Mother
Nature is one of the greatest healers the world has ever known. Her work can be
found in the pharmacy, the examination table and the recovery room. It fills
the aisles of health food stores and grocery chains. More immediately, it dwells
in a lonely garden path, within a fragrant orange grove, on a fallen-needle
path of pines.
Ironically,
Mother Nature is both the purveyor of health and the cause and deliverer of
decay. She is constrained by the laws of death, but confirmed as the harbinger
of life. She is, so very often, the prescription of Heaven.
This
is not a political truth or an advocate’s plea. It is a reality that most of us
have recognized at some point in our lives. And yet, with only a few
exceptions, we as Christians clearly draw the distinction between valuing the
Creation and worshiping it.
Our
sacred history is celebrated mostly in church and temple. Of course it also
includes many exceptions – in garden, mountain and grove. But for some reason
we become wary of those who take their religion to the wilderness.
So it
is with a bit of suspicion or with an inherent hesitation that some of us admit
how much we need the natural world for our own peace of mind. We shouldn’t need
to feel this way. Admitting that we love to walk in the woods shouldn’t make us
feel like we’re admitting a sin.
Take
the masculine hobby of hunting as an example. It is filled with men that love
being outdoors. It is also filled with men that have learned that it isn’t
polite, in mixed company, to brag about their trophies. Neither do you hear these
men talk about how much they love the wind in their hair, a beautiful sunset,
or the honking of geese. Yet these are all very common feelings of most hunters.
I have
felt, on a number of times, like I had to explain my political position at
church or in a social gathering after being caught enthusing over a trip into
the wild. Just recently I had an influential member of my community come up to
me at church with surprise written all over his face. He had just learned how
conservative I am on many issues. “Sam,” he said, “all this time I thought you
were a tree-hugger.”
Because
this sort of thing happens often enough, I have learned to boil my feelings
down to a couple of simple points. I seek out nature because of a real
curiosity about the created world. But I also seek out nature because of its
profound ability to heal.
I
recognize that other people do not share my fascination with animals and
plants. Try as I might to convey my enthusiasm for beetles, these people only
recoil at the sight of long antennae and stout mandibles. These individuals seem
to survive happily behind manicured lawns in town.
Yet in
spite of differences in our individual preferences, Mother Nature remains one
of the greatest healers of all of us. This is just as true for the committed
urbanite as it is for an aboriginal shaman. And no matter how blind we are to
anything that isn’t man-made we can fix our lives and our relationships more
often than we realize if we would just let go of the control we impose upon the
world and let the natural rhythms of nature teach us a thing or two.
There
are several extreme examples of this in a little book by Diane Ackerman
entitled A Slender Thread. This is a book about the author’s thoughts and
phone conversations while volunteering at a suicide prevention center. As this
fascinating book unfolds, it becomes clear that psychological health is a
fragile thing indeed.
Ackerman
shows that one of the best ways to help someone experiencing a deep suicidal
depression is to get them out in the natural world. Dealing with these cases on
an individual basis becomes very situational, but there is no doubt about the
benefits of the real world.
This
can be frustrating to many people used to our world of quick fixes – to a world
that has come to rely on modern medicine and a pharmaceutical solutions.
Unfortunately mental and emotional angst is not always so easily cured and sometimes
Mother Nature is a tremendous help.
On one
occasion a woman, that Ackerman refers to as Louise, calls and admits that her
life is in ruins and she is ready to end the suffering. Ackerman listens to her
problems, coaches her and then listens some more. She tries appealing to
Louise’s need to care for her teenage daughter. This doesn’t work. Then she
asks the woman if she happens to be outside. As it turns out, she is.
“Look
up,” she tells Louise, who laughs just a little at the beautiful cloudy sky.
The conversation then turns to other natural things. Louise mentions a tree.
“What kind is it,” asks Ackerman.
“It’s
a gingko, it has fan-shaped leaves,” answers Louise. The conversation then
turns more directly to botany and the disaster is averted, at least for the
time being. For some reason (deeply embedded in human nature) the sky and a
tree were capable of grounding this troubled woman.
The
most obvious reason for this is that we are natural beings ourselves. It is
true that sacred literature teaches us of our unique position in the world.
Clearly we are different than other beings. And yet we are still created from
the dust of the earth. Physiologically and anatomically we belong to this earth
just like the squirrel outside the window or the dogwood blooming in the
spring.
And so
it should not be a surprise that we respond to the ways of nature. And it
shouldn’t surprise us either that our manmade world – a world that takes us
away from nature – might just be the cause of many of our ailments.
This
was brought home to me a few years ago in a conversation I had with Reese
Nelson, Professor of Horticulture at BYU – Idaho. Reese had grown up in the
rural town of Grantsville, Utah amid old poplars and sagebrush and had learned
to appreciate the rhythms of rural life.
During
his graduate work at Idaho State University, he came up with a plan to see if
he could measure the benefits of nature on a group of college students in a
fairly stressful situation. He decided to create an area on one side of the
university’s testing center with an abundance of ornamental plants. Then he
arranged for the testing center to randomly assign some of the students taking
a math exam to this area.
Reese’s
design was straightforward and yet fairly convincing. He was able to show that
students taking the exam near the plants were both calmer and scored higher
than students that took the exam away from the plants. The differences were not
enormous but they were real (and they were conducted on enough students to be
scientifically valid).
After
thinking about this study I realized that I already believed its basic conclusions.
The natural world can calm us down and help us regain peace of mind. One
particularly telling example of this happened at the time I lost my job a
number of years ago. This was a very stressful time and for years, even after
finding other employment, I was anxious much of the time. The experience had
left me quite vulnerable and numb, both mentally and emotionally.
Fortunately,
I was able to escape to wild places often and this helped a great deal. I also
learned that a bracing bath in a cold stream (or in a cold shower) did wonders.
The sudden (and uncomfortable) sensation of the frigid water left me wide awake
and acutely aware of the moment. During the time of the bath or shower, and for
over an hour afterwards, I felt very much alive.
I became
convinced over the years that mental, physical and emotional health all require
that we interact with the natural world. When we fail to do this, we build
instead a wall of unnatural barriers between us and the way we were meant to
live.
Consider
all the things that fill our lives today that were not part of the world our
ancestors lived in – not part, that is, of the world in which we were created.
We live in buildings that are kept at constant comfortable temperatures. We
only walk a fraction of what we used to. And when we do, it is in shoes that
keep us from strengthening our feet. We travel at speeds and at heights that our
bodies do not understand completely – not to mention the shock of changing time
zones so suddenly.
We eat
foods that are saturated with refined sugars and carbohydrates that our
ancestors often considered to be rare delicacies. We sit around most of the day
in postures that don’t match our bodies’ needs. We breathe a myriad of
chemicals that have completely unknown effects on our bodies. And we fill our
heads with an almost constant stream of noise and visual stimuli that are quite
unnatural. Is it any wonder that so many of us struggle?
The
reality is that our many technologies, for all of their conveniences, almost
never reach us at a visceral level. And if we never allow the natural world
into our lives; then, by definition, we are living unnatural lives.
My
favorite example of the healing power of nature is the classic children’s story
The Secret Garden written by Frances
Hodgson Burnett. The story is about three children that circumstances bring
together in a setting of Victorian gardens.
Mary
Lennox is a spoiled and petulant girl who loses both of her parents in a
cholera epidemic in India. Because there is nobody left in the household to
take care of her, she is sent to England to live at Misselthwaite Manor in the
home of her uncle Archibald Craven.
Mary
hardly ever sees her uncle who travels a great deal after having lost his wife.
And Mary’s sour disposition doesn’t win her many friends in her new home. Even
so, Mary becomes captivated by a young boy named Dickon who loves being outside
and who has a patient way with animals and plants. When Mary discovers that
Dickon feeds and plays with animals, she is so fascinated that she manages to
stop being mean and the two children become friends.
After
arriving in Misselthwaite, Mary begins hearing cries coming from someplace
within the large house. Despite warnings that she is never to venture into
unbidden rooms, Mary sneaks around searching for the source of the sounds. As
it turns out, the cries have been coming from Mr. Craven’s invalid son Colin,
who is confined to his room and almost never leaves his bed.
Colin
is a very spoiled boy who insists on getting his own way. He is not expected to
live very long and the household has been instructed by Mr. Craven to humor the
boy until he dies.
When
Colin meets Mary for the first time, he is both frustrated and pleased that she
is not afraid of him and will not be intimidated by his domineering ways. The
two children become friends and Mary tells Colin of all the wonderful
adventures that she is having outside with Dickon.
Eventually
Mary tells Colin about a great secret. It is a hidden garden that she has
discovered outside the manor. This garden was the former treasure of Colin’s mother,
but after her death it had been closed. His wife’s death, in fact, had been
such a blow to Mr. Craven that the garden was abandoned and the key was thrown
away.
Through
the passing years, the outside door to the garden had become hidden in
vegetation and nearly forgotten. It was only by chance (and the instincts of a
robin) that Mary found the key and the door. Then, together with Dickon and the
forbearance of the gardener, the two children set to work rehabilitating the long
abandoned wonderland.
When
Colin was finally trusted enough to secretly join Mary and Dickon in the garden,
his spirits greatly improved and he began to heal. But this was all kept highly
confidential among the three children. Finally, at the end of the story, the
family learns that Colin has been sneaking outside and has been healed in the
secret garden. He can stand up and walk and his complexion is ruddy and full of
health. He is no longer expected to die. In fact he stands to inherit
Misselthwaite Manor.
My
wife, Kathy, and I read this wonderful book together some time ago. And as it
happened, we finished it on Easter morning. We couldn’t help but notice the
impressive moral implications. The theme of renewal and healing was so
obviously and effectively portrayed that the connection between nature and
Christianity seemed the most natural thing in the world.
