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Quotes on Responding with Love and Care for
Mother Earth
Under the
rubric of the Oblate Ecological Initiative,
Rev. Darrell Rupiper, OMI visits parishes in
order to spread the Good News of the
importance of respecting God's creation,
both as individuals and as a global
community. Uncredited quotes can be
assumed to have been written by Fr.
Rupiper. If you are interested in bringing
Fr. Rupiper to your parish to speak, please
contact him at
drupiper2000@hotmail.com.
As part of
his ministry, he has provided inspirational
quotes regarding the integrity of creation:
“Be the change you want
to see in the world.” - Gandhi
We must extend our
circle of community to include all that
lives. Can we ever reach the point where
our sensitivities to the loss of a species
will be felt as the loss of a family
member? “When you realize that you have
enough, then you are truly rich.” - Tao te
Ch’ing
“There are two ways to
get enough. One is to continue to
accumulate more and more. The other is to
desire less. - GK Chesterton
“The desire for
continued accumulation is a flawed path to
satisfaction.” - Peter Sawtell
“Every being has its
own interior, its self, its mystery, its
numinous aspect. To deprive any being of
this sacred quality is to disrupt the
total order of the universe. Reverence will
be total or it will not be at all. The
universe does not come to us in pieces any
more than a human individual stands before
us with some part of his/her being.” -
Thomas Berry
“Woven into our lives
is the very fire from the stars and the
genes from the sea creatures, and everyone,
utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant
tapestry of being. This relationship is not
external or extrinsic to our identity but
wells up as the defining truth from our
deepest being.” - Theologian Elizabeth
Johnson
“We stand at a critical
moment in Earth’s history, a time when
humanity must choose its future. As the
world becomes increasingly interdependent
and fragile, the future at once holds great
peril and great promise.” Preamble to Earth
Charter
“Wonder and awe lead to
reverence and reverence leads to
responsibility. Reverence for and
responsibility to the natural world are
intimately connected to each other and to
authentic religious experience.” - Heather
Eaton
“Anytime, day or night,
at home or in the street, wherever we are,
we are bathed in God.” - Dom Helder Camara,
Bishop of Recife Brazil
“Every tradition has an
awareness of the natural world as a primary
place of revelation and religious
experience, a place of beauty, elegance and
inspiration.” - Heather Eaton
“Those of us who
contemplate the world soon come to have a
great sense of wonder. The perfection of
the stars, the beauty of the mountains and
streams, the invigorating quality of clean
ocean air fill us with feelings of
celebration and reverence. We must be
responsible and at the same time express the
wonder of all that we know as humans.” -
A Taoist
“Contemporary society
has become dry, not for lack of wonders but
for lack of wonder.” - GK Chesterton
“It is imperative that
we reawaken to an awareness of a sacred
presence within the Earth’s sublime and
sophisticated life systems including water,
to which the appropriate response is awe.” -
H. Eaton
“Whoever you are, no
matter how lonely, the world offers itself
to your imagination, calls to you, like the
wild geese, harsh and exciting, over
and over announcing your place in the family
of things.” - Mary Oliver
“Just now one of the
significant historical roles of the primal
people of the world is not simply to sustain
their own traditions, but call the
entire civilized world back to a more
authentic mode of being.” - Thomas Berry
In speaking about the
extinction of species Thomas Berry says: “We
are losing splendid and intimate modes of
divine presence.”
“Scientists have
suddenly become aware of the magic quality
of the Earth and the entire universe.” -
Thomas Berry
“The universe shivers
with wonder in the depths of the human.”
- Brian Swimme
Pope John Paul II says that
everything is a manifestation of God’s love,
wisdom, generosity and love. Stop! Where
do you see it manifest right now? Lit is
sink in and give thanks.
If it is
true that it is first and primarily in
nature that God is revealed, (St. Thomas
Aquinas) what step(s) can you take to move
closer to God by becoming more intimate with
nature?
