Earth Day Testimonial: Manifesto for a Rural Religion

Behold this Earth!

Earth which is the persuasion of God

Have eyes and see, see!

Perceive with the eyes which are your eyes the grey rainshafts which stride across green fields where before great pillars of yellow light painted yellows and browns and

Thunder announcing,

Announcing efforts, purposes

Trees hear them, and the grass and the vegetables

The little lettuces such spots of color upon the raw brown earth

Do hear and so the swift flow of clouds, torn and formed and full of vortex, makes sense

How it speaks to us to tell us goodness prevails

And in my world I know it does not prevail always

In peopleness where the rain cannot just fall nor grass green merely.

How we long for the clarity of innocence!

But we must take up our hoe

And know instead.

Friday is Earth Day. Why protect the Earth, why preserve her ecosystems? There are so many arguments. Some appeal to specifically human interest, and try to tell us that we will suffer economically or in terms of bodily health if we damage the Earth. The changing climate will cause coastlines to flood and to salinate, species loss will cause the loss of species particularly useful to human life, polluted air and polluted water will make us sick. These arguments have their measure of persuasion, but unless these things happen fairly dramatically, I suspect we humans will simply adapt to them.

Some argue that non-human life enjoys a value independent of their usefulness in securing human ends. These arguments do have appeal to our reason and to our sentiment, I think, but they do not address the real ethical issue. Clean air is good, but so is electricity – produced by burning coal mostly. A stable climate is good, but so is the modern economy – powered largely by oil. Which values are better? It is the task of ethical vision to judge among competing values, and also to inspire the imagination towards a world where good things might compete less.

So my personal testimony – not an argument! - for preserving the Earth is, Earth’s ecosystems are the source of vision. Among the greening oaks and darkening spinach, our humanity finds its task in the universe. That’s how it feels to me.

The green fields stretching, flowing over the ground, air filled with light and rain, vegetables raising themselves up, storms thundering emotions I cannot possibly fathom…What is the vision? It is the presence of a vast intelligence at work, of living things brought into being by it, of living things joyfully fulfilling the work of improving creation. This work, it is utterly beyond my perspective, it is universal, and I am both small and fragmentary before it, and I am given all of my meaning and my value by it. I am asked to build up beauty, to act with tenderness, to consider all life and not just my life.

How can we worship without the Earth? Without her beauty, how can we remember that there is beauty in the universe, to inspire us in the face of evil, or boredom? Without the beauty of the Earth, where comes our inspiration to our own human kind of beauty? The Earth and its life, surrounding and inside of us all, reminds us that we are not the center of things. How we need that reminder, it seems! Yet do we not also require, sung by soft warm wind and spring rain-scent, to be told that we matter, we can contribute. The rhythms of Earth, of its seasons, of its weather, of its oceans – I feel in these rhythms God’s redemption, the security of my own meaning before the nature of things. How can we fail to protect the Earth? How can we make it so difficult to hear the good news that God loves us and wants our loyalty?

Earth Day is Friday. There are many sacred scriptures, it seems, many texts. For me, the Earth is sacred scripture. Its evolution speaks of a universal urge toward increasing beauty. What God has inspired, who would destroy it? The protection of Earth, is it not the insistent message of human reason? I give thanks to Earth, my home, the place that tells me who I am and what I must do.