And in
fact most of us already believe this to be true. But the relationship between
Christianity and nature is a complicated one. We see it tangentially in
Christian romantics like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In
America’s Christian culture we have the examples of William Bartram, Henry
David Thoreau, Walt Whitman and John Muir. Each of these nature writers drew
heavily from their Christian heritage.
Yet,
even as Christianity has been the vantage point from which much of our natural
interest derives, we don’t often find the likes of a Saint Francis who was as
clearly passionate about the Creation as he was about the Creator. And even
though Jesus Himself clearly loved sparrows and the lilies of the field, we
find little of this dual appreciation throughout Christian history.
Part
of the reason is clear enough. Christianity has a long and complicated history
associated with nature religions. In the beginning of the Christian Era, the
Roman Empire’s religious diversity included several cults and religious groups
that worshipped some aspect of the natural world. Magic and pagan worship such
as the Bacchanalia (celebrating the wine god Bacchus) were practiced along with
the more popular Olympian deities imported from ancient Greece.
Much
of the natural world – including trees, mountains and springs – was worshipped
by these non-Christian groups. Yet in spite of this perceived (and undoubtedly
real) threat, these early Christians refused to distance themselves from the
same natural objects that their pagan rivals worshipped. Springs were
particularly important to both groups – with references to springs in the Bible
having particular sway among the Christians.
Robert
Bartlett points out in his recent history of saints and martyrs that these
early Christians often built churches over sacred wells. Bartlett makes the
ironic observation that, “despite all this evidence for saints as opponents of
and substitutes for the holy springs, the saints left their deepest mark on the
landscape through their association with wells and springs.”
This complicated
Christian relationship with nature and pagan nature worship continues to our
day. The religious scholar Peter Beyer, in an attempt to get a handle on what
he considers to be an abstract mix of religious practices, places several
groups in the broader category of “Nature Religion”. These groups mostly tend
to be critical of Christianity and it is easy to see that there still exists a
substantial divide. These groups include modern witchcraft (Wicca),
Neo-paganism, aboriginal spirituality, portions of some environmental groups, and
even some feminist and New Age groups.
This
tension is not going to disappear anytime soon. But, in fact, neither will the
Christian love of nature or the very real healing power of the natural world.
Our Christian heritage and belief in the importance of the Creation are more venerable
and real today than are its rivals.
I
think this is abundantly clear not only in our history but also in our
literature. The Canadian novelist Lucy Maud Montgomery put it quite simply and
elegantly in her classic story Anne of
Green Gables. You will recall that Anne was an orphan who came to the town
of Avonlea by mistake. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert had originally asked for a
boy that could help with the chores.
Anne
was about to be sent back to the orphanage but Matthew had sympathy on her and
persuaded Marilla to keep the young (and at times exasperating) girl. Anne
loved Avonlea, with its woods, flowers, lakes and meadows. Through the years
she became the pride of both Marilla and Matthew. But she always had a special
place in her heart for Matthew. And when he died, it nearly broke her heart.
A few
days after the funeral, Anne found herself talking with Mrs. Allen, the
minister’s wife. She was concerned that she was beginning to enjoy nature again
and wondered if this didn’t imply disrespect for Matthew. Mrs. Allen assured
Anne that, on the contrary, Matthew would want Anne to continue enjoying the beauties
of the natural world. “I am sure,” she told Anne, “we should not shut our
hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us.”
Perhaps
no better call to nature exists than this simple line form a classic Christian story.
The beauty of it stems from its universal truth and applicability – no matter
what our heritage and faith may be. Mrs. Allen knew it. Anne knew it. And so do
most of the rest of us. God’s creation – fallen and imperfectly understood as
it is – can make all of us feel a lot better.
References. Diane Ackerman’s book A Slender Thread, Rediscovering Hope at the
Heart of Crisis was published by Random house in 1997. A good reference
dealing with the health needs of our ancestors is John Durant’s book The Paleo Manifesto, Ancient Wisdom for
Lifelong Health published by Harmony Books in 2013. My copy of The Secret
Garden was published by the Folio Society in 2006. Reese Nelson’s work on
restorative environments can be found in his dissertation: Mitigating Stress in College Students by Enhancing Testing Center
Environments through Passive Interaction with Plants. Idaho State University,
2006. Peter Beyer’s article, Globalization and the Religion of Nature can be
found in Nature Religion Today: Paganism
in the Modern World (compiled by Pearson, Roberts and Samuel in 1998, and published
by Edinburgh University Press). For a summary of the early Christian perception
of nature see Chapter 15 of Jim Bartlett’s Why
Can the Dead Do Such Great Things, Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to
the Reformation (published by Princeton University Press, 2013). Anne’s
conversation with Mrs. Allen in Anne of
Green Gables is found in Chapter 37 (The Reaper Whose name is Death).
