Can the poor stand up and be counted?

I would not have stumbled upon this insight had I not read Edwin Bernbaum’s essay, “The Spiritual and Cultural Significance of National Parks”.

According to him, “these sanctuaries of unspoiled nature represent places of spiritual renewal where we can return to the source of our being”.

Now I can understand why traditional societies declared the forests, mountains and other natural habitats into places of abode for their gods.

In this way, these features remained sacred and were preserved because people are not likely to destroy or deface their places of worship.

But once they stop seeing God when they enter a forest, they will most likely cut down the trees. And once they have lost their values, they will no longer respect their rivers and lakes.

Instead, they turn them into dumping sites.

As such, the battle to preserve the environment can not be won on the political front alone. It also has to be fought as a moral crusade.
It is one thing to fence off nature parks and clean up the rivers but it is another to get those living near them to respect these sacred places in the long term.

Mr Bernbaum, in paying tribute to American conservationist John Muir had this to say: That when Mr Muir was pushing to establish the Yosemite National Park in California, he said the Yosemite Valley was “a temple far finer than any made by human hands”.

Inspire awe

I have been to many places of worship in the world, including the Cathedral of Cologne — where the bones of the three wise men are preserved — and the Pagoda of Miyajima — where the ashes of Buddhas are kept.

But no building can inspire the awe and tranquility I experience when ever I get the opportunity to visit the temples of nature; be they ragged mountains, frothy rivers or wild forests.

As Mr Bernbaum noted, these habitats “provide us with some of the most beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring places on earth”. Let us conserve them.

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The true test of courage

Many things have happened in this country since voters went to the polls on December 27, last year.