Lucky Tom

What a blessing to live in an area where you can look out your windows and see nature at any time of the day or night. My feeders are always playing host to a huge variety of birds. This morning sipping a cup of tea and watching a Tom Turkey displaying for his hens is something that as a child I could only dream about. I am living the life I've always wanted. Being surrounded by wild animals is for me, heaven on earth.


A Pantheist Daily Mindfulness Practice:(excerpt from Universal Pantheist Society, Harold W.Wood Jr.)

1. Touch or engage with a flower, plant, or tree; really acknowledge its existence.
2. Touch or engage with an animal, an insect, or a companion animal.
3. Touch or engage with something of the earth – a mineral, a clod of dirt, some sand, or the soil.
4. Touch or engage the sky – look – really look – at the blue of the sky, or at clouds, or the stars at night.
5. Touch or engage another human being – acknowledge a loved one with a hug, or help a child or the sick or elderly, or pass on a word of cheer to another.

When Pantheists “take a walk in the woods” – we engage in our most fundamental spiritual devotion. By so doing we refresh ourselves, and we feel peace and joy in Nature. No one can tell us our beliefs or faith is wrong, because we have touched and engaged in the reality. There is no argument about “your beliefs vs. my beliefs.” We simply know from our own experience that the practice of Pantheist mindfulness enhances the relationship with the sacred that is the whole point of religion.

When we touch or engage other living things, we should try to deeply understand them. Mindfulness includes engaging the mind, as well as the heart. Enjoyment of the beauty is necessary, but not sufficient. We should try to understand them with all our capacities, including scientific understanding and the use of reason. Some say that scientific understanding seems to make things cold and unfeeling. It has never seemed so to me. When I acknowledge a fir tree, my appreciation of its beauty and joy in its being is hugely increased by having some understanding of its familial relationships, and its ecological relationships, taught by the science of botany. By knowing what family, genus, and species a particular fir tree is, helps me to see it no longer as just part of the scenery, but to help me better understand it as a living being whom I acknowledge. The more I know about taxonomy or ecology of a plant or animal, the better I can appreciate it. For a Pantheist, a nature guidebook to local flora and fauna is like the Book of Common Prayer for an Episcopalian, or a Sutra to a Buddhist.

Later...@ sit spot for my Kamana Class.....1ST PHOEBE!