Discovery Channel has crack for commercials, I swear. Look at this latest commercial “The World is Just Awesome” - and fall in love!

Now that song will be in your head for the rest of the day. You can thank me later. Pagans aren’t the only ones who love the earth, you know. I’m pretty sure almost every person on the planet does, except for maybe Dick Cheney. Hell we’ve got Newt Gingrinch and Nancy Pelosi doing commercials together to combat global climate change.

Even the Vatican is going green. Yup! The Pope preached green at the UN, the Vatican itself is going carbon neutral, has installed solar panels, and at one point, there were reports in the media that pollution would be one of the new sins replacing the seven deadly ones, but that turned out to be a rumor. Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, in an interview with the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, did say we need to face up to that it is a “new form of sin” - but he’s not the Pope, nor does he speak for the Vatican. So don’t toss the Seven Deadlies away, just yet.

I’ve always been somewhat of an environmentalist. I remember being very young, three, maybe four years old, and going out into the woods with my dad, who ran a medical lab. He was asked to collect a water sample from a nearby creek. This creek was so polluted, not just with debris, but with so many chemicals that it glowed an eerie green, like anti-freeze. Even at such a young age, I couldn’t believe how nasty that water was.

Then I got older and married a hippy. A German hippy, no less! Not only did we recycle, we grew our own organic vegetables, and had a compost bin. All this “take care of the earth” bizness must have rubbed off, because one day during recess at school, my daughter started cleaning up the playground. All on her own. Soon she had all her little buddies doing it, too. The teachers asked her why? why was she cleaning up the playground? And she told them… well, it was dirty! It needed cleaning up!

Most animals seem to know, not to poop where you eat, but apparantly we humans are still learning that lesson. We only have this one little planet to love, that feeds us and takes care of us, we’d better start taking care of it, too. I admit, there is a *small* - very *small* group of Christians who believe that, humans have dominion over the Earth, we can trash it all we want because we’re all about to be raptured anyway. I call bullshit, where I see bullshit, and that’s bullshit. It’s not only bullshit, it’s being lazy and yeah - I’ll call that a sin. God didn’t give us this perfect jewel of a planet to have us treat it like toliet paper.

So, whatever your path, whatever your religion, I wish you a Happy Earth Day. Sing thanks and praise for this wonderful gift we’ve been given, and treat it like the treasure it is.