to listen.” Is Mother Earth trying to get these people’s attention? Are they listening?

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.”

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU, AMERICAN AUTHOR, NATURALIST, TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHER

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After you write your own meaning and interpretation of this meeting with nature, do some research to find out the mythical and mystical meaning of this wildlife. Now what do you think the message of the animal might be? What is this animal pointing to? What does Spirit want you to pay attention to? Record this in your journal.

The four elements are inherent in every living thing. The actual presence of fire may not be in something, but the metaphysical element of fire is—for fire refers to all luminous and electrical states. Each of the four elements represents powerful principles and energies that you can tap into. The four elements are represented in the signs of the zodiac, the Native American Medicine Wheel, the I Ching, and the tarot. In Tibetan medicine, as well as other Eastern practices such as acupuncture and Tao shiatsu, each of us is seen as being either in balance with the internal four elements or out of balance.

For example, if you can “go with the flow,” the element of water is strong in you. However, if others too easily influence you, perhaps you have too much water energy and need more fire or earth. Someone who speaks too much is said to have too much wind energy, or air. Ideally, these elemental powers are somewhat balanced in you, but in a particular mix that complements your uniqueness.

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

—JOHN MUIR, AMERICAN NATURALIST, ENVIRONMENTALIST, AUTHOR OF MANY PUBLISHED JOURNALS

The element of fire is related to creativity, intuition, sexuality, and spirit. Fire people are often creative and enthusiastic, sometimes domineering. Fire energizes. Fire is the power of transformation and dramatic change.

The element of water is related to the soul and is associated with the emotions, sensitivity, and being receptive and fluid. Water people are more easygoing and can adapt themselves to new and changing situations. Water expresses the powers of slow change, imagination, and quiet qualities.

The element of air is related to thoughts and ideas, as well as speech. It is the element of communication. It can represent psychic communication. Air people can become easily bored so need to be involved in something all the time. Many prolific writers have a strong air quality.

The element of earth is related to the physical body and all its sensations. It represents stability, patience, and persistence, organic qualities, and sensuality. Because of earth’s abundance, earth people are often prosperous. Earth people are dependable. Earth people are grounded, stable, and centered.

I am a person of water when I am at school but after school I am a person of fire and air. I am a person of water at school otherwise I would burn myself up. I am a person of water. I am a person of water when I am at school. The teachers see me as this good student but inside I am fire and air, inside I am fire and air, inside I am fire and air. I am a person of water at school and my body moves down the halls past the lockers, past the seniors, past the teachers waiting, and into the classroom where I sit like a drop of water in a large pool of water. I am a person of water at school. I am a person of water at school until I get out and my fire and air come out. Then, I am a person of fire and air.

“In God’s wildness is the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.”

—JOHN MUIR

All original cultures—Native Americans, Celts, Australian aborigines, African tribes, the desert peoples—know that the Earth is our mother. We depend on her for our very life. So how is it we are moving so far away from her? Elders from many Native American tribes, as well as other present day wisdomkeepers (Eckhart Tolle, Ram Das, Lama Surya Das), know that our time is limited on this Earth if we persist in the way we are going now. It is not so much that the Earth will be destroyed, it is more likely that she will spit us out like a body spits out a disease. Global warming, for example, can be likened to a high body temperature, or fever. This heat helps expel the disease from the body—whatever is causing the temperature to rise. Mother Earth is powerful. She does not like to be ignored or mistreated. We cannot escape the reality that our very lives depend on how we care for her. As you know, global warming in reality results in a variety of problematic weather changes, not just increasing temperatures.

“The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.”

—TETON SIOUX TRADITION

For me, the Earth is a breathing being with a soul so big it took a planet to hold it. Everything I do as I walk on her body affects her and everyone else on the planet. I know I can walk on her more carefully. Each day as part of my prayer I ask myself, What can I do for Mother Earth today? Then, as part of my morning ritual I honor the Earth Mother by pouring a bowl of water into her and thanking her. Some elders warn us that Mother Earth, the soul of the Earth, is in so much pain she is thinking of leaving. This feels true to me, and so I pour the water, and ask the question “What can I do for you today?” Some days this might mean reusing a water bottle rather than buying a new one every time I am thirsty. On other days it might mean picking up someone else’s litter lying by the side of the road.

