If teaching is preaching, I've become a warmer, gentler, pastor.

More like the clergy at my mother's church, maybe it's appropriate that these years have

given me new spiritual release too.

I've settled into a comfortable place with the idea of nature and God being the same thing.

Gravity change and the dynamic transformation of field into forest, move me.

A warbler migrating over hundreds of miles of land and ocean to sing in the same tree once again

is as miraculous to me as any dividing sea. Doing good things for and revering nature are just

acts. There is righteousness in conserving things, staving off extinction, and simply admiring

the song of a bird. In my moments of confession in front of strangers talking about my love of

something much greater than any one of us, I become a freer me, each time I am reborn.

For all those years of running from anything resembling religion and all the scientific

training that tells me to doubt anything outside of the prescribed confidence limits, I find myself

define these days more by what I cannot see than by what I can. As I wander into the pre-dawn

dark of an autumn wood, I feel the presence of things beyond flesh, bone, and blood. My being

expands to fit the limitlessness of the wild world. My senses flush to full and my heartbeat

quikens with the knowledge that I am not alone.