God Feels Closer in Nature

[Detales]

God and Nature are One, and you are One with THAT. God knows nothing of location, and only your sincerity and devotion, not where you are, matters in your lifting of your mind and heart to God. Your prayer is your song of love to and of God, as one of His children. Do you think He has a preference as to where you burst into vocal or silent song? Just sing your heart, Angel.

 

[Cecilianus]

I agree that you can be close to God in nature, but don’t forget that in Divine Liturgy (or Mass), God is actually present there in the Eucharist, in a unique way not like anywhere else. It’s not the fellowship, it’s not the people, or the building, but the Eucharist…

but certainly there’s nothing wrong with spending time outside in nature to pray too

God bless!

This is how I think of it.

In nature we experience the presence of God. (This seems undeniable to me, simply from having spent time in nature.)
At the Liturgy we experience God Himself, under the appearances of bread and wine.

Sacramentally, nature is an ikon, while the Eucharist is that which the ikon represents (and makes present, though not substantially). However, there is a sense in which the Christian mystery is less veiled in the ikon of the Divine Liturgy than in the ikon of nature, because the Liturgy reflects more visibly the divine Logos, through its iconography, the liturgical action, and the music. Nature thus seems more akin to the silence forming the background to the created Logos (=Word) of the Liturgy.

Therefore, the Liturgy is by nature communal, focuses on the adoration and glorification of God, and is only participated in by the sanctified (i.e., one can’t receive Holy Communion in the state of mortal sin), while nature is by nature (pardon the bad pun) contemplative and a place eminently suited for repentance and metanoia. Hence Christ retreated into the wilderness for the prototypal Lent, and John the Baptist and Elijah (both being, as prophets, types of Christ) retreated into the wilderness - and the scapegoat was sent into the wilderness. Nature is a sanctuary for repentance not only because it (like man) is fallen, but probably because repentance itself is simply a form of contemplation or silence (as Max Picard used the term) suited to fallen man.

Therefore, “love of nature leads to love of man” (Wordsworth).

And because of the presence of God in nature, being in nature leads to a sense of peace (a false sense, unless it corresponds to a real repentance within the soul).

This is why one can feel sentiments expressed in the beautiful poem shared with us above.

Whence comes, O God, this peace which floods over me?
Whence comes this faith with which my heart overflows?
To me who, not long ago, uncertain, restless,
And tossed on waves of doubt by every wind,
Sought the good, the true, in the dreams of worldly sages
And peace in hearts resounding with tempests?
Scarcely have a few days brushed past my brow,
And it seems that a century and a world have passed away,
And that, separated from them by an immense abyss,
A new man is reborn and begins again in me.

-Alphonse de Lamartine

 

[Cecilianus]

God and Nature are One, and you are One with THAT. God knows nothing of location, and only your sincerity and devotion, not where you are, matters in your lifting of your mind and heart to God. Your prayer is your song of love to and of God, as one of His children. Do you think He has a preference as to where you burst into vocal or silent song? Just sing your heart, Angel.

Detales, that’s not my understanding of the Vedanta. You’ve probably studied it more deeply than I have - since you made it your religion! - so correct me where I’m wrong, but my understanding is that the doctrine of advaita (I’m using the term “doctrine” to mean a philosophical or theological doctrine - the source of this teaching doesn’t come from revelation) teaches that the multiplicity of the world is at once a veil or mask for and a revelation of the unity of God. Hence God is spoken of (by Vedantic thinkers) as Reality and the world as nothingness (which is why we call this teaching advaita, or nondualism). I don’t think that anyone seriously thinks that we literally don’t exist - if they did, they would belong in a madhouse. What this doctrine means is, to phrase it in terms of scholastic Catholicism, that God is Being and we are beings - what makes us be (our atman) is God. (Our atman in Hinduism is not our ego; likewise, for St. Thomas God is our Being, but not our formal being - two ways of trying to get at the same thing.) The Hindu doctrine of atman is a different formulation of the Platonic doctrine of archetypes - most schools in Hinduism would not (despite the shallow, superficial American revision of Hinduism you may find at the local TM center) identify the ego (or created, individual self) with atman. Furthermore, I don’t believe that any school of Hinduism ever saw atman in nature (this seems to me to be a truth we learned explicitly from revelation), but in practice the Hindu “forest dwellers” do retreat into the wilderness.

I would disagree with you that “sincerity and devotion” are all that matters, because, while God is always ready to forgive our shortcomings, intellectual and otherwise, Truth is the very context in which we worship God, since God is Truth. You are right, however, that He does not have a preference to where you burst into song - all of creation is hallowed by the love with which God created it. But there is an infinite difference between the church and the forest - God IS the Eucharist, and is there physically and substantially present, whereas since the substance of trees are not God (for Hinduism any more than for Catholicism), God’s presence is mediated through created substances. And yet God is certainly present in nature. The very act of being, for Thomists, is the divine act of creation. What it is not is the divine substance.

My understanding of Hinduism is informed heavily by the writings of Frithjof Schuon and Swami Abhishiktananda, who despite certain grave errors in their systems are extremely enlightening to someone trying to navigate through the complexities of Indian and Sufi thought. You might want to look at them, Detales.

By the way, I like your signature. I’m majoring in physics, and especially given my philosophical inclinations, I’ve found myself spending far more hours happily contemplating Schroedinger’s Cat.

 

[caparisi]

I feel i am closer to God in church. When ever I go out in the nature by myself or with my family. We seem to talk about God more, it seem to relax more, you are away from the neighbor knocking at the door, phone ringing, or even when you go in room and shut the door to pray it seems like I still get disturbed by something or someone. But when you get out in nature there is nothing to disturb you. You hear a pleasant bird singing. or a fish jumping in the river,and hear the river running. It makes you realize that their is pleasure left in the crazy world today. I think that more people do this now days that they could get closer to God. I just did this yesterday which I haven’t done in a long time. Me and my son went to play tennis and behind the tennis court in the woods was a river, and my son decided he want to walk over to the river, which remember me how important it is to take time away from the world and enjoy each other and the nature that god created. My son is 13 and he remind me of this.