Here We Are
During a recent mindfulness exercise in nature, I found myself drawn to a small stone nestled in the earth. Its oblong shape and warm hues of rust red, brown and tan reflected the colours of the Australian outback. As I turned it over in my hand, what I felt wasn’t just its texture, its coarseness, but a memory of a distant, familiar place. It reminded me of home. Not the home I stood upon, but the lush, green, ancient lands of Ireland. The shape and sturdiness of the stone reminded me of the dolmens, those great megalithic tombs with upright stones that stand like sentinels of time, holding up capstones that once cradled our ancestors as they journeyed to the Otherworld. This simple stone in my Australian garden somehow connected me to that sacred soil across oceans and centuries.
This is the quiet healing power of nature. In its stillness, we find kinship. Wherever we are, the land speaks, reminding us that we belong not only to one place or one people, but to something deeper and older: the earth itself. Nature doesn’t ask us to choose sides, nor does it care about our passports or accents. A red stone in one hemisphere is of the same earth as the dolmen stones of another. The veins in a leaf reflect those in our hands and we are all shaped by the same elements of wind, water, fire, and time.
In that moment with the stone, I wasn’t just grounded, the interconnectedness of nature was palpable. My grief, my healing, my joy, and my heritage were all allowed space in the vast, wordless understanding of the natural world. I was reminded that healing isn’t linear, and it doesn’t always come in silence or stillness. In that moment it arrived in the palm of my hand, a rugged jewel of earth, weighty, worn, and whispering, “you are not alone”.
Whether you walk through eucalyptus forests, desert plains, soft mossy fields, or fragrant, rain-drenched country lanes, nature offers the same invitation; to pause, to listen, to remember who you are beyond the noise. And to sense, however quietly, that we are all part of the same wide and generous web of life. We are here, and here we are.
Mind yourself.
Alan