Dr. Jordan Peterson once mentioned in one of his lectures that extroverts orient themselves to society. "Introverts orient themselves to..." his voice trailed away and he fell silent for a moment of intense thought.
"I think it's nature," he told the students. "I never have quite figured out what introverts orient themselves to, but I think it's nature."
That tells me Dr. Peterson must not be an introvert. I am, and I suspect he's right. It's certainly true for me.
I've written about the mysterious draw that the natural world has for me in my post titled, "When I Run." I experience it like a spell from a fairy tale. It calls me imperiously. I'm drawn to it, I yearn for it. Sometimes when I lie in bed at night I listen to the sound of the wind, and something makes me long to rush out into it.
I feel a difference in my soul, and even in my body when I've been away from nature for too long. As I walk into the building for my job each morning, I look up at the sky for as long as I can. I gaze intensely at trees, and I smile fondly at pools reflecting things upside-down.
I'm writing this post because I'm beginning to understand how weird, no--unheard of--this concept actually is these days. I have never known anything different. As bizarre as all this most likely will sound to you, reader, this is my everyday experience. I am not exaggerating for a theatrical effect.
You're telling me people don't notice the little wildflowers that come up before Easter every year? The little white starflowers with the purple stripes? What about the little clover blossoms that smell so clean? They don't look at the tiny yellow buttercups with their liquid-looking centers as if they truly had butter melting inside them? What about the dainty tall ones with the shy, half-closed blossoms with their tiny orange dots of pollen? Those are my favorites to see around Easter.
Yes. They're weeds. I know that. But they're beautiful. What does it matter that they're weeds? You're telling me people don't give them a glance?
Do you ever look at the sky and just take delight in how big it is? All that vast, open space is filled with color, light, and wind sculpting away at the ever-changing clouds. It's breathtaking in all its weathers; rain, snow, clear, or stormy.
When I drive in my car, I gaze avidly at the trees I pass, especially this time of year when they're in bloom. I was almost overwhelmed today when I passed a tree resplendent in snowy blossoms, with a subtle, pinkish hue in each cluster. I find it hard to believe that anyone could pass by it and not be moved to delight. But they do, I know they do. That's what they tell me.
Whenever I feel burdened, or when life becomes too confusing, I run to nature. I run to the Woods. To mountains if at all possible.
I'm not sure I can explain why. Creation is not sentient; she gives no answers. She doesn't always give comfort, either; not the all-encompassing kind that I need. Sometimes she makes me feel even more restless than I felt before.
To be surrounded by Creation, even for a short time is to allow myself to be accosted by tumultuous inner seas of desire and restlessness. Yet it's better than to slump languidly in my cushy temperature-regulated box with my eyes glued to a screen; numbing myself so I can't feel those yearnings. No. It's always better to allow yourself to yearn rather than to quench it, smother it, or numb yourself against them.
I feel withdrawals if I go too long without wind and trees and running water and grass. I feel lonesome if I shut myself away too long from the Sky. My feet ache to feel grass and dirt between my toes, with the passion that I hear from most women who are sighing for the feel of sand between their toes.
I need the sound of the wind in the trees. I need rocks and cliffs and woods. I need the light, the colors, even of raindrops and the claps of thunder. I need every season, with all its pleasures and discomforts.
I need the privacy of being surrounded by trees. I need trails, threading and beckoning through them. I need to be alone under the sky. I need the wind in my hair, I need open spaces without fences or buildings.
Why? I don't know why. I just do. My soul this moment is afire with longing.
The idea that most people don't feel this kind of thing bewilders me.
I said Creation does not give me the deepest comfort I'm searching for. But she does give me her own kind of comfort. Nature is benevolent and nurturing as well as cruel and unforgiving.
I think that call I feel from the wilderness is a call from the Author of Creation. Who else could it be? I can't tell you how many times I've been in the woods and had my senses overwhelmed by this anticipation that I was about to meet someone. Not the creepy feeling we all get sometimes when you feel like you're being watched by something you can't see, something or someone that may be malevolent. I don't mean that kind of feeling. What I'm describing is an uncanny feeling for sure, but not a creepy one. Nor do I mean that I sense the presence of a person just before I see them or hear them. It isn't even some kind of strange instinct that I'm about to meet my soulmate or anything like that.
I know, I know. If it isn't those, what could it be? Well, I don't know. Or, I think I do know, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, humanly speaking. Every time I try to pin it down with words it sounds like emotional froth.
