James W. Hood

Human beings “must now return nature . . . into our worship. And Quaker meeting is the perfect place to make that reclamation,” writes Jim Hood in this poetic and thoughtful meditation. In celebrating the interrelationship of living beings – the ecology – of the natural world, alongside the deep interrelationships at work in a meeting for worship, Hood calls us to deepen our spiritual relationship to nature and to the Light that illuminates it. He urges us to restore this deep connectedness with nature not only for our personal spiritual health, but so we can find our way back into connectedness with a planet we have largely forgotten and abandoned.… (mehr)

Hood presents Quaker meeting as the perfect place to return nature to our spiritual practice, a necessity in our human-made environmental crisis. He argues that in the group silence of waiting worship in Quaker meeting, we release our discursive and analytical minds and can experience full sensory awareness of the world. This pulls us out of self and into relationship, awareness of our world as an ecosystem of connectivity. In fact, he says, "religious practice is an ecological relationship."
The ecological relationships in the natural world are the same as the interrelationships that develop in the gathered meeting for worship. As we experience this, we move toward righting our relationship with the rest of nature.
Hood's pamphlet is interesting and clearly written, on an important topic. He illustrates his theme with an observant walk through his native forest.… (mehr)