Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

What Are We Missing?

Reverend Darcey Laine
March 25, 2007
Palo Alto, CA

Last year we held my son’s birthday party at a neighborhood park. We found a great set of picnic tables right next to the slides, swing, and assorted climbing structures. We had brought sidewalk chalk and bouncing balls for everyone. Within minutes of the children arriving they had all disappeared. They were hiding in a giant bush at the back of the playground. For almost an hour it was their clubhouse/fort/castle. It never occurred to me to say “honey, would you like to have your party in a bush this year?” but that was apparently what the children most wanted. Until it was time for cake that is.

It would seem that this generation of children just doesn’t have that many chances to hide in a bush with their friends. Why is this? As a society at this moment in history, we simply don’t have the time, we don’t have the space, and we don’t see playing in a bush as something valuable to our culture.

And why should we value playing club-house in a bush? When the Green Class and I were preparing for today’s worship, I explained what my sermon would be about this way “I want the adults to know that you need more free play in nature, and they do too.” This met with universal head nodding and agreement. So let me be so bold as to ask you all, by raising of the hands, is there anyone here who would like more free-play in nature?

All right, if we are going to get these folks some more time in nature, we are going to have to believe in our heart of hearts that this is valuable, and find a way to articulate what is behind that belief.

Your heart knows, your soul knows, your inner child knows that being outside is good. Your heart knows that looking out a window at trees feels better than looking out the window at a brick wall. Your heart knows that something about standing on the edge of the Pacific Ocean having the worries blasted out of you by the blustery winds has the power to change the course of your week.

But there is another voice inside us saying that really, this is goofing off. When children are hiding in bushes, and when adults are standing on the back porch starring blankly at the dappled sunlight on the grass, we are not ACCOMPLISHING anything.

We need to start doing things that don’t accomplish anything in particular IMMEDIATELY. This is urgent. This will not wait until you are retired, because just last week a retired volunteer said to me “I really have to take a sabbatical. One of these days I am just going to disappear for a month.” It takes practice, and if we don’t start young, it will be hard to learn later in life.

In 1890, Henry James defined 2 kinds of attention: directed attention and fascination. Directed attention is the kind of attention we use when we are being productive, when we are doing tasks like writing, or proof reading, or homework or preparing our taxes. Fascination or “involuntary attention” is, for example, what happens when you are watching a bug crawl up a blade of grass, or an eagle circle in the sky.

Rachel and Stephen Kaplan did a study on this topic, finding that too much directed attention leads to what they call “directed-attention fatigue” because “Neural inhibitory mechanisms become fatigued by blocking competing stimuli.” This leads to “impulsive behavior, agitation, irritation, and inability to concentrate”. They wrote in their article for Monitor on Psychology “If you can find an environment where the attention is automatic, you allow directed attention to rest.”

The Kaplans did a study of office workers and found that those with a window view of trees, bushes or large lawns were less frustrated and found more enjoyment in their work than employees without. I know for myself that when I get stuck writing a newsletter article I have often found inspiration just letting my eyes wander over the bushes and trees in front of my office, and all the critters who inhabit them.

Terry Hartig, a Swedish researcher, has worked on various studies showing that Nature can “help people recover from Ônormal psychological wear and tear’ [as well as improving our] capacity to pay attention” In one study Hartig’s subjects did 40 minutes worth of tasks designed to wear out their direct-attention. Afterwards one group was asked to walk in a local nature preserve, another walked in an urban area, and the final group sat quietly reading and listening to music. “After this period those who had walked in the nature preserve performed better than other participants on a standard proof-reading task. They also reported more positive emotions and less anger.”

Richard Louv has gathered together some of the sparse but growing research about the effects of our time in nature or lack thereof on our mind, body and spirit in his most recent book: Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He defines nature as “self organizing wild places” as small as a patch of bushes on the periphery of a park. (p. 8) Studies like those done by Kaplan and Hartig are giving grounding to that instinctive drive to stare out the window at a tree when we are burned out, the intuition that the most efficient way to restore our capacities may be a walk in nature.

These are among the growing number of studies showing that proximity to nature has measurable benefits to both mental and psychological health. For example, Howard Frumkin writes in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine about a 10 year study of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery, finding that patients whose room had a view of a grove of trees went home sooner than those who had a view of a brick wall. (p. 46) A study out of Cornell University Environmental psychology program showed that “life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions, compared to those who live in low-nature conditions.” and that this protective impact increases for those with the most stressful events in their lives. (p. 49).

In addition to the physical and psychological effects of our contact with nature on us, we also must consider the impact of this contact on our eco-system. Most people who camp as adults were taken camping for the first time by their parents. Most adults who care about the natural world built that wonder-filled relationship as children: building tree houses, fishing, throwing rocks into creeks. When you read stories about Teddy Roosevelt’s childhood experiences in nature, it seems only logical that he would have been the president to put his weight behind the national park system.

Our children are the future conservationists. Will children raised indoors grow up to camp in our national parks? And if they do not love the open spaces, how will they vote when housing pressures increase? How will this generation of voters and activists know that those national treasures are worth preserving?

