Environmanitarianism

Posted by admin on Oct 21, 2008 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

After over 20 hours of travelling, I had slept on bananas, been thrown from the roof of a car into a ditch, waded through mud, and lost three pairs of shoes. But I finally got there; El Nido, a cove on the northeast side of the island Palawan, nestled between the mainland and the Malaysian and Indonesian islands. Known for its extraordinary dives, underground rivers, secret lagoons, unique flora and fauna and breathtaking sunsets on beaches, I hardly believed it was real. I had heard tales of the island’s beauty, untouched by man-made structures.

After a few days of practicing the language, I convinced a boy to take me out to a secret lagoon. We pushed off the beach and after twenty minutes we had come to a wall of limestone cliffs. The cliffs cut out over the water and went straight up. The boy could see I was getting nervous and said to me, “It’s ok, wait and you’ll see.” We came to the edge of the cliffs and the boy stopped the boat. He pointed me downwards into the water and instructed me to swim down 10 to 15 feet to find a wide hole in the rock wall. I dove down; the hole was exactly where he said it would be and I swam through the tunnel to the other side.

What I found was amazing; it made me glad I had only my memories and no camera to preserve it. The sun was shining down and fish came up to kiss my toes. I treaded water, wholly overcome by the beauty. It was Eden; untainted, secretive, protected and perfect. Was this the closest I had ever been to His image, what He saw when He dreamed up “the Garden?” As I swam, I thought of the creation account in Genesis and longed to understand the Creator and the created.

I allowed what I saw to change my life. I got a glimpse into the life of the earth before its beauty was disturbed by the carelessness and ignorance of man. I saw that my own failings had contributed to its demise. We are at a critical point with the environment; if we don’t make significant changes now the beauty we see around us might not be there for our children. Moreover, we are commanded to rule over the earth, to subdue it; it is our responsibility and can even be our joy. I do believe there is godliness in making positive decisions about caring for the earth, almost like worship. This is our calling, but it starts with small steps; walking, carpooling, reusing bags, recycling, and eating less meat, dairy and eggs.

While I understood why we were given the order to take care of the earth, I had another revelation. That no matter the beauty of this place, as the pinnacle of creation I was even more beautiful; that as human, I had been created in the image of God, which can’t be said of anything else on the planet. Mysteriously, seeing creation helped me see the beauty in myself. I never wanted to forget this. So, on the way back through the hole, I grabbed a shell and later put it on a necklace to remind myself of my responsibility to see God in others and the earth.

After being in El Nido, I could understand how a person who didn’t know God might get caught up in a sort of nature-worship, or how environmentalism might become a person’s god or religion. I too saw the mysterious spirituality of the earth, speaking my name and calling it out through colours of petals and sand, begging for the attention it was created to have.