Brian McLaren connects our love of nature with our grief and anger when it’s treated without respect and care:
Through the years, I’ve been involved in a lot of different areas of activism and so often what sustains us and motivates us in our activism work is anger. That’s legitimate because wherever we see injustice, we ought to be angry. But anger … can toxify our motivations if anger is all that’s driving us. That’s why I think it helps often for us to trace our anger back to grief, as Father Richard often says, and then to trace our grief to love. It’s because we love something that we feel grief when it’s threatened. In fact, one of my favorite definitions of grief is that grief is love persisting when what we love is passing away. What you love, you try to save, and that’s why so many of us see the natural world around us with such tenderness, with such grief, sometimes with such anger, because what we love is passing away. [1]
Author Lydia Wylie-Kellermann describes her approach to helping her children fall in love with a place:
When I think about parenting in this moment, I often think about the words from the Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum, who said, and I paraphrase, “You can’t save a place you don’t love. You can’t love a place you don’t know. And you can’t know a place you haven’t learned.” [2]
I think that is some of the most important and radical work we can do as parents of young kids: help them learn the land that holds them. By doing so we are nurturing them to fall in love with this place—and ultimately that love may lead to imagination and action for climate justice….
So we lie down on our bellies and watch the milkweed disappear as the caterpillar grows fat. We wander the neighborhood in search of snacks in the form of wild grape vines, tiger lilies, and the roots of Queen Anne’s lace. We throw lavish funerals for the fallen sparrow and delight when the opossum comes to visit…. We let mud get between our toes and we climb the apple trees. With each moment, we are learning this place. We are all falling in love….
Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit peace activist now a beloved ancestor, once said “Don’t just do something. Stand there.” Standing in one place and not moving is a part of the work. And a beautiful piece that leads to knowledge and intimacy and relationship. Resistance to climate destruction can be slow work of being present to a place in the face of a transient, fast-paced world.
Fall in love.
None of us are going to save this planet alone. But we can shift patterns of destruction in our own ecosystem. If we learn the place and fall madly in love, how could we not interfere in the destruction and make change? [3]
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
Do everything in dependence on Me. The desire to act independently–apart from Me–springs from the root of pride. Self-sufficiency is subtle, insinuating its way into your thoughts and actions without your realizing it. But apart from Me, you can do nothing; that is, nothing of eternal value. My deepest desire for you is that you learn to depend on Me in every situation. I move heaven and earth to accomplish this purpose, but you must collaborate with Me in this training. Teaching you would be simple if I negated your free will or overwhelmed you with My Power. However, I love you too much to withdraw the godlike privilege I bestowed on you as My image-bearer. Use your freedom wisely, by relying on Me constantly. Thus you enjoy My Presence and My Peace.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
John 15:5 (NLT)
5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.
Additional insight regarding John 15:5: “Fruit” is not limited to soul winning. In this chapter, answer prayer, joy, and love are mentioned as fruit (John 15:7, 11, 12). Galatians 5:22-24 and 2nd Peter 1:5-8 describe additional fruit: qualities of Christian character. Remaining in Christ means (1) believing that he is God’s Son, (2) receiving him as Savior and Lord, (3) doing what God says, (4) continuing to believe in the Good News, and (5) relating in love to the community of believers, Christ’s body.
Ephesians 6:10 (NLT)
10 A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.
Additional insight regarding Ephesians 6:10: In the Christian life we battle against rulers and authorities (the powerful evil forces of fallen angels headed by the devil, who is a vicious fighter, see 1st Peter 5:8). To withstand their attacks, we must depend on God’s strength and use every piece of his armor. Paul is not only giving his counsel to the church, the body of Christ, but to all individuals within the church. The whole body needs to be armed. As you do battle against “mighty powers in this dark world,” fight in the strength of the church, whose power comes from the Holy Spirit.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT)
26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.”
27 So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Additional insight regarding Genesis 1:27: God made both man and woman in his image. Neither man nor woman is made more in the image of God than the other. From the beginning, the Bible places man and woman at the pinnacle of God’s creation. Neither sex is exalted, and neither is depreciated.
