Worship in the Woods

"Soulcraft Intensive," a program of the Animas Valley Institute, October, 2022, outside Louisville, Kentucky

It didn't feel like worship, exactly. But I wouldn't know what else to call it. We sat in a circle under a clear fall sky, a distant hawk circling high overhead. The morning sun burned hot for mid-October and those among us not soaking it up were trying instead to shelter ourselves from it, pulling hoodies up over our heads and blankets over our knees.

The night before, we had bedded down, each in our own tent, to the yips and cries of coyotes in the near darkness. One of our group tried yipping back. Some heard the hooting of barred owls. The place was alive, this large spread of wooded farmland in rural Kentucky. It made me doubt that the pond, which was aerated to keep the water fresh and to prevent algae from forming, was free from leaches and the kind of creepy-crawlers that might attach to my nakedness as I waded in, not wanting to stir them up by diving off the dock.

Each afternoon we would go off on Wild Wanders, alone, often with an invitation suggested by our guides--to notice what we noticed, to feel our sympathies with the land, to allow ourselves to be surprised. We would write in our journals and sometimes share something of the experience when we returned, mid-afternoon, to rejoin the group. In the evenings we gathered in a circle to drum and to dance into the night, allowing our bodies to move under the cover of darkness any which way they wanted.

For five days and nights we felt part of the natural world. We were learning the ways that our souls were brought to life by being there, awakening within us the griefs and longings of our hearts. We were remembering, as best we could, that childhood wonder that allowed us to believe that the trees talked to us, and the animals listened, and even the moon was part of the conversation.

Sarah Lyon offers individual "eco-spiritual direction;" she leads groups in "nature-connecting" retreats; and she gathers a congregation of "edge walkers" each month in what they call Wild Church. She knows both the soul's need to be in wild places, and the ways that the Wild shows up to meet us there. It's a deeply satisfying experience to begin to see the universe as a "communion of subjects," one that includes us, rather than a "collection of objects" (Thomas Berry). Sarah helps people discover this for themselves.

There was a time we might have thought that spiritual direction took place in a darkened room, with a candle burning and perhaps the sound of water from an electric tabletop fountain. But more recently counsellors and therapists of all stripes have been directing their clients back to the natural world, where a deeper healing and a deeper wisdom is available than talk therapy can achieve in a windowless office.

The Animas Valley Institute has been doing this for over forty years now, inviting soul seekers to camp out for days at a time in forests and on mountains. The Wild Church movement requires only a few hours on a Sunday in a local bit of wildness, either in the city or out of town. Both would talk about the sacredness of the natural world.

Sarah offers guidance to those who want to reconnect with the Earth. It is a kind of holy listening that attempts to track the responses of the soul to the land that raised us and to the wilds that call us. She is gifted, and trained, in this kind of listening. But she is also rooted in her own love of the land and in her openness to its wisdom. She is a new breed of spiritual guide teaching us an ancient way of knowing.

To listen to my conversation with Sarah Lyon for The Mystic Cave, click on the Play button, below. To learn more about her work and that of the Wild Church movement, follow the More Info prompt to the show notes.