Exploring the Future of Listening
8.6 Exploring Future Experiential Learning Activities for Listening to Nature
Chapter Five describes an abundance of experiential learning activities for listening to nature. I highlight some of these specific listening to nature activities and point to other resources for further practice. This smorgasbord approach provides a variety of tasty listening activities to satisfy and savor.
Nature Stories
For lovers of reading, there are few better nature authors than David Henry Thoreau and John Muir for narrating the sensorial experience of being in nature. I recommend beginning with Thoreau’s Walden,[1] and Muir’s Yosemite.[2] For snippets of nature stories fit for campfire reading, I enjoy Amy Hoitsma’s Inspired by Nature.[3] For reflective short stories about insects, plants, and animals, see Anthony De Mello’s Song of the Bird.[4]
Reading Short Nature Stories as a Meditative Listening Practice
Short stories and passages about nature can be read often with increasing enjoyment, satisfaction, and insight if read with a meditative listening attitude.
I paraphrase De Mello’s method of meditative reading.[5]
If you read a story once, you are entertained and move on to the next story for another dopamine hit.
If you read a story twice, reflect on it, and apply the story to your life, you will have a taste of “theology” that you can share with others.
If, after reflecting and applying the story to your life, you return to reread the story (maybe several more times), carrying it, “. . . around all day and allow its fragrance, its melody to haunt you. Let it speak to your heart . . . [this could] make something of a mystic out of you . . .”[6] And it could be the beginning of learning nature’s wisdom through meditative reading and listening.
Engaging with Nature
Reading stories about nature is one way to appreciate listening to nature. But reading alone cannot substitute for the actual experience of being in nature and listening attentively to nature. In addition to stories about the natural world, Sandra Ingerman and Lynn Roberts’ Speaking with Nature also contains meditations and experiential nature activities at the end of each chapter.[7] The stories, meditations, and activities represent the spectrum of the natural world, including elemental glacial sand, artesian springs, blackberries, wild roses, banana slugs, earthworms, black bears, and elk.
Other general resources for listening to nature are Joseph Cornell’s fifty-four activities in Sharing Nature and Michael Cohen’s eighteen nature activities in Reconnecting with Nature.[8] Both Cornell and Cohen include activities for listening to the natural world of elements, plants, and animals.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings (New York City: Bantam Books, 1982). ↵
- John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: The Century Company, 1912). ↵
- Amy Kelley Hoitsma, ed., Inspired by Nature (Essex: Falcon Guides, 2000). ↵
- Anthony De Mello, The Song of the Bird (New York: Image Books, 1984). ↵
- Ibid., xv. ↵
- Ibid., (italics author). ↵
- Sandra Ingerman and Llyn Roberts, Speaking With Nature: Awakening to the Deep Wisdom of the Earth (Rochester: Bear and Company, 2015). Ingerman and Roberts present two different perspectives on nature. Ingerman's standpoint reflects a life lived in the desert of Arizona, while Robert's view reflects a life lived in the Hoh rainforest in the state of Washington. ↵
- Joseph Cornell, Sharing Nature: Nature Awareness Activities for all Ages (Nevada City: Crystal Clarity Publishers, 2015), and Michael J. Cohen, Reconnecting with Nature: Finding Wellness through Restoring Your Bond with the Earth (Lakeville: Ecopress, 2007). ↵