The earth is the Lord's

I rarely know what to expect from a day at work, and that's especially true when I am traveling. When I schedule a meeting with a community contact at one of our sites, I never quite know whether I've set myself up for a hike through the woods, a neighborhood tour, a few minutes holding a precious baby, or just another chat in the office. Yesterday it was a garden tour, right down the street from the house I used to live in here in Birmingham.

The EcoScape Garden at Birmingham-Southern College is full of found objects: wood from the deck of a frat house that had one too many parties now makes a bridge over a tiny stream, broken dishes from local restaurants have been turned into incredible mosaics, a bowling ball is used to create a huge wind chime. As I walked past bright red holly berries, ran my hands through a blanket of fragrant thyme, and envisioned the arrival of spring in this garden in just a few weeks, I found something else: a piece of myself I had been neglecting.

It's the piece of me that sees recycling as an issue of moral responsibility. It's the piece that is utterly captivated by the sunset as I drive home through rush-hour traffic. It's the piece that breathes a deep, satisfying sigh of relief when I find myself surrounded by the quiet beauty of nature.

As I walked through the garden, wishing I didn't have to rush off to another meeting, each stone, each blade of grass spoke to me. Sinking into the muddy trail with each step of my high-heeled boots, I heard words of conviction. The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. How have I been caring for his creation? How have I been celebrating it? How have I been noticing him, praising him because of what he has made? Why haven't I been taking time to plant, to water, to stop and smell the flowers?

In nature there is promise, purpose, peace. Appreciating nature requires the ability to find beauty in life, in death, and in everything in between. Caring for nature demands time, faith, perseverance. In all of this, God speaks. Am I awake, am I open to what he is saying?



i thank you God for most this amazing
i thank You God for most this amazing day:
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;
this is the birthday of life and of love and wings:
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any-
lifted from the no of all nothing-
human merely being doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e.e. cummings