The Unifying Force of Nature

Unification with Nature

- I was born into a strict Lutheran conservative sect. Since Martin Luther was a rebel, I guess it was appropriate that I would become one too. At about the age of 15 while I was taking Catechism Classes I was told by the minister that we, as Evangelical Lutherans, needed to support the outreach to those “poor” African and South American native tribes that had never heard of Jesus Christ so that they might be saved. I cried that day. I cried because I felt that if that concept was true then I had to feel sorry for all those poor souls we Lutherans might have missed, not only in my lifetime but especially spanning all the centuries that had already passed. I asked myself, “How could we possibly accomplish such a goal, now or ever?”

Then logic told me that this idea had to be false. How could a loving God possibly condemn all the millions of souls in this world to hell and damnation simply because they had not had the opportunity to hear the Good News about Jesus, the Savior! How could we Lutherans – as well as other Christian sects – place our beliefs above those of these native peoples who had lived for centuries in isolation from the so-called civilized world? This idea also seemed to be a throwback to earlier times when brown skinned peoples were considered inferior and needed to be uplifted. This smacked of unadulterated racism, although I was not that clear about it back then.

After pondering these questions for some time, I divorced myself from the Lutheran cult and went on my own merry way into the world as a young man. I did what many young men did in the late 1960s; I went to San Francisco and hung out with the hippies. I grew my hair long sort of like Jimmy Hendrix; I dropped acid, smoked dope and generally tried to have a good time. I questioned the beliefs of my parents, I protested the Vietnam War because I knew that war was wrong. I beat the draft and paid the price in terms of lost job opportunities as a result.

Unity Church of Christianity

For about 5 years I had no religious beliefs. Then one day while living in Chicago I was invited to try out a Unity Church. Unity was a turning point for me because they believed in a more open liberal metaphysical system. I really liked the Unity minister there as he would typically dress informally, wore sneakers and hired many of the local Jazz musicians from Chicago’s nightclub district to play the music on Sundays, always seeming to be able to come up with show tunes that had a spiritual message or twist. For many years this was my school. Unity in Chicago had a fabulous metaphysical bookstore and I purchased many books including those from the Science of Mind movement founded by Ernest Holmes.

Pan, Nature God

Sometime later I joined Science of Mind where I began taking classes in earnest with the idea of eventually becoming a licensed minister in the movement. I took classes for about 4 – 5 years until one day I got into a philosophical argument with the minister over whether or not plants had a consciousness. It was her belief that plants did not have a consciousness; only humans could. And this was representative of the old fashioned hierarchical view that Man was situated at the top of the hierarchy and everything else was his to dominate. Since I had been reading books by Michael Roads, an Australian who wrote books about his dialogues with Nature, such as Talking with Nature, and Journey into Nature, I was convinced that we must pay attention to Nature because in a way it is a part of our larger self. “Rivers and rocks and trees have always been talking to us, but we’ve forgotten how to listen.” – Michael Roads

Why is it that we have so many wars, poverty and general disharmony? Since man had made such a mess of life on Planet Earth, I decided that I just could not agree that we were so much smarter than all the rest of life. The trouble with Man, I decided was that he held himself in a type of Ego-centered separation. This, I concluded, was the root cause of all of our problems and perhaps even the reason we are here in Earth Bodies. Lucky for us, there is help available from the Other Side.

The Findhorn Garden

Back in the early 1970s a small booklet was published describing the incredible happenings going on at a small trailer park in Findhorn, Scotland. There was a small group of people there who had formed an intentional community and somehow were able to grow very large organic vegetables on bad sandy soil. Word got out that they were somehow linked up with Devas, Nature Spirits, Elves, Fairies and the like and that this was the secret of their abundant success.

Here’s a brief quote from the front of their book, The Findhorn Garden. “One radiant energy pervades and gives rise to all life. While it may speak to us through plants, nature spirits or the human beings with whom we share life on this planet, all are reflections of the deeper reality behind and within them. Myth has become reality in the Findhorn garden, not to present us with a new form of spiritualism, but to offer us a new vision of life, a vision of unity. Essentially, the devas and nature spirits are aspects of our own selves, guiding us toward our true identity, the divine reality within. The story of the garden is the celebration of this divine life in its myriad forms. May the joy we experience in participating in this celebration deepen our commitment to revealing the total beauty of ourselves and all life around us.”

In my search for meaning I have found organized religion lacking and even misleading. Their purpose seems to be to support the Military Industrial Agricultural Complex and to keep people trapped and powerless. I also found limitations in the more modern metaphysical religions such as Unity and Science of Mind. After reading

Talking with Nature – Michael Roads

Michael Roads, Findhorn, The Elves of Lily Hill Farm, and other books that talked about the existence of Nature Spirits and the cooperative effort that Nature sought with humans, I realized that we were polluting the earth in the name of our false sense of dominion we thought we had over the earth which was supposedly given to us by the Christian Sky God who seemed to be unconcerned with its own creation except for humans. I saw the hypocrisy of this and the destruction…not only of earth, but of ourselves in the process because I learned that we are all interconnected. The earth, humans, nature…we are all interdependent on the ONE system we live within. We must learn to work WITH nature and nurture our earth and ourselves, overcoming the need to dominate one another or the planet or any of the species. We need to respect and care for…be care givers instead of exploiters.

People like Michael Roads and the Findhorn Community invite us to a more ancient time when man was young and shared his world knowingly with these beings. This priceless gift of wonderment invites us to become as little children, dancing in an elfin ring …and walking near the majesty of the great god Pan. We are offered the renewal of links only recently forgotten in the rush to industrialize the Earth. Yet at the same time, Findhorn proclaims the image for humanity of a new maturity, the birth of the consciousness of participatory divinity, of co-creation with God.