Experiencing God in Nature

e often think about God in our daily life. We pray to God. We discuss about God and who God is. But oftentimes, it is difficult for us to "feel" God or "experience" God. After all, when we talk about God, we use words like "infinite", "eternal" and "all-powerful" to describe God. For most of us, we can understand what these things mean, but asking us to "feel" these things is something completely different. As human beings, we are limited. It seems contradictory that we could experience God who is infinite while we ourselves are so small.

One thing that we forget, however, is that there are many ways in which we can experience God. We can experience God directly or indirectly through God's creations. Of course, it is not always easy because it requires us to put aside the things in our daily life so that we can totally turn ourselves toward God. For us who are busy with school, work, family, and friends, it is not a thing that we can do automatically. Many times, I try to sit in silence only to find myself falling asleep from tiredness. Other times, I find strange thoughts and images appearing in my mind without me knowing them. In those times, it is difficult to experience God and I become discouraged.

A friend of mine recently told me about a profound experience he had in which he went out into the woods by himself for an entire day. He sat in one place and attempted to become one with his surroundings. By becoming one with nature, he was able to have a deep experience of God because God was present in nature in a very profound way. I was impressed by what I heard and decided that I would do the same to see whether my experience would be similar to his.

On a beautiful Sunday morning, I set out to the woods about half an hour from where I lived. I walked for fifteen minutes through the groves and found my place under a tree. I did not know what kind of tree it was but it was large in size. The branches, though bare from the winter that just past, exhibited signs of rejuvenation as spring had finally arrived. The ground was still wet after several days of rain, yet it was vibrant in its colors of green, purple, and yellow -- all coming from wild flowers that sprawled about. Dead tree branches and twigs, though rampant, could do little to inhibit the wild flowers from adorning the ground with their beautiful blossoms. Above me, the sky was blue and clear with the exception of some white, fluffy patches of clouds hanging high in the sky. Occasionally, an airplane would fly by streaking the blue field with their lines of artificial white clouds.

This was nature on this warm Sunday morning. This was nature filled with sounds of birds singing and woodpeckers pecking. This was nature with sights of ants crawling on the grass and on my sitting mat, and a multitude of insects flying about. In search for an experience, I looked, I touched, I listened. A new and strong breeze blew a new leaf from the tree and gently hit my forehead. I picked it up and observed its tiny stem, the soft greenness of the leaf, the undefined texture of the veins. I crushed the leaf and moisture oozed from it. This leaf represented spring, the new life that came from it, and the freshness of the season.

My thoughts turned to myself. Where was my place in this nature? I laughed a little at the fact that I was sitting on a mat to keep from being affected by the ground underneath me. I wondered if the trees could feel a foreign presence in their midst. I looked for deers but could not seem to find any. Perhaps they saw that I was here and they knew that I did not belong here. I suffered from an inferiority complex, the same feeling that occurred when I moved into unfamiliar territories. I felt the desire to belong, yet at the same time, I was fully aware of my differences from the norm. I heard whispers. I was being talked about, mocked, perhaps criticized.

After several hours in the woods, I stopped looking around. I fell asleep, though the ground was not nearly as comfortable as my bed at home. Nevertheless, the sunlight was soft, the breeze was gentle, the singing of the birds was calming, and the sound of the running water in the nearby creek was relaxing, and I was led into a sound sleep. I received no vision in my sleep. No relatives from the nether world came to talk to me. Jesus did not appear to me in a dream. Neither angels nor spirits came to deliver a message. I woke up from my light sleep at the strange sound of a bird cackling somewhere close by. From the sound, I imagined the creature more to be a small dog than a bird. But I knew no dog was around, and if it were, it would have to be somewhere above in the trees.

I opened my eyes still lying flat on the ground. An eagle flew across the expanse above and I followed it across the sky. I felt immersed in my environment. I became oblivious to it. The chirping of the birds no longer sounded strange. The buzzing of insects in my ears was no longer a nuisance as before. I lost awareness of where I was. Was I a part of nature? Did something happen during my nap that transformed me? I picked up a bug crawling on my mat, observing it like an entymologist would observe his subjects. It came to me. I was still an outsider looking in. Yet, I did feel sentimental. It's not easy to like bugs, especially when you're trying to sleep and they annoy you by buzzing in your ears and crawling over your body. Nonetheless, I did feel a strange relation to the bug that I was holding. Perhaps there was hope for me yet.

My thought turned to God. I tried to not philosophize. It was difficult, so I forced myself. I tried to feel God instead. But I struggled in myself because I felt that I made a mistake when the thought of "try" appeared in my mind. I gave up. It all seemed so hopeless. I could not get out of this web of "think" and "try" and "force." Why didn't God just come to me? God was not in my mind. I could not conceptualize God. Why didn't God just strike my body like a violent lightning and make his presence felt? I got scared at such a thought. What if it came true? Would I be able to survive it?

At five in the afternoon, my stay in the woods ended after nine hours. But by this time, I noticed that I felt happy because I had grown comfortable in my environment, in my nature. Perhaps it was because I had grown more interconnected with the things around me. I did not feel like I had just come to a beautiful scenery and appreciate it for the first time as a traveler would do. Instead, I was a part of that scenery, no more no less than the things around me. I relished in this thought. I smiled at the things I saw, all sharing in the same existence that made me who I was. I no longer felt so foreign, so isolated. A sense of peace came over me. Was it the peace that God bestowed upon His creations? I wasn't sure. But there was no uncertainly in the feeling that I had. I didn't feel the need to reason about it. I sat there for a few more minutes, immersing myself in this peace. God was in nature and nature was in me. Perhaps I had experienced God at last.