The past couple of days I’ve walked to a spot in the Carleton Upper Arb where there’s a circle of large boulders in a grove of oak trees. Looking at an Arb map, I think it’s the site of the Old Faculty Picnic Grounds but I’m not sure.
The whole scene has the feeling of a church for me. There’s a big slab rock in the middle of the circle, sitting atop a couple of other rocks that make it look like an altar. Eight boulders form a circle surrounding this slab, and as I walk around them, they remind me of the Stations of the Cross in the Catholic churches of my childhood. The trunks of the huge, stately oaks are pillars, the branches form alcoves and canopies and arches. The chirping of the birds and squirrels are the choir.
The May 7 Newsweek cover story on Religion and the Brain and a subsequent article in the Pioneer Press titled The Science of Prayer got me thinking about doing this, putting myself in a mental and physical state where I’d experence the “feeling of God”, a palpable spirituality. Today, I did a version of the Stations of the Cross by pulling out my Palm Pilot and reading an inspirational prayer or a quote out loud as I stopped at each of the boulders. I had a cup of coffee with me, so I placed that chalice-like on the altar, of course.
This sounds pretty new-agey, I suppose, but so be it. All I know is, it “worked.” It’s worked in the past when I’ve visited an empty church too, come to think of it. It’s the same refreshing, inspirational feeling, a souped-up SOS. I’ll keep doing it, now that it’s warm, and see how it affects me.