LET US RENEW THE FACE OF THE EARTH – Reflection for May 2010

In the last month we had the eruption of the Icelandic Volcano, which, even if it didn’t do any lasting damage, resulted in major disruption to people all over the world for an entire week. Have we learnt anything from this last event? When Nature decides to act, we humans have to learn to wait.  Perhaps we need to look at our technologically driven lifestyles. What is a week in a whole lifetime? Yet it seemed catastrophic to “lose” an entire week of work, travel and business.

For once, Nature had the upper hand.  Yet we humans keep trying to wrest control and in doing so we sometimes endanger the planet we share.  As the warm weather entices us outside, let’s decide, this May, to notice the beauty, colour, birds, flowers, trees, water and sky to give thanks for all that surrounds us.  Our role in relation to God’s creation was summed by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury in a lecture he gave on Human Responsibility and the Environment.  He said, “Renewing the face of the earth is an enterprise not of imposing some private vision on a passive nature but of living in such a way as to bring more clearly to light the interconnectedness of all things and their dependence on what we cannot finally master or understand. This certainly involves a creative engagement with nature, seeking to work with natural powers ….in order to enhance human liberty and well-being.”