Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Once again I will bring up my mother, and the things that she taught me as a child. As you might imagine, I was not the best student and did not always accept as ‘truth’ all those things that were told to me. One of the things that Mother told me was that I should not be a pagan, which was a form of idolatry and a ‘wrong’ belief in her mind.

 

My greatest solace was sitting alone in the quiet woods behind the house, even back when I was a child. I have always wondered if being a pagan was really not a bad thing. Now, I’m wondering if we were all pagans, would we have spent the last 500 years polluting and poisoning the earth and the ultimate survival of our form of life?

 

Earth-centered religion, or nature worship, is a system of religion based on the veneration of natural phenomena. It covers any religion that worships the earth, nature, or fertility deity.

 

For me, God is love, and that definition is all-encompassing. I’m pretty sure that Jesus told us just that. He was a living example – a role model – of how to love. 

 

Do you remember the phrase, “What Jesus would do?” I’ve always thought it was actually a good motto to follow, but the concept never took off.

 

My guess is that using Jesus, and Love, as a role motto is simply too hard in our capitalist, frantic society. How can we love and honor God’s will and still get to work, and possibly work at jobs that we believe are actually contrary to what Jesus would have us do? We have children to support! So we pray, and hope that God will fix it, and it will all be alright in the end. 

 

Or, maybe some politician or industry or the economy will fix our environmental problems, and global warming/climate change will be just temporary. It’ll resolve itself. 

I am of the belief that all change must begin in our hearts. Deep down we know what’s right, if we listen to our hearts and our intuition. After we see and understand what is really the ‘truth,’ then we can put our minds and bodies to work. 

What if getting our relationship right with the Earth and all its creatures is not the scenic backdrop of some circus sideshow but as crucial as getting our relations right with our Creator, our family, and our neighbors? What if all of Creation is the most palpable expression of our Creator’s generosity, sense of wonder, and commitment to diversity? What happens if we begin to include the fungi, the flowers, the ants and worms, the butterflies, and the flocks of wild geese as our neighbors, our family, and our Creator’s expressive face?  

What if?