More Quotes on Creation
- “It is imperative that we reawaken to an awareness of a sacred presence within the Earth’s sublime and sophisticated life systems including water, to which the appropriate response is awe.” – H. Eaton
- “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” – Mary Oliver
- “Just now one of the significant historical roles of the primal people of the world is not simply to sustain their own traditions, but call the entire civilized world back to a more authentic mode of being.” – Thomas Berry
- In speaking about the extinction of species Thomas Berry says: “We are losing splendid and intimate modes of divine presence.”
- “Scientists have suddenly become aware of the magic quality of the Earth and the entire universe.” – Thomas Berry
- “The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human.” – Brian Swimme
- Pope John Paul II says that everything is a manifestation of God’s love, wisdom, generosity and love. Stop! Where do you see it manifest right now? Let it sink in and give thanks.
- If it is true that it is first and primarily in nature that God is revealed, (St. Thomas Aquinas) what step(s) can you take to move closer to God by becoming more intimate with nature?
- Fr. Thomas Berry made this alarming statement: “The impending death of half the Earth’s living species is being looked at with casual indifference!” Is your response one of indifference? Can you think of one way that you can make a difference?
- The following two statements are literally true. “We humans are literally the consciousness of the universe!” “When you sing, it is the Earth singing!” Please ponder those statements until you are filled with a sense of awe. (Again, perhaps)
- “See God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and is a book about God. Every creature is a word of God!” Meister Eckhart O.P. 1260-1329
- “Understand the creation if you wish to know the Creator….For those who wish to know the great deep must first review the natural world.” St. Columbanus (c 543-615)
- “A mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillion infidels!” Walt Whitman. Do you see the miracle in the mouse? In trying to see the miracle it might help to remember that we humans cannot make a blade of grass.
- “A sense of awe is the beginning of wisdom.” Abraham Heschel
- Seek for the ‘awesome’ and when you are ‘awed’ give thanks to our Creator.
- The simple, so taken for granted, necessary and precious gift of water is becoming scarce at a frightening rate. Can you think of two ways to conserve fresh water? Remind others.
- A Sioux prayer: “give us the strength to understand, and the eyes to see. Teach us to walk the soft Earth as relatives to all that live.”
- “Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
- “For when one considers the universe, can anyone be so simple-minded as not to believe that the Divine is present in everything, pervading, embracing and penetrating it?”
- “Do you think God is sleeping on a pillow in heaven?…God is wholly present in all of creation, in every corner, behind you and before you. If you truly understood a grain of wheat, you would die of wonder.” Martin Luther (1483-1546)
- Pope John Paul II said that in light of the ecological crisis that we humans are causing, it is urgent that each person find his/her ecological vocation. How are you contributing to the health of our planet? What else can you do?
- All that is, is holy! Everything you see around you came from the Earth which came from the hands of our Creator. All is holy and deserves to be treated with a sense of reverence.
- Our Holy Father has said that we have not been good stewards of the Earth but autonomous despots. What change can you make in your life to become a better steward?
- “Teach your children that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.” Chief Seattle
- “A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives….Life is sacred to him.” Albert Einstein (1875-1965)
- “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” Psalm 19
- Join with the heavens in thanking and praising our God.
- “Christ is someone and something within the very structure of the cosmos itself, the pattern on which the universe was conceived, is built and is now developing.” Ron Rolheiser, OMI “for in him all things in heaven and earth were created…all things have been created through him and for him.” Colossians
- “The fact that Christ is cosmic and that nature is shaped in his likeness means too that God’s face is manifest everywhere. If physical creation is patterned on Christ, then we must search for God not just in our scriptures, in our saints and in our churches…” Ron Rolheiser, OMI
- A prayer: “O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom thou gavest the earth as their home in common with us….May we realize that they live not for us alone, but for themselves and for thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.” St. Basil the Great (329-379) Do you think of squirrels, etc. as enjoying that sweetness of life?
Quotes without attribution are from Fr. Darrell Rupiper, OMI
