Feast of the Forest: Communion in and with Nature

Your Friday Nudge: Check out the Wild Church Network

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Hi friends. I was away at a Wild Church Retreat this past weekend in southern Ontario. It was hosted by members of the Wild Church Network, a community of eco-spiritual leaders, primarily in the US and Canada, who lead wild churches in their places and encourage others to form wild churches.

What is Wild Church?

Wild Church is a way of worshipping in and with the natural world, understanding the natural world as a place and body in which God is present and alive. While the sacred is not found exclusively within nature in Wild Church, a core belief is that the Sacred is embedded within the natural world. Furthermore, the natural world participates in the worship of the Holy. In our time of both ecological crisis and social fracturing on every level, the need to ground ourselves in worship in and with the more-than-human world is vital. 

Even though I preach, speak and teach about the importance of recognizing humans as being interconnected and interdependent within the Earth community, it has been a long time since I have engaged my own ecological spirituality directly in the natural world. My time at the retreat was transformative, and I have come home invited by God to continue the connections that I experienced with the trees, wind, animals, rocks, and living water. As I write this essay, I am sitting on my back deck, experiencing the winds of a coming storm that is also promising to drive away the dangerous heat and humidity that hovers over the place where I live.

There was so much I experienced while away that will influence my thinking and writing, as well as my praying and living. In today’s essay, I am reflecting on the sacrament of communion, which we participated in at the retreat. For your Friday Nudge, to give you more context and information about what Wild Church is and what it might mean for you, I invite you to check out the Wild Church Network. If you are drawn to reading more about Wild Church, you can also read Church of the Wild, written by Wild Church Network co-founder Victoria Loorz. I’ve read it and found it to be both spiritually meaningful and theologically rich.

Have you read Church of the Wild? Are you part of a wild church? Let us know!

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Feast of the Forest: Communion in and with Nature

Wild churches are as diverse as the humans (and nature) who worship. Some use a loosely Christian liturgy and read Scripture as well as poetry and wisdom from various spiritual traditions. In others, the word ‘church’ is never used and the people who form the community are people who would never step foot inside a church or anything that suggests being Christian. This diversity of expression and experience is central to what it means to be a wild church.

At the same time, there are aspects of spiritual practice that resonate across spiritualities, and one of those is sharing food together. On Sunday morning, the last day of our retreat, the Wild Church leaders led us in a feast of the forest, what those of us who are Christian and who participate in Christian practices can experience as the sacrament of communion. 

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