Earth Day
Reflection
The theme of Earth day 2021 is Restore Our Earth. Restoration is based on hope. It is the belief that things can be returned to their former healthy state. Deforestation, wildlife trade, air and water pollution, human diets, climate change and other issues have all fed into a breakdown of our natural systems. Rather than trying to use artificial methods of control or accepting adaptation to an increasingly unhealthy planet, leaders for environmental change are looking to natural processes, innovative thinking, and green technologies to combat planetary degradation. The goal Restore Our Earth is a call to each of us to support efforts to preserve the earthly home on which we live. We all need a healthy Earth for our health, survival, and happiness. Whether we will live on a healthy planet is not a choice- it is a necessity if we are to live at all.
Prayer
May we not be grateful for Earth just today, but cooperate to restore its health every day of our lives.
Action
Support or join in one of these activities:
- Support planting billions of trees as one of the biggest and cheapest ways of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere
- Support organic farmers
- Make an impact for our planet by cleaning up our public spaces
- Support Climate Literacy
- Join Global Earth Challenge
Suggested Reading
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.
Job 38:4
Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 92
Each community can take from the bounty of Earth whatever it needs for subsistence, but it also has the duty to protect Earth and to ensure its fruitfulness
for coming generations.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 67
The Great Work, now as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. The deepest cause of the present devastation is found in a mode of consciousness that has established a radical discontinuity between the human and other modes of being and the bestowal of all rights on the humans.
Thomas Berry
This earth is what we all have in common.
Wendell Berry
He that plants trees loves others beside himself.
Thomas Fuller
We do not inherit Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
Native American Proverb
If we are ever to halt climate change and conserve land, water and other resources, not to mention reduce animal suffering, we must celebrate Earth Day every day — at every meal.
Ingrid Newkirk
The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.
Lady Bird Johnson
I had assumed that Earth, the spirit of the Earth, noticed exceptions — those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth is wise. It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable.
Alice Walker
We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.
Barbara Ward
To treat all parts of Earth as sacred and Earth’s beings as our neighbors to be respected and loved…
Land Ethic Statement, Sisters of Saint Joseph, Brentwood, NY