The best way I can describe it is this strong expectation of encountering someone good, someone who's waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves to me. Someone, but not like a human; someone beyond merely human. And it's frustrating because it's a good kind of anticipation, even excitement; I'm in the right place, but our positions in Time don't touch, or at least mine doesn't touch theirs. A few times I've found myself turning around and around on the spot, scanning in every direction, asking in my heart, "Wait! Where are you? Who are you? Come back!"
And before you start thinking I'm a complete lunatic (though it may be too late), I'll mention that I've never seen anything when that feeling came over me. Never heard voices, nothing like that.
I see Nature with a kind of double-vision. I see what's there, and I can just almost see beyond to what it could be. As if Creation itself is in disguise, and underneath is potential waiting to be called into glorious fullness.
I suppose this double-vision is what remains of the ability I once had as a child to Pretend. As you can no doubt guess, I had a vivid imagination when I was little. I saw pictures in my head so clearly that they were just short of real to me. When I pretended with my siblings in the backyard, I barely even saw the yard around me. I was so preoccupied living and interacting with the world I saw that when Mother called us in to supper, seeing the yard was something of a shock. "Oh, yeah...I guess I have been here the whole time."
When I was a child, I thought that life was dull. Grown-ups were mostly dreary, and obsessed with things that were boring. They didn't understand the world that I imagined, and they didn't want to. I was made to understand that the "play world," couldn't last forever. That one day I'd have to leave it, lock its doors behind me and lose the key.
At the end of "The House At Pooh Corner," by A.A. Milne, there is a scene where Christopher Robin is leaving the Forest. For good, evidently. Everyone is aware of it, and no one really knows how to react or how to feel about it. Christopher Robin and Pooh go alone to an Enchanted place at the very top of the forest, in a ring of trees. You can see the World from up there. And Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he has to leave to go down there, into the World. If my memory serves me, he asks Pooh to promise him that he'll be there waiting for him, even when he (Christopher Robin) is a hundred years old. Pooh gives his promise. Then the story closes.
That scene and others like it in stories I read and movies I watched troubled me deeply. It made me want to weep, and I did sometimes, when I was alone. The thought of leaving Neverland, or of being shut out of Narnia, or of forgetting my faithful imaginary friends filled me with an impossibly deep dread.
The world adults inhabited, (so I thought) was one of drudgery and routine. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right that I was to be wrenched away from every thing that gave my life meaning! I loved the stories because their plot made more sense than the pointless days I lived. I could see them, in my mind's eye, stretching out before me like a straight, flat road to the horizon. Days upon days stacked into weeks, months, then years; all of them similar, monotonous, maddening. What was there to live *for*, exactly?
Shut up all Adventure, Beauty, and Stories into the past? Forget them? Put them away? And for what? A task list with all the boxes ticked?
I could not. I would not. It would be an indecency. An indecency against Being--against Reality itself.
"One word, Ma'am," [Puddleglum] said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put a good face I can on it. So I won't deny all of what you've said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."
---"The Silver Chair," by C.S. Lewis.
Thank God I was wrong about the world. It took me a long time to begin to suspect that there was hope (and adventure!) in this life. You see, my mind was grounded in God's Word, but my heart and emotions were haunted with yearnings that had seemingly no connection with Christ!
That's how He got me, you see. I mean, He called me to salvation as a young child, but as I grew up, He drew me to love Him using the Arts: music, Stories, Creation, beauty.
He is the Author of all beauty. The Author of all the great stories, the ones that matter, the ones that stay with you forever. He is the Composer of all the good music. He is the Maker of the trees, the winding rivers, the rolling hills. His work is as epic as the sea, as grandiose as the mountain ranges, and yet as delicate as the tiniest wildflower, as intimate as a human child, woven in the secret place. He created laughter, He created drama, He created dance. He invented Romance--that was all His idea. He thought up flavors and colors, textures, scents and sounds.
He made me. He wanted my soul to exist in His universe. And He loves me, not just as His handiwork, but as His daughter. He wants me to be with Him. He allured my heart with the Arts, He whispers to me in Stories. And it seems as though He calls to me from the wilderness. Perhaps it is His desire for me to seek Him that drives me to run wildly out into the rain, or to scramble up the slopes. Evidently He---misses me. Not that He is incomplete without me, of course. Just---that He made me to adore Him, and He wants me to find my ultimate comfort in Himself, my Great Father.
