Our Earth Shepherds: Hearts that Beat With Pure Joy from Nature

By Robert R. Schwarz

                                        The heavens are telling of the glory of God.

                                        ( Psalm 19:1 )

                                    

                        Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers  today,

                        And give us not to think so far away

                        As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

                        All simply in the springing of the year.

                        Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
                        Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night ;

                        And make us happy in the darting bird

                        That suddenly above the bees is heard,

                        The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,

                        And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

                        For this is love and nothing else is love, 

                        The which it is reserved for God above

                        To sanctify to what far ends He will,

                        But which it only needs that we fulfill

                        ( A Prayer in Spring by Robert Frost )  .  

            This report is about intimate, soul-stirring relationships people have with nature an likely will have until the sun and moon shine no more. They speak of the joys and raptures which come spontaneously to all of us as does a  pulse beat. 

            The people I interviewed include a retired shoe salesman now coping with Parkinson's disease; a  mother and daughter who compose songs they sing to audiences; and   two mothers who are environmental activists for their  group called  Earth Shepherds . And,  oh , I am  compelled to add one of  my  own personal encounters with nature.                                      

       Diane Adam and Bonnie Cimo are Earth Shepherds , and they help care for their planet. "When I come out here  to this forest preserve , I feel God in everything He has created, " Bonnie said. " When we stay in our homes playing video games, we are not connected to nature. "   Twenty Earth Shepherds meet monthly in her  Arlington Heights ( IL)   suburban home northwest of Chicago. Weather permitting, the group regularly  takes   90-minute guided hikes through forest preserves. 

"Nature, our common home "

    

            " What can nature simply do  for you ? " Bonnie asked. "Well, it helps you prioritize. You see that what is of value is not acquiring a lot of material things   but  creating peace rather than upheaval. " 

            Bonnie and Diana's   Earth Shepherds are  part of an interfaith, resource-sharing  alliance called Green Pastures. The two women regard their  activism  as a ministry of their  14,000-member  St. James Catholic Church and urge people to realize that  "it is  everyone's responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation and  our environment, our common home, " Bonnie said.  

            As the two  of  us hiked down a woodland trail one day, Bonnie gave voice to the ecological  values she has passed down to her four adult sons : " I've always believed in the power of single individuals coming together and turning things around.  I really believe we have God on our side, and with God, all things are possible  . When I look at these  prairies here,  I know He doesn’t want them  to become spoiled. "

        Bonnie's eyes now  scanned  the restored prairies in view  and recalled how they once  were    spoiled and absent of the nearly 400 species of flowers now growing  there. " If we don’t do  the right thing, God cries. I think He's crying about what we've done to his creation. We need to come out to nature and have a sense of awe and wonder rather than saying to ourselves , ' I need to pick this thing and take it home with me.' Or, 'Gee,  I could build a lot of houses here and make a lot of money.'" 

This day God gives me high heaven,

Sun and moon shinning, flame in my hearth

Flashing of lightning, wind in its swiftness, 

Depths of the  ocean, firmness of earth

( hymnal text ascribed to St. Patrick ) 

Bonnie ( second from left ) on a guided forest preserve hike 

 

                                

     

            On  a rainy day in October , Diane Adam  brought her entire family to a forest preserve 30 miles outside  Chicago for an overnight campout to observe the feast of Saint Francis, a 12^th Century saint recognized by many as the patron saint of animals and the environment .   At day's end, Diane , expressed a sentiment likely felt by many Americans  who , in a fashion,  consider  themselves  Earth Shepherds.  " I brought my entire family here [ to the campout ]  so we could  be one with God  and with all those who came here and to be one with nature, even  with this rainy nature in all its beauty."

            Dinner that night for the Adam family and 70 other campers was meatless chili with baked butternut squash with fresh pecans ,  cooked in the lodge  by Bonnie and a friend.  " We created little garbage, " Diane said, " We had a  compost box for food scraps. "

            After dinner,  the  Earth Shepherds watched videos that pointed  out that  love can win many over to care for our common home of the poor [ a reference to an encyclical of Pope Francis ] . 

