William Wordsworth’s most famous work is “Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Reflections of Early Childhood.” It is one of my favorite poems, exploring the lost pleasures of childhood that Wordsworth believes are hints of the immortality we left behind:

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

And again,

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Setting aside theological mysteries and controversies for another day, what has preoccupied me for that last month and a half has not been immortality, past or future, but increasing intimations of mortality:  My own,as I have experienced an unusual and thought provoking spell of genuine illness, something unusual for me; but also increasing intimations of mortality in the world in which we live, highlighted by the Gulf oil spill but buttressed by a host of other events. Read more »

Care of Creation and Eden Vigil are cohosting a Consultation on Environmental Missions in Manhattan KS July 12-16.  A small group of environmental and missions leaders will spend three days together hashing out issues that will help us to establish Environmental Missions as a new category of missions.  You can read the announcement of the event here – and you can contact Robynn Bliss, event registrar, here if you would like to join us.

Meanwhile, Lowell recently wrote the following piece for the Evangelicals for Social Action newsletter, answering the question, What do we mean by “Environmental Missionary”.  Enjoy!

What Is an Environmental Missionary?

Cheez-its that taste medicinal. Metallic cornflakes. Eggo waffles that remind you of “stale straw”.  Meat that calls to mind cardboard or damp dog hair.

If the recent government effort to reduce salt in processed foods is successful, this is what we will have to eat.  Or so says the food industry according to an astonishing front page article in yesterday’s New York Times (free subscr reqd).

Compared to reducing fat and sugar, for which substitute ingredients have been found, eliminating salt and sodium is turning out to be a major challenge for these companies.  Why is that?  It turns out that without salt – lots and lots of salt – we eaters might discover that the stuff that is being sold to us as delicious, tantalizing and even healthy “food” is really nothing of the sort.

It’s a marketing problem.  Without salt to hide the true nature of these products, we might not buy them.   Why not?  It turns out they don’t taste very good: Read more »

The folks over at crosswalk.com have posted an unusually good summary of my book, Our Father’s World: Mobilizing the Church to Care for Creation.  Most reviews feel as if the reviewer looked at the table of contents and the blurbs on the back cover.  Not so in this case: Whitney Hopler has done such a good summary of the content that I almost wish I’d written it myself.  If you haven’t got the book yet, or have it but haven’t quite got round to reading it (! I know this true of some of my own friends, so don’t feel bad!), her review/summary is below – you could almost read the summary and fake it in a conversation – not that you would, of course.  [Here's how to order from the Care of Creation website., and keep in mind that this is also a very good summary of the kind of content you get in the Our Father's World seminar - booking information is here.]

Our environment — God’s creation — is in deep trouble. From the effects of climate change and the extinction of animal and plant species to the growing shortage of clean air and water, creation is in a crisis more serious than ever before.

But the good news is, there’s no better group of people to help solve the problem than Christians. It’s us — those who love God — whom He has called to take care of the environment He made. And if we’re faithful to that call, He’ll empower us to heal our suffering creation.

God is counting on you. Here’s how you can mobilize your church to care for creation: Read more »

I am having a hard time believing that we have been watching the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico for four full weeks, and only this morning did we have the first bit of partially good news – an attempt to siphon some of the oil into a tanker is starting to work.  No one dares to say this is even the start of a solution – it has just made the current situation a little less bad.  Meanwhile, reports over the weekend suggested that one of the reasons not as much oil has reached land as originally anticipated is because the stuff is lurking underwater, in enormous “plumes” – one of which might be as large as 10 miles by 3 miles.  Read more »

“Old Literature” is an occasional series pointing to works of the past, sometimes well known, sometimes not, that have embedded in them a clear creation care message.  [Check out previous posts in the series here.] C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books are perfect subjects for this series, and have long been on my mental list.  Before I got to him, though, Dean Ohlman at Wonder of Creation blog did the job for me, with a little Isaac Watts and John Newton thrown in for good measure.  Here is his meditation on Narnia – reposted by permission: