Podcast Transcript: Welcome to the Inspirational Living podcast, brought to you in part by Book of Zen, makers of wearable inspiration for a better world. Visit them online at Bookofzen.com. Today’s podcast has been edited and adapted from Thoughts Are Things by Prentice Mulford, published in 1898.

You are fortunate if you love trees, especially the wild ones growing where the Great Creative Force has placed them, independent of human care. For all things we call “wild” or “natural” are nearer the Infinite Mind — and being nearer the Infinite, they have in them the more perfect Infinite Force and Thought. That is why when you are in the midst of what is wild and natural (in the forest or mountains, where every trace of human works are left behind), you feel an indescribable exhilaration and freedom that you do not feel elsewhere.

You breathe the elements ever being thrown off by the trees, the rocks, the birds, and animals, and by every expression of the Infinite Mind about you. It is healthfully exhilarating. It is something more than air. It is the Infinite Mind, as expressed by all these natural things, which is acting on you. You cannot get this force in a city, nor even in a carefully cultivated garden — for there the plants and trees have too much of our lesser mind in them, the human mind which believes that it can improve the universe.

People are inclined to think that the Infinite made this world in the rough, and then left it altogether for us to improve. Are we really doing this in destroying the native forests, as well as the birds and animals which once dwelt in them? Are our rivers, many of them laden with the filth of sewage and factory, and our ever expanding cities and towns, covering miles with piles of brick and mortar, their inhabitants crammed into the smallest living quarters, honeycombed with sewers below, and resounding with rattle and danger above — are these really “improvements” on the Divine and natural order of things?

You are fortunate when you possess a live, tender, earnest love for the wild trees, animals, and birds, and recognize them all as coming from, and built of, the same mind and spirit as your own, and able also to give you something very valuable in return for the love you give them. The wild tree is not unresponsive or mindless of a love like that.

Such love is not a myth or mere sentiment. It is a literal element and force going from you to the tree. It is felt by the spirit of the tree — for you represent a part and belonging of the Infinite Mind, and the tree represents another part and belonging of the Infinite Mind. It has its share of life, thought, and intelligence. And you have a far greater share, which is destined to be greater still.

Love is an element (which though physically unseen) is as real as air or water. It is an acting, living, moving force, and in that far greater world of life all around us, of which our physical senses are unaware, it moves in waves and currents like those of the ocean.

There is a true sense in the tree which feels your love and responds to it. But it does not respond or show its pleasure in our way or in any way we can now understand. Its way of so doing is the way of the Infinite Mind of which it is a part.

The ways of God are unsearchable and past finding out. They are not for us to fathom. They are for us only to intimate and live out, in so far as they make us happier. There is for all (in time) a serenity and “peace of mind which passeth all understanding;” but this peace cannot be put through a chemical analysis or the operation of a dissecting room.

The full podcast transcript for this episode is now exclusively available to our patrons. Become our patron for as little as 3$ a month to gain access to all of our podcast transcripts and the exclusive series Our Sunday Talks. Learn more at: https://www.patreon.com/inspirationalpodcasts.

Subscribe to the Inspirational Living Podcast at iTunes & Stitcher

All transcripts from our spirituality podcasts are edited adaptations of the original work and copyrighted by LivingHour.org. For reproduction permission please contact us via our contact page.