In 2019, I was trying to understand how to find a way back to my Catholic roots without compromising my worldview, which I felt was in deep conflict with institutional dogma. Its rejection of women’s ordination, body autonomy, and the sexual nature of humanity created a milieu that also undermined Mother Earth. I became accustomed to my eco-feminist peers talking about Catholicism with disdain, as institutional harms overshadowed the deep wisdom embedded within the tradition. I feared that if I exposed myself as longing to re-engage with Catholicism, I would be ostracized. Despite my apprehensions, I believed that the mystical experiences I had as a devout child were available to me as an adult in an even deeper form, especially with the guidance of the saints. Although I didn’t know exactly how, I sensed that my deep care for the earth was a direct path towards re-connection. 

One day while in the gardens of a local sanctuary I was tending as the resident medicinal herb gardener, I began to speak a prayer of grief within the garden. I prayed for the loss of traditional spiritual wisdom, institutional domination, and for the earth and soil which had been so pummeled by patriarchal society. As I allowed myself to process the grief I had been holding through prayer, I became overwhelmed with a presence of pure comfort and a profound sense that God existed deeply within creation. I have a strong feeling that St. Hildegard visited me in the gardens that day, and helped bring me to the realization that enabled me to re-embark on my Catholic path in a newfound way. 

As many individuals have brought their prayers to natural spaces, we can understand St. Hildegard was in communion with God living in and through the gardens she tended. There’s so much to celebrate about the gardens that feed us. Yet among the gratitude that we can feel for the growth that nourishes and sustains us, there’s also often grief that’s woven through our relationship with nature. 

There is a way that both nature and grief open doorways through which new chapters of our prayer lives can begin, filled with depth and authenticity. Feeling grief is a necessary step toward feeling everything, and being fully awake and alive in the world. Right action can come from contemplating the griefs we hold, however small they may seem, while giving them the care and attention that they deserve. With St. Hildegard as our guide, grieving in, for, and with nature is often a good place to begin contemplatively rooted action. 

In the words of the prophet Isaiah 24:4-5: 

The earth dries up and withers, 

The world languishes and withers, 

The heavens languish together with the earth. 

The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants, 

For they have transgressed laws, violated the statues, broken the everlasting covenant. 

In a commentary on this biblical passage in her book Praying with Hildegard of Bingen, religious educator Gloria Durka writes: 

“The ecosystem’s disaster symbolizes the lack of care and reverence for all living things. The rape of the environment provides a mirror image of violence people use to control and dominate each other. In the biblical injunction to have dominion over the earth, the word dominion originally meant ‘care.’ If we were to regard Mother Earth as a living body that is also our home, perhaps it would be easier to see ourselves as partners with her. Hildegard’s keen sense of divine imminence can help us to understand that God’s creative power engulfs the earth and energizes it from within. Recognizing God’s presence in all of creation can also help us to recognize our responsibility to cherish the earth and to care for it” (73).

It may not be easy to ‘presence’ the grief that we feel when spending time in nature. Yet throughout time, grief has unfolded in the natural world. As Jesus prayed in distress in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified (often referred to as the ‘Agony in the Garden’), wisdom traditions throughout time have told stories of an earth that is able to hold our grief: through, with, and in both wild spaces and those that we tend and cultivate.

Here is a framework for creating your own prayer, inspired by the psalms of lament, to help process garden grief. 

Step 1: Connect to your breath and body, and name your garden grief. 

Example: Garden loneliness and burden. 

Step 2: Turn to God with your grief. 

Example: God, I’m afraid to face this grief. And I’m not entirely sure it’s worth it, because I’m busy with other things. So I’m turning to you to help me slow down enough to really feel it. I trust that you can hold its weight, because I can’t do it all on my own. 

Step 3: Complain to God with your garden grief. 

Example: Why have you given me this garden, but no one to help me with it? I can’t feel the joy of it without anyone else around. But I’m afraid that if I ask for help no one will join me, or they will be too busy with other things.

Step 4: Ask God for support. 

Example: Give me the strength to invite people into this garden that you have so graciously gifted me. Help me to overcome my fears of rejection, and trust that the right people will say yes wholeheartedly to tending this sacred space with me. 

5. Affirm your trust in the process. 

Example: I trust your ability to help me move through my garden grief and into the relief that comes with asking for help, surrendering my control, and the love that community brings.

Reflection Questions:

Naming Your Grief 

What are you grieving today? 

Feeling Your Grief 

What does your grief feel like? Where are you feeling it in your body? Does your grief have a color, image, sensation or sound? If your grief were a season, which would it be? 

Tending To Your Grief 

What does your grief need today? How can you honor the grief that you’re feeling? Can you learn anything from your grief? What do you need most right now for support?

When I think of someone who interfaced with grief in a spiritually minded way, I think of Ethan Sisser. As my first yoga teacher and bodywork practitioner, Ethan’s community yoga classes and Thai yoga bodywork sessions introduced me to yoga as fundamentally spiritual practices. Ethan’s mentorship was so impactful for me as a young adult that it led me down my own path of becoming a yoga instructor and Thai yoga practitioner, which laid the foundation for my career in the holistic healing arts.

In 2019, Ethan was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Ethan’s generosity extended into the courageous act of documenting his active dying process, through a film called The Last Ecstatic Days. When I watched the film, I was deeply moved by Ethan’s capacity to not only face his death with unabounding presence and grace, but also his honest approach to the grief which enveloped the process. His curiosity-led relationship with grief allowed him to be an investigator of his own dying process, which no one would have blamed him for running away from. The overarching message I received from watching Ethan move through his dying process was that our spiritual practices prepare us for unknowns in life, as well as the often uncharted realms of grief that exist in our bodies. Ethan modeled how ‘presencing’ ourselves to our own grief creates a rich and fertile experience of accepting the most feared areas of our lives, and that doing so can be a beautiful, transformative and healing process.

Image description: Against a mixed blue and purple background, is a sketch of Ethan Sisser from the shoulders-up. In the first image, Ethan, a white man with a shaved head and a beard, looks downward. In the second image, Ethan looks straight toward the artist.