GAZING AT TIME'S BODY

For enrichment to occur in our lives, other ordinary distractions must be minimized. This is why a wilderness experience seems, actually is, an enrichment: Big chunks of civilization are removed. Then, the numinous (sensing the presence of the divine) qualities of Nature can be realized. We can then, like Thoreau, sense that, "In wilderness is the preservation of the world."

Yes, it is a letdown to return to the strictly mundane, the quotidian routines of life, after one has seen the divine in Nature. Our experiencing a place like the Grand Canyon--with its exposed Earth strata of mauve, terra cotta, ocher, and brick-red--is partly like gazing into the living tree rings of the Earth itself. It's easy to lose oneself in time there, in the overwhelming sense of the immense span of time and its vivid corporealness, as if Time were a substance and we just short-lived molecules in its body. Yet, the body of Time and Nature continues and lives on, whether we are here or not. At least we can gaze part way into it. And, then, live here, now--in the body of Time.

NATURE AS METAPHOR AND SACRAMENT

It would be difficult to fashion a definition of what it has meant to be human ever since the beginnings of our genus, without seeing humanity in relation to Nature. We as humans still need to experience the timeless, the mysterious, the primordial. This is found in Nature. Not because we can understand the mysteries of the Universe, but perhaps because we CANNOT comprehend its timelessness and vastness. As Trappist monk Thomas Merton said,

"We are exiles in the far end of solitude, living as listeners
With hearts attending to the skies we cannot understand."

I would say that our interior journey of understanding/not understanding is a mirror of our outer journey of understanding/not understanding. Nature, then, functions as both metaphor and sacrament of our Soul.

It's okay that we can understand so little of the interior/exterior wildernesses. But, the journey must be undertaken. Then, and only then, will we be helped along the way.