(Photo of a colza field, by Allyson Beaucourt, from Unsplash.)
It was during a morning run that I first found my sacred grove. I was nineteen, and my family was living in St. Andrews, by the North Sea, for the spring. While my parents and sisters stayed in a house on North Street, my brother Joel and I lived in a rented house towards the edge of a nearby suburb. A short walk from our house, you could find a long, sloping gravel road leading out of the cluster of houses and up a relatively rural hillside.
For a month or so, the slope and the gravel trail had deterred me, but one morning, I finally gathered the courage to take my run uphill. As I left the suburb behind, fields of yellow colza flowers spread out on either side of me, and I could see the indigo horizon in the distance, softening to blue. In the field to my left, pronged heads popped up, staring at me with their black-pebble eyes. They were still for a moment, the breeze bending the shafts of colza around their hidden bodies, until they judged that I was too close for comfort and bounded away.
After the colza fields came the cement blocks of a water treatment plant, which was less endearing, but just beyond that, almost at the hilltop, was a small patch of forest. The trees had broad, palmate leaves, like maples, and the aroma of their bark mixed with the scents of moss and soil. Along the ground, the trail shifted from gravel to dirt, thinning and weaving among white stones and fallen logs. There was no one there except me, but the stones had such a prominent, accommodating look to them that I liked to imagine that they’d been arranged as seating for the resident dryads.
(Photo from Wix, sadly, and not from the actual Grove.)
I came to think of this area as the Sacred Grove, a name stolen from the Legend of Zelda video games, and it was meaningful to me for at least two reasons: it let me rest, and it let me play. Whenever I visited that patch of forest, I’d climb one of the trees and find a perch among the branches. Their limbs were strong (I only fell once), so I felt safe, both upheld and protected among the rustling, winged leaves.
There are a number of natural areas where I’ve experienced such opportunities to rest, and I’m grateful for those places. It’s partially out of that gratitude that I find myself wanting to return the favor, offering rest to nature. Similar to how humans will experience stress or unrest, many parts of the environment are suffering unneeded agitation.
In light of the most recent IPCC report (here’s a helpful summary of it from the New York Times), which represents the meta-analyses of thousands of scientists across the globe, I find myself reflecting on the agitations of climate change: the roaring forest fires, the feverish tundra, the bloating oceans, and the exacerbated heat-waves, droughts, and storms around the world. Humans can and have done wonderful things for the environment, but through our role in driving this unprecedented rise in global average temperatures, we have created what is, in many ways, a restless planet.
To be clear, a healthy environment is not characterized by pure serenity, any more than healthy people are. When it’s at its healthiest, our planet trembles with thunder and tempests, roils with the fluctuations of predator and prey, and cycles with the four seasons through withering and flourishing. In the present state of our world, such patterns of rest and ravage are necessary for our ecosystems to thrive.
However, those two elements must be kept in balance, and by raising global average temperatures, human beings have exacerbated natural turmoil, inflicting strife not only on plants and animals, but also on human communities—especially those who are most vulnerable, like the Pakistani farmers who suffer abrupt floods from the thawing Himalayas.
(Photo of the Western Himalayas, by Sukant Sharma, from Unsplash.)
Whatever form these agitations may take, climate change has made our planet restless, and that saddens me. Nature has so often brought me peace, as I’m sure it has done for many others. Remembering that, I am willing to work so that our world may rest.
And it’s not a hopeless battle, either. Our human ingenuity gave rise (unintentionally at first) to our society’s carbon-intensive systems in the first place, so if we deny complacency and pursue sustainable solutions with that same creativity, ambition, and willpower, we can still change things for the better. In fact, that’s one of the central points of our most recent climate report: we may be too late to avoid all the repercussions of climate change, but we still have time to avoid the worst of them, if we act boldly and quickly. It is well within our power to create a relatively stable and thriving planet.
Moreover, though I realize that not all my readers will share this belief, I also take hope in knowing that the Christian God strives alongside us to bring rest to nature. In the Old Testament, God provides places of refuge for birds, goats, and badgers (Ps. 104:17-8), and He also orders Israel to give their fields a year of rest every seventh year, as “a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land” (Lev. 25:4). Both instances express that God desires to bring rest to the natural world. Beyond that, if Jesus extends salvation to nature in addition to humanity (Col. 1:20; Rom. 8:20-3), then I trust that He also extends to nature His promise of salvific rest (Heb. 4:8-10), including rest from the agitations of climate change. Knowing this brings me hope for our planet.
(A polar bear at rest. Photo by Hans-Jurgen Mager, from Unsplash.)
Theology aside, I see the fight against global warming not as a guilt-induced, hopeless struggle against fate, but rather as an act of gratefulness and hope, striving to provide nature the peace and rest that it has so often provided us. The effort is compassionate, and the victory attainable.
With this in mind, I wanted to offer some more encouragement and resources for taking action against climate change. Some may help by giving money to trusted organizations, others by giving time, and others by spreading the word. I realize that most people (myself included) don’t feel called to become a full-time activist, but when lots of people do lots of small things, we can bring about great change. For anyone who feels drawn to that, please refer to my “Climate Action Catalogue."
Our planet is restless, and due to our most recent report from the IPCC, we know that this decade will be crucial for deciding how tumultuous the environment will become. Nonetheless, we still have time to establish a relatively stable and thriving world. We have many opportunities to help, and if we act with zeal and creativity, we can establish peace for the earth.
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