And we as UUs have a particular investment in our own connection with the earth, with the web of life. This connection with nature, is one of our deepest sources of renewal, inspiration and wisdom. Our tradition holds the knowing that we remember when we are intimate with the natural world: that we are not separate from beings who are not human, from things made not by human hands. We must make sure that as one of our expressed values, the living of our life honors our articulated theology. If we don’t spend time with the natural world, we loose that chance to grow deeper in that wisdom and inspiration, in a mature understanding of our interconnection, to let it guide and inform our lives. What better way could we share this knowing, this value with our children than giving them time to be fascinated by the natural world.

So why aren’t our children given the time to be in nature? Now that higher test scores are the main focus of our schools, recess is being shortened or even eliminated in some states, because this is time legislators feel could be better used preparing for tests (p. 98). But studies are beginning to suggest that nature can be used as a therapy for ADHD, in some cases replacing medication or behavioral therapy. Remembering the Kaplan’s research, it seems that regular breaks in nature would restore the ability to focus and could improve test scores.

Children also loose some of the time in nature that previous generations have enojyed because they participate in more organized sports and other adult-programmed activities. From 1981 to 1997 there was a 27% increase in the amount of time children spend in Organized sports. (p. 117) However, Louv notes that “Generalized, hour-to-hour physical activity is the likely absent ingredient [that has lead to increased childhood obesity]. The physical and emotional exercise that children enjoy when they play in nature is more varied and less time-bound than organized sports” (p. 47)

Children also losing their time with nature as time is spent more and more with technology. Today’s children spend an average of 30 hours a week in front of the TV (p. 47) Schools increasingly emphasize technology; they are geared more towards visiting a website about the Rainforest then spending time with local flora and fauna.

And we as adults have less time to spend in nature ourselves. We spend more and more time on our daily commute, as housing and jobs spraul apart. And as Juliette Schorr writes in The Overworked American we are working more hours than at any time since the industrial revolution over 100 years ago. If we don’t value highly our time to wander in and be fascinated by nature, the external pressures of test scores and commutes quickly push aside our time for wild places.

The spaces for such fascination and exploration are disappearing as well. Local open spaces are designated as playing fields and structured playgrounds, which researchers have found encourage less creative, more competitive play. Most adults of my generation can think of a spot of “left over” land, around the edges of organized development where they played as children. I had a creek through my back yard growing up, and found once I got old enough that I could walk that creek all the way to my friend Laura’s house. My husband had a patch of un-developed lots in his housing development where he and his friends played. The development where my son is growing up is filled in. The creek down the street has chain link fence on all sides.

Now we are blessed with a very lovely park just a couple of blocks away, but current parenting practices being what they are, I would never allow a kindergartener walk by himself to the park. My generation ran out to the park and had only to be home in time for dinner. This generation is never out of site of an adult. And parents aren’t the only ones letting fear come between child and self-organizing wild places. Who has the liability insurance to allow children to climb a tree, much less build a tree house in this overly litigious age? The park near my house has play structures, paved paths, picnic tables a skate ramp and several grass playing fields. And one really cool bush.

For my son’s generation it is no longer legal to build tree houses or pick flowers in our open spaces. Though Researchers have observed that children have more creative imaginative play in natural play areas with “loose objects” than children playing in constructed play areas, public parks and open spaces are increasingly designed for particular purposes. We are to stay on the path and look. We know that the wild places are in danger from too much contact with us. We know that we need high density infill housing to preserve open spaces and reduce the carbon footprint of lengthy commutes into the sprawl. But the downside of this sensitivity is that because there is so little nature left, kids are taught “don’t touch;” read about it in a book or see on computer.

So as I read Louv’s book, and started to wonder, where could my child go where he can play independently, where there are grass and trees, where there are loose parts suitable for imaginative, creative play. And I realized the only place he has like that is here at church, over in that playground behind the children’s classrooms. I mentioned this revelation to the directors of the Thatcher Childcare Center the other day, and they said a parent who had noticed the same thing but was on the waiting list for their program asked if they could refer her to another site with a similar sense of place for children. They couldn’t think of anything to recommend. What we have here is precious.

I have long known one of the main reasons our UUCPA kids ask to come to church on Sunday is for our playground; the parents tell me this like a guilty secret. But just now am I realizing; playing in the nooks and crannies of the trees and bushes and dirt piles of our playground IS religious education. The Adult Religious Education committee pondered asked about our monthly nature outings for families: “are they really RE?” Now I say with confidence — yes. They are at the core of what the spirit needs. It needs to learn through fascination as well as focus. We need all we can learn from the wild places.

So this month I offer to you a spiritual practice (if you will choose to accept it). Find yourself a bush, a tree, a nook, a path, a place on the edges of life organized by humans. Visit it when you are burned out, and let your attention go deep into the particular life of that place. Visit it when it rains, or when the sun comes out, and see how it responds and grows. Spring is a particularly exciting time to notice a place, because change happens so quickly and with such artistic flourish. Take a child or a friend to your special place, and see what they might notice that you have missed. And when you know it, and it becomes part of you, remember that this ordinary bit of wildness is just as much a miracle as the Amazon rainforest, and as deserving of our attention. Perhaps, as our Green Class recommends, you will find yourself a rock for a friend.

Environmentalism is not just about protecting the earth, it is about letting the earth renew you, body, mind and spirit and letting the earth and all her creatures be your companion on this journey.