Earth Day: What Earth do we celebrate?
A Christian Science perspective: What are we cherishing, valuing, looking to understand and preserve?
There are many things in our lives that point to the concept of exhaustible. The physical world, our bodies, fossil fuels, minerals, aquifers that are pumped faster than they can replenish, point to finite resources. Then there are certain things, even within the physical world, such as the sun, the wind, or water cycles, which stand as metaphors for continuing renewal.
It’s helpful to ponder the many things that are, in fact, inexhaustible. Take mathematics or music, for instance. The more you employ multiplication, the more you see how constant it is. The more you rely on the tone of A or the interval of a third in music, the more you recognize that they will never change, that they never wear out. Tones in the scale don’t need a vacation from overuse. They don’t need renewal time. Multiplication doesn’t need updating. And the possibilities for their application are equally endless. No one wars over shortages in notes or numbers, or argues over their equitable distribution.
Then there are things, such as unconditional love, undeviating honesty, good humor, generosity, forgiveness, kindness, order, creativity, ingenuity, wisdom, which all only broaden and strengthen with practice. We don’t mine these things from the earth. We don’t hoard them or calculate their expiration date or estimated depletion. They are always available for unlimited application, only becoming more and more apparent and fruitful with use. Why?
There is an insightful description of Earth that goes like this: “A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end.
“To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 585).
This spiritual perspective of Earth reveals a different condition of existence and points to the possibilities for transforming our experience, our world. Stuck in a limited, matter-based, earth-bound perspective, we see only the restrictions of our planet. But as we allow ourselves to live “in earth as it is in heaven,” as Jesus said it in the Lord’s Prayer, we open up vast, unlimited resources of opportunity, energy, solution, and possibility because we have plugged into the infinite, into God.
God, as divine Love, as divine Principle, is always inexhaustible good. All the ideas, qualities of life, that we or Earth will ever need, are actually in abundant and constantly available supply. Spiritual resources are so far beyond the imagination of vast undiscovered, underground resources. But what good is a power source that we either don’t know exists or don’t access? These proverbs provide some insight:
- “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare).
- “As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7).
Perhaps we need to see that as we think of Earth, so it is. As we cherish Earth this Earth Day, what are we cherishing, valuing, looking to understand and preserve? We can let the unlimited realm of divine Mind, of infinite ideas, fuel the discoveries and innovations we need in order to cherish Earth more spiritually. This is a most practical thing to do. There are no limits to the good we can do as we see Earth and ourselves as ever spiritually self-renewing.