The Wordless Calling (and How to Start Listening)
One small step to respond to what the land is saying
It starts as a nagging restlessness you can’t shake.
Something draws you. Not intellectually. Deeper than that. Your body knows before your mind can name it. The land is speaking, and part of you is already responding.
When I first felt this on the Aubrac Plateau during a pilgrimage, I tried to overintellectualize it. I’m a professor of research methodology. Analyzing is my first response to everything. Western society encourages this: name it, explain it, understand it before you trust it.
But EcoSpirituality invites us to follow the call first. Worry about the what and why later, if at all.
Here’s what I learned in this experience: it can be incredibly lonely starting to follow something you have no words for. I started looking for others who were writing or talking about this experience. Just to know I wasn’t imagining things. That search eventually led me to the EcoSpirituality Certificate I’m now teaching.
One Small Step for Today
If you recognize this calling, try this:
Take a walk. When something in the natural world attracts your attention, a tree, a stream, a certain plant, stop. Spend time with this being. Be open to what it may want to communicate. Without judgment. Without overintellectualizing.
Just listen.
Learn More
If you want to explore this further, read yesterday’s full post and join tonight’s free Q&A at 5pm EST.
Register for the Zoom session here
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Walking beside you,
Jeffrey