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Quote of the Day: Sister Nature
“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
It’s often said that progressive environmentalism, at least in its most extreme form, is a religion. But instead of worshipping the Creator, its adherents worship the Creation. Their goal is for nature to be utterly pristine, untrammeled, holy. And the role of man/woman/cis-kind is to serve it and sacrifice to it. If we blaspheme Gaia, she will punish us. Repent now or the end is nigh.
Chesterton’s view is much more healthy — and accurate. We are His creation, as is Sister Nature. And, created in His image, we’re charged with protecting her. Just like we would protect our little sister.
Published in General
By the sweat of your brow…
A farmer bought an abandoned farm in a small town and began fixing it up. Some years later, the town preacher came by for a visit.
“Wow,” he said. “What an amazing testament to what God and man can achieve when they work together!”
“That may be,” the farmer said, “but you wouldn’t have wanted to see the place when He was running it by Himself.”
It took William F. Buckley until his fifties to read Moby Dick. He said, “to think I could have died before I had read it.”
What do you mean ‘borders on’?
@Amy Schley
This reminds me of an old joke. A bunch of scientists had in the distant future figured out how to transmute inanimate matter to living animals. They were amazing themselves by designing creatures and one scientist shouted to the heavens, now we are as G-d for we may create life as he did in Genesis.
G-d looked out and said to them. Perhaps we shall have a contest to see who can create the most interesting creatures. The scientists accepted and they designed a beautiful and powerful creature.
Just as soon as they were about to throw the switch, G-d stopped them and said, “Hey now. Get your own dirt.”
Ha. My son, whom I forced to read that book during his senior year in high school, wished at times that he had died during that agonizing time period.
Haha! What I’d like to know is how Buckley got through high school without having to read it.