Taking Care of the Garden

I ran into a Master Naturalist friend at church this morning. She asked if I had been there last week. Unfortunately, I didn't go. The service and sermon had been all about nature, my friend said. She loved it.

Too bad for me, but at least I could go online to listen to the recording of the sermon, "Taking Care of the Garden."

Jennifer began with a quote from E.O. Wilson's book, The Creation, a book in which he appeals to fundamentalist ministers to think about the "stewardship of Earth" model and to consider how it has destabilized everything.

Human centered preaching with its emphasis on the afterlife has encouraged us to manage and control Earth's resources for our own benefit rather than to live as a part of a living Earth and recognize our oneness with it. The traditional Christian religious model, Wilson says, encourages apathy and denial. Why care about this temporal Earth?

We need a new model, he says, a new model to replace the God as King model with a God as Universe one. This way of looking at life does not elevate humans over Earth. Rather, it recognizes that we are part of God's body. The bounty of the Earth isn't there for our use. It is holy ground that requires us to nurture, protect, and deeply, deeply love it completely.

Jennifer ended her sermon by asking us to imagine the changes we would make if, indeed, we would to imagine nature as God's body. It would affect our life and every choice for living.

I think so. I think we would live more simply and we would tend our gardens with care.