Lenten Reflections for Us ... for God's Creation

Linda B. Rimer, Environmental Stewardship Committee Chair

During the Lenten season of 2004, the Environmental Stewardship Committee invited you to consider Mahatma Gandhi's invitation to "live simply so that others may simply live." We gave sobering statistics on the consumption habits of Americans, statistics made even more stark by comparisons with citizens of other countries. We related those consumption habits to the negative impacts on the natural resources of God's creation. We invited consideration of an alternative to 'giving up' something treasured or enjoyed during Lent; we asked instead for an effort to simplify life, consume fewer 'things' and use new-found time to reflect on whether the pursuit of material wealth was bringing peace, satisfaction and fulfillment.

We find ourselves again in the Lenten season with no measurable indication that our collective appetite for consuming has been diminished The ecological footprint of an average North American is double that of a European, and seven times that of the average Asian or African. (The Ecological Footprint estimates how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard.) If the rest of the Earth's population lived like we do, it would take three planets to support us all.

There is also no measurable indication that our consumption habits are bringing us satisfaction or fulfillment. Survey research shows us that the percentage of Americans calling themselves "very happy" reached its highest point in 1957.

The season of Lent, this special time set aside for soul-searching, reflection and taking stock, is a wonderful time to consider our consumption habits, and the impacts those habits have on God's creation. Hopefully the remainder of this article will provide inspiration to assist you in this process. This soul-searching will be more powerful if done outside, under a tree, or sitting by a stream or river, looking up at the sun or clouds or stars. Let Job begin your reflection:

But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all humanity. Job 12: 7-10

The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
Thomas Berry

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Henry David Thoreau

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

John Ruskin

Treat the earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children.

Kenyan Proverb

We are the generation of choice. We still have a choice to halt the destruction, the ravaging of the Earth. We are the
generation that could stand in harm's way and be those who preserve God's creation for future generations.
The Rev. Joan Campbell,
General Secretary, National Council of
Churches of Christ

The Earth is ultimately a common heritage, the fruits of which are for the benefit of all . . . It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of
people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of existence. Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness - both individual and collective - are contrary to the order of creation, an order which is characterized by mutual interdependence.

Pope John Paul II

We have multiplied. We have subdued the earth. Now it's time to focus on the Second Creation story.
The Rev. Charles W. Treadwell,
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, McKinney, TX.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Rachel Carson

The effort of religious groups, based on moral conviction, rather than immediate self interest is likely to have a disproportionate effect in the political arena on behalf of the environment.
Dr. Edward O. Wilson,
Baird Professor Science, Harvard University

Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Chief Seattle, 1854

If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know.

Union of Concerned Scientists, 1992

The Earth I tread on is not a dead, inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit, is organic, and fluid to the influence of its spirit, and to whatever particle of that spirit is in me. She is not dead, but sleepeth. Henry David Thoreau

Ethics are complete, profound and alive only when addressed to all living beings. Only then are we in spiritual connection with the world. Any philosophy not respecting this, not based on the indefinite totality of life, is bound to disappear. Albert Schweitzer

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality - tied to a single garment of destiny - whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Take care of the land, and it will take care of you. Take what you need from the land, but need what you take. Aboriginal law

Our world has enough for each person's need, but not for his greed.

Mahatma Gandhi

The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves.

Rachel Carson

When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may see it with love and respect. Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame and confined in terms of things natural, wild and free.

Aldo Leopold

Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of your grandchildren and those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.

Founders of the Iroquois Confederacy,
c. 1000 AD

We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi

... in wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau

I do not see a delegation for the four-footed. I see no seat for the eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior. But we are, after all, a mere part of Creation. And we must consider, to understand where we are. And we stand somewhere between the mountain and the ant. Somewhere and only there, as part and parcel of the Creation.

Chief Oren Lyons

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.

Genesis 1:31.

On Saturday, the Chapel of the Cross received one of two Environmental Stewardship Awards. The citation reads: The Chapel of the Cross, Chapel Hill is hereby recognized for its work of improving our environment, God's creation, organized by their Environmental Stewardship Committee under the direction of Linda Rimer, given by the Chartered Committee for Environmental Ministries of the Diocese of North Carolina on January 22, 2005 AD.

[signed] Thomas Dropper, Chairman

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