Asking the Clergy: How can one incorporate nature into a religious practice?

Summer calls Long Islanders outdoors to play, to dine and — for some people of faith — to worship. This week’s writers discuss spiritual insights gained amid nature’s bounty.

Bob Yugi Festa

Zen practitioner, Huntington  

The answer to the question posed this week is, how can we not incorporate nature into our religious practice? Nature means everything in the world that is not organized and constructed by humans, but humans are in a dependent relationship with nature. We are seeing record high temperatures in Arizona and Death Valley, California, and droughts in California and Canada resulting in uncontrolled forest fires causing serious air pollution problems for much of the nation.

The Buddha talked about the Three Poisons of greed, hatred and ignorance as flaws in the human mind. The climate change we are experiencing is only one symptom of our greed and our ignorance of how dependent we are on nature. There are many other examples of this, including the pollution of our oceans and lakes. The Buddhist practice offers humans a moderate lifestyle (the Middle Way) encouraging one to avoid the extremes of self-deprivation and self-indulgence. The Buddha refused to answer questions that did not pertain to ending human suffering, so he spent much of his time talking about nature and how humans must live in concert with it.

The Rev. Vicky L. Eastland

Pastor, Brookville Church, Glen Head  

For me, being in nature brings an awareness of God’s presence. I feel closest to God when I’m gardening. There is something about digging in the dirt, tending the soil, growing flowers and vegetables, even mowing the lawn or spreading mulch, that grounds me. Seeds are what is left of a former plant. Seeds must be put into rich soil and watered for the plant to germinate and grow. This is the hope of new life, new growth, new possibilities.

The biblical creation story says that God took the dust of the earth and breathed life into it to make humankind. There is something primal for me when I connect with the earth through gardening. I get a sense of co-creating with God. God is an amazing designer; the creativity of God’s creation is limitless. Did you know that God even arranged, in the natural order of things, for antidotes and poisonous plants to grow side by side? Jewelweed wildflowers are often found growing next to poison ivy. If you crush the hollow stem of the jewelweed plant and rub the sticky, clear sap on your skin, it takes away the itch from poison ivy blisters. God is amazing!

Rabbi Josh Franklin

Jewish Center of the Hamptons, East Hampton  

Where is God’s house? One might expect it to be a synagogue or a church, yet the Bible offers us a different perspective. Several times in the Bible, a particular place is described as “Beit El” or “Beit Elohim,” meaning “the house of God.” Contrary to the expectation that God resides in some grand structure, God’s house tends to appear in the midst of nature. When the biblical patriarch Jacob lodges in the wilderness, he places a stone under his head and falls asleep under the open sky. He dreams of a profound scene where the point of heaven and earth meet, and God speaks to him. When he wakes up, he says: “God was in this place and I didn’t know it” and declares that the wilderness around him “is none other than a house of God (Genesis 28:16-17).”

To enter God’s house, we must leave our own home and step into the realm of nature. You need not step into a synagogue to connect with God. Find a nice quiet place in the comforts of the natural world, close your eyes, and then open your heart. Or find a religious experience that fuses nature and prayer, such as our Shabbat on the Beach every summer Friday night.