23 September, Season of Creation XXIV: aquatic life, Laudato Si’ VIII.

41. In tropical and subtropical seas, we find coral reefs comparable to the great forests on dry land, for they shelter approximately a million species, including fish, crabs, molluscs, sponges and algae. Many of the world’s coral reefs are already barren or in a state of constant decline. “Who turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of colour and life?” This phenomenon is due largely to pollution which reaches the sea as the result of deforestation, agricultural monocultures, industrial waste and destructive fishing methods, especially those using cyanide and dynamite. It is aggravated by the rise in temperature of the oceans. All of this helps us to see that every intervention in nature can have consequences which are not immediately evident, and that certain ways of exploiting resources prove costly in terms of degradation which ultimately reaches the ocean bed itself.

42. Greater investment needs to be made in research aimed at understanding more fully the functioning of ecosystems and adequately analysing the different variables associated with any significant modification of the environment. Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another. Each area is responsible for the care of this family. This will require undertaking a careful inventory of the species which it hosts, with a view to developing programmes and strategies of protection with particular care for safeguarding species heading towards extinction.

All Creatures are dependent on one another, but humans can consciously care for this family. Francis is strongly supporting the scientists here.

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October 15: Readings from Mary Webb:VII, A wonder greater than any myth.

 

I promised more Mary Webb, since a good many readers share my enjoyment of her writing which complements our long-running theme of Laudato Si’. She takes me back to Shropshire, though in her time hillsides that are silent today were loud with mining or the ironworks along the Severn River. ‘Those atoms that move invisibly’, however, set me thinking of the stars and interstellar dust, the clay from which our world, and we were made. But no, she is in the Shropshire hills. Lay down beside her, and Laudato Si’!

When no tread of man or beast disturbs the silence, we are haunted by the footsteps of the dust – of all those atoms that move invisibly and mysteriously to fresh unions for the building of hills and the hollowing of valleys. On such a day all the ripples of motion are in full flow; the tide of growth is coming in; all green things and flowers hold out their arms to the sun. In autumn the tide ebbs; leaf and petal look down to the soil whence they came, as if they heard a call and longed to go back and intermingle with their kin; softly the petal flings herself down, and the leaf is not long in following. They go, not to death, but to a new incarnation among the unseen company that moves in silence, busier than a hive, creating daily a wonder greater than any myth – the world around us, with its mutable grace.

From The Spring of Joy:II Joy.