I was very young when I recognized that I deeply felt the emotions of others.  At 3 or 4 years of age I well remember begging my younger sister to stop crying because her anguish hurt me so deeply.

 It wasn’t until several years later though, that my deep empathy for and innate understanding of the natural world became apparent. At maybe 11 years old I was participating in what was called a “Night Watch” at a state park in southeastern Ohio.  Sitting in the dark under a walnut tree, my father about 50 feet away under his own tree, I listened to the myriad sounds of nightly activity that surrounded me.  And then, quite unexpectedly, creation reached up and embraced me tightly, holding me so snuggly it felt as if the earth and I merged in an embrace that both terrified and exhilarated me.  

It was decades before I spoke of that experience to anyone.  After all, back then I was simply the young child who ran home from play to help plant petunias in the yard, the high-schooler who spent the evening of her junior prom spreading manure on the family tomato plants, the quiet dreamer who sat on creek banks for hours, watching and listening.  I was the obedient and responsible oldest one who kept her younger siblings in line at weekly church services. Was it any surprise really, that I couldn’t see that what I had experienced was another face of the God who supposedly lived in that church? 

That God, after all, seemed to have very little to do with vegetable gardens or walnut trees.  The community of faith who worshipped that God had almost nothing in common, it appeared, with what I experienced in my early profound, communal connections to the natural world.

Over the years since, though, God has become far more apparent in the multitudes of flowers I grow, and in the vegetables from our garden.  The divine is very present in the sunsets and sunrises we are so privileged to witness almost daily from our farm. Planting seeds in the spring is truly a sacred ritual. Even in the act of hanging laundry on the clothesline, I see the love offered us by our Creator, who desires that we have clean, dry clothing.    

Long ago I took to praying outdoors.  Walking barefoot in the grass can become a sacramental moment.  I feel the pulse of life in the trees, in the wind that rocks them.  I kneel in the garden and hold the soil that will grow those first summer tomatoes, and weep for joy. All life is truly sacred, I began to understand over time.  It is all one aspect of that same divine love.

But today our natural world suffers greatly.  I feel its pain, as weather systems swing wildly and the seasons careen out of control.  Even here in the Midwest we are rocked by December tornadoes, flooded fields, water sitting in ditches 10 months out of the year, April snowstorms demolishing our fruit crops.

We are destroying the greatest gift we have ever been given – and yet we still do not see or understand.  Greed, the desire for more new stuff, the belief of many that this world has nothing to do with God – all these prevent us from understanding how interrelated we are to THIS place, to THIS soil, to THIS atmosphere.  These waters are our life blood.  These microbes are our cousins.  We destroy ourselves. 

This Earth Day I beg you to walk away from your various screens, to open your doors, to immerse yourself in the gift universal to us all.  I know that the situation may appear overwhelming, and the work insurmountable.  But simple things go far!  Give thanks for the beauty, the love, the embrace of that which sustains and nurtures us. We can all pray for the earth and its people!  Do what you can to protect it for your children and great-grandchildren. Be the neighborhood example. Be careful what you buy, and what you discard.  Do you really need fresh berries in January? Use earth-safe cleaning products, herbicides, and pesticides. Harass your political leaders. Limit your travel as much as possible.  Make do with what you have. Educate yourselves!!

The earth cries out!  

Offer it your comfort and love in return, for the sake of all of us. Please?