THE PEACE OF WILD THINGSWhen despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
Our world, our environment , where we live and what we eat affect us. A recent US study found autism rates were higher among children who experienced higher rainfall in their first three years of life. This research is based on child health and weather records from three US states, California, Oregon and Washington State, but British autism experts are quite condemning of the conclusions. This seems a strange correlation to put it mildly. Does this mean that everyone in the UK has a very high risk of autism? or people from the rain forests are more likely to be autistic? Perhaps its less about rain and more about West Coast life and environmental quality!
A more interesting piece of correlation research suggests that though there are significant differences in health related to income and social deprivation, when you live near a park, woodland or other open green spaces the differences are reduced. Sometimes you wonder what really makes sense and what doesn't. Rain and clouds make you emotionally depressed however autism is not an emotional condition. But an authentic association might be that green spaces have far reaching effects environmentally and emotionally.
I do believe increasingly that studying has its limitations and studying indoors at a desk or table has a deep implication. Philosophers and theologians have spoken of God's "two books." Bonaventura called them the liber naturae and the liber scripturae. Later Francis Bacon called them "the book of God's Words" and "the book of God's Works." The primary lesson of the book of nature is to convince us that God exists. God's second book, the Bible, then gets the picture of God into a greater sense of focus. However both are about thinking with the mind, lived lives and a sense of peace rooted in trust and divine relationship. A healthy way of living is to look at both, to experience both, and know that God created both.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:3-4
