Creation Care on Earth Day and Every Day
When I was around 13 years old, our new next-door neighbor came by with an unusual request: Did we mind if she built a birdhouse in her backyard? I’m not sure how someone could say no to that—my parents certainly seemed bemused—or even why they would want to deny an elderly lady the right to keep some birds around for company. Come June, the summer before I started high school, I realized exactly what the issue was: birds are loud. Especially parrots. And when the dawn starts breaking before 5am and you’re a hormonal teenager staying up past midnight . . . well, I came to despise birds.
Just to clarify: I’ve never intentionally caused physical harm to a bird of any sort.
As for unintentionally… well, we take care of what we love, don’t we? But what about the things we don’t see, or walk past unblinkingly, or quickly scroll past, or put headphones on to ignore? Those things we can harm with our apathy. What we find unworthy of our attention becomes a person without a home to shelter in, or a home destroyed by a bomb or a missile or a drone attack.
A bird without its forest, or its wetland, or its sandy shore.
Today, on Earth Day, I think about how caring about social problems and caring about ecological impacts are intertwined. A consumerist mindset that prizes accumulation above all else results in the devastation of environments that nurture not only flora and fauna, but provide food and water to human creatures as well. And when humans are without food and water, they encroach on other environments, pushing out the plants and animals residing there. The pattern keeps repeating and expanding, resulting in things like fires and floods, climate migration, and species extinction.
During our monthly Peace Catalyst meeting, we discussed what had made us happy over the last few days. Nearly all of us mentioned birdsong. My colleague Steve then revealed his theory: you know you’re hitting middle age when you start appreciating the sounds of birds; you know you’re officially there when you’re wondering which bird sings which song.
And, as I’ve learned myself, when you know which birds are nearby and you’re cheered by their warbles and trills, you’re far more likely to want to protect them. Even if you live in a small apartment, you might plant a few containers with red, orange, and/or white flowers near a shallow dish filled with rocks and pebbles where the birds can stop for a drink. You might learn that birds could use supplemental food year round—especially after heavy rains or during a period of drought—and upcycle a plastic bottle and those old chopsticks buried in the silverware drawer into an easy bird feeder that even your children could make (and in having them help, they might not grow into teens who rail about birds like some of us did). And while paying attention to the birds can lead you to make decisions that help on an individual level, becoming a citizen scientist—tracking and contributing your findings—advances research and promotes larger conservation efforts. Cornell even has a free online class to bring you into a virtual global community to better love and protect birds.
But—childhood traumas notwithstanding—birds are pretty easy to care about. The bubbly chirp of a house wren, the graceful swoops of a swallow, the quiet mystery of an owl, the majestic appearance of a bald-headed eagle . . . with a little attention, people don’t need much convincing. What, though, about the rest of this animal planet?
In his recent book Creation Care Discipleship, Steven Bouma-Prediger opened my eyes to the Book of Job, one that I didn’t pay much attention to, having been taught that its basic message is to trust God, even when life seems unfair. But what if its last few chapters (38–42) can teach us what it means “to be human in the world”? In asking Job if he can feed a lion or teach a hawk to soar or capture a hippopotamus, God is reminding him (and us!) that we are not the center of creation. It is a relationship, this world, between the Creator, the human, and the plants and animals, and air and water; and the human cannot make himself the focal point. That also requires revering not only that which we find adorable, or charming, or beautiful, or pleasing to the ear, but also that which is slimy, or hostile, or menacing, or downright revolting. God nurtures the Behemoth and the Leviathan; therefore, so must we.
Advocating for ecological justice in this dismal, terrifying world where we need to stop unfair imprisonment and governments rewriting history and the mass deaths of hundreds of thousands is already difficult. Even with God on my side, I was pretty skeptical about getting others to care about protecting things like giant squids. But then I read about the importance of mosquitos—the one animal I’d always questioned God having made, given how much they enjoy supping on my sweet, sweet blood. I learned that a bat can eat up to 300 mosquitos and other insects per hour. Now, you might argue that we don’t need bats either, given their tendency to get tangled in people’s hair and sometimes turn into vampires. But without bats, we wouldn’t have the saguaro cactus, cacao, or avocados.
I’ve always felt that love of the Creator should lead to love of all that is created . . . in the abstract, anyway. But those mosquitos, dude. Those mosquitos. It took realizing that if bats went hungry, I would never again have avocado toast to understand that I need to find a way to live in peace with mosquitos, too.
Every morning when I check my newsfeeds, I’m once again filled with fear, with sadness, with rage. It seems counterintuitive to find one more thing to care about—especially when that thing is a mosquito. But deep, dark chocolate makes me happy. Cacti decorated as Christmas trees make me happy. Tugging at that thread, I can plant herbs that naturally repel mosquitoes (basil, lavender) and put a fan out on my porch on summer evenings. I can even build a bat box to help keep the mosquito population down and the avocado trees flourishing.
These hands-on tasks help me feel like I’m making a difference, contributing something tangible to this messed-up world that we live in. But in time, they’ll also help me care for the bats in and of themselves, as I’ve come to do with the birds simply by watching and listening. What God has created is not simply for us humans to use, or even admire. Everything has a purpose.
Paying a bit more attention to the natural world around me has helped me realize that all of us are endowed with the gifts of the Spirit. And that, in turn, has helped me let go a bit of my need to fix this entire burning world. I must do what I can, as much as I am able, using the talent and skills I’ve been given, both to serve my neighbor and to attract others’ attention to their plight and to the ways we must advocate for their dignity.
But I must also trust that others out there will step up to do what they can, whenever possible, with the abilities the Creator has granted to them. I’m not meant to do this alone. Neither are the birds, nor the bats.
Neither are you.
This blog was originally posted at: https://substack.com/home/post/p-160248034
Kirsten Schlewitz is Peace Catalyst Program Director in Belgrade, Serbia. She educates current and future pastors and church leaders on how peacebuilding can bridge their congregations’ spiritual practices, and she also engages in digital ministry to help Christians adopt peacebuilding as a way to live out their faith. Learn more about Kirsten here.
