Called by many different names, the Chamaecyparis thyoides is known as the Atlantic Cedar in New Jersey. It grows along the coastline and is home to the Cedar Waxwing as well as other birds and a flower known as the Swamp Pink. Threatened by rising seas along our coasts from Maine as far south as the Carolinas, the New Jersey DEP has joined with environmental organizations to save the cedar by saving its habitat.
The cedars spend most of the year with wet feet in swamps and fresh water swirling about the wetlands that are its home. They are our Sequoias, growing well over 75 to 100 feet creating a canopy of life. New Jersey used to have 125,000 acres of the cedars; now we have only 25,000.
The plan is to not just protect the current wetland forest but to actually restore at least another 10,000 acres of their majesty. It’s always easier to preserve than to restore, something we need to consider as we face our continuing climate crisis.
Prayer for the Day
Faced with the results of our negligence, Magnificent Creator,
We acknowledge our failure in caring for the gifts you have given us;
We know we must rebuild that which we have destroyed
But often we are caught up n our desire for ease and comfort.
Open our eyes and bring us to that place where we truly work
For the restoration of the world you gave us.
In the name of the One who points the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. As the polar ice melts and the sea levels rise, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that we may quite literally become ocean.
- John Luther Adams, American composer
The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just a warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting the polar and alpine ice but also ocean acidification.
- Sylvia Earle, American marine biologist
All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth,
When a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, listen!
For thus the Lord said to me: I will quietly look from my dwelling,
Like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in heat of harvest. – Isaiah 18: 5-6