Multiple Dimensions to Healing Earth – Day Six

Peace activist, John McConnell, believed humans have an obligation to take care of the earth, and to share its resources equally, based on such passages as Psalm 115:16. Two years before I was born, in June 1965, McConnell spoke at the National Education Association Convention in Madison Square Garden where the public came together for a “Minute for Peace.” In October 1969, at the National UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, McConnell proposed a global holiday to celebrate Earth’s life and beauty and to advance peace. And in 1970, US Senator Gaylord Nelson established April 22^nd, first as an environmental teach-in, followed by the annual observance.

Growing up in Denver, CO, I remember years of looking toward the foothills, not able to see them for the perpetual brownish haze that lined the Front Range. Despite regulations imposed on oil and gas industries, air samples in some areas remain at greater than national percentages, higher even than refinery-dense Houston. National regulations have made an impact, however. The Clean Air Act, for instance, has been good for overall health and for the economy.

What is often missed in the discussion about environmental concerns is that global warming most acutely impacts the poor. My father-in-law, Howard A. Snyder, cogently discusses this issue, our responsibility to the earth and to the underserved in his Salvation Means Creation Healed. His impulse is much the same as John McConnell’s but Snyder takes the conversation further by suggesting that creation care is part of God’s redemptive plan. If you believe this as I do, perhaps we might be doing more to make things right in and for this world?

Today I had another mind-blowing conversation with my son, Howie chiming in a bit later. We were talking about four-dimensional constructs and the vectors that define them. This always spirals into the (friendly) argument over how to conceive of four dimensions and what additional dimensions indicate. It is such fun, but I’ll leave the details for another day. This is where Howie interjected. He recalled the lyrics from Sting’s, “Love is the Seventh Wave” based on the principle that waves come in sevens, the seventh of which is biggest. Sting asserts that Love is that 7^th wave. So we considered the importance of seven in scripture and that perhaps six dimensions are the constant, including time, and that a seventh dimension permeates the reality of the six . . . . Of course, if you subscribe to string theory you’ll want to take it out to eleven, so a twelfth can be Love (you, know, 12 disciples, 12 tribes of Israel)

Yeah, this is how we spend our Saturday’s – and this Earth Day. At any rate, nearly fifty years after the first observance, I have hope that my children will continue to make all things right for the world, for this earth, entrusted us from the beginning. I believe this because of the advances in maths and sciences and technology and, well, YouTube, and they can think in terms of dimensions—beyond what I was taught and limited by in primary school. I have hope because Love is a reality that is beyond all dimensions and my son, for one, lives in that reality.

The lyrics are beautiful to contemplate and Sting’s performance can be viewed here:

“Love Is The Seventh Wave”

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