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Creation Corner Column: Inspiring Quotations for Environmental Stewardship
If you have
men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and
pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. St.
Francis of Assisi
Each
religion has given to us a definite acknowledgement of God as creator. Each religion also discusses divine qualities
that mankind can utilize to be co-creators with God. When individual souls use God’s energy in a
positive way to create good, we are part of God in action. God is then working through us.
G. David Lundberg
If a chimney
is full of smoke, how can the light be seen?
If the mind is full of dirt, how can the soul shine?
Yogaswami
The care of
the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all, our most pleasing
responsibility. To cherish what remains
of it and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.
Wendell Berry
Now in the
people that were meant to be green there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful
stink of evil, selfish goings-on.
Thunderstorms menace. The air belches
out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples.
The earth should not be injured!
The earth must not be destroyed!! Hildegard von Bingen
The
intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a world that
honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift. Albert Einstein
We are
talking only to ourselves. We are not
talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and the stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have
shattered the universe. All the
disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual ‘autism.’ Thomas
Berry
The Zen
Master Thich Nhat Hanh was once asked what we need to do to save our world. ‘What we most need to do,’ he replied, ‘is to
hear within us the sounds of the Earth dying.’ Quoted
by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
God’s first
intention for heaven and earth was that they be one. The polluting corruption of evil has caused
them to flee one another, but this division will not last. God’s original intention has now become God’s
mission… (a) journey toward restoration. G. Robert Paauw
Water and
air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global
garbage cans. Jacques Cousteau
There’s no
polite way of saying this: your body is a landfill, a dumping ground for a mind-boggling
array of toxic chemicals. So is
mine. So is your child’s.
Sloan Barnett
You will
find something far greater in the woods than you will find in books. Stone and trees will teach you that which you
will never learn from masters.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
French Cistercian monk
The Old
Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s
heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing,
living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. Chief
Luther Standing Bear
Biblical
orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.
Francis Schaeffer
We are looking
forward to a new heaven and new earth, the home of righteousness. 2
Peter 3:13
Note: The web site of the home church for the columnist is www.stmarkswilliamsport.org .
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