  

            "The peace of the night, "   Diane continued,  " was very serene as children and adults went on their very first night hike through a forest.  Then we had a  camp fire with marshmallows.

            Diane and her family slept in one of three campground cabins; other overnight campers, which numbered about 30 ,  slept in tents . Coyote howls woke the campers near 3 a.m. ,  one of whom later took a sunrise stroll and spotted a doe  with her two fawns.

            The memory of all this made Diane rhapsodic with words:  " As the song goes ,  " we will dance in the forest and play in the field ; sing, sing the glory of the Lord ! "

                A few weeks after the campout, she emailed me this email: " I had a wonderful time  really feeling the presence of our  Creator in the midst of the forest and the glowing faces around the fire. "   

Diane ( far left )  and family at  their St. Francis Fest 

  

"Miracles" (lyrics)

By Jeanne Kuhns

                                                            I hear the wind

                                                            Singing songs to me.

                                                            Trees sway like women

                                                            With branches raised.

                                                            Remnants  of sky

                                                            Left in puddles on a  muddy road

                                                            Heat is rising from the stone cold ground.

                                                            And I, I see miracles  all  around me.

                                                            Whispers of wind

                                                            Like a lovers'  sigh,

                                                            Northern  lights shimmer with ecstasy.

                                                            Mother  Earth offering

                                                            Answers with an artist's eye.

                                                            Red fawn hidden in waves

                                                            of green ,  green grass

                                                           And  I, I see miracles all around, all around, all around me.

                                                            I hear the wind singing songs to me,

                                                And  I see miracles, I see miracles, I see miracles all around

                                                            me. 

"Clover " ( lyrics )

By Jeanne Kuhns

                                                            I planted a field of sweet purple clover

                                                            Some grew up tall and some grew bent over .

                                                            Some  turned their faces toward the sun

                                                            Some turned away from everyone.

                                                            They grew up in the night

                                                            when the stardust fell all over them.

                                                            On quite wings angels call us together.

                                                            All growing wild like fields of clover,

                                                            Like clover,  fields of clover, oh,  oh,  oh .  

[ " Miracles " and " Clover " are used with permission

from Jeanne Kuhns and daughter  Marybeth Mattson .

They  have composed these lyrics to songs

which they  sing to live audiences.
They are known as " Girls of  Small Forest "

( "smallforestmusic.com" or jeannekuhns@gmail.com ) .

Jeanne  is owner and resident artist of the  "Lost

Moth Music and Art Gallery in Egg Harbour ,

Wisconsin. ]

            Several decades ago my ten-year-old boyhood friend sat serenely between his mother and father  on a  vintage couch  in the small lounger of the Cedar Lodge Resort on Big Spider Lake in northwest Wisconsin. The three of them were listening to "tall" fish stories being told by the lodge owner, Frank LeTourneau, an affable man of Chippewa descent.  Bruce was warmed by the burning birch logs in the fire place but warmed more by  the closeness of  Mom and Dad. The crackling of log sparks was hypnotic ; Bruce's eyes,  I'm sure, were dancing.  

 

            At bedtime, Bruce's father rose and made a comment about flannel pajamas. ( His father was my father's employer at an International Harvester Company  truck sales office on Elston Avenue in Chicago ) .  Bruce's father pulled out a flashlight and the three left the lodge and headed down a thickly wooded and densely dark   path to their log cabin. 

            Once or twice Bruce paused in a  narrow clearing in the pines and peered upward at the star-filled sky. When he heard his  cabin screen door slam shut , he left the path and strolled down to  the lake.  He hadn’t the slightest idea what had urged him, but later in life  he would tell me, "It was so dark that I  couldn't see my hand in front of me. "

            My friend  walked  to the end of an old, narrow and partially submerged pier where four lodge rowboats were docked. There was nothing to be seen on or around  this lake except reflected moon light; nothing to be heard except a lone loon's frantic cry from somewhere in  the dark expanse and   the howl of wolf a long  way off  and the gentle lapping of ripples against the rowboats.   Again Bruce peered upward at the stars,  deeply breathing in all the scents of forest and water. One might say he was  filling himself with millions of new  atoms. 

