When the trees say nothing

Edited by Kathleen Deignan

An absence of a sense of the sacred is the basic flaw in many of our efforts at ecologically or environmentally adjusting our human presence to the natural world. It has been said, "We will not save what we do not love." It is also true that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred.

In our present attitude the natural world remains a commodity to be bought and sold, not a sacred reality to be venerated.....Eventually only our sense of the sacred will save us.

Merton's gift, eloquently captured by Kathleen Deignan, is this sense of the sacred throughout the entire range of the natural world.

Thomas Berry From the forward