Go to your Sacred Sit Spot and pay special attention to weather: breezes, clouds, etc. Feel them as external parts of passing moods or internal feelings: the introversion of fog, the clarity of bright sunlight, the settling down at twilight, the sense of awakening at dawn.

As we carry a lot of anxiety and a variety of different stresses these days due to Covid-19, this spiritual practice in nature may be therapeutic. Do it whenever works in your routine. Consider doing it before Easter, perhaps on Good Friday, a day of grief and lament. However, grief lives throughout our days, so this is a good practice for whenever grief feels especially heavy and poignant.

You are beginning the practice of seeing the land and wild ones as what Thomas Berry would call, “a community of subjects, not a collection of objects.” The simple act of deeper noticing and self-introduction begins the critical shift needed to see creation as a community with whom we can be in communion. This is essential for creating your wild sanctuary.

This is a practice of forming what theologian Steven Bouma-Prediger calls an ecological perception of place. That is, a practice to get to know your ecology by becoming familiar over time with as many components of your ecology as you can. In other words, this is a process of learning to listen and attune your self to storied and sacred land.

Nature Hand Looms are beautiful ways to symbolically weave ourselves back into a sacred relationship with the wild world. This practice provides a form through which one begins to attune to the all of the wild life that surrounds them and creates a woven piece that can be placed upon one’s home nature table or altar.

The Story Stick is a way to document your journey, whether through seasons, through terrain, or through meaningful moments in your life. Inspired by the Australian aboriginal practice of conveying their homeland and communicating their collective dream time through message sticks, the Story Stick is a way to witness this time through the natural world.