At age 4 I visited Eden, a glade lit by the rising sun filtered through the morning mist but still strong enough to summon reflected light from each dewy twig and branch spreading a soft glow over the glade. A blooming plum tree scarcely taller than I held a nesting dove whose mourning blessed the air. Lacking descriptive language, I was absorbed in the glory of the scene, each sense alive to the slightest nuance of sight and sound, each pore of my skin open to the caress of the quiet air. I understood that God was in heaven and all was right with the world. Father’s rifle fired! Feathers and petals fell to the ground. I fled the scene, knowing that man had the power to destroy Eden.

Mother Nature has continued to astound me with her treasures and challenge my mind to understand her. Meanwhile, my fellow men have continued to destroy our natural heritage by mountaintop mining, fracking and tar sands exploitation. Modern man has become a cancer on our planet.

Scriptures condemn men’s inclination to exempt themselves from nature’s law by amassing wealth and power at the expense of their fellows and to celebrate their individuality through self-indulgence.

Taking more of nature’s bounty than we need to sustain our existence accelerates a death spiral. Alternatively, we could “live simply that others may simply live.” Rather than deprive ourselves, we delegate moral leadership to clergymen, who, desirous of maintaining their influence and aware of our propensity to kill the bearer of bad tidings, abandon the scriptural teachings, preferring to kindly absolve believers from the consequences of their gluttony. Some religious people even assert that a religious community’s material wealth is a sign of divine favor.

We must start reclaiming our natural heritage. No virtual reality can compensate for the loss of Eden.

John E. Gibson

Owatonna