It’s Earth Day today and we are now faced with an assault on our earth that we haven’t had in many years. Given the stance of the new regime on environmental policy, not only is the fossil fuel industry emboldened but logging companies are whetting their saws looking at old growth forests, such as the Tongass National Forest.
And there is the push for more coal mining as well. Of course, although miners are told that this means a return to jobs which results in terrible health problems such as Black Lung disease, HHS cut 900 jobs from its occupational safety division. After all, coal miners are expendable in the face of corporate greed and power.
And how could we forget Big Oil? Apart from gutting environmental justice programs as part of his support for even more corporate greed, people who live in areas polluted by natural gas refineries (it’s not clean in those areas, for sure) have little recourse. Oh, and we can’t forget that the Pacific Marine Sanctuary is now open to commercial fishing.
Happy Earth Day!
Prayer for the Day
Acknowledging you as Creator, O God,
We see the glory of your creation even in a grain of sand;
Even the wolf and the bear, the lynx and the cougar call to you
As the tortoise and the butterfly look to you in silence.
Come, O Holy One, and remind us that we are not the owners
Of your earth and your creation, but caretakers.
In the name of the One who helps us walk,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The ecosystems, the ecosphere, those are good gifts. We have to regard them as gifts because we couldn't make them. We have to regard them as good gifts because we couldn't live without them.
Wendell Berry, writer and poet
We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion."
Hildegard of Bingen, writer, composer (1098-1179)
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who live in it;
For God has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.
Psalm 24:1