faith and work on Conservation

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even k...

If we are to be God’s image-bearers with regard to creation, then we will carry on his pattern of work. His world is not hostile, so that it needs to be beaten down like an enemy. Rather, its potentia...

All the great agricultural systems which have survived have made it their business never to deplete the earth of its fertility without at the same time beginning the process of restoration.

G. K. Chesterton was well-known (and iconoclastic) in his defense of tradition in a time when progress was all the rage in Western Europe- in technology, in the sciences, in philosophy. Chesterton, on...

Make all you can, save all you can, so that you can give away all you can. Actual quote: "Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly, saved all you can, Then, 'give all you can.'&qu...

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season,...

Work supplies the physical, psychological, artistic, and religious needs of communities extending to the ends of the earth. Furthermore, through work, we create abundance out of which we help meet the...

The savings bank of human existence is the weekly Sabbath.

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

As we keep or break the Sabbath day, we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

Never mistake motion for action.

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our comm...

No work is insignificant. All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)

Precisely because our frenzy is fundamentally aimless while remaining driven, we set ourselves goals whose main purpose is to keep the frenzy going until it consummates itself in sloth. If at present ...

Nor, indeed, can a man properly be said to save anything, if he only lays it up. You may as well throw your money into the sea, as bury it in the earth. And you may as well bury it in the earth, as in...

We might say that convictions are firmly held moral or religious beliefs that guide our beliefs, actions, or choices.

If you keep a bow always bent, it will break presently; but if you let it go slack, it will be the fitter for use when you want it.

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

Food production entails at every stage judgments and practices that bear directly on the health of the earth and living creatures, on the emotional, economic, and physical well-being of families and c...

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

We cannot abandon the soil for the microwave.

Keeping sabbath may involve us in relinquishing certain kinds of power on behalf of other kinds. If we allow it, sabbath may bring us to true authority, true power. The road is that of letting go, rat...

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

The other afternoon, in an effort to avoid doing my work, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It turned out to be a fitting choice, as Thoreau has quite a bit to say about wasting time. “The cos...

Modernity slowly weakened spirituality, by design and accident, in favor of commerce; it downplayed silence and mere being in favor of noise and constant action. The reason we live in a culture increa...

Ambition has no rest.

O gracious Father, who opens your hand and fills all living things with abundance: Bless the lands and waters, and multiply the harvests of the world; send your Spirit into the world, that it may rene...

It is an expression of the grace of God. It can be a charisma, that is, a gift of the Spirit. It is inspired by the cross of Christ. It is proportionate giving. It contributes to equality. It mu...

Here is the uncomfortable truth: Humans run to a much slower evolutionary clock than our inventions. To use an engineering term, we are the “gating factor” that keeps a process from running faster. It...