Summer means many of us spend more time outdoors and in nature. Here are some practices especially for such excursions.

15. LEARN MOTHER NATURE'S LESSONS.

When you are out in nature, in the company of trees, bushes, grasses, and flowers, welcome the opportunity to be silent and passive. Luther Burbank explains in Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird's The Secret Life of Plants: "Preconceived notions, dogmas, and all personal prejudice and bias must be laid aside. Listen patiently, quietly, reverently to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to teach. . . . She conveys her truths only to those who are passive and receptive."

16. BE PRESENT WITH ANIMALS.

In Listening to Nature, Joseph Cornell writes: "While you're outdoors, observe an animal closely. Follow it as it moves. See how nature has expressed itself uniquely in this animal. Become quiet within your mind so that you can become sensitively aware of the animal's essence. Mentally affirm your appreciative thoughts to the animal. Listen." Be ready to receive what an animal you meet in the wild offers you. Observe, listen, and take in the special energy of this being. When the animal leaves, send along a blessing.

17. BEFRIEND A TREE

Tree culturist P. G. Cross thinks we should all get up-close and personal with trees: "If you would live life in all its richness, then make friends with your trees, your neighbor's trees, the trees of the hillside and the highway. To form such a friendship means serenity of being, better health, and above all, lasting happiness. No tree ever proves to be a false friend." Befriend a tree for the summer. Look out for its welfare. Notice its moods. Sit beside it and bask in its energy.

18. TALK TO GOD WHILE SITTING IN A TREE

Michael Meade in Men and the Water of Life writes: "Children love to climb trees . . . They can get away from what weighs them down . . . Part of the tree is for talking with God . . . Part of the tree means being held by nature in ways that one's family cannot hold." Perch in a tree and talk to God (or relive a childhood memory of doing so).

19. PRAY IN THE FIELDS

"As often as you can, take a trip out to the fields to pray," advised Rebbe Nachman of Breslov in The Empty Chair. "All the grasses will join you. They will enter your prayers and give you strength to sing praises to God." Take a trip to the fields or hills or beach to pray. Experience the communion you feel with all elements of the natural world. Sing your praises together.

20. LEARN HUMILITY IN THE NATURAL WORLD

"Whales and redwoods both make us feel small and I think that's an important experience for humans to have at the hands of nature," says Roger Payne in Jonathan White's Talking on the Water. He continues: "We need to recognize that we are not the stars of the show. We're just another pretty face, just one species among millions more." Purposefully seek out some places of grandeur in the natural world. Acknowledge your smallness in the vast scheme of things.

21. EXPERIENCE THE UNIVERSE AS GOD'S BODY

Theologian Sallie McFague writes in The Body of God: "The universe as God's body (sun, moon, trees, rivers, animals and people) is a rich, suggestive way to radicalize the glory, the awesomeness, the beyond-all-imagining power and mystery of God in a way that at the same time radicalizes the nearness, the availability, the physicality of divine immanence." Create a summertime ritual in which you experience the Earth as God's body. Talk or journal about how this perspective affects your feelings, your body, and your attitudes toward nature.

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