Mother Nature

Perhaps Mass isn't the best place to think about Mother Nature, but today my mind wouldn't stop and get locked in the sermon our handsome and talented preecher shared with us. My mind was a sharp, shiny ping pong ball jumping around the place, from stories to be written, to stories once started to their continuation. From scenes and plots that didn't have any place in the ship of the church, the little ball of my attention bounced onto the nature surrounding us, slowly swinging in the wind past the large window panes.

Bits and pieces of the sermon leaked in and the little, shiny ball slowed down and stuck there with a question: What's Mother Nature's place in our religion? Perhaps, even, what's the place of Mother Nature in the main religions of Western Societies? We pray and admit one God, us Christians talk of one God composed of three parts: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, where to my understanding, the Holy Spirit - unexplained for most - is basically the energy of the Universe. However, Mother Nature has been somewhat excluded. Her name can be used today in the frame of folklore or among environmentalists and treehuggers, but the rest look at the concept and at her as a romantic, surreal concept used for propaganda and unreasonable dreams.

There are many theories, among them the theories of woman-centric activists who call themselves "feminists", who claim that the exclusion of Mother Earth or Mother Nature from the frame of the main religions is simply due to the attempt to turn societies man-centric, paternalists, and erase any trace of matronist societies. Though this is posible, as well as it is also possible that the erradication of Mother Nature or Mother Earth as deity happened in the frame of the conversion of older, Pagan societies into the current main ones (particularly Christianity, which is the case I know somewhat), in order to set the difference with the previous religion and the previous customs.

Through ages, the respect, love and care for Mother Nature declined, and a desperate, spiteful race started to conquer her, submit her, break her and tame her as if she were nothing else than a wild animal that can be trapped in a farm and profited from. And she was chased and cut and forced into tamed farm fields that drained them and robbed her from her natural, God given fertility.

In there, a house of prayer and adoration, I wondered, why we don't make space for her in our lives and our meditation. She doesn't have to be considered a goddess, but she is certainly Holy, and as such she shall be respected.

It may be the influence of the seasons talking through me, but yet I still wonder, does it take shine from our love to God, to turn our eyes to her, also His creation and treat her with the respect and veneration she deserves? I'm talking about more than celebrations and rituals, I'm talking about the daily observance of her. Would it hurt us if we mention her in our prayers? Would it delay us too much if we take a minute of our day to do something for her? Mind your purchases, reject plastic bags, reusing, recycling, prefering the natural products to the synthetic, buying rationally, considering what we really need, and reducing the waste.

We may live in concrete cities surrounded by plastic, metal and glass, with nights lightened with artificial lights, but still, she's there, so let's remember her, rescue her and bring her back to our lives.