A RANT AND A PRAYER FROM THE BUCKET DURING THE PANDEMIC

 THE EARTH IS TAKING A BREATHER

from the predation, pollution and destructiveness of mankind. 

We are reading tales of the skies clearing over  smog dense areas of China and India. Also the canals of Venice are cleaner and fish are seen there after many long years  away.

So for a relatively brief time the entire earth and the skies above are  free of  human waste products  that have  transformed them. We know from Genesis that after God created the world He looked at it and said that it was all good.

What has changed that is the result of centuries of human rampages, excesses and the emission of dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere.
Forests have been  destroyed and now the last immense rain forest of the Amazon is also under attack. This destructiveness is the true measure of what the human stewardship of Divine Creation has actually amounted to.

It is heartening to see what improvements  our world has made to rid  itself of the poisons of human activity in such a brief interlude.  We see that the world is always trying to clean itself.

Recent Nature shows on PBS have also described and demonstrated what happens when the balance between prey and predator is upset.
They show that when rabbits multiply so do their predators encouraged by the rich food supply.  But when the predators become too many and too greedy and the  rabbit population shrinks in time the predators  must leave and go to an area where  prey is still plentiful.
 When the predators leave, the rabbits  begin to restore their numbers rapidly.  And so the cycle starts anew. It is a cycle of a kind of supply and demand.

So if the human predators on earth have become too greedy and voracious, they too will  destroy the very thing that  nourishes them and this will trigger a  blight of the human population to save the prey itself.

That is one way to understand the Coronavirus and the expectation that there will be more world wide  pandemics. That may be nature's way of counter-attacking the marauding human  predators.
After all, nature is a living entity and we are all part of nature. We are not separate from Nature. 

 I recall  a funny cartoon that I saw many year ago  Two birds are sitting on a tree branch and two people are walking under that branch. One of the humans says "Feels great to be back in Nature."
One bird turns to the other and says "Where do they  think they have been ?

That is a good question--where have we been?  We have always been in NATURE; how can we get to anyplace else  before death.  


NOW FOR THE PRAYER--

Our Father, 
Who created all that exists. Please help me to see my unity with all life and my responsibility to protect all life. 
 Please help me to curb my greedy or hurtful or ignorant behaviors.
Please help me to cherish all the creatures that you have made and help me to see that my dominion over them is that of a steward, a helper and not a destroyer.
Please Holy Father in Heaven help me to see that it was the INCARNATION that made humanity special--"THE WORD BECAME FLESH AND WALKED AMONG US." 

We were saved, but the rest of Creation did not require salvation because trees, plants, animals, are not capable of wrong-doing. 
There is nothing to forgive. Oftentimes mankind has distorted their natures through goading them into fighting and dying for our amusement.
Please help me to see and protect the beauty that you have created.  Help me to be  allied with the sanctity and salvation of all creation. AMEN