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Fill up a bowl with water and pour it into the Earth. Thank her.

“We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened.”

—FROM HUCKLEBERRY FINN BY MARK TWAIN

“There was wildfire to be caught before it was tamed and kindled; there were dreams, visions arising from hunger or possibly from psychotropic mushrooms, that spoke with voices from other realms; there was dancing and singing and coupling; there was language; there was the roar of the thunder and the jagged spear of lightning hurled down to earth—by whom or what?—from the unfathomable height of the luminous sky. There were the wheeling stars at night and the great warmth of the sun that vanquished the stars at dawn.“

In the excerpt above, Rick Fields is speaking of early humans in Africa. Their relationship to the natural world and to Spirit was intense and real. We need to bring this intensity back through connection to the Earth and to our true nature. Our bodies need the fresh air and all the elements to bring forth in us our own wild nature. Feeling bored and dull? Go for a brisk walk outside. Go watch the waves crash on the shore, or gaze at the sunset after a storm. It is unnatural to be so subdued and tame—it is in our nature to be in nature.

There is something wild in us all. Granted, we are pretty well domesticated and tamed. Most often we are well behaved and know when to wait our turn in line. But the wildness I am talking about is there inside of you and me—wanting to come out. It needs to come out. And one of the easiest ways to invite it out is to go out and be in the wild yourself.

“The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and will always be, entirely beyond us. That there are such worlds all around us is an essential feature of our world.”

—FROM BEAST AND MAN: THE ROOTS OF HUMAN NATURE BY MARY MIDGLEY

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Take your journal and a pen. And if you have a camera take that, too. Find a wild prairie. Find a natural beach. Find a healthy stream or creek. Find a hillside that is preserved. Find a wild place in nature. Notice what sounds, smells, sights are around you. What is the ground like that lies beneath you? Write about all that you see, hear, smell. Give yourself an hour. Notice what changes in that hour.

Go find a place to observe the night sky outside the city limits. Lie on the ground looking up. Write about what you feel.

Photos on my wall or in my album remind me of special moments when I encountered wildlife. Many of those photos originated when I managed to overcome the wary alert systems of the animal involved and had an encounter within the animal’s normal flight zone. I wore camouflage or hid in a blind, so the animal did not know I was present. That made it possible for me to experience the nature of the animal in a way I could not have done from a greater distance.

“If a flower blooms once, it goes on blooming somewhere forever. It blooms on for whoever has seen it blooming.”

—FROM SOUNDER BY WILLIAM H. ARMSTRONG, AFRICAN-AMERICAN NOVELIST

Observing and photographing prairie chickens delivers a special meaning. The sight and sound of a prairie chicken lek, or booming ground, at the crack of dawn touches one’s soul with delight and a sense of history. The strange displays of the cock birds attempting to attract hens for mating are entertaining. An air sac, like a small yellow balloon, fills up along each side of the bird’s neck. The prairie chicken slowly issues an eerie, deep, resonate, “Mmm-wall-oomm.” As I observe the males’ posturing and then the foot-stomp display, I know I’m viewing wildlife that influenced some ceremonial dances of Native Americans. This displaying, too, touches me. If I had only observed the displaying prairie chickens, I still would have long remembered their show, but the photos I took will help me to remember details of their act and to explain it to my friends.

Begin your own book of field notes and photos or drawings. Local bird stores have field journals to purchase or you can simply create your own. The ones in the store are usually waterproof.

“Remember, this is just practice. You write what you write. Besides, who can say from the marshy edge of my pond which frog gets transformed and which kiss holds magic.”

—FROM A WRITER’S BOOK OF DAYS BY JUDY REEVES

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Take your journal and camera out to a place where you can easily observe wildlife. Hide in a blind or wear camouflage. Sit as still as possible and watch the undisturbed wildlife. Journal about their behavior as Al did in the above piece.

Take your camera and journal to a favorite spot in nature at sunrise. Take field notes and photos of what you see and hear.

Read A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, American naturalist and ecologist. These essays on the Round River are an example of field notes turned into a popular book.