Reflection
Only when we see ourselves, humans, as part of creation rather than as the crown of creation, will we ever be able to come anywhere close to really grasping the greatness of God and God’s gifts to us. Only then will we begin to see the face of God everywhere. Only then will we begin to understand that we are meant to come to fullness of life together – plants, animals, planet and humans in one great reciprocal circle of a common creation. Until we do all of us will go on living life with spiritual blinders. What we do not do to save the whole of creation will shrink our own spiritual vision and separate us, starved and emaciated of soul, from the wholeness of life.
Paraphrased from Edith Stein
Prayer
Let creation proclaim the glory of God.
Action
Explore what it means to go on living life with “spiritual blinders.”
Suggested Reading
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of God’s hands.
Psalm 19:1
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.
Pope Francis, Laudato Si
We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things came into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participation in this more sublime dimension of the world about us.
Thomas Berry
Dedication to God means dedication to the whole of creation.
Edith Stein
When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
Mahatma Gandhi
I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better.
Vincent Van Gogh
Your deepest roots are in nature. No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.
Charles Cook
It was in the forest that I found “the peace that passeth understanding”
Jane Goodall
Believe one who knows: you will find something greater in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
Saint Bernard de Clairvaux
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.
George Washington Carver
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men’s apples and head their cabbages.
Cyrano de Bergerac
We abuse land because
we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to useit with love and respect.
Aldo Leopold
After all, I don’t see why I am always asking for private, individual, selfish miracles when every year there are miracles like white dogwood.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh