The Leaf Has a Song

From Jackie Rankin

“What can I say that I have not said before?

So I’ll say it again.

The leaf has a song in it.

Stone is the face of patience.

Inside the river there is an unfinishable story

and you are somewhere in it

and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum

and the chamber of commerce

but take it also to the forest.

The song you heard singing in the leaf

when you were a child

is singing still.

I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,

and the leaf is singing still.”

~ Mary Oliver, “What Can I Say”

After the fall of Rome, the Order of Saint Benedict took on abandoned Roman estates and developed them as monasteries. Here the link between labouring on the land and cultivating the mind became entwined as “the life of the sprit needed to be grounded in a relationship with the earth” (Sue Stuart-Smith). As well as productive orchards and vegetable gardens, a typical monastery would include enclosed spaces — hortus conclusus — for mediation and recouperation. Alongside this, the idea that fresh clean air and scent could have a powerful effect on human physiology and psychology was gathering pace…

Today science is validating what gardeners have known for hundreds of years. One of the largest studies to date on gardens and gardening, by the National Institute for Health Research, found that the benefits of gardening were similar to the difference in health between the wealthiest people and the poorest people in the country. It reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, promotes feelings of mastery, accomplishment and competence, higher levels of self-efficacy, self-esteem, and psychological wellbeing.

— Lottie Delamain

I feel comforted in the presence of big trees. There’s a palpable spiritual energy that comes off of big trees that heals. When I was young, I often lived in big cities and never stopped missing trees and animals and starlight. I gave up nature to have cultural ferment in those days. I wouldn’t do that now.

The more urban we become the less we’re aware of how much we need nature just to feel human. That’s a serious loss to the human soul, it seems to me. Nature has a song in it and we need to wake up and go to sleep hearing that song. That simple and basic need is difficult or impossible to satisfy for millions of humans. And, adding insult to injury, our human-built environments are made for machines more than for human beings.

Humanity needs beauty. It needs a sensory experience of the awesome beauty of nature, and on a daily basis I believe.

Grant Haffner — Into the night, 1978.

That separation of nature and culture I encountered when I was young may not be so entrenched now, what with remote work by internet, but people also need a community of real people. We may be in danger of falling into a virtual world and forgetting we need more than what passes through our eyes and brain. We need to smell the fog and hear the birds around us.

I thank my parents for deciding — they had a choice — to raise us in the countryside with lots of animals and trees. Someone who was raised in a desert or on a glacier or on a beach might feel differently but for me it’s a longing for deep soil and big trees — and seasons. No monoclimates.

I can’t imagine how you can become accustomed to an urban environment with no relief. What does that do to your soul, your need for roots in Creation?

If you grow up without nature maybe you won’t consciously miss it but I think something fundamental in you does, and having to live without it removes something essential from your need to thrive.

I’d swear there’s a connection between art, gardening and spirituality.

Futurama Nobu, Lotus Leaves — Evening Blue

Volume three of my series Meditations on Living is now published on Amazon. If you read it, please leave a review.

**https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFDB16NR?binding=kindleedition&searchxofy=true&ref=dbs_s_aps_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1695336051&sr=8-9**

It will look like this: