Celebrate Earth Day

Image: NASA.gov

I remember the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.

It was a comfortably cool, sunny day at Concord Junior High in Elkhart Indiana. Part of the day, as our contribution to Earth Day was to clean up trash around the bushes and trees along Yellow Creek which ran between the junior and high schools. A student in shop class with me, I shall not mention his name, had constructed a rocket to be fired that day. I distinctly remember the lettering on the side of this large rocket. It read in large red letters against a white background ”USSR” with hammer and cycle atop the lettering. I found that quite amusing, as most students decorated their rockets with the customary “USA”.

We set the rocket on the gravel drive behind the school just outside of the shop class garage door. We ignited it with Mr. Spickard’s car battery. The rocket reached an impressive altitude before it began its descent. The parachute opened. And once again, as it landed in the trees along Yellow Creek, I found myself helping to clean the area of man’s trash.

All things considered and said, it was a wonderful and, obviously, memorable day.

But more to the point, let’s recognize and celebrate Earth Day today let’s each and all do some small act of reconciliation with Earth. Pick up trash, consume fewer resources, and drive fewer miles.

Even the United Methodist Church, in its 2016 Book of Resolutions encourages good stewardship of Earth…

Specifically, the United Methodist Church:

• designates one Sunday each year, preferably the Sunday closest to Earth Day, as a Festival of God’s Creation incorporating creation care into the church’s worship and study.( page 71)