It is hard to think about ...

It is hard to think about our planet hundreds or more years from now. It is particularly hard if one is an environmentalist at heart... We know that we, in a physical sense, will not be here. There are those like myself who are at an age where our days on earth are numbered, and we are keenly aware of that fact. But, I feel at times "punished" for my and similarly others' failure to seemingly have any impact at all to stem the tide, to slow the march ... towards our children's deprivation of the natural world. It is heart wrenching....

If we believe that God created the heavens, the earth, and the living entities that inhabit our planet (and I do), then why do we keep failing (in a collective and majority sense) to see the earth with the reverence for all life that he intended. Was it all just for "us"? For an eternity? Are we the "stewards" he intended?

I watched CSPAN this week as our two Senators from North Carolina each calmly and without remorse (or seeming sense of failure) voted to forever change God's beautiful landscape and true wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I am not angry, just consumed with an overwhelming sense of loss .... The votes of our senators and others were not made with malice aforethought. I know that. Maybe it was not an easy decision to make for them. It is not cause for a "fight"...

But for me, it was like attending the funeral of an admired friend on lifesupport and knowing that "we" had collectively agreed in our pious state of consciousness ... to pull the plug ... and to say goodbye to ANWR as we have known it, and as God created it ... as a "gift" to all of "us".

Forgive us, God - for "we know not what we do".

Lyn Adams