Sep 30, 2019 | Attachment
Just as no two snowflakes are alike and no two sets of fingerprints are alike, no two connections between God a human being are alike.
Conversation starter
Main idea: Many kids are able to experience God in the beauty of nature. They care strongly for the environment around them.
Mediation: “Ask the animals and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?” Job 12:7-9
Let’s talk: How does nature connect you with who God is?
Apr 18, 2016 | Attachment
Readers of this blog know we focus on exploration of a child’s human spirit. Nature plays a crucial role in spiritual development and health. After all– to state the obvious– it’s our natural habitat. We are wired for it. Children need to spend time in nature– even city kids need the parks.
From nature, children…
- gain a certain perspective unattainable from any other source
- acquire neuroconnections key to brain function
Nature advances a web of life perspective
One of Alexander von Humboldt’s most important discoveries was that nature is a web of life. He found Earth to be one great living organism and a place where everything is connected. Humboldt wrote, “no single fact can be considered in isolation.”
He was the first to recognize the forest as an ecosystem. As such, he predicted devastating consequences of despoiling the face of the earth. However, though he was captivated by empirical data, he never lost his sense of wonder. He wrote that, “nature must be experienced through feeling.”
How do the children in your life “feel” nature’s web of life?
- Relationally – through a connection with their pet(s), tending vegetables in a garden, nurturing a potted plant
- Powerfully – awe and wonder of nature as far bigger than all of us, through astronomy, IMAX nature movies
- Creatively – inspiration for poetry, photography
- Experientially – sitting at the side of a lake listening to the water lap against the shore
Connections with nature build neuroconnections in the child’s brain.
From Dr. Becky Bailey’s work on Conscious Discipline, I learned more about how a child’s connections on the outside build neuroconnections on the inside. When relating to people, these outside connections come from eye contact, touch and presence.
When relating to nature, one woman describes an insight gained from sitting in a forest:
Your colleagues or supervisor at work won’t allow you to pursue your ideas. Then, you notice that a tree looks like it was initially growing in one direction, but something got in the way and now it’s growing—and thriving—in another. It’s as if the tree is saying, “Grow where you can! Send your energy to where you will be nurtured!”
A sense of peace envelops you as you lay down a fruitless struggle. Then a new creative space emerges as a more helpful question dawns on you: “Where can I grow?” (Kris Abrams)
Many great writers, thinkers, scientists, and poets have reflected extensively on nature:
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. (Albert Einstein)
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction. (E. O. Wilson)
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)
Come forth into the light of things, let nature be your teacher. (William Wordsworth)
Children learn all living things can be our teacher.
Happy Earth Day!
Tweetable:
- #EarthDay2016: Connections in nature build neuroconnections in a child’s brain. Click to Tweet
- #EarthDay2016: From nature, children gain a certain perspective unattainable from any other source. Click to Tweet
May 4, 2015 | trust
Children who go to religious education classes, Sunday School or parochial school benefit from opportunities to experience God beyond learning facts about God.
Earlier this week, I took my four-year-old granddaughter to the library and to the park for a Bug Hunt. As I steered the car into a parking spot, I asked “What is God doing today?”
Long pause. “I don’t know,” she said.
I continued, “Maybe he would like to come with us to the park to hunt for bugs. Should we invite him?”
Longer pause, then: “Yes, God can come with us while we look for bugs, and other Gods can be with other people so everybody has God with them today.”
Soon we walked past a bush and she said, “Look! There’s threads on this bush,” and we traced the path of the threads from a leaf all the way to the sidewalk. I offered, “Maybe we can find a book in the library to tell us more about the threads.”
The librarian found a picture book for us about spider webs and another book about our best sighting of the day–ladybugs–which we read together in the beanbag chairs provided by the library.
Finally it was time to go home. As we talked about our adventure, I said, “I had so much fun with you today. Do you think God had fun with us?” Her silence was more profound this time.
This silence was that same kind of hush I’ve seen whenever she processes a new experience.
Then she burst into song. I didn’t catch all the words but something about joy and God. I never said anything about her song because I understood that it wasn’t really intended for my ears anyway.
Tweetable:
Ask children, “What is God doing today?” and see how they experience God beyond the facts they’ve learned. Click to Tweet
May 26, 2014 | Uncategorized
From ou
r earliest years and throughout our lives, hunger of body and hunger of spirit are mingled together.
We know a lot about satisfying physical hunger in children with food, but less about satisfying their spiritual hunger. In the first year of life food goes toward the body’s growth. When the child starts to walk and talk it goes into fuel for physical activity. Throughout life food continues to be essential and without it, life is not sustained.
Yet what do we know about feeding the human spirit?
Around the time that babies begin to walk and talk, their human spirit has been developing to where they now seek satisfaction through curiosity about the world. In another year or so they show an ability to believe in things they can’t see, and the tendency to live entirely in the moment. We feed their spirit when we promote growth in any of these tendencies.
Kids are innate spiritual beings.
“Young kids have an incredible sense of wonder — they’re innate spiritual beings,” says Marianne Neifert, a pediatrician, mother of five, and author.
Feed their spirit with nature.
A caregiver can feed that spiritual sense of wonder by the abundant resources provided in nature. Haven’t we all seen inexplicable joy when a toddler encounters water? I watched my two-year-old grandniece fill her pink plastic pail with water in the ocean, run quite a distance to where her big brother was building a sand castle, dump it out as per his instructions, return to water’s edge to wait for the incoming wave and repeat the ritual for almost an hour.
The beauty, power and order of nature are at the same time a feast for the child’s senses and a spiritual experience.
[Due to the holiday today in the US, I’ve re-posted a popular previous entry.]
Tweetables:
- From our earliest years and throughout our lives, hunger of body and hunger of spirit are mingled together. Click to Tweet
- The beauty, power and order of nature are at the same time a feast for the child’s senses and a spiritual experience. Click to Tweet
Just as no two snowflakes are alike and no two sets of fingerprints are alike, no two connections between God a human being are alike.