11/15 Creation Corner: Inspiring Quotations for Environmental Stewardship

11-15 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 .

                                                          -30-