Church of the Wild: Rediscovering worship in nature’s cathedral
News Story by Cindy Hval | FāVS News
Long before massive cathedrals built of stone — before wooden structures with towering steeples — humans worshiped in sanctuaries not constructed by human hands.
They gathered outdoors to pray, to connect and to embrace a vast and wild creation.
On Sunday, in North Spokane, the Church of the Wild invites the community to rediscover worship without walls.
“We are part of creation. How do we enter back into relationship with it?” asked organizer Roger Hudson. “By gathering in a building, you immediately separate yourself from nature.”
Hudson is part of New Story Spokane, a local collaboration that’s inspiring change in the Inland Northwest by rejecting the old stories of fear, aggression and violence, and embracing a new story of hope and love. Using a framework for sustainable prosperity, they’re working together to build a better community, for the good of people and the planet.
“New Story Spokane and Church of the Wild are different initiatives, but related in the sense that the new story needed will require a spirituality respectful of creation,” he said.
To that end, he and fellow facilitator Tom Robinson are launching the Church of the Wild with a Cosmic Walk on the autumn equinox, Sept. 22.
Where the Earth is ‘our church’
Robinson likens the Church of the Wild to the practices of Native Americans.
“Our Native American brothers and sisters lived in harmony with nature, but the rituals and ways they related to creation have been subsumed into the dominant culture,” he said. “Church of the Wild is focused on a worship experience in nature and treating the earth as our church.”
Hudson often uses this quote from Wendell Berry when describing what compels him to pursue a form of worship left behind during humanity’s pursuit of an industrial growth economy.
“To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament,” said Berry. “When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.”
Creation care is paramount to Hudson’s faith.
“We must move to a life-affirming economy,” he said. “An economy more in tune with the God who pours himself into creation.”
The Cosmic Walk will be held in Hudson’s garden — in North Spokane, where guests will enjoy local wine and cheese before the walk.
“My garden contains elements of a Church of the Wild spirituality,” he explained.
Those features include an herb garden in the shape of a cosmic spiral.
“It’s celebrating the ongoing 13.8 billion year creation story,” Hudson said.
Where raised beds and compost bins are worship
His raised bed gardens in the shape of a Jerusalem Cross invite visitors to contemplate the four-path journey. The journey is sequential, cyclical and never-ending. It forms a map of our ongoing human experience across life’s four great questions: How do we face change? How do we move through suffering? How do we receive joy?
Even his compost bins are a part of his worship. Inspired by Anton Rublev’s Trinity icon, Hudson built Rublev’s composting altar. The icon and a wooden chalice rest atop it.
“The three chambers represent order, disorder and reorder,” he explained.
After enjoying the garden, guests will be invited to the glen for the Cosmic Walk. A walker will follow a spiral design while Hudson narrates the story of our shared existence. The walk takes guests through the 13.8 billion-year history of the story of the Universe by marking out significant “moments of grace” from the Big Bang to the present day.
Hudson said all are welcome to participate in the Cosmic Walk.
“Any religion or no religion,” he said. “It’s for the spiritually-minded who feel they’ve entered a cathedral when they walk into a forest.”
Robinson agreed.
“Let’s consider the earth as a church,” he said. “A place to congregate in harmony with creation, instead of apart from it.”
- Cosmic Walk
- Sunday, Sept. 22, 6 p.m.
- The event is free.
- For more information and to RSVP by Sept. 20, email newstoryspokane@gmail.com.
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