16th July 2026
One of the things I like about the creation story in Genesis 2 is the way it draws in so many different strands. At the centre – or maybe it’s at the perimeter on the edge of the curve – is God. God creates the Earth (and heaven). But the Earth needs water to produce vegetation. So God provides water – not just an initial splash but a stream of water that encompasses the whole Earth – and we now understand how the water cycle keeps that life-giving water flowing. God uses the stuff of Earth to form the first human, and plants together the human and a garden. The former is to serve and watch over the latter; the latter to provide all manner of seeds and fruit for the former. God then uses more of the stuff of Earth to create a multitude of other beings to work alongside the human, and another human as a partner.
This is a story that tells of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all that makes up creation. As the story then unfolds, we see how by separating the different strands, the humans cause the degradation of what has been created. Eve separates what she knows to be God’s will from her consideration of the attractiveness of the fruit. She separates the word of the snake from the the word of God. Both Eve and Adam separate their undertaking to God from their action in eating the fruit. And when called to account both try and separate their responsibility for from the outcome of their actions.
When we separate the interconnectedness of nature (and our own connectedness within that) and rather view things in separate silos, we are bound to make mistakes.
When we separate maximising what we can harvest from the land from the need to care for the soil including all its multiple organisms, we end up depleting the fertility of the soil and destroying our means of growing food.
When we separate the intricacies of the water system from the use of the land, and seek to sap and constrain the former to increase our use of the latter, we end up exacerbating the impacts of flood and droughts to our detriment.
When we separate bugs and weeds from the menu of biodiversity, killing off the latter with pesticides and herbicides, we diminish the robustness of the ecosystem in which plants grow.
When we separate what we choose to eat – beef and dairy by the bucket load, strawberries in January and asparagus in August – from the limitations of the natural environment, we diminish the robustness of the environment which sustains our food supply. And invariably the ones who go hungry are those who are poor and powerless.
Even when we try and address these problems, we typically do so with a blinkered approach. We don’t see the interconnectedness.
Cutting down tropical forests to grow animal fodder for cattle in Europe may provide cheaper meat in the UK but reduces the water levels of the River Amazon, increases local temperatures and releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere further driving temperatures upwards, accelerating climate change and exposing people both in the tropics and in Europe to ever more extreme weather events.
Draining peatlands, clearing trees and hedgerows, and straightening rivers may expand arable fields, but when rains come the water will first quickly flood and then quickly disappear, damaging crops first with too much and then with too little water. And not only crops. Households too will face winter flooding and summer water shortages.
Only when we see and acknowledge the interconnectedness and the interdependency of the creation and respond attentively, will we reverse the ecological disaster that has been years in the making. Only then will we understand the intricacies and depth of our part in serving and watching over the garden in which, for our wellbeing, we have been planted.
This week we have seen the Church of England – its governing synod and its Commissioners – fail to understand what is at stake if we do not care for our land holistically rather than seeing it as just a source of income.
This week we have seen the Government issues its own response to the loss of biodiversity, and failing to embrace the needs of the farmer for income, the land for good care, the people for food security, and the Government’s own role in leadership.
This week we continue to see whole swathes of people not having the information that informs about what makes a healthy diet, nor having the necessary income for and access to healthy food, nor having knowledge, or hands-on experience, of how the natural and the farming worlds work.
Can we be part of a move to tell and explore the bigger picture?
The Green Tau 