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine...Do you remember? The color and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, 'Psyche, come!' But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home."
---"Till We Have Faces," by C.S. Lewis.
(C.S. Lewis just *gets* it, doesn't he?!)
I went hiking last Saturday. I was on a trail leading to a waterfall. Every moss-covered rock seemed to be compelling my heart to rejoice. The chattering of the stream over the rapids sank into my ears, purging them from all the Noise I'd had to endure all week. I heard the roar of the waters long before it could be seen. I hastened ahead, reminding myself inexplicably of a lover anxious to catch sight of his bride.
When I finally saw the waterfall, I scrambled across the slippery rocks to find a seat directly in front of it. I filled my gaze with it, awestruck. I could hardly tear my eyes away to notice the beauty of the hollow and the ripples of the pool. For a while I sat there, thinking of everything and nothing.
I noticed people were walking up close behind it, and I soon could not rest until I had done the same. I crossed the rapids and found my way among the massive rocks. Around, over, and under until I could walk on level rock right up to the falls.
I gave my backpack to my friend and slowly advanced. Cool mist enveloped me as it drifted on the light breeze. I kept walking until I reached the spray of the falls, and stopped. Single droplets soared down to me from the overhead ledge like blown kisses.
I wasn't dressed to get completely soaked or I probably would have walked right beneath it. But I edged close enough to put my hands under the waterfall. They were dirty from all the climbing and scrambling I had done, but in an instant they were clean. I knew I couldn't leave until I had drunk from the waterfall. I cupped my hands, but to my disappointment the force of the water splashed nearly all of it right back out again. So I took what little I had and drank.
Water, we claim, has no taste, but I can't agree. In this country we are spoiled with clear, filtered water, but this water tasted better. It was cleaner, fresher, more real, somehow. It tasted of freshness and of spring. I caught in it the joy of blossoms, the patience of stone, and the vitality of the earth.
There is a River of Life, we are told, that flows from the throne of the Lamb. Those whom He gives the right may drink freely of it for all eternity.
I think I am drawn to nature because of what she symbolizes. I drink from the waterfall, but I want to go beyond the waterfall. I was given a promise that one day I might swim *up* the Waterfall to find Him beyond.
He waits for me beyond the waterfall. Into the West.
He ever calls me---further up and further in.
~Cadenza
"I think it's nature," he told the students. "I never have quite figured out what introverts orient themselves to, but I think it's nature."
That tells me Dr. Peterson must not be an introvert. I am, and I suspect he's right. It's certainly true for me.
I've written about the mysterious draw that the natural world has for me in my post titled, "When I Run." I experience it like a spell from a fairy tale. It calls me imperiously. I'm drawn to it, I yearn for it. Sometimes when I lie in bed at night I listen to the sound of the wind, and something makes me long to rush out into it.
I feel a difference in my soul, and even in my body when I've been away from nature for too long. As I walk into the building for my job each morning, I look up at the sky for as long as I can. I gaze intensely at trees, and I smile fondly at pools reflecting things upside-down.
I'm writing this post because I'm beginning to understand how weird, no--unheard of--this concept actually is these days. I have never known anything different. As bizarre as all this most likely will sound to you, reader, this is my everyday experience. I am not exaggerating for a theatrical effect.
You're telling me people don't notice the little wildflowers that come up before Easter every year? The little white starflowers with the purple stripes? What about the little clover blossoms that smell so clean? They don't look at the tiny yellow buttercups with their liquid-looking centers as if they truly had butter melting inside them? What about the dainty tall ones with the shy, half-closed blossoms with their tiny orange dots of pollen? Those are my favorites to see around Easter.
Yes. They're weeds. I know that. But they're beautiful. What does it matter that they're weeds? You're telling me people don't give them a glance?
Do you ever look at the sky and just take delight in how big it is? All that vast, open space is filled with color, light, and wind sculpting away at the ever-changing clouds. It's breathtaking in all its weathers; rain, snow, clear, or stormy.
When I drive in my car, I gaze avidly at the trees I pass, especially this time of year when they're in bloom. I was almost overwhelmed today when I passed a tree resplendent in snowy blossoms, with a subtle, pinkish hue in each cluster. I find it hard to believe that anyone could pass by it and not be moved to delight. But they do, I know they do. That's what they tell me.
Whenever I feel burdened, or when life becomes too confusing, I run to nature. I run to the Woods. To mountains if at all possible.
