In this interview about the environment, Bill Moody, a teacher and practitioner of Christian Science shared with Sentinel radio host Russ Gerber how he would pray in the face of an environmental crisis. Bill has spent countless hours enjoying the wonders of nature and has a deep, spiritually based love for the environment.

This experience happened several years ago. It’s early one afternoon as my friend Al and I are slowly making our way to a destination some 40 miles back into the Canadian wilderness.

After a portage through a grove of cedar trees, we put our canoe in the water again and paddle around an island that appears not much more than a small black dot on our map. Yet, in its natural setting, this little island is a treasure, like an evergreen emerald, and what we found when we got there was this truly pristine beauty. That’s how I remember it. And I’ve often wished that people everywhere could celebrate that same beauty and peace right where they live, day to day, every day.

Yet obviously, there’s no escaping what so much of the world continues to confront—everything from rivers wasted by toxic chemicals to denuded rain forests to human hunger and poverty. Yet I’m reminded of something that Bill McKibben wrote in The New Yorker magazine some time ago. After adding up all the environmental challenges, he went on to say: “Our present environmental troubles, though, just might give us the chance to change the way we think. Spurred by the realization of what we have done, we might begin to think and then behave more humbly” (September 11, 1989).

I guess I believe that something in our hearts simply will not give up on whatever beauty and promise we’ve seen in life. In her Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, spoke of the beauty of our earth and the universe. She felt this beauty was something that had been truly enhanced to her view through her developing spiritual sense and her understanding of God. She saw the beauty around us as pointing to something higher than the merely material representations.

Of the beauty of the physical universe, she wrote, for example, that it “typifies holiness.” And she observed, “ ‘I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied….’ ” (Mis., pp. 86, 87).

That true spiritual origin and nature of beauty are explained in another of Mrs. Eddy’s works, her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In one place, she wrote, “Beauty is a thing of life, which dwells forever in the eternal Mind and reflects the charms of His goodness in expression, form, outline, and color.”

You see, divine Mind in Christian Science refers to God. And Science and Health makes clear that the substance of real beauty is always in and of God. God, the divine Mind, is not only the source of all that is good, but God permanently maintains this pure good throughout His creation. Divine goodness, purity, grace, and harmony, simply do not fail. They are constants in the real universe and the real you and me, which are entirely spiritual.

When I think about this spiritual creation, God’s creation, I can see that it really cannot be defiled. It can’t be defiled by abuse, misuse, greed, ignorance, indifference. Genuine beauty, which is always a “thing of life,” knows no destruction or extinction. The beauty and purity of God’s creation have to be as eternal as their source, their Creator.

I don’t think infinite good could ever be depleted. No degradation of life or the environment ever has the law or will of God behind it. The law of God, of divine Love, actually embraces all of us here and now. And as we begin to understand this law, begin to grasp the truth of God’s spiritual creation and see more of our own relationship to God as His perfect, spiritual expression, we gain in dominion, step by step.

And for me, I think this can be the basis of our prayer whenever we hear of some environmental crisis facing mankind. The prayer that affirms perfect God and His perfect spiritual creation enables us progressively to cast limited and even polluted concepts out of our own thought and out of our experience.

Human consciousness is being purified by our prayer. Experience is being purified, and our mental environment is cleansed. In prayer, we’re actually gaining access to the intelligence and inspiration that foster all kinds of solutions to the problems our world confronts. We’re gaining inspiration. And the solutions come in practical ways, as do the ability and willingness to carry them out.

You know, I often look at the example of Christ Jesus. Jesus surely expected practical effects from prayer and from spiritual understanding. In the one recorded prayer he specifically left his disciples, he taught them to affirm the present truth of God’s transforming power.

“Thy kingdom come,” Jesus prayed. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” I don’t think we should ever underestimate the power of prayer in transforming not only our own lives, but the life of our planet as well.

What I’ve been getting at here is why, in spite of the many environmental difficulties facing the world today, I can still be filled with wonder and joy by our earth’s beauty, which, I’m coming to see, typifies something high and even holy.

So I don’t feel hopeless, though I clearly recognize the need always to do better as a steward of the world we all inhabit together. Perhaps that’s also why that picture of the Canadian wilderness still rests in my thought just as brightly today as when I first stood at the edge of that lake all those years ago.

And even though there’s yet a considerable distance for all of us to travel in becoming better stewards, there is beauty, grace, and peace in our world. It’s the gift of God. And we can all cherish its promise.

Our spiritual environment:

Science and Health
247:21-24

King James Bible
Matt. 6:10