In his short essay on how we humans have transformed nature, the writer Czeslaw Milosz quotes Allen Ginsburg’s poem “Howl,” in which the poet decries how we have come to worship Moloch, an ancient Canaanite god, in our worship of our own power to shape the future. Using Moloch, associated with the sacrifice of children, was Ginsburg’s way of decrying what we have done to the natural world.
Off the coast of East Greenland, schools of whales have come up from the Antarctic, seeking food and places to bear their young. But the melting ice and warming waters have also threatened other species, such as narwhals, strange looking because of the giant tooth that juts out like the horn of the imagined unicorn.
It is off this coast of Greenland that a Texas based oil company wants to drill and tried to land testing kits in spite of objections from the island’s government. Will the Arctic become another Moloch, eating the future just as so much of the natural world has been destroyed? This is what we are doing, of course, in our relentless search for control.
Prayer for the Day
Warming waters beckon not just to your creatures, O God,
But to our own greed and demands for power;
Driving down into the waters made frigid by ice,
Your creation looks to you for protection, O Creator.
May we not pass through the fires of Moloch,
With its destruction of the future for our children.
In the name of the One who calls us to consider the future,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
It has become increasingly evident that large-scale physical and ecological changes are occurring rapidly across the Arctic. In the marine environment, marine-terminating glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates.
Prof. Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, from Frontiers in Marine Science
A strong warning will be sent to the licensee with a warning that all future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority—before they are carried out.
Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, Government of Greenland
The tents of robbers are at peace, and those who provoke God are secure,
Who bring their god in their hands.
But ask the animals and they will teach you; the birds of the air and they will tell you;
Ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will speak;
Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?
In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.
Job 12: 6-10