A Culture of Reverence
June 2025
by Julian
“Knowing that you love the Earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the Earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one way street into a sacred bond.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer
Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to be introduced to the practice of forest bathing by spiritual director Laurie Sharpe, at the Franciscan Spiritual Center in nearby Marylhurst, Oregon. After a brief orientation, the small group of us were sent out to spend 10 minutes exploring the grounds with our senses, hearts, and minds open to the world around us. I immediately gravitated to a magnolia tree that caught my eye a month earlier, when its display of pink and white flowers in full bloom shone brilliantly against green foliage. And although the time was short, I quickly fell into a rapt rapport with this tree, noticing the different textures of bark and moss, seeing with my eyes, touching with my hands, smelling the rich aromas. I walked the perimeter of its branches, enchanted by the light and shadows, colors and patterns above me. My ears perked to the chirps of a family of juncos flitting from limb to limb, as I relished in wonder that this unique, unrepeatable being, this tree, supported a vast, interwoven community of creatures.
Oregon Oak, Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey, Carlton, Oregon
In this short span of time, I came to sense in my own body that I, too, was part of this intimate community of creatures; that this tree contains its own mysterious depth and interiority. I came to sense this tree not as an object but as a mode of divine presence, to borrow a phrase from the late, self-identified “geologian,” Thomas Berry. And while I don’t really know what it means to feel that the Earth loves me, I can’t help but think that it starts with this intimate sense that this magnolia tree is a part of me, imparting something that transforms and nourishes me.
When we lose our capacity to receive the beauty and nourishment all around us, our hunger for things like power, achievement, status, security, and wealth becomes insatiable.
The Buddhist image of a hungry ghost comes to mind, a caricature of what we become when we step out of this circle of relationship and experience ourselves as isolated subjects in a world of objects: creatures with stomachs as wide as a planet and open mouths the circumference of a needle, unable to take in real nourishment. When we lose our capacity to receive the beauty and nourishment all around us, our hunger for things like power, achievement, status, security, and wealth becomes insatiable.
Julian and Adel work in the garden.
And yet, despite the vast destruction our illusory hungers inflict, the trees still call to us—the flowers, grasses, forests, rivers, oceans, deserts, even the green leafy vine hanging from the ceiling over my desk as I write: our precious Earth. Call it love if you will, this constant invitation to release our destructive patterns and find nourishment in our sacred bonds with one another and with all creatures.
Please join us here at Dandelion House as we experiment with practices and patterns of living that seek to mend these sacred bonds and fulfill our responsibility to defend, protect, and celebrate life in all its diversity. We invite you to share the gift of your presence and creativity with us, whether helping us in the garden or preparing and serving a hot meal to hungry neighbors. Come for prayerful silence and heartfelt sharing at our Sunday Soup and Contemplation gathering or celebrate the Sacred with us at our Cosmic Liturgy of the Divine Feminine. Together, in the midst of so much harm and indifference, let us build a culture of reverence.
