Confluence Formation

I have been combing the internet for sources of insight at the confluence of wildness and spirituality. The internet is not the most relevant place to search for such things. The most relevant places to search are wild places and wild spirits, your very own and those belonging to others. But there is no shortage of wild wisdom out there—even among the ones and zeros—for those who have eyes to see....

After Easter this year I flew from Boston to a conference center in a little corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains. They are called the Blue Ridge Mountains because the trees on the mountainside emit hydrocarbons that—when seen from a distance—huddle over the mountains in a haze of blue. When you are in the mountains, and not just beholding their hazy edges from afar, things are more vivid. Up close...

A sunrise like today’s makes me think about that sentiment that appears through the pen of the prophet who wrote: “His mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning.” Sometimes I procrastinate a long while from doing a thing that I want to do, and then I wake up one day and I’m like, “Ahhh *deep sigh* new mercies.” And I just go ahead and do the thing. I like to sit every morning at my...

As a wilderness guide, the ability to pivot from your itinerary when the weather, terrain, group, circumstance, or who-knows-what requires it—that’s one of your most vital capacities. The same goes for any practitioner of wild spirituality. It’s interesting though, because it’s seldom crystal clear whether the pivot is entirely necessary. It’s always some combination of managing risk and expectati...

“We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators, but for thunder and mud.” — Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey Perhaps you’ve heard: Loving on nature is good for us. A little biophilia goes a long way toward making us feel better.  In 2017 The Nature Fix , by Florence Williams, landed on bookshelves. In it Williams explores a host of efforts to st...

Wilderness therefore is for everyone—the hardy hikers as well as the vast majority who have never known what it means to carry a pack… Wilderness is more than camping or hiking; it is a symbol of a way of life that can nourish the spirit. – Sigurd Olson, Living Wilderness (1968) Update about Spiritual Formation in the Wild here. Life is wild. I am wild. Wilderness is powerful. Wilderness is danger...

I almost came to tears holding the gaze of a giant beech tree the other day. It was midday, clear skies, Emma and I and the golden doodle were out for a walk to the river. It was cold but comfortable. We were talking. My gaze was inward, clutching at my thoughts. Emma and the doodle went across the street to deposit a bag of dog s**t in the trash, so I paused for a moment. When I pause, sometimes...

The more I practice paying attention, the more readily I am able to notice that mole hills are, in fact, not mountains. When I was a child my favorite line in the bible was the one in Peter’s letter where he tells his readers: “Cast all of your anxiety on God, because God cares for you.” There is a container that is big enough to hold what I am not big enough to hold. I can feel the big things tha...

I just launched a business! Now it’s time for show and tell. And I feel like a kid standing up in front of a classroom of his peers, excited and nervous. I’ve been toying with the right analogy, actually. Do you launch a business? or build a business? or plant a business? or grow a business? or conjure up the audacity, against the odds, to become a business? Whatever the analogy: I made a thing! A...

I almost slept in, but when I got up to turn off my alarm and cancel my appointment, well, at that point I was up, and I might as well make some coffee, and scratch some pages, and do the thing that I said I was going to do. I think a lot, and hear a lot, about softening the edges of the grasp that productivity culture holds over us. The admonition to soften those edges strikes me as wise, especia...

Most mornings recently I’ve been doing morning pages . Before anything else (by which I mean: wake, brew coffee, do Wordle, then…) I open a notebook and uncap a pen and scratch out three pages of whatever comes through my scrawling hand. One morning last week I wrote:  I have a list of eight things to write taped to my wall. And a list of twenty odd things to accomplish before lunch, before peace...

I once helped a farmer bury a goat who had died during a cold December night. Or, come to think of it, the ground would have been frozen solid. Maybe we just moved the goat to a resting place and covered him with as much earth as we could muster, biding time till the thaw. I used to wake up at first light even though the blackout blinds kept the sun out of the room. Bombadil, the bantam rooster th...

