Earth Centered Spirituality ~ Forrest Church

"We may fairly describe our ancient ancestors' worship and fear of nature's gods as primitive religion. You would think that an enlightenment tradition would celebrate having graduated from so-called superstition and never look back. For many years we did. Yet, in recent years many liberal religionists are beginning to discover that with each gain we score in concert with scientific demystifiers, we must protect ourselves from losing something even more important, an intimate experience of the power and mystery of the creation.
One need not accept the tenets of ancient animism to perceive heaven in a mustard seed or a world in a grain of sand. To do so is not to reject rationalism, or even skepticism, which guards us from irrational delusion. Thoughtful people can maintain an eye both critical and open. Turning for inspiration to earth-centered spirituality is not to abandon our critical faculties, but to open them wider, to place ourselves in a larger field and that field under the widest canopy of stars we can imagine. Then, like the first human, for a sacred moment we too may be terrified and filled with awe. We too may experience raw religion. "

"As the prophet Isaiah warned twenty-five centuries ago, "The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers, the heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant." If the letter here differs from that of the earth-centered traditions, the spirit is the same. Again, common values transcend constrasting beliefs. Different sources flow into the same river, which flows into the one cosmic sea." 


More at   http://forrestchurch.com/writings/sermons/for-beauty-of-earth.html