Finding home in nature
Christianne Squires on finding wonder in the outdoors, the Light House + Rewilding God
Like a gentle trail in the woods, we’re walking with gratitude and wonder in this season. Some of my deepest gratitude in life bubbles up when I think of my friends. Kindred spirits I’ve felt drawn to other the years. Christianne Squires is one of those humans. My spiritual director told me about Christianne back in 2018 when I started discerning an intentional call to write. She said, “Christianne helps people birth books without losing their soul.” Yes! That’s exactly what I needed. I listened to her podcast series and joined her writing community. She’s been a crucial voice of discernment in my life at the intersection of spirituality and writing. I’m honored to introduce you to Christianne today. Enjoy!
Christianne leads an online community for contemplative women called the Light House, founded in 2019. Formerly, she worked in book publishing as a book editor, and prior to starting the Light House, she coached contemplative authors through the book publishing process through a company she founded, called Bookwifery.
Christianne holds an MA in spiritual formation and leadership and an MS in entertainment business, and she is also a trained spiritual director. She writes, teaches, and leads at the intersection of noticing our invitations, practicing discernment, being drawn forth into our fullness, and living the contemplative way. You can connect with Christianne on Instagram at @christiannesquires.
Jenny: I’m fascinated by how we grow in gratitude and wonder practices over the course of our lives. Throughout your life, is there a moment where choosing gratitude and wonder shifted your story? What made you choose wonder when it could have been easy to go a different way?
I was listening to a podcast interview with Bill Plotkin recently (it was this one), and he described one of the developmental tasks of middle childhood as being to “learn the enchantment of the natural world—coming to find oneself fully at home with the other-than-human world.”
When I heard him share this, I could not feel more aware of all the ways I didn’t complete this task in middle childhood. I was an indoor child. I would much rather sit in a chair and read a book than play neighborhood games with other kids. What time I did spend outdoors—camping with my family, playing softball with my sister—I resented enormously. Why did anyone need to go outside when the inside world was so cozy?
All of which is to say, I never felt at home in nature.
But in the summer of 2017, my husband, Kirk, and I booked four days in a tiny English village in the Cotswolds, population 500. While turning into the village on the day of our arrival, we passed an enormous sunflower field I could not stop gawking at. Our first night there, we went for a walk in the rain, and it was glorious. One of the afternoons we were there, we took another walk, this time down a very long lane, and at one point I stopped and looked out over hills and parcels of grass and sheep that went on for miles and miles.
I felt my soul sync up with something in that place. I felt at home, and I felt magic, and I felt wonder, and I felt awe. I was enchanted. I never wanted to leave.
Since then, I’ve noticed myself opening more and more to nature. For example, when I stop to consider the moments that bring me a sense of wow and wonder, it’s always connected to nature—a bald eagle in flight, a rainbow outside our front door, our cats being completely themselves, a hidden field not far from our home that reminds me of that experience on the lane in the English village.
But it takes effort for me. The neural pathways in my brain that say I don’t like nature are strong and well grooved. Neurons have been firing down that track for decades. It takes effort to divert them a different way, to let myself become a different kind of person, one who might actually come to feel at home in the outside world.
I took up a walking habit recently, and even though I’ve not yet been the most faithful observer of this practice, part of the reason I’m doing it is to allow myself to befriend the outside world even more. To give myself more opportunities for wonder.
You get to do some incredible work with wonderful people. Tell us about the Light House! What’s lighting you up in this season and how can people work with you?
The Light House is an online community for contemplative women that I’ve been leading since 2019. What’s lighting me up about it most right now is the transformation I see happening among our members as they discover themselves in a community that deeply sees, values, and celebrates them for who they are.
As contemplatives, we walk through the world feeling like odd ducks most of the time. We move slower than the rest of the world. We value discernment and noticing our invitations. We connect to the Divine Mystery in myriad ways. We practice presence and deep listening.
These are not common ways of being in our world, or even our religious institutions.
But in the Light House community, because we share this identity and way of being in common, we extend the gifts of it to each other, and it feels like coming home. I’m immensely grateful for the way our community loves each other and supports each other.
I’m also excited about a free 4-part series I just created for subscribers to my email list, called “Rewilding God.” It’s a miniature version of a series we did together in the Light House in October, and it provides you with a container for noticing and naming how your concept of God and experience of God has shifted over time. You can receive it for free when you sign up for the newsletter at www.acontemplativelight.com.
What are you learning about gratitude and wonder as you engage with the Light House community?
What I’ve been learning most recently is the importance of holding the hard and the beautiful together.
A few months ago, after the Uvalde shooting, we shifted the plan for our weekly live gathering to hold space for lament, grief, rage, and prayer instead. The whole session long, we named the sufferings of the world, our own responses to that suffering, and our prayers.
The following Monday, I pivoted another way and invited the community to name their gratitudes. I wrote in the post with this invitation:
“Last week was hard. On top of collective weeks and months and years of hard. You are not alone in your weariness in and for the world, if that's what you're feeling. We have been waking up each day and doing hard things for a very long time. It is hard to be a human on this earth at this time. In an examen group I led last week, we spoke of noticing the little slivers of light that broke into the week, and how even a pinprick of light can make a difference in all that dark. Pausing to name a gratitude from this moment, this day, or this past week is one way to let the light in. What would you name as one of your gratitudes?”
I was floored by what poured into that gratitude thread. So many of us named small things, big things, all kinds of things. We spoke about how helpful it was to pause and name these gifts at a time when the grief felt so heavy.
It was a moment that made me realize we are a community that honors both the grief and the gifts together—and how necessary that is. It’s a more accurate reflection of reality. Life is both/and, not fully one or the other, but both.
This learning reminds me of one part of what it means to be a contemplative, which is a willingness to hold opposing things together and believe in the truth of both. It reminds me, too, how much the light can carry us—can fortify us—in the dark.
What one thing would you encourage our readers to embody when it comes to gratitude and wonder?
I’ll pass along to you an exercise that someone in the Light House community, Noelle Rollins, shared with us when she led us in a series on finding our native language for God recently. In one of the four sessions she led, she invited us to write down moments we could remember experiencing a sense of wonder, joy, or awe. After we made our list, we paused and considered it. What did we notice? Was there anything we could learn about our own native language for God from these namings?
It was through my practice of this exercise that I discovered what I named above—that so many of my moments of wonder are connected to the natural world. I wonder what you might discover about yourself and your own native language for God if you do this exercise too?
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Current Offerings
Christmas Text List: As we ease into the holiday season, we know the choice that lies before us. We could take off on the race track, straining for the finish line. No one would stop us. It might even make for a meaningful season.
Or -- we can take a deep breath and choose a quiet gravel path that winds through the woods. There are places to pause and rest. To notice and wonder. To release and receive. There’s no rush.
Almost as if the journey to Christmas is the whole point.
You’re invited to join our Christmas Text List as we journey together. Receive a text message each morning from November 27 through December 26 at 8:00 am PST. Together, we will ground ourselves in rest, love + wonder during this holiday season. Join the list!
The Thread Retreat: A weekend women’s retreat January 6-8 on Camano Island here in Washington state. Let’s take your next step of healing together. Details.
Palms Up Path: Ready to ask some brave and bold questions in your life? Need to take a deep breath? This course gives you a spacious framework that holds you while you journey inward. Details.