Published: September 22, 2025
How do we reconnect with Spirit, the spirit within ourselves, the spirit of Nature? Many call this Spirit by different names: Source of Our Being, God, Goddess, Elohim, El Shaddai, Allah, Al-Khaliq, Al-Quddus, Great Spirit, the Dao, Universal Energy.
When I ask people where they experience this Divine reality, I get one answer. The Divine is experienced when the person is in nature (walking outside, at the beach, fly fishing, sitting by a tree, sitting in a park). It may surprise us, but people do not say: Mosque, Temple, Church, etc.
Why is this? One answer might be that worship at Churches, Mosques, Temples, and other sacred spaces is usually highly planned out. The services involve many “moving parts” like standing or kneeling for prayer, sacred text reading, hymns/chants/songs, witness or testimony, a message, etc. There is a “liturgy” (from the Greek, “leitourgia” meaning a public service, or the work of the people). There is a beginning, a middle, an end. These services can be formulaic.
Prayer in these contexts can often be more about talking to God, rather than listening to God. More of an external experience than an internal one. As we seek to experience the Divine, active public worship may hinder our chances to be in the presence of the Divine. What are we to do? The answer is NOT to stop attending public worship services in your tradition. Public worship can give us a sense of community and connection to others.
In many faith traditions, people have often sought after the Divine by seeking to be in silence and solitude. They seek to be in quiet settings, away from distractions. Muhammad sought solitude in a cave on Mount Hira outside of Mecca. Jesus is often depicted as going away from the crowds to seek time away in solitude. Buddha meditated under a bodhi tree in solitude. The Desert Fathers chose to be alone in the desert, living as hermits.
Monks, of varied faith traditions, built monasteries which allowed them to separate from society but be in community- to be- alone together. The Shaolin Temple, the Wudang Mountains of China, as well as the Monasteries of the Franciscans and Jesuits were places of solitude and connection. In other words, these people seeking after a much deeper experience of God, sought solitude and silence to reach God (Spirit, Creator, Source). They sought to be beyond all the trappings of the world and all the trappings of their religious traditions. Somewhere beyond the formulaic and the traditional liturgy, Spirit could be found.
By being alone, they found silence, removing the noisiness from their lives and the distractions. Maybe that is why people report that as they walk alone in nature or slowly fly fish standing in a river, or sit under a tree in deep thought, they experience God’s presence. In fact, all these activities could be considered acts of worship in my opinion. In the solitude and silence, God’s voice is heard, the Divine Presence is felt.
Time spent in solitude and silence helps us to meet ourselves. We can process our emotions, our undesirable traits, and our shortcomings. If we can get past our own egos, we can connect better to Source. Time spent in solitude is like a circle, where we first meet ourselves, and then meet the Divine.
I invite you to experience the Divine Spirit in this way. Seek some “alone time”. Pause the noise of the world and welcome the Spirit in. Sit by the ocean and meditate with no expectation. Don’t overthink it. Simply be in solitude and silence and experience the reality of God’s presence. Simply Be.
Thank you for taking the time to read these words. I wish you a deep and profound experience of that which is greater than us. Don’t be afraid to be a wayfarer on the path. I wish you blessings and peace on this journey.
