Elucidations

  ‘I prayed with my heart, everything around me seemed delightful and marvellous. The trees, the grass, the birds, the earth, the air, the light seemed to be telling me that they existed for man’s sake, that they witnessed to the love of God for man, that everything proved the love of God for man, that all things prayed to God and sang his praise.’ This description of prayer captures the sense of God in all things central to Christianity. It comes from the Russian classic ‘Way of a Pilgrim’ which encourages repeating the Jesus Prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner’ as aid to praying without ceasing and feeling one with nature. Given the enormity of the environmental crisis I find this sense of creation praising God in tension with its ‘groaning in labour pains’ awaiting ‘be[ing] set free from its bondage to decay [to] obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God’ (Romans 8:21-22). Both passages, ‘Way of a Pilgrim’ and Romans, imply a link betwee...