Soiva Tuleva Futures Day 2025 - Future prototype: Bark Meditation

What if churches and chapels are built in city centers in the future to foster a relationship with nature?

The theme of Finland's National Futures Day on March 7, 2025, is a thousand and one prototypes of the future of peace. I have chosen peace with nature as the theme, and in this blog, I will share my prototype of the future and imagine a new symbiotic relationship with city dwellers and trees.

In the future, there will be many people, and more and more will live in cities—at the same time, cities will grow larger and larger. What if churches and chapels are built in city centers to foster a relationship with nature?

Future prototype: Bark meditation

I filmed close-ups of thick bark in the summer of 2024. The colors, shapes, and endless surface patterns enchanted me, and my imagination ran wild. My future prototype is a bark meditation, where watching bark focuses on examining nature and one's relationship with nature. In this future story, the prototype is the first step and exercise toward the nature chapel experience of the future.

The pine tree in the video is hundreds of years old and grows on a rock in Jyränkö, Heinola. It has lived through the fields of the old Jyrängö village, the wars and peace of the last century. It has witnessed the modern city dweller fiddling with his mobile phone, and this same pine tree will probably still be standing there when you and I no longer exist.

Course and purpose of the exercise

Imagine sitting inside such a green chapel, breathing fresh air and feeling the cool vegetation around you. Imagine that in the middle of the chapel, a three-hundred-year-old pine tree stands in place of the altar—a pioneer of the post-glacial forest. Its trunk is covered with thick bark.

Imagine that we value this tree so highly that we have built a whole sanctuary around it covered in green vegetation so city dwellers can cool off and calm down.

Meditation is an exercise that involves doing nothing. You sit, breathe, and focus on looking at the bark. This exercise is also mindfulness: you practice conscious presence in this moment, focusing your attention on the bark.

The video lasts about ten minutes. The soundscape consists of the wind in the treetops and the birdsong of last summer. Watch and focus. The purpose of the exercise will become more apparent as you practice.

With this prototype, I wish you a peaceful Futures Day 2025!

Bark Meditation - A Future Prototype celebrating Finland’s National Futures Day March 7, 2025 - theme: Peace with Nature.

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Read more:
Finland’s National Futures Day
Tulevaisuuspaiva.fi

You can read the introduction to peace with nature here in Finnish:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tulevaisuusp%25C3%25A4iv%25C3%25A4-2025-ihmiskuntan-ja-luonnon-yhteinen-auri-antinranta-ml6zf
And here in English:
https://www.antinranta.com/blog/2025/2/19/futures-day-2025-the-shared-journey-of-humanity-and-nature