One of the many themes I wanted to teach my children in Isora and the Pearl of Wisdom is the interconnectedness of humankind with the natural world. I grew up in an atypical way in the 1970s—my family lived far out in the country for a few years away from the modern conveniences of power lines and telephones. We got our electricity from a generator and even used car batteries. Surrounded by natural beauty, I grew up with a deep appreciation of nature that many of my peers didn’t seem to share. I would spend hours cross-legged in a field, braiding strands of grass while waiting for groundhogs to peek out of their holes. Something I learned was that groundhogs are more patient than little girls!
Now I live in the suburbs and my two boys are having a very different childhood experience than I did. My boys live in an age of fantastic technology that I couldn’t have imagined when I was young. I admittedly have allowed them to probably spend too much time watching movies and playing video games, but I have also tried to find ways to teach them to at least have an appreciation for, if not feel some kind of interconnectedness, to nature.
Living in the Pacific Northwest has provided ample beautiful scenery in which to hike and explore. We have a small garden in the backyard and through the years have grown some of our own fruit and vegetables. We try to attract as many beneficial insects as possible with a wide variety of perennials and shrubs. One of my most memorable moments with my youngest boy, Alex, was watching an Orb-weaver spider put the finishing touches on his web.
We also had a Fibonacci Day, in which we collected several objects from the natural world that contains the Fibonacci sequence. For those of you who are not complete geeks, the Fibonacci sequence is a series of numbers in which each number in the series is formed by adding the two numbers before it. It begins like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ect…. Well, I normally dislike math and would be rolling my eyes by now, but what knocks your socks off is that this very pattern is seen almost everywhere in nature. We collected pinecones, sunflowers, flower petals, and leaves, and also bought a pineapple and an artichoke. Spreading them out on the table we counted the number of spirals in the fruit and sunflowers, petals in the flowers, and numbers in leaf arrangements. Count them and you will have a Fibonacci number. Who would have thought that by gazing into an artichoke you would see something so divine? So profound and perfect? This is where science and nature meet God.
Take your children on walks. Marvel together at this glorious planet we live on. Count the number of petals on a daisy and take time to investigate the miracle of a spider web. It is through these moments that we become more connected to our children, to nature, and ultimately, to the divine.
For more information about Fibonacci, check out:
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