There is a particular week in spring when it happens all at once. The blossom that seemed reluctant a fortnight ago is suddenly everywhere, the mornings arrive lighter, and something in you that had been holding its breath all winter quietly lets go. You do not have to be religious to feel it. You only have to be paying attention.

At OneSpirit, we spend a lot of time with people who are paying attention: to the seasons, to the sacred in ordinary things, to the traditions that have tried, for thousands of years, to put words to exactly this feeling. So this spring, rather than simply naming that connection between spirituality and nature, we wanted to sit with a handful of the traditions that have shaped it, and ask what each one might actually be teaching us.

Dr Jane Goodall once said, “you cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.” It is a simple line, but it is where most of these traditions begin.

Start with the ground itself

Long before any of the world’s major religions were written down, Indigenous traditions across the globe were already describing the earth as a living relative rather than a resource. Not a backdrop to human life, but a member of the family, owed the same care you would owe an elder. Ceremony, storytelling and daily practice all exist to keep that relationship honest. It is a strikingly practical idea once you sit with it: you do not extract from someone you consider kin.

Shamanic traditions, found in cultures on nearly every continent, take a related but distinct view: that everything, plant, animal, river, stone, carries something of spirit within it. The shaman’s role is to move between the visible world and that deeper one, restoring balance when it has been lost. It is less a belief in magic than a discipline of attention: treat nothing as inert, because nothing is.

Duty, not sentiment

Hinduism frames the natural world less as something to feel moved by and more as something you owe a duty to. Its sacred texts place deities directly in rivers, forests and mountains, and the principle of dharma extends that reverence into obligation: care for the earth is not optional, it is part of what you are here to do. Ahimsa, non-harming, widens that circle of care to every living being.

Buddhism arrives at something similar from a different direction. Its teaching on interdependence holds that nothing exists in isolation, which means every action ripples outward, including the ones we take against the earth. Karma, in this reading, is less a cosmic ledger and more a plain statement of cause and effect. Live simply, consume with awareness, and you are already practising the teaching.

Stewardship across the Abrahamic traditions

Christianity, Islam and Judaism each frame the relationship slightly differently, but the underlying instruction rhymes. Christian teaching describes the earth as a sacred trust, entrusted to humanity to protect rather than to own. In Islam, humans are khalifa, stewards, and the Qur’an warns explicitly against israf, wastefulness, treating excess itself as a kind of spiritual failure. In Judaism, the more recent, modern reading of tikkun olam, repairing the world, has extended a much older tradition of ethical responsibility to include the natural world too, alongside its long-standing teachings on sustainable agriculture and the ethical treatment of animals.

Three traditions, three names for a similar responsibility: you were given something you did not make, and you are answerable for how you leave it.

The divine, close at hand

Sikhism describes the divine as present within all beings, which makes reverence for nature not a separate practice but simply an extension of recognising the divine anywhere at all. Guru Nanak’s teachings return again and again to this closeness, treating the natural world as something to live alongside rather than above.

Shinto, native to Japan, holds that kami, sacred spirits, inhabit mountains, rivers and forests directly, which is why purification and conservation sit so close together in Shinto practice.

Paganism, in its many forms, organises its entire ritual calendar around the turning of the seasons, treating the cycle itself as sacred text. Nothing needs to be argued for. You only have to notice that autumn follows summer, and build a practice around paying attention to that.

Harmony without needing the supernatural

Confucianism does not ask you to believe in anything beyond what you can observe, and still arrives at a similar place. The virtue of ren, benevolence, extends outward from family to community to the natural world itself, treating harmony between people and their environment as a mark of a well-ordered life rather than a spiritual obligation.

The Bahá’í Faith holds a related thread from a more explicitly unifying angle: that humanity is one family, and that nature reflects that same interconnectedness. Its teachings encourage moderation and a lighter ecological footprint as a natural consequence of taking that unity seriously.

And Humanism, without appeal to the divine at all, arrives at the same conclusion by way of reason and shared consequence. If this is the only world we have, and we share it, then looking after it is simply what a responsible life requires.

What strikes us, laying these traditions alongside each other, is not how differently they answer the question, but how insistently they all ask it. Wherever you look, across continents and centuries, and whether or not the supernatural is involved at all, people keep arriving at the same conclusion: that we are not separate from the natural world, and that this closeness comes with a responsibility we cannot opt out of.

Sir David Attenborough put it more simply than any of us could: “the whole of life is coming to terms with yourself and the natural world.”

Where this leaves us

We do not think you need to belong to any one of these traditions to feel their pull this time of year. That is rather the point of interfaith work: not to flatten these teachings into one another, but to notice what they share, and let that shared ground become somewhere we can all stand.

As the season turns, what is nature asking of you this year?

Written by OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation’s Communications and Marketing Lead, Kailee.

Sources & References:

• Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World.
• Chapple, Christopher Key. Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water.
• Dalai Lama. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World.
• Foltz, Richard C. Islam and Ecology: A Bestowed Trust.
• Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man.
• Kasulis, Thomas P. Shinto: The Way Home.
• Pope Francis. Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.
• Starhawk. The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature.
• Tu, Weiming. Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans.