Imagine the clouds dripping.Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.

“There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility. This is the great fall, the fall by which the fish forgets the sea, the ox forgets the meadow, the clerk forgets the city, every man forgets his environment and, in the fullest and most literal sense, forgets himself. This is the real fall of Adam, and it is a spiritual fall. It is a strange thing that many truly spiritual men, such as General Gordon, have actually spent some hours in speculating upon the precise location of the Garden of Eden. Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed. ”


i'd love to see more religious groups champion environmental issues. its strange how seldom these two come together in my opinion. if we truly believed that our god created this world, then shouldn't environmentalism be our key agenda? i think theres great potential in using religion to mobilize concern about the environment.


edit: i did some googling last night and turns out theres quite abit of material about it on the internet!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_environmentalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaitiaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_ecology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_environmentalism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewardship_(theology)

green pilgrimage network by WWF: http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=521
UK based Alliance of Religions and Conservation started by Prince Phillip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Religions_and_Conservation

theres also been landmark publications like the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, the Yale forum on Religion and Ecology.


took the day off work to read about all this today. i correct my statement that these two seldom come together. i wished i heard more about this coming together on the "ground level" instead - church sermons, religious talks (any religion would do, but could be my limited personal exposure to people of different religions, would love to meet someone from the baha'i faith and mormons), news of religious activism (ie first and only time i've ever heard a religious network mobilize here was Love Singapore - record 80 churches for the anti-gay agenda). i'd love to hear more people champion this cause for the environment! recently on twitter i posted about this, and a friend did mention that people would take issue that religion was "used" as a means to an end.

honestly (but perhaps i am wrong since i'm not the most religiously involved person i know) i always thought that in reality, religion was largely a means to an end - for personal meaning, for championing agendas, for improving our own lives (lost count the number of times people say i believe in X or i do things for X god, because He will reward me in the end). of course its sad that it can be and has been manipulated for certain agendas that harm, but i do think it is also a powerful medium for positive change. in that sense i don't see a point in ascribing a certain value judgement to 'using' religion per se, the focus should be on how its being used.