Embracing Church of the Wild

 

1 Teach me, God, to wonder, teach me, God, to see;

let your world of beauty capture me.

Praise to you be given, love for you be lived,

life be celebrated, joy you give.

                                                                Voices United 299

church

1. a building for public Christian worship.

2. public Christian worship of God; a Christian religious service.

Early yesterday morning we headed out in our kayaks onto the Bay of Quinte, an arm of Lake Ontario. We checked that the wind speeds were low, the temperature was perfect, and it was simply a glorious summer day. We paddled for just over an hour before the bay became busier with motorboats and fisherfolk, enjoying a stretch of shoreline with only a handful of residences. We saw plenty of creatures including blue herons, ospreys, egrets, a green heron, kingfishers, a beaver, a deer, and turtles. We love it along here and the risk of being out on bigger water is moderate.

As regular readers will know, we consider spending time in the natural world as sacred and we do so as often as possible in every season. We have done so over the course of 50+ years and we hope to continue doing so as long as our general health and the grace of the Creator allow us to do so. My aged joints grumble a lot more now getting into the cockpit of my boat than they once did but I'm not prepared to stop just yet.

Is this "church"? Some would say no, emphatically, and certainly the congregation was small in terms of humans, although "For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Matthew 20:18. There was a heavenly, watery host when other species were counted in. We often offer praise, perhaps a recalled verse from a Creation hymn, and we have a brief physical ritual of acknowledgement of the Creator we engage in. There is no building but each space is a templum, using the definition of dedicated to a deity, place of divine worship, sanctuary, shrine, temple. 

                                                                          Photo: Ruth Mundy

There is a book Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred. The author,  Victoria Loorz, is passionate and persuasive in speaking about the formation and  transformation which unfold in the natural world. She is a founder of the Wild Church Network with a growing number of wild churches, committed to worshipping en plein air. 

The natural world -- that world where we already belong -- is an alluring invitation into the sacred, into a relationship with something larger. And that very sacred presence invites us into the wild. The whole process is holy. It is a dynamic, a reciprocity, a loving conversation, a relationship -- one that includes me and you and God and the whole wild, alive world. 

I love inspirational church architecture, old and new, but more and more I chafe at supposedly sacred spaces that don't even give a hint of the glory of Creation. How did we ever get to the place where it became either/or for our worship gatherings and we shut out the outside world with stained glass windows? Some modern church structures have no windows at all. 

This morning we attended worship 10:30 at Trenton United and it was a meaningful service. Before we did so we drove to North Beach Provincial Park and were there for the opening at 8 AM. In the solitude we went for a swim and listened to a loon calling from across the bay. Both experiences fed our souls. 

                                                                     Photo: Ruth Mundy