The contemporary refrain of protest against the loss of global forests speaks something more fundamental, more central than that encompassed by standard environmental impact statements.  I sense that we are reacting on a more visceral level to a sense of loss that is difficult to grasp, probably impossible to measure, but nonetheless real at a most basic level.

We gaze out on creation and witness the loss and death we have unleashed.  We witness the loss of beauty, of countless images and experiences provided by the diversity of forests and wild places.  As the trees fall and the hills are laid bare, our human hearts, both individual and collective, are pierced.  As forests are destroyed and species and wilderness are lost, no less is the diminishment of the human spirit. 

Global deforestation spawns a culture of death, which no longer recognizes the divinely-inspired contemplative gaze upon creation.  A culture of death that kills both our physical needs for survival as well as our aesthetic and spiritual sensibilities.  A denuded landscape and a diminished human spirit become one and the same. 

I wonder if the source of our lament (about the loss of forests and wild places) is rooted in the acknowledgement, be it explicit or unconscious, that our current rapacious relationship with the world’s forests is inherently dehumanizing and contrary to the human spirit.  In our seemingly relentless ravaging of the world’s forests, we have failed to acknowledge that forests are not simply “natural,” but in fact a creative response of Divine Love. 

We have failed to acknowledge that our forested world, indeed all of nature, may be more that it seems; that it may speak of Divine beauty and love in and through its myriad sights, sounds and wonders.  Consequently, we have assumed a power that reduces our natural world to superficial matter, meaningless and inchoate.  Such a perspective breeds covertness and a grasping greed.  This pernicious exercise of power is seductive and effectively blinds us to the essential sacramental heart of nature. 

Global deforestation and loss of primary forests is paradigmatic of our need for an “ecological conversion.”  For only authentic religious, moral and intellectual conversion will gift us with the eyes to see and the ears to hear.  The eyes to see and the ears to hear the Blessed Trinity at the heart of creation.  The Blessed Trinity, creator of all that is seen and unseen.  The Blessed Trinity, through whom all things were made.  The Blessed Trinity, the giver of life.