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Tara Cousineau, PhD

Clinical Psychologist, Kindness Warrior

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nature

Calling on Kindred Spirits for Healing

April 19, 2020 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

Sometimes I feel like I was a tree nymph in a different existence. Not that I know much about trees except that I love them. I love them like friends. My most peaceful moments as a child were wandering in the woods, building forts, climbing a grand weeping beech with its voluptuous growths. I could nestle in its limbs for hours reading as if in a mother’s lap. My friend Heidi and I mapped out mystical lands with secret underground caverns as we huddled under her canopy bed with color pencils. Once her mother reprimanded us after we stole tomatoes from a neighbor’s garden to stock supplies for one of our woodland forts along Old West Mountain Road.

I read once that our brains are primed to the color green, an instinctual signal of vitality, growth and life. Children’s cognitive skills are enhanced when exposed to nature. We wonder. We are kinder and more creative. In hospitals and nursing homes, patients fare better and experience less pain when a plant is on the windowsill. There is a psychophysiological effect in the presence of verdant foliage. It doesn’t matter if it is a small patch of weeds, an Ansel Adams poster, a city park, or a Sunday drive through the countryside. 

Even if you are a city dweller, you can find some place, perhaps a park or a golf course, where you can observe the mysterious migration of the birds, and the changing seasons.

And with your child you can ponder the mystery of a growing seed, even if it be only one planted in a pot of earth in the kitchen window.

Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder

Inner and outer dwellings

One of my most formative experiences was traversing the forests on Mt. Kenya when I was 20 years old when I had to get as far away from home as possible. So I was captivated when I read in my inbox about a short documentary: The Church Forests of Ethiopia by Jeremy Seifert. The words in the subject line grabbed me: A church forest. 

I clicked the link. In a short nine minutes I was transported to an ephemeral world, captured by the intimacy of a handheld camera. Old trees, hazy light, monkeys…. and a native orthodox priest. The film zoomed out, an expansive Google map or drone view, over a brambly swatch of old growth forest encased by desolate, overused land. A green oasis in the midst of cattle-eaten countryside. 

It was a conservation effort.  And as it happens there are many of these small forests spread far and wide, as many as 20,000. They are tended by spiritual gatekeepers who protect these endangered enclaves of biodiversity, like woodland angels. As the story unfolds, there is a foreign conservationist, a local ecologist, and a forest priest. They convened about what to do. At a gathering with the priests, the spiritual leaders came up with an idea of their own: to build a wall. A wall to keep the cattle from eating the seedlings, so that the forest could reseed itself. “The church is within the forest. The forest is inside the church,” explains the priest. The widening walls would protect both.

And it’s working. 

In a remarkably short time in one forest, the sounds of birds can be heard, monkeys sway in the canopies, and children come to clamber up the trees to find refuge in the cooler air. It turns out that only the native forests inhabited by priests and hermits are the ones surviving, but barely. The walls, yellow and dusty, are carefully stacked with the stones churned up from the surrounding fields. They are wide enough for children to skip along. The walls are helping in more ways than one. Now efforts are being made to connect these forests, like emerald strands across a bare neckline.

Walls for mending and tending

Walls serve many purposes. The American poet Robert Frost famously wrote about mending walls, questioning whether they make good neighbors. Of course, it’s complicated. There are border walls that separate children from families and bar people from safe havens. Chain link and wireless fences can keep anything in or out. There are those that eventually fall I once sat upon the Berlin wall with traveling companions on a study abroad. I think of the virtual walls we are creating now by sheltering in place, standing in lines six feet apart, flattening the curve as it were. A wall with invisible boundaries. 

Separate yet connected

Walls. It all depends on the intention. Is a wall erected out of fear? Or, is a wall erected out of love? And even intentions go awry and can pave the way to hell. We see how the walls of nursing homes, hospitals and prisons can ensnare a novel corona virus, a prolific microscopic invader. Yet, the virus, like the cattle in Ethiopia (and every living organism), seeks to survive. And walls, let’s face it, are porous.

I’m hopeful. The Church Forests of Ethiopia demonstrate what deep listening and caretaking can do. These forest walls arose from a divine partnership: part spirit, part nature, part human. There is no separation. The simple conservation effort brings into view something mysterious, magical, practical (as you will see if you watch the 10 minute film). Now I sit in my home walled off from the world thinking about our intentions. I believe our behavior, our quiet caretaking, matters even more. Compassionate action even with inaction. A paradox that goes against our natural instincts. Most of us are not hermits.

Just like the Ethiopian forest priests tend to the fragile seeds, we are kindred spirits spread far and wide tending to ourselves and each other. It is in our nature to tend and befriend, a beloved term coined by psychologist Shelley Taylor about our survival instinct through affiliation. We are saving ourselves.

It will take time to recover and heal from this pandemic. Let’s take refuge in the dwellings in which we reside.

We all need a kind and wise companion looking after us. I invite you to call on a kindred spirit. The one that lives within you. Here is a meditation to connect with one.  

More Matters in Kind:

  • I am now obsessed with these church forests. Learn more about Dr. Alemayehu Wassie, a forest ecologist and Dr. Margaret “Meg” Lowman, an American ecologist and canopy biologist. Read an exquisite essay in Emergence Magazine about the church forests of Ethiopia by Fred Bahnson, who himself was transformed on his visit. “Less than three percent of primary forest remains. And nearly all of that three percent, Alemayehu discovered, was only found in forests protected by the church.”
  • The Global Oneness Project offers amazing stories and study guides about the earth we tread upon and our connection to the natural world. Its sister project, Emergence Magazine (Ecology, Culture, and Spirituality) is a new favorite of mine. 
  • Watch the beautiful animation The Man Who Planted Trees, directed by Frédéric Back (1988 Academy Award winner), and based on the French story by Jean Giono about a shepherd’s lone journey to re-forest a barren valley after a devastating world war.
  • The Sense of Wonder: A Celebration of Nature for Parents and Children by Rachel Carson, “The patron saint of the environmental movement.”

