"I remember the first time I visited the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I had seen pictures of it, but these were no preparation for the overpowering experience of being there, walking slowly toward the unfenced rim, seeing the solid earth end in a sudden void almost a mile deep and ten miles across, stretching further than I could see to right and left. After an involuntary gasp at the vastness of the canyon, I was struck by the stillness of the whole panorama. No one in our group of four had much to say because as soon as we spoke, it seemed as if our words were swallowed up by the enormous chasm before us. The proper response was not words but silence. I felt dumb and dwarfed in the presence of something so immense, so primordial. I felt the same reverence I feel in a sacred place at a sacred moment. The Grand Canyon evokes that sort of reverence. It is a place of tremendous majesty. To throw beer cans over the rim, as some do, seems like a desecration.

"The reverence that people spontaneously feel at places like the Grand Canyon is the attitude we need to cultivate toward the entire earth. Eco-spirituality honors the earth. We walk the earth with humility and reverence, not with the arrogant air of an insensitive landlord. We do not worship the earth as divine, but respect it as a revelation of the creator; to reverence the earth is to respect the artistry of the divine artist.

"Every feature of the global landscape has its value even though we may not be able to identify that value or explain its role in the total ecosystem. It took millions of years for the forces of nature to carve out the Grand Canyon, and every feature of the earth's surface is the result of similar historical processes. The antiquity and functional success of these planetary systems demand reverence.

"Our physical environment forms us in obvious as well as subtle ways. We are shaped by the landscape and imbued with the spirit of the place where we live. It could be said that the earth gives birth to us because it conditions the way we live and support ourselves. People in the tropics are different in many ways from people in the arctic; the environment affects their quality of life and also their outlook on life.

"It is because the earth shapes and nurtures us that the earth is our mother. People rightly associate the earth with maternal qualities of fruitfulness, growth, creativity, protection, healing, guidance, beneficence. Mother earth deserves a loving reverence similar to that which we show to our human mothers."