Send Them Outside to Play

If you have no relationship with nature,

you have no relationship with humanity.

-- Krishnamurti

The landscape of one’s home is always sacramental.

 It molds our character. It’s the soil out of which we grow.

 It’s where we either encounter the divine

or we never make the connection.

-- Seamus Heaney

If we have a relationship with nature, we do better in relationships with people because we realize that the health of our community depends on the health of our environment. We realize there are bigger truths in the world than our own personal truths. Nature also has a way of humbling us, and reminding us that we’re not in control outdoors. In nature we become aware of a greater power.

If we have a relationship with nature, we will care about what happens to the environment. We will notice when our favorite river becomes polluted, or when our favorite woods are being cut down for a subdivision. We will notice because we will be outside and we will see the destruction. And we can stop the destruction, if we care.

If we don’t connect to nature, we will regard the forest only as a source of wood for building homes. We will think of the river only as a place for factories to dump their waste water. We won’t care about pesticides running off the land and into our lakes, killing the fish and making the water undrinkable. Unless we have a favorite fishing hole, or a favorite river that we like to canoe, we won’t care because we won’t have a personal investment.

Large businesses don’t care about the environment. They only exist to make as much money as fast as they can for their shareholders. Large businesses have large PR teams that create rosy picture to make you think they care. They don’t.

If we don’t connect to nature, if we don’t love the woods and rivers and mountains, if we don’t feel part of the community of living creatures, then we will exploit the land, and we will exploit each other. If we aren’t in community, then we exist only for ourselves.

And when we die, we will be alone, closed up in a hermetically-sealed room because the air smells bad. We will drink artificial water, and eat tasteless, plastic food. And we will be depressed by the lack of natural beauty outside our windows because it’s all been bulldozed flat.

Send your children outdoors to play so that they will grow up loving the land and care what happens to it. Go outside yourself before you become crusty and bitter. Breathe in the fresh air of the mountains and feel yourself come alive. Then you will understand what is at stake.

Pay attention to what is going on in nature before it becomes a toxic dead zone.