 .

            He would never forget that  night and would   always feel his pulse beat hard  whenever he  thought of it. It saddened him  to believe  he might never  recapture that sense of existing in eternity when every particle of his mind and body  was  mingling with the universe. Nevertheless, the mere thought nowadays of that night  uplifts him more   than any therapy or medicine  nurses  give him for his Parkinson's disease.    

                                    There is a great deal of talk these days about saving the

                                    environment.  We must,  for the environment sustains

                                    our bodies. But as humans we also require support

                                    of our spirits, and this is what certain kinds of

                                    places provide. ( Alan Gussow, American

                                    artist, teacher, conservationist devoted to

                                    and inspired by the natural environment. ) 

Most of the text which follows here is from my blog post ( ExodusTrekkers.blogspot.com ) of Oct. 1, 2016 entitled  "Life Down at the Mississippi Abbey. "

            Sr. Gail rose from the table with her list of daily tasks for the day, and we exchanged a few parting words about our  "gratitude" for  being created humans rather than creatures. We agreed: this was a gift so easy not  to appreciate . We  had been discussing it  for nearly an hour in her office at the Mississippi Abbey outside Dubuque, Iowa. I told her I was anxious to stroll through the abbey's square mile of pastures and cornfields  and  things growing wild.  " Go then," she said smiling and rushed out the door.  

     I walked down to the barn  and  past the abbey vegetable garden with its  perfectly cultivated crop for salads  for 19 Cistercian sisters. Posted in the middle was a  weathered sign with words painted in white: " Where Angles Tread. "

Nature kissing the Mississippi Abbey

      

             I swung open a  wide wire gate and was greeted by an endless  panorama of wheat, chest-high  corn, alfalfa ,  and haystacks here and there. On the horizon were uninhabited   woodlands  and beyond that was  rolling land that gracefully meets  the  Mississippi River bluffs. I began walking slowly  down a  wide dirt  path shaped by years of tractor wheels running over it. The sky was puffed with white clouds,  and  birds—most often  orioles— kept flushing  up from  patches of  wild  flowers. 

            My eyes winked  from sunlight glistening from the  lower leaves of corn  still wet with morning dew . At my senior  age, raw nature still  intensely enchanted me  as years ago when , on camera safari with  my late wife , we  drove all day across a  wild  Zimbabwe plain .  I could not turn away from the sight of   white and  blue  butterflies and grasshoppers   flitting or darting to and from among the  tall weeds and thistles  hugging  my path ,  and  now hearing the feint orchestration of cricket sounds ,  I  also head  in my mind some stanzas from Canticle of the Creatures penned in the 12^th Century by Saint Francis, known for his mystical love of animals.  In his canticle of praise , he calls out  to Sir Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind, Sister Water, and Brother Fire. 

             I sat  down , allowing  tall prairie grass to blanket me . Like Bruce, never had I felt so intimately connected to Nature .  For a brief moment,  I yearned to actually  become an indissoluble part of it .  

             But then ,  I was prompted to get up  and continue  my trek . As beautiful and joyful this moment was, I sensed  something   pagan about it. Was it that I had excluded  from my  ecstasy of Nature the live presence of  the One who created and sustains  it ? 

             I prayed  Psalm 23 and returned to my path.  

                     

          

Where Bob listened  to frogs and crickets--and prayed 

  On my left now  and about a hundred yards at the end of down a gentle slope ,  there was a pond with  a cabin on its far bank . A few tree branches , tall weeds, and bulrushes obscured most of this pond, as if the pond  itself had requested it .  I walked  through the thick underbrush and paused to look at the cabin , a stone's throw away.  I entered it. It was a simple log  structure with windows without  any covering and an interior  empty of any   furnishings. Later, I learned that  it was built without nails by pioneers  and that the sisters sometimes came here to  meditate and pray. I sat down a few feet from the pond and began listening to frogs and crickets.

                                                The End

                         All comments are welcome.

rrschwarz7@wowway.com

© 2017 Robert R. Schwarz