“Time in nature is not leisure time; it’s an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own).”
Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods:
Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Our faith stories, beginning with Genesis, are grounded in knowledge and awareness of the natural world around our forebears. And yet our own daily urban lives often remove us from that very world. Computers and cell phones restrict our vision, rather than expand it. Studies demonstrate the importance of time outside in green spaces for our physical as well as mental well-being – indeed for our spiritual health.
Are we open to and listening for the word of God in the natural world, our island home?
What we can do:
- Enjoy a laugh.
- Schedule intentional time outside
- Have children in our lives? Be sure we are intentional about providing unstructured discovery time in the woods; take walks together
