Parishioner Mark Aldrich Reflects on the Spirituality of Hunting: Seeing God in the Beauty of Nature

Parishioner Mark Aldrich connects with God in the solitude of nature. Since he was 12 years old, hunting has been a large part of his life, having spent many hours in the woods looking and listening for animals. It is during this quiet and remote time that Mark’s spirituality shines and his relationship with Christ grows through contemplative prayer.

“From a young age, my father cultivated the love of nature in my brothers and me by teaching us how to fish and hunt with both a bow and a gun,” Mark says. “Hunting is a quiet and patient sport. Your senses are on high alert as you listen to the sounds of nature and look for the movement of animals.”

In the quiet, Mark has a lot of time to sit with his thoughts and pray. In part, this is why he devotes so much of himself to the sport — it forces him to be still and takes him away from the busyness of work and life.

“The hardest thing for me to do is throttle back and force myself to be still,” Mark says.

Removing himself from the distractions of the world is the first element of the spirituality that Mark has discovered in hunting. To truly enter into prayer, it is necessary to quiet one’s mind and focus. Mark has found that the pressures of work, chores around the house, and the distractions of technology and entertainment often distract him from prayer.

“Nature is God’s Cathedral,” he says. “The beauty that I observe when hunting raises my mind to God. It is something that no man can create, and I am in awe of how amazing God must be to create something so simple, yet complex and beautiful.”

As a hunter, Mark has a front-row seat to the ever-cycling beauty of nature. These experiences of natural beauty inspire the second element of his hunter’s spirituality — recognizing God in His creation. Hunting provides Mark with the eyes of faith, where the keen awareness of his surroundings moves him to praise God.

Finally, hunting is a sport with a high failure rate. Although Mark prepares to the best of his ability — scouting the land for traces of animal signs to determine the best spot for his hunting blind, setting up his gear, and target practicing to make sure that he is ready to take the shot — he will still go hours without seeing a single animal. “When I go out on a hunt, all I ask God for is the opportunity to get a deer,” Mark says.

The woods evoke a heightened sense of gratitude within Mark. Amid the beauty of the landscape, Mark is grateful for the fact that he can spend time doing an activity that he loves. Simply seeing a deer can be the highlight of the hunt. Successfully harvesting a deer unifies his whole family in a sense of gratitude for God’s blessing.

And it is gratitude that rounds out the third and final element of Mark’s hunting spirituality. Through it, he properly places himself before God and praises Him for His goodness and power.

Mark’s hunting experiences provide us all with an opportunity to broaden our understanding of spirituality and to challenge ourselves to see God in our normal daily activities. We do not always have to be sitting in a pew to connect with God, nor must our prayer strictly be connected to our time in Church.

Christ is ready to meet us in all things. It is up to us to respond to the invitation and cultivate our relationship with Him.

Mark Aldrich connects with God in the solitude of nature.

Mark is in a ladder stand hunting deer with a bow.