Fr. Thomas Berry made this
alarming statement: “The impending death of
half the Earth’s living species is being
looked at with casual indifference!” Is
your response one of indifference? Can you
think of one way that you can make a
difference?
The
following two statements are literally true.
“We humans are literally the consciousness
of the universe!” “When you sing, it is the
Earth singing!” Please ponder those
statements until you are filled with a sense
of awe. (Again, perhaps)
“See God in
all things, for God is in all things. Every
single creature is full of God and is a book
about God. Every creature is a word of
God!” Meister
Eckhart O.P. 1260-1329
“Understand
the creation if you wish to know the
Creator….For those who wish to know the
great deep must first review the natural
world.” St.
Columbanus (c543-615)
“A mouse is
miracle enough to stagger sextillion
infidels!” Walt Whitman. Do you see the
miracle in the mouse? In trying to see the
miracle it might help to remember that we
humans cannot make a blade of grass.
“A sense of
awe is the beginning of wisdom.”
Abraham Heschel
Seek for the
‘awesome’ and when you are ‘awed’ give
thanks to our Creator.
The simple,
so taken for granted, necessary and precious
gift of water is becoming scarce at a
frightening rate. Can you think of two ways
to conserve fresh water? Remind others.
A Sioux
prayer: “give us the strength to understand,
and the eyes to see. Teach us to walk the
soft Earth as relatives to all that live.”
“Reading about nature is fine,
but if a person walks in the woods and
listens carefully, he can learn more than
what is in books, for they speak with the
voice of God.”
George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
“For when
one considers the universe, can anyone be so
simple-minded as not to believe that the
Divine is present in everything, pervading,
embracing and penetrating it?”
“Do you
think God is sleeping on a pillow in
heaven?...God is wholly present in all of
creation, in every corner, behind you and
before you. If you truly understood a grain
of wheat, you would die of wonder.”
Martin Luther
(1483-1546)
Pope John
Paul II said that in light of the ecological
crisis that we humans are causing, it is
urgent that each person find his/her
ecological vocation. How are you
contributing to the health of our planet?
What else can you do?
All that is,
is holy! Everything you see around you came
from the Earth which came from the hands of
our Creator. All is holy and deserves to be
treated with a sense of reverence.
Our Holy
Father has said that we have not been good
stewards of the Earth but autonomous
despots. What change can you make in your
life to become a better steward?
“Teach your
children that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the
children of the earth.”
Chief Seattle
“A man is
truly ethical only when he obeys the
compulsion to help all life which he is able
to assist, and shrinks from injuring
anything that lives….Life is sacred to
him.” Albert
Einstein (1875-1965)
“The heavens
are telling the glory of God; and the
firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.”
Psalm 19
Join with
the heavens in thanking and praising our
God.
“Christ is
someone and something within the very
structure of the cosmos itself, the pattern
on which the universe was conceived, is
built and is now developing.” Ron
Rolheiser, OMI “for in him all things in
heaven and earth were created…all things
have been created through him and for him.”
Colossians
“The fact
that Christ is cosmic and that nature is
shaped in his likeness means too that God’s
face is manifest everywhere. If physical
creation is patterned on Christ, then we
must search for God not just in our
scriptures, in our saints and in our
churches…”
Ron Rolheiser,
OMI
A prayer: “O
God, enlarge within us the sense of
fellowship with all living things, our
brothers the animals to whom thou gavest the
earth as their home in common with us….May
we realize that they live not for us alone,
but for themselves and for thee, and that
they love the sweetness of life.”
St.
Basil the Great (329-379)
Do you think of squirrels, etc. as enjoying
that sweetness of life?
“This we
know, the Earth does not belong to us; we
belong to the Earth. We did not weave the
web of life; we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web we do to
ourselves.” Chief
Seattle
Oblate Ecological Initiative
Darrell Rupiper, OMI
5531 S. Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60637
Cell 760-469-7323
Contact
Rev. Darrell Rupiper,
OMI |
