I've been reading this book and I am here to tell ya.......you need to read it. When I first started reading this book I was thinking along the lines of "for my children" but realized as I continued to read that this book is talking to children and adults.
I read a chapter about attention deficit disorder last night and how being in nature can help with that and so many other handicaps and disorders. Like animal therapy (dogs, cats, horses, etc.) institutions are starting to use nature therapy.
As I was reading my thoughts went to Levi but then as I continued to read I thought about myself and the struggles I've been having. Might this not help me as well?
The statistics in the book are staggering.
Soo, as I start to feel the rug being yanked out from under me again I think I am going to turn to nature for therapy. I'm going to go and plunk myself down in my back yard and stare at the "native plants" that have crept into all of my flower beds since last I weeded two years ago.
I need to read that book! We went to Moab last weekend to go camping. Would you believe that this was our first family camping trip!?! (aside from camping with extended family) Let me tell ya, rejuvination for the soul!!
ReplyDeletethere is power in God's creations....their simply isn't any substitute for it is there? Even the native plants are such a miracle. ;) Ahhhhhhhh......and the river.....I was listening to a cd meditation thing and i will have to tell you more in person but basically you go on this journey and the thing that takes you were you need and want to go is this river...and the water is God's love and so forth...it is really good...I will send the book over because it is a book and this cd and i love it...:)
ReplyDeleteI'm ready for some camping, boating and other outdoor activities!
ReplyDeleteI think I'm going to have to get that book from the library, but it'll make me feel bad. WE were inside so much this year because of living in the middle of the city. It's going to be better this year. It already has been and we've only been in our new house for a few days!
ReplyDeleteOf course that's on my to read list! I think I need to invite myself to join your book group, lol! Was this the book you read, or was it another one you did?
ReplyDelete:) You would be always welcome Miss Island girl! It has been a long time since any of us have seen you!
ReplyDeleteNo, this wasn't for book club. Just a book I've been reading on my own and have really enjoyed and have learned from. A lot of "hmmm, and a-ha" moments.
The thing about nature is that there is an order there that is absolutely huge - huge, complex, massive, and completely without need of human tending. It happens whether you do your job or not. It's there to be learned from. Observe and see the pattern of salvation. And as I have said about horses - their size, something about them - like the process that demands that water on either side of a membrane has to even itself out by flowing from the high place to the lower one? When you touch a horse, your too much energy is absorbed in the huge calm of the horse.
ReplyDeleteScience has entropy all wrong, diametrically wrong: it is not that all things, untended, will devolve into chaos. It is that human chaos, untended, will devolve into fundamental order - an order that humans do NOT understand, and thus term chaos.
Oh Kristen! I love that last paragraph. You wrote it perfectly. That is EXACTLY what happens. Oh that was good! In the book there is an older lady who was asked why she spends so much time in this "vacant lot" that had been untended and ignored for 30 years. It was a lot that was going to be built on in the city but then it was abandoned. She said something to the effect that most people look at the lot as an eyesore full of weeds. She says she sees all of the native plants that have sprung up, plants that aren't native but are still a part of the area, the growth patterns, etc. She talks about how as she spends hours in this lot learning about all of these flowers and plants how healing it is and she mentions that very thing. People view this lot as chaos, a mess but it is the people's lives that are chaos and a mess and if they would just come and spend 20, 30 minutes in this lot each day their lives wouldn't be so chaotic!
ReplyDeleteShe talked about some of the flowers that because of the heat, they look to the ground instead of staring the sun full in the face and so if you do not look close you'll miss them. We're too busy looking and running full speed ahead and so we are missing "the flowers" of life. Those things which are important.