The weather has been so mild and in this winter (so far) without snow daffodil shoots several inches high are already appearing. Hellebores are already in bloom as are the tiny snowdrops. Skunk cabbage is out in swampy woodlands and the Pine Barrens.
Both a state and national treasure, the Pine Barrens ecosystem is threatened not just by rising seawater but by the greedy eyes of developers bent on turning the Garden State into the Warehouse State. Proposed warehouses within and adjacent to designated preservation areas have environmental leaders worried, as they and we should be.
When John McPhee wrote his article “The Pine Barrens” in 1967, it spurred Congress to create the 1.1 million acre Pinelands Preserve. But 65 years later, politics and money still play an important role in whether we will still have a Pine Barrens with its unique ecosystem or an area equivalent to the Turnpike approaching Newark. We hold this gift from God in our hands.
Prayer for the Day
The earth blesses you, O God, Creator and Sustainer of life;
May we honor all that grows from the earth, forest and plain.
The rivers and springs and all who dwell therein, sing to you, O God;
May we listen for the bellow of frogs in the swamp.
Grant, O Lord, that we sustain the life you have given us,
Even to the smallest of all your creatures among us.
In the name of the One who gives us new life,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
This is a globally unique habitat, and it should be treated with the same reverence we give Yellowstone or any other national park. Every day, I wonder why it isn’t.
- Jason Howell, Pinelands Preservation Alliance
There are lots of threats to the Pines, but the biggest one is from Trenton.
- Leslie Ficcaglia, former Commission member removed by Christie for opposition to a 22-mile gas pipeline through the Pinelands
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind …
Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, so that a flood of of wasters cover you?
Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go and say to you, “Here we are?”
Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind?
Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or tilt the waterskins of the heavens,
When the dust runs to a mass and the clods cling together?
Job 38: 34-38