One of the Dedicant Path requirements is a meditation journal kept over a period of months. Since this is the longest-term project aside from attending/celebrating eight High Days, I figured I might as well get started.
At this point, almost all of my experience with meditation has been in a Buddhist context. I can tell that the type and benefits of meditation that the ADF has in mind is different from the no-mind sought in zen practice.
In the ADF texts, meditation is described as listening, looking at, and experiencing nature. Focusing on nature is definitely not what I've learned in Zen practice - there the goal was... not quite to ignore what was going on around you, but to let it go by without making an impression on you.
Since I'm familiar with meditation but not the goals, I'm going to approach this from two angles. First, to get back in the habit of meditating daily, I've signed up for a service called Meditation Buddy from Budge. It texts me once a day, asking me to just sit for five minutes or so and then report back how I did.
The second half requires actually getting out in nature - for values of nature that can be found near my office or apartment - once a week for walking or sitting meditation. I did a bit of walking meditation today outside my office but all I could really think about was the rain. Rain is pretty awesome, but it makes it hard to appreciate pretty much everything. I'll try again tomorrow.