I'm not sure I can explain why. Creation is not sentient; she gives no answers. She doesn't always give comfort, either; not the all-encompassing kind that I need. Sometimes she makes me feel even more restless than I felt before.
To be surrounded by Creation, even for a short time is to allow myself to be accosted by tumultuous inner seas of desire and restlessness. Yet it's better than to slump languidly in my cushy temperature-regulated box with my eyes glued to a screen; numbing myself so I can't feel those yearnings. No. It's always better to allow yourself to yearn rather than to quench it, smother it, or numb yourself against them.
I feel withdrawals if I go too long without wind and trees and running water and grass. I feel lonesome if I shut myself away too long from the Sky. My feet ache to feel grass and dirt between my toes, with the passion that I hear from most women who are sighing for the feel of sand between their toes.
I need the sound of the wind in the trees. I need rocks and cliffs and woods. I need the light, the colors, even of raindrops and the claps of thunder. I need every season, with all its pleasures and discomforts.
I need the privacy of being surrounded by trees. I need trails, threading and beckoning through them. I need to be alone under the sky. I need the wind in my hair, I need open spaces without fences or buildings.
Why? I don't know why. I just do. My soul this moment is afire with longing.
The idea that most people don't feel this kind of thing bewilders me.
I said Creation does not give me the deepest comfort I'm searching for. But she does give me her own kind of comfort. Nature is benevolent and nurturing as well as cruel and unforgiving.
I think that call I feel from the wilderness is a call from the Author of Creation. Who else could it be? I can't tell you how many times I've been in the woods and had my senses overwhelmed by this anticipation that I was about to meet someone. Not the creepy feeling we all get sometimes when you feel like you're being watched by something you can't see, something or someone that may be malevolent. I don't mean that kind of feeling. What I'm describing is an uncanny feeling for sure, but not a creepy one. Nor do I mean that I sense the presence of a person just before I see them or hear them. It isn't even some kind of strange instinct that I'm about to meet my soulmate or anything like that.
I know, I know. If it isn't those, what could it be? Well, I don't know. Or, I think I do know, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, humanly speaking. Every time I try to pin it down with words it sounds like emotional froth.
The best way I can describe it is this strong expectation of encountering someone good, someone who's waiting for the right moment to reveal themselves to me. Someone, but not like a human; someone beyond merely human. And it's frustrating because it's a good kind of anticipation, even excitement; I'm in the right place, but our positions in Time don't touch, or at least mine doesn't touch theirs. A few times I've found myself turning around and around on the spot, scanning in every direction, asking in my heart, "Wait! Where are you? Who are you? Come back!"
And before you start thinking I'm a complete lunatic (though it may be too late), I'll mention that I've never seen anything when that feeling came over me. Never heard voices, nothing like that.
I see Nature with a kind of double-vision. I see what's there, and I can just almost see beyond to what it could be. As if Creation itself is in disguise, and underneath is potential waiting to be called into glorious fullness.
I suppose this double-vision is what remains of the ability I once had as a child to Pretend. As you can no doubt guess, I had a vivid imagination when I was little. I saw pictures in my head so clearly that they were just short of real to me. When I pretended with my siblings in the backyard, I barely even saw the yard around me. I was so preoccupied living and interacting with the world I saw that when Mother called us in to supper, seeing the yard was something of a shock. "Oh, yeah...I guess I have been here the whole time."
When I was a child, I thought that life was dull. Grown-ups were mostly dreary, and obsessed with things that were boring. They didn't understand the world that I imagined, and they didn't want to. I was made to understand that the "play world," couldn't last forever. That one day I'd have to leave it, lock its doors behind me and lose the key.
At the end of "The House At Pooh Corner," by A.A. Milne, there is a scene where Christopher Robin is leaving the Forest. For good, evidently. Everyone is aware of it, and no one really knows how to react or how to feel about it. Christopher Robin and Pooh go alone to an Enchanted place at the very top of the forest, in a ring of trees. You can see the World from up there. And Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he has to leave to go down there, into the World. If my memory serves me, he asks Pooh to promise him that he'll be there waiting for him, even when he (Christopher Robin) is a hundred years old. Pooh gives his promise. Then the story closes.
That scene and others like it in stories I read and movies I watched troubled me deeply. It made me want to weep, and I did sometimes, when I was alone. The thought of leaving Neverland, or of being shut out of Narnia, or of forgetting my faithful imaginary friends filled me with an impossibly deep dread.
The world adults inhabited, (so I thought) was one of drudgery and routine. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right that I was to be wrenched away from every thing that gave my life meaning! I loved the stories because their plot made more sense than the pointless days I lived. I could see them, in my mind's eye, stretching out before me like a straight, flat road to the horizon. Days upon days stacked into weeks, months, then years; all of them similar, monotonous, maddening. What was there to live *for*, exactly?
Shut up all Adventure, Beauty, and Stories into the past? Forget them? Put them away? And for what? A task list with all the boxes ticked?
I could not. I would not. It would be an indecency. An indecency against Being--against Reality itself.
"One word, Ma'am," [Puddleglum] said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put a good face I can on it. So I won't deny all of what you've said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world that licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."
---"The Silver Chair," by C.S. Lewis.
Thank God I was wrong about the world. It took me a long time to begin to suspect that there was hope (and adventure!) in this life. You see, my mind was grounded in God's Word, but my heart and emotions were haunted with yearnings that had seemingly no connection with Christ!
That's how He got me, you see. I mean, He called me to salvation as a young child, but as I grew up, He drew me to love Him using the Arts: music, Stories, Creation, beauty.
He is the Author of all beauty. The Author of all the great stories, the ones that matter, the ones that stay with you forever. He is the Composer of all the good music. He is the Maker of the trees, the winding rivers, the rolling hills. His work is as epic as the sea, as grandiose as the mountain ranges, and yet as delicate as the tiniest wildflower, as intimate as a human child, woven in the secret place. He created laughter, He created drama, He created dance. He invented Romance--that was all His idea. He thought up flavors and colors, textures, scents and sounds.
He made me. He wanted my soul to exist in His universe. And He loves me, not just as His handiwork, but as His daughter. He wants me to be with Him. He allured my heart with the Arts, He whispers to me in Stories. And it seems as though He calls to me from the wilderness. Perhaps it is His desire for me to seek Him that drives me to run wildly out into the rain, or to scramble up the slopes. Evidently He---misses me. Not that He is incomplete without me, of course. Just---that He made me to adore Him, and He wants me to find my ultimate comfort in Himself, my Great Father.
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine...Do you remember? The color and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, 'Psyche, come!' But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home."
---"Till We Have Faces," by C.S. Lewis.
(C.S. Lewis just *gets* it, doesn't he?!)
I went hiking last Saturday. I was on a trail leading to a waterfall. Every moss-covered rock seemed to be compelling my heart to rejoice. The chattering of the stream over the rapids sank into my ears, purging them from all the Noise I'd had to endure all week. I heard the roar of the waters long before it could be seen. I hastened ahead, reminding myself inexplicably of a lover anxious to catch sight of his bride.
When I finally saw the waterfall, I scrambled across the slippery rocks to find a seat directly in front of it. I filled my gaze with it, awestruck. I could hardly tear my eyes away to notice the beauty of the hollow and the ripples of the pool. For a while I sat there, thinking of everything and nothing.
I noticed people were walking up close behind it, and I soon could not rest until I had done the same. I crossed the rapids and found my way among the massive rocks. Around, over, and under until I could walk on level rock right up to the falls.
I gave my backpack to my friend and slowly advanced. Cool mist enveloped me as it drifted on the light breeze. I kept walking until I reached the spray of the falls, and stopped. Single droplets soared down to me from the overhead ledge like blown kisses.
I wasn't dressed to get completely soaked or I probably would have walked right beneath it. But I edged close enough to put my hands under the waterfall. They were dirty from all the climbing and scrambling I had done, but in an instant they were clean. I knew I couldn't leave until I had drunk from the waterfall. I cupped my hands, but to my disappointment the force of the water splashed nearly all of it right back out again. So I took what little I had and drank.
Water, we claim, has no taste, but I can't agree. In this country we are spoiled with clear, filtered water, but this water tasted better. It was cleaner, fresher, more real, somehow. It tasted of freshness and of spring. I caught in it the joy of blossoms, the patience of stone, and the vitality of the earth.
There is a River of Life, we are told, that flows from the throne of the Lamb. Those whom He gives the right may drink freely of it for all eternity.
I think I am drawn to nature because of what she symbolizes. I drink from the waterfall, but I want to go beyond the waterfall. I was given a promise that one day I might swim *up* the Waterfall to find Him beyond.
He waits for me beyond the waterfall. Into the West.
He ever calls me---further up and further in.
~Cadenza
