Reflection on Genesis 1, 1-19 for EARTH DAY ( April 22)

The Bible's story of the creation of the world is a very popular story. It is a beautiful narration of God's creating in seven days, and it is also a story which has caused much discord and argument among people. The argument is based on whether or not God created exactly the way it is written in the Bible.

The story of creation, however, is written for our inspiration and our amazement at God's wonderful kindness toward us. This world is an expression of God's love and greatness, and it is given to us for care and protection. This Genesis section of the creation story tells us about the first four days of creation. The term "day" is not a 24-hour period as we know it in our time. A "day," rather, indicates a season or period of time of some unknown duration.

In the first three "days" of creation, God creates light, water, earth. On the fourth day, God creates galaxies with sun, moon, and stars. This fourth day seems to have special significance for the balance of our universe. The sun and moon give the rhythm of day and night, of season and of balance in the universe. It is the sun and moon which regulate the motion of the planet and which even influence some patterns of emotion and

health in us humans and all other living beings. To all of this, we, too, can say with God "how good it is."

Let us be grateful for Earth and the ever expanding universe that gives us cause for amazement and wonder. These are the beginning of wisdom.

--Rosemarie Greco, DW

Earth Day: Preserving a Healthy Biosphere

The resilience of the community of life and the well-being of humanity depend upon preserving a healthy biosphere with all its ecological systems, variety of plants and animals, fertile soils, pure waters and clean air.

Earth Charter

Care for the Community of Life

Care for the community of life with understanding, compassion, and love.

Earth Charter, Principle 2

In Celebration of Earth Day 2010

The story of the universe is now being told as the epic story of evolution by scientists. We begin to understand our human identity with all the other modes of existence that constitute with us the single universe community.

The one story includes us all. We are, everyone, cousins to one another. Every being is intimately present to and immediately influencing every other being. We see quite clearly what happens to the nonhuman happens to the human. What happens to the outer world happens to the inner world. If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of the clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human. (Thomas Berry, The Great Work, 2000)