Why we preserve nature

Bobby lets the words fall out

I heard these words spoken last night on a podcast while I was washing dinner dishes.

I fell to my knees in tears right at the kitchen sink.

I invite you to tell me, if you know, (1) who spoke these words, (2) where these words were spoken, and (3) how this unscripted, impromptu speech spoken in that context changes your perception of current events.

No snark, please. These words are sacred:

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“The reason we protect the environment is because there’s a spiritual connection.

“There’s, you know, a love that we have—I got into the environment because there’s this connection to the fishes, the birds, and the wildlife, and the whales—the purple mountains majesty—and I understood the way that God talks to human beings through many vectors: through each other, through organized religions, through the prophets, the wise people, the great books of those religions… but nowhere with the kind of detail and texture and joy and grace as He does through Creation.

“And when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine, to understand who God is and what our own potential is and what our duties are as human beings.

“And that is not about quantifying stuff. That’s what the Devil does. He quantifies everything, and that’s what he wants us doing: put a number on it.

“And the reason we’re preserving these things is because we love our children, because nature enriches us economically and spiritually and culturally and historically. It connects us to those 10,000 generations of human beings who were here before laptops, and it connects us to the most important spiritual lessons.

“All of the organized religions that we know of today—the central revelation of those religions occurred in the wilderness.

“Moses has to go into the wilderness of Mt. Sinai to hear God’s voice and see the burning bush.

“Mohammad, who was a city boy from Mecca, had to go to the wilderness of Mt. Hira, on a camping trip with his kids, and wrestle the angel Gabriel in the middle of the night to have the first stanzas of the Quran squeezed from him.

“Buddha had to go into the wilderness and wander for years and sit under the Bodhgaya tree to get his first revelation of nirvana.

“And Christ had to spend 40 days in the wilderness to discover his divinity for the first time. And his mentor was John the Baptist, who lived in a cave in the Jordan Valley. He ate the honey of wild bees and locusts. And all of Christ’s parables come from nature: ‘I am the vine, and you are the branches,’ the mustard seed, the little swallows, scattering the seeds on the fallow ground.

Because that is where we sense the Divine. God talks to us through the fishes, the birds, the leaves—they’re all words from our Creator.

“And that is why we preserve Nature.”

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