Happy Earth Day!
A few quotes on the environment from Baha’i and Christian writings:
Nature is God’s Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world.
(Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 142)
This nature is subjected to an absolute organization, to determined laws, to a complete order and to a finished design, from which it will never depart – to such a degree, indeed, that if you look carefully and with keen sight, from the smallest invisible atom up to such large bodies of the world of existence as the globe of the sun or the other great stars and luminous spheres, whether you regard their arrangement, their composition, their form or their movement, you will find that all are in the highest degree of organization and are under one law from which they will never depart.
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, Chpt. I, p. 3)
We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.
(Letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, 17 February 1933, Compilation on Social and Economic Development, p. 4)
In wisdom you made them all, the earth is full of your creatures. There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number – living things both large and small… When you send your Spirit, they are created and you renew the earth. Psalms 104:25,30.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.
Genesis 2:15, New Revised Standard Version
What can we do?
Each of us can play a small but important role in being good stewards of nature! My wife and I have decided to ditch plastic bags (8 million tons of plastic are dumped in the ocean every year) and buy biodegradable trash bags. What can you do?
Lastly, here’s a photo I took a few years ago while flying over Ohio. I think it captures the beauty of the earth and sky.