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 there are bigger truths than our own personal ones, and we can learn from nature. Nature has a way of humbling us, and reminding us that we’re not in control outdoors. In nature we become aware of a greater force at work in the world.

The health of our community depends on the health of our environment.

If we have a relationship with nature, we will care 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 some of the destruction if we say something.

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 beloved fishing hole, or a favorite river that we like to canoe, we won’t care because we won’t have any personal investment.

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

If we don’t connect to nature, if we don’t come to love the woods and rivers and mountains, if we don’t feel we are part of nature’s community of living creatures, then we will exploit the land, and we will exploit each other. Everything becomes a commodity if we love nothing but money. If we don’t care about the welfare of others, then we exist only for ourselves, and that is sad.

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

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, bitter, and bent over like an old curmudgeon money pocket. Breathe in the fresh air of the mountains and feel yourself come alive. Then you will understand what is at stake.