Meister Eckhart once observed: "What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth." And we humans are co-creators with the Holy One, called to take care of the good Earth, to reverence and cherish all living beings on the planet.
In this challenging work, the internationally known author, lecturer, retreat leader, spiritual director, and peace activist Megan McKenna laments the destruction of the earth by human selfishness, power, greed, and short-sightedness. The environmental destruction that is underway, including the extinction of many species, is staggering in its implications. It is up to spiritual people around the globe to harm not the earth and to lead the way in ecology projects.
To refresh our appreciation of the scriptural backdrop to these two challenges, McKenna presents her interpretations of biblical accounts and stories — the Creation, the Serpent and the Question, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark, Amos and Isaiah, Trees in the Bible, Jesus' Geography as Told by Water, New Heaven and New Earth, and The Eighth Day. The author, as always, includes a series of illuminating spiritual stories from many different traditions to shed light on taking care of the trees, rocks, animals, seas, and the whole creation.
We commend McKenna for her poem about reverencing a snake, for her call to build new arks in these times for mistreated creatures and critters, and for her plea to begin with "the globalization of compassion and an ecology of the heart." We love her concluding prayer and the exuberance she brings to this substantive plea that we love and cherish the good Earth.
