Contemplation of Creation: A Nature Meditation Walk

by Kolya Braun-Greiner, MDiv

Editor’s Note: All of our contemplative practice offerings are meant to be experienced, but this one especially is intended to be listened to out in nature. That said, there are few options to make this exercise more adaptable. You might stream the audio as a longer guided meditation while you are on a hike, a walk around the neighborhood, or at a quiet spot outside. You may also choose to meditate indoors by a window looking out onto a landscape, a yard, a tree in the street, or even just the sky. If none of these options are available to you at the moment, the accompanying photos can serve as a visual aid during the meditation (click on the photo to enlarge), or simply close your eyes and picture one of the natural objects, whether from a particular memory or imagined.

You could choose to listen to the guided meditation in full, which takes around 40 minutes and is provided at the beginning of the text. We have also included each “Encounter” as separate audio guides, positioned under their respective headings. Each individual encounter lasts 3-5 minutes and could serve as a pause in your day.

You are invited into a place-based, embodied spiritual experience, to hear within your soul what nature may have to teach you of God’s creating presence in all things. A walking meditation contemplating nature offers a way to connect with an expression of God’s creation in nature local to you, or elsewhere in a place of your choosing. This place could be just outside your door, in your wider neighborhood, or a park nearby. Wherever you are, be it rural, urban, or suburban, the Spirit of Life can be witnessed in the more-than-human world.

Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in Christ all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible...
– Colossians 1: 15-17

This is the “universal Christ” that Richard Rohr espouses, as “Christ is in all things, everywhere.”

...ask the animals, and they will teach you, the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? – Job 12:7-9
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
– Rachel Carson

Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop. – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Pay attention. Be astonished. And go tell others. – Mary Oliver

Before the Walk: Exercises for Centering Your Mind, Body, and Spirit

Before you begin your walk, consider centering your Mind, Body, and Spirit as three doorways through which your soul can witness Christ or the Divine in nature. Each of these doors invites us to step over a threshold into “the world in which the boundaries between us [and the wider family of creation] can dissolve,” as Kimmerer affirms.

First Doorway: Mind

Contemplate nature as the First Word of God. Prior to the Word of Scripture, the Source of Life, Creator of the Universe, brought Earth into being. How is this being I’m witnessing expressing the intention or Word of God’s creativity?
Creation naturally praises and glorifies their creator. How do I sense this being’s appearance or sound expressing praise for their creator?
Listening for Wisdom, the Sophia of God, in Creation which mirrors and expresses our Creator’s Spirit. What message do I hear within my soul that seems to express Holy Spirit’s Wisdom?

Second Doorway: Body

Engaging the full awareness of your bodily sensations — sight, smell, hearing, touch (with safety) will open you to a wider experience of connection with the natural world. These are physical ways of entering the contemplations of beings in nature that will follow.

Begin with your feet, feeling rooted in Earth. Imagine your head connected to Heaven by a thread or ray of light; you embody a bridge between Heaven and Earth. And as you walk between encounters with beings of creation, walk mindfully and gently upon Earth, saying to yourself silently or aloud, “With every step I take, this sacred ground I walk upon.”
Now focus on your breath. God’s Spirit is breathing in you and through you every moment of your life. Breathe in the breath of life; this precious breath that sustains you.
With your eyes, practice gazing with deep seeing. Franciscan Richard Rohr distinguishes seeing from looking. He says that “The mystic sees the seer and the seen as equivalent, granting respect to that which is ‘over there.’ This second gaze expresses the difference between seeing and looking. Deep seeing with reverence and wonder is a kind of prayerful attention. This second gaze goes deeper to examining our deep connection with all that is - it's called the mutuality of all things - in Franciscan theology the "univocity of all being."

In each of the encounters below with nature, you are invited to gaze with this kind of deep seeing. As Rohr says, “meditate on its unique being. Allow it to speak back to you.”

Third Doorway: Spirit

Now that you have approached the doorways of mind and body I invite you to center upon the doorway of spirit all around us and in us, through experiencing the following emanations of God’s creation.

Walk: Seven Encounters

You will be invited to contemplate seven encounters with beings in nature — Sky, Stones, Water, Trees, Flowers, Insects, and Birds. You may wish to just spend time focusing on one, skip ahead to listen to another one, or experience them all sequentially.

Pause between encounters long enough with each one to allow for some revelation to emerge within you.

Contemplating Sky

Contemplating a Stone

Contemplating Water

Contemplating a Tree

Contemplating a Flower

Contemplating Insects

Contemplating Birds

What else in this location of God’s creation can you engage your mind, body, and spirit to contemplate? What do they reveal of God’s voice speaking to your soul?

Closing Prayer

As a benediction I offer you this wisdom from Dostoevsky as a blessing to take with you.

Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love each thing you will perceive the divine mystery in all things. Once you perceive this, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love. — Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

May it be so for you with all your relations in the more-than-human world of God’s exquisite creation. Amen.

Kolya Braun-Greiner is a member of Seekers Church in Washington, DC, and former program coordinator with Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake. She has created curricula and facilitated trainings for people of many faiths to explore connections of their tradition with care for the environment. She is currently working on a book about contemplating nature as a way to foster reverence and healing for Earth.

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