Pinecone Photo by Anika Huizinga on Unsplash

Filed Under: Inspirations Tagged With: forests, nature, spirituality, trees

The Gift of Paying Attention

January 25, 2019 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

Every once in a while there is something that draws our attention in such a precise way that we see — an object, person, or experience — with simple clarity.  In such an instance we feel inseparable; or to say it another way, we feel fully connected and alive. That is what the late poet Mary Oliver did for me (and many others) upon reading her words about nature or her dogs or some mundane detail in an ordinary day. Her poems are like still life paintings. Or little reminders. She passed away last week. It was inevitable.

Pay attention is her great teaching. So this morning I asked her, What have you to teach me today, Mary? I randomly opened to a page in a slim volume, Swan (Beacon Press, 2010, p. 35).  Here is her short poem, When:


When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know
any of us, what happens then.
So I try not to miss anything.

I think, my whole life, I have never missed
the full moon
or the slipper of it coming back.
Or, a kiss.
Well, yes, especially a kiss.

Mary Oliver

I smile. A kiss. A moon. Well, isn’t that apt?  She leaves us the very week a glorious eclipse passed overhead, the last total lunar eclipse of the decade. A moon that Mary Oliver just missed. A blood moon, also called a wolf moon.

I turn to look at what may be her most famous line from The Summer’s Day, emblazoned on a piece of wood resting in an old fireplace in my home office, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” I wonder if people who come visit me even notice it despite the dust. Maybe they will now.

In gratitude to Mary Oliver and the power of the present moment. May we find comfort in loving awareness and connection to each other and our planet.

Rest in Peace, Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

More Matters In Kind

Find nourishment with Mary Oliver’s words:

  • Finding Refuge Within Ourselves, in a previous post on my blog
  • Mary Oliver Helped Us Stay Amazed, The New Yorker
  • Mary Oliver: Listening to the World, OnBeing (podcast)

Filed Under: Inspirations Tagged With: attention, gratitude, Mary Oliver, mindfulness, nature, poetry, present moment

On Turner’s Pond: A Walking Meditation

June 25, 2017 by Tara Cousineau Leave a Comment

On the eve of the first day of summer I took a walk with my dog Leo. I’m not the dog walker in the family even though I should be (Leo was my idea), but I needed to get some head space and so I drove over to Turner’s Pond. Leo is getting on in years and twice around the pond seems too much for his short legs. We decided to give it the ole college try.

I edged around the first bend full of maples and oaks to a clearing. Cumulous clouds were bursting forth like cotton candy at a county fair. My mother used to tell me and my sister that when the sky turns bright pink the angels were busy baking cookies. This always made me happy as a child.

It still does.

This sky was pretty enough to take a picture. Alas, I had purposely left my phone in the car and was now feeling a twinge of regret. With a new mission in mind to get it I picked up my pace, while eyeing the ever changing hues. Please stay still.

I raced by a family. They were rather striking for their stature and number. Two parents and four boys of various ages. The older boy was close to being a teenager and the youngest, about 4, was on his red bike and mightily leading the pack. They could be from some Scandinavian country, I thought.

My four-legged companion was petering out. I decided to give Leo an out and let him sit in the car. I took the second lap around rather briskly with my cell phone in hand. Could I catch the sky’s dusty rose hue?

It was too late.

Why do we need to document such moments anyway, I chided myself.  I slowed down and welcomed the breeze. Breathe in. Breathe out. My mind was flitting back and forth from appreciating the pond life to being lost in memory.

I observed something else that warmed my heart as much as my mother’s words about cherubs and a craving for warm cookies. I came upon a young couple who had set up portable hammocks among the birch trees just over the water’s edge. They were facing each other and quite animated in conversation. They paid no mind to the nocturnal insects, to the bellows of bullfrogs, or to my presence.

Hammocks. That took some planning. I felt soothed by the waning sounds of their voices.

I finally came to the opening at the far end of the pond where the geese and duck circle each other and a random dog inevitably chases them off. It happens every visit. This time two lumbering white retrievers had their fun. The owner and I exchanged a laugh. Poor Leo. He missed it.

And I missed my chance for the photo op. They sky quickly paled in the twilight. I headed back and came across the Viking family again. This time the mother, father, and the two older boys were tightly nestled on a short bench. Shoulder to shoulder. They barely fit. The littlest one poked a stick in the pond and the other child was skipping a stone. Like the young couple, they were deep in conversation looking out over the water.

Cozy.

I could hear that they were American. I think this surprised me — to see a family all together at dinner time rather than dispersed at some sport field or immersed in technology. That this family was so intimate, and in nature no less, made me pause. I felt a bit voyeuristic.

They also gave me hope. I’m not sure for what. Maybe just that nature is always there to restore us. And if we can appreciate this gift, as the couple and this family seemed to, then maybe we can be good stewards of each other and our planet after all — no matter the color of the sky.

 

*

 

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get future updates about my upcoming book: The Kindness Cure: How The Science of Compassion Can Heal Your Heart And Your World.

Photo Credits:
(c) 2017 Tara Cousineau

Hammock:
Nicole Harrington

Filed Under: Balance, Inspirations, Meditation Tagged With: meditation, memory, nature, pause, reflection, restore, Walking

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