An unconventional prayer and essay for Earth Week

There is no doubt that human beings have changed the earth’s cycles, surface, and creatures by our activities.

We have managed and bred for our use and enjoyment some plants and animals, and destroyed the habitats of others.

We have extracted minerals, fossil fuels, and soils, and have been careless with our use of extracted water.

We have preserved some biomes for their scenic beauty, but ignored the ecological services provided by others.

We have trawled the bottom of the seas and used them as a trash repository.

A growing and increasingly urban population’s hunger for food, clothing, shelter, and fuel is taking its toll, despite ongoing efforts to slow the loss of traditional rural wisdom about conservation and creation care.

Human migration has fostered the spread of invasive species that displace native species, just as human migrants have often displaced indigenous peoples. Scientists and activists may disagree about what is the greatest threat to human survival on the planet.

Should the scarcity of water for drinking and sanitation be our biggest concern, or the challenge to feed a hungry world in an ecologically sustainable way? And which of our excesses put the whole planet in the greatest peril? Is it climate change or the loss of biodiversity that poses the greatest threat to the resilience
of life on earth?

Ecologists understand that while entry points for concern and action vary, all these issues are interrelated. In agriculture, to take an example from our managed environment, resilience in the face of climate change will depend on better stewardship of water and increased preservation of the diversity of seed stock available
for developing improved crops, while those engaged in agriculture continue to assess their contribution to greenhouse gases, polluted waste water, and soil erosion, and how all these negative impacts on the environment can be decreased.

There have been and will continue to be unintended consequences for our environment due to our choices and behaviors, but study and prayer can help us to become more conscious of the human impact on our planet. As we consider the risen and ascended Christ drawing all things to their perfection in himself, indeed drawing the cosmos into the heart of God in that process the Eastern Church calls “deification,” we find reason for hope and an impetus for the renewing and reconciling of our relationships within the creation of
which we are a part.

Source and credit to the Liturgical Resources for Honoring God in Creation: Explore a host of liturgical resources for honoring God’s creation, from the Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. https://www.episcopalchurch.org/ministries/creation-care/loving-formation/