Nature comes to my emotional rescue

Ahh, Easter morning. If my dad were still around, I would be calling him first thing and instead of saying hello, he would say, “He has risen.” And my response would always be, “He has risen indeed.”

I miss that man.

Even though I am writing this on Good Friday; I have such fond memories of Easters past. There just seems to be a certain feeling in the air on this day, a calm of sorts. The normal sounds of traffic racing down the road is absent, neighbors’ houses are quieter than usual and walking down to the river with a cup of coffee in hand, I am more tuned in to the natural world.

As I pass a particular dogwood tree, I snap off a blossom and remember the symbolism it carries. The thorny crown in the middle, the bloody nail holes on the petals and my theological background comes flooding back.

Raised in the Episcopal Church, or as I like to say, “cheap Catholics,” Easter brings back a flurry of memories, sights and sounds. Mounds of Easter lilies, the color purple and everybody dressed in their Sunday finest.

I probably won’t make it to church, but only because I find it easier to find God in nature. You might regard that as blasphemy, but in my lifetime I have attended church thousands of times. I was an acolyte at the Church of the Cross in Bluffton when I was 12 years old and was in choir practice there when President Kennedy was shot. I attended Episcopal boarding schools in high school, one in Virginia and the other in Charleston, and during that period attended church each and every day.

I learned so much from all those days in church and, in particular, how important it is to offer random acts of kindness each and every day. I really do try to fulfill that way of life and, as corny as it might sound, I believe each act — no matter how small — adds “GPs” to my résumé should St. Peter weigh the good against the bad when entering the next phase of existence.

What are GPs, you ask? A little creation of mine called God Points.

I am slightly embarrassed to say that I believed in the Easter Bunny longer than I held onto Santa Claus being real. There was just something pure about getting an Easter basket and my folks were so creative choosing what went into these Easter morning surprises.

As for Easter egg hunts, I was terrible. The youngest of five kids, I would have at most two eggs in my basket while my siblings’ baskets were overflowing. I am still slightly traumatized about when I woke on Easter morning and there was no basket. I think I was 18, so that alone should speak volumes about what kind of mind I have or don’t have.

So now that you know the basics about my religious beliefs, it was in my mid-20s that I found spirituality in nature. I had always loved the outdoors, but as I got older and began questioning just about everything, I was walking down a dirt road in Foot Point Plantation, now called Colleton River Plantation, and it was right about this time of the year.

I vividly remember just about every moment of that walk. It was warm, not hot, and the sun was dappled as it showed through the leafy canopy overhead. Having rained the day before, the resurrection ferns had magically appeared along the long limbs of an old oak and I was so taken back by the beauty of it all that I sat down at the base of a tree and cried.

I know that sounds strange, but it was a moment of revelation for me.

I always carried a camera with me back then, along with a pad of paper, and I wrote a poem about the greens and browns gently rhyming. To make that moment even more special, three does walked out of the woods not 10 feet from me and crossed the road. It was like I was invisible.

I wish I could find that poem because that day was a real turning point for me. I know I kept it but with several memento boxes in my attic, I don’t have the time to look through them all.

Since that day, I have always been able to find peace in nature when all else fails. I no longer walk looking straight ahead like so many people seem to do. Instead, I look from side to side, up, down and, without fail, I always see something that would have gone unnoticed had I simply stumbled along.

Just this week as I was heading in from a marathon trip to the Gulf Stream, the sun was setting over a millpond ocean and in front of us appears a schooner called the Spirit of SC. Dead tired, I slowed to take in the sight and once again nature came to my emotional rescue. Reflections of the schooner on the water, flying fish soaring boatside and the setting sun made me glad to be alive.

For me, at least, it’s religion at its very best.

This story was originally published April 15, 2017 at 7:58 PM with the headline "Nature comes to my emotional rescue."