On the one hand, we are faced with the stewardship of this beautiful, subtle, incredibly delicate, fragile planet. On the other, we confront the destiny of our fellow man, our brothers. How can we say that we are followers of Christ if this dual responsibility does not seem to us the essence and heart of our religion?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the dual responsibility of caring for the planet and humanity as core to religious belief.
Barbara Ward highlights the moral obligation of humanity to both protect the earth and care for others, stressing that true following of Christ encompasses these responsibilities. She suggests that stewardship of the planet and compassion for fellow humans are essential elements of faith, and one cannot neglect either aspect.
In practice
In a church sermon discussing environmental responsibility, this quote could inspire action.
We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that "we choose death."
There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.
Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.
Only in the books written in earlier times did she sometimes think she found some faint idea of what it might be like to be alive.
All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies.
They are lonely. I'm not talking about lonely for a lover or a friend. I mean lonely in the universal sense, lonely inside the understanding that we are tiny people on a tiny little earth suspended in an endless void that echoes past stars and stars of stars.
Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
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