Last week I was on an island in the Caribbean. Some of the trees in the Virgin Islands National Park wink at you when you walk past them. They flex and whisper their age. They tell stories, if you listen, about the ecology of the place and about a whole history of happenings. Ferns grow on the trees’ trunks and contribute to their whispers. It is a rather elegant arrangement. These ferns are epiph...

The boy followed his father through the palms to the sand. When his feet touched sand the boy ran toward the waves, then a sharp left. He darted along parallel to the surf. Down the beach a ways he found a broad swath of wet sand and dug the toes of his right foot into the sand, hobble stepping around until he’d drawn a big circle in the sand, twice as wide as he was tall.  If you’ve done this you...

Last month I got curious about Transcendental Meditation so I signed up for an information session with a local instructor. Curiosity takes us places. There is so much world, and so many souls exploring it from so many angles. I met the meditation instructor and one other interested soul, a chef, on a rainy mid-December day in the basement of the historic Cambridge Masonic Temple in Porter Square....

During intermission at Midwinter Revels last week I sparked connection with the man next to me at the sink while we washed our hands. When he bent toward the faucet, his glasses slipped from where they were perched on the top of his head, and he caught them midair. “Nice snag,” I said to him.  He chuckled. And I chuckled. While we dried our hands at the paper towel dispenser I pointed at his lapel...

I’m not sure what the most affirming and compelling thing would be that a friend or a reader might say to me. But my friend David got close when we sent me this on Monday: “I’ve been encouraged to see the wilderness more through your writings.” And then he told me about one of his other wilderness guides, his two-year-old, Lina:  One of the games she plays is called ‘bird’. We essentially just pre...

When its spiritual growth that I’m after, a balance between consistency and flexibility serves best. If it’s too rigid, for instance, my morning routine breaks every few weeks. I need to keep it simple and supple and strong. Right now I have one commitment in the morning: That I engage in a morning practice. And I have a menu of morning practices that I pick from depending on what I feel that I ne...

I was born on this day in 1982. Here are 41 things that I have learned since then. * There is so much world. * When kindling a fire: Start small and build slow. * Do the same when kindling any new practice, aim, or intention. * In politics and personality assessments it’s seldom beneficial to paint with a wide brush. * Blank pages are invitations, not enemies. * Imperfect action is necessary, and...

I saw a little bird flying today. “You can not fly forever,” I thought, “Without returning to the earth for sugar.” The bird was high up and seemed safe. I thought, “You probably would like to stay up above it all, above the threats of feral cats and snakes. And sometimes you can. But all of those little flaps of those little wings take energy. You need sugar. And you have to risk the earth with i...

The moon is waning, which means that the nights are growing darker as the days continue to shorten en route to the solstice. This makes it a good time to hunker and reflect. Plus it’s my birthday in a week. I tilt toward being contemplative the whole year round, but this time of year I tend to go especially inward to scan the ways that a year’s worth of days have shaped me and prepared me for anot...

My friend Michelle wrote this last Friday : “Prayer gives structure and meaning to our thoughts.” Our prayers, she says, “Take patterns of thought and make them specific through the process of naming.”  I used to pray with my eyes closed and my hands folded. Sometimes I still do that, because I’m a sucker for nostalgia. But mostly now I pray with my hands full and my eyes looking to the horizon, o...

When I was 22 years old I flew to Scotland to try my hand at wandering my ancestral lands. While I was there I fell in love with places and people and simple routines. I grew up a little bit while I was there. I grew into myself as I maneuvered from one moment into the next, from one encounter toward the next. The six months I spent abroad were tinged with the magic and romance of exploration and...

I took a course with the Academy for Coaching Excellence last week to lay the foundation and establish my commitment to a year of training. When it was my turn to share my occupation I told my colleagues and instructors that I work as a minister of spiritual formation. That’s the broadest stroke I’ve managed.  This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or ge...

My sister taught me to braid friendship bracelets in the backseat while our parents drove us around the country to Christian youth camps where my dad was the preacher... This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arammitchell.substack.com