Inside, we are all born for the outside. We breathe the naked air, grow in the light of the raw sun. We spring from the soil as surely as the most tentative grass. Through the astonishing and mysterious grace of the natural ways, we have come to be creatures of awareness as well, capable of wonder, faith and deep feeling. We see the remarkable stretch of the place beyond and below us, and develop spiritual conceptions to make meaning of the vast patterns. For long ages, humanity has applied intuition and knowledge to create paths of spirit, to make sense of the larger universe, and to provide daily guidance for our individual footfalls.

Two thousand years after the founding of the west’s dominant religion, spiritual seeking is a resurgent theme. Some who have grown up in a material rather than spiritual culture find themselves sensing an absence, and wishing to return to more calming ground. Others who have pursued traditional faiths find those belief systems now incomplete or inadequate. Many seek to integrate a heightened ecological consciousness with a spiritual one. All of us are challenged by the commingling and collision of different paths, as a global culture increases our exposure to vastly different notions. The result can be a crisis of spirit within the renewed awakening.

There is one spiritual path which contains all others, though; which conflicts with none. It is nature itself. Nature is the path which fosters the life of all seekers. Nature neither requires nor precludes belief in deity. It includes both creation and evolution, without conflict. It demands no dogmatic rituals, and damns no disbelievers. Nature speaks only silently, offers no absolution, and has hard ways as well as sweet vistas. Yet within its silence and its graceful, tightly woven forms, it offers philosophical and practical answers. In the way that plants, animals and even the elements are and relate to each other, is an almost holographic, complete key to the balance we must find within ourselves and with each other.

We can follow nature’s path through the tiny details of it present in our everyday lives—regardless of where we live and how damaged the natural order may be there. Nature offers a practical spirituality to be integrated into our daily lives as they are, rather than something we must radically alter our usual routines to include. It’s a natural mindfulness that sees the whole of the answers to our questions and difficulties in the tiniest details of the living, natural earth.

What is this spirituality, and how can we apply it daily?

In the answer to this is both a beautiful celebration of the details of the natural world, and a meditation upon living in it. All that’s required is our vision. This is a prayer for, and a glimpse of, that vision.