This morning, a friend shared a quote with me that he believed summed up what we had been saying about God - for one, that neither of us believed in 'Him' but instead in the nature Gods - the deities of the ocean, forest, mountain and rivers. We agreed this was highly metaphorical - to us, it was about worshipping and respecting nature.

Written by astrophysicist Hubert Reeves, the quote forces us to reflect on how we can worship this unseen God and destroy the very visible natural world that we depend on for our existance.

“Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible God and destroys a visible Nature. Unaware that this Nature he’s destroying is this God he’s worshipping.”
― Hubert Reeves

How irrational we are to adhere to religious or spiritual beliefs that revolve around a unseeable desity when at the same time we destroy the tangible, observable beauty that surrounds us! It certainly raises questions about our priorities and what we understand to be 'divine'.

How absolutely bonkers it is to bow down to something beyond our senses, to raise churches, to go to war for, to create entire institutions around this God, when we utterly neglect the wonders of the natural world. We pollute rivers, we deforesting landscapes, we pillage the ocean - and utterly pay no mind to the idea that nature is, according to our understanding of a creator God, actually an embodiment or manifestation of divinity.

We argue that we witness God in the beauty of rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, mountains, and forests. We believe such wonders are provided by and created for us by a higher power. Yet, we also engage in activities that harm, exploit, destroy and annihilate these very creations. How can we see God in the utter, breathless magnificence of nature - and build industry that degrade it for profit?

Reeves' quote is a reminder to reconcile our spiritual beliefs and our care for the environment. What are our real priorities? If we truly believed in God, we should also be fostering a deep connection to the world that He created. We are caretakers of the wild, and must recognize the divine within the visible, tangible world, and to protet and preserve it as a reflection of the very God we claim to worship.

For the record, the deity I bow down to is of the mountain, river and forests. It is in the dew on mushrooms, the fern frond unfurling afer a forest fire, the dawn birds and the night birds both. This is the divinity worth fighting for. This is the divinity I worship above all.