![]() Its rather treacly sentimentality and continuing popularity in a far more cynical age moved Monty Python to parody:īut Monty Python’s mockery actually reinforces, rather than rejects, my fundamental point: Urchins, squid, hornets, sharks matter too. Written in 1848, the words to this hymn are steeped in Victorian romanticism, extolling the glowing colors of each little flower, the tiny wings of each little bird. ![]() “Fair are the meadows fairer still the woodlands.” Or perhaps for me and so many others, most memorably: And a great many of those hymns are songs of praise and thanksgiving for creation’s wonders. What I want to talk about today is the preservation of the world-its glaciers, its forests, its waterways, its species-in the face of the crisis of global warming and environmental change.Īmong the most powerful memories of my childhood experiences in church and Sunday School are hymns that still echo in my mind. ![]() ![]() But it is also a question with deeply spiritual implications concerning what we owe not just to one another and our descendants but to whatever god or transcendent being or divine force we might believe in. ![]() It is an obligation to our children and to their children, and it is in one sense a quite simple matter of human self-interest and survival. Today I want to speak about one such obligation, one I am asking our community to take on with new focus and new force. ![]()
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