Letters September 10, 2007 Issue

LETTERS

with contributions from NANCY MARTIN, RALPH WHISTLER, PEGGY LINDAHL, LANA NUEST

Since I'm a birder, your stunning cover photo of a falcon in flight naturally caught my eye (July 23-30, "All life—under His wing"). As I read this Sentinel cover to cover, it seemed as if the writers and editors had designed this issue just for me! Compelling accounts about living abroad, healing experiences at teen camps, praying for dogs and dolphins, prayerful attention to environmental concerns, even the wonderful photographs . . . each struck a concordant note in me.

Thirty years ago Peter Henniker-Heaton wrote in a Christian Science Journal editorial: "Animals are not people. To regard them as such can lead to sentimentality of a kind helpful to neither men nor beasts. But we do share spaceship Earth with them; and the stewardship of Earth and its resources on its long voyage through space and time is in our hands. We best fulfill this charge in the degree we look beyond the temporal and material to the eternal facts of God's spiritual creation" ("All God's Creatures," November 1976).

I confess that up until that article, I'd felt somewhat alone in advocating prayer for animals and our shared environment. (Of course, that wasn't the case; many were surely praying regularly along those lines!) Today, I'm deeply grateful to note a steadily growing number of inspired/inspiring articles encouraging more prayerful "stewardship," with expectancy of progressive results.

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