The Lives Around Us – daily meditations for nature connection. Dan Papworth

The living world is all around us, whether you live in the centre of the most urbanised area or the centre of the most rural out of the way place, the living world is there to discover and to learn from on both natural and spiritual levels.

To engage with and learn from nature has been part of the Christian tradition from the beginning, from Jesus’ instructions to his disciples (see Matthew 6v26-30 & Luke12v24) and Paul’s declaration about being able to see God’s eternal power and the mystery of his Divine being in the natural world around us (Romans 1v20), through the early saints, such as Columbanus (6th C) who said that we must get to know creation if we want to truly know the Creator, and later mystics, such as Meister Eckhart (14th C) who declared that every creature is a word of God, and that if he could spend enough time with just one caterpillar he would never have to preach another sermon, to the modern era with John Muir (19th C) who declared that he would rather be in the mountains thinking about God than be in church thinking about the mountains, and the ‘Eco-Church’ movement launched in 2016 by Rowan Williams and Ruth Valerio (Arocha).

Many within the modern church, however, seem to have either forgotten or ignored this rich heritage in the Christian faith of engaging with God in and through nature. In The Living World Around Us Dan Papworth takes us on the traditional 40 day journey into some wild and unknown places and re-engages the reader with the idea of encountering God by learning about nature.

Filled with detailed research and information about the natural world, the reader learns about the birds, the insects, the animals, the flowers, the trees, fungi, and various other aspects of nature. From there Papworth leads the reader into some related words of scripture and then draws them to reflect and pray, truly weaving the soul of the reader in with the soul of the natural world, reminding us that the physical and spiritual worlds are interlinked. In this way Papworth draws our understanding away from an anthropocentric view of the natural world into a more symbiotic way of seeing, and also reminds us that “nature does not need us to control and manage her”.

Whether you are new to the concept of nature connection for Christians, a well-practiced spiritual naturalist, or anywhere in between, this book has something for you, and will teach you something which you didn’t already know. It will take you deeper into the world in which you live and create opportunities for you to encounter God there.

The Lives Around Us is an excellent book to help you engage with the Divine in and through nature, and a wonderful resource for any who wish to lead groups in reflective times with specific plants or creatures, or to just sit out alone and read.