I believe God created the universe. I am skeptical of a literal six day creation story though. I believe God is much more intimately involved in the world. A god who creates the world then wipes his hands of his creation to let it carry on without any sort of input or involvement appears not to care whether his creation succeeds or fails. A god who creates then abandons does not enjoy creation. This abandonment communicates an apathy to the creative act, as if creating is a deplorable act which must be completed expediently. There is no relationship between creator and creation.

I believe creation is not a discrete act but a continual outpouring of God’s creativity and desire for relationship. I see evidence of this continual input through evolution by natural selection. God’s hand continually molding, shaping, creating. Seemingly random genetic mutations create a greater likelihood of survival, maturation and reproduction. Genesis shows us God enjoys creating. He is pleased with his craftsmanship, his work, his art. I believe if something is pleasing, one will continue to do said thing (however, this is where God’s moral compass is necessary to prevent over-indulgence, thus God resting from creating on the seventh day).

I believe God placed humanity in a unique situation to be the stewards, or caretakers, of Creation. God told Adam to name the abundance of life he observed around him. To name is to enter into relationship. To name is to know. In creating this relationship between humankind and creation God set a precedent for our future actions towards Creation. I believe humankind’s original natural inclination was not the exploitation of Creation for the accumulation of products. However, sin has brought us into this reality. The beauty and poetry of God’s workmanship is forgotten and is replaced by a new vocabulary; raw materials, finished products, yields and commodities.

-Graham Greene, The Tenth Man

Could changing land use practices have a role in the fires as well? Imagine southern California 100 years ago. Were there even a fraction of the houses then as there are now? Did anyone care if wildfires raged through the eastern mountains? Uncontrolled and unrestricted sprawl into natural areas disrupted the ecological fire cycle that the high desert was accustomed to. Without excess fuels (dead trees, shrubs) being consumed, massive quantities of fuel accumulated. Fire was ignorantly treated as a bad thing. We anthropomorphized trees into “houses” and decided since fire was not good for human houses it therefore must be bad to nature’s “houses”. We forced our reality onto organisms that do not recognize our reality.

Humankind continued to rush headlong into the future, building ever larger homes, consuming ever larger quantities of resources, especially water. When one lives in a desert area, one MUST have a perennially green lawn (if the Joneses have it, so must I). Increasing sprawl leads to more roads, parking lots, driveways, cul-de-sacs, massive warehouse-sized box stores, all which increase the amount of impervious surface that does not allow precipitation to permeate the soil. Reservoirs are emptied into individual swimming pools and a region’s worth of irrigation systems. Precipitation is “mined” for insatiable human consumption.

Meanwhile, the distance between humankind and nature engorges. We become consumed with the Joneses once again. We abandon our relationship with nature quicker than a high school kid dumps their younger sibling when “watch over your little brother/sister while we are gone” is uttered. We become accustomed to some artificial right which states “if it is our way, it is the right way” and lose sight of local communities. We become insular selfish islands (John Donne be damned).

Now we are reaping the benefits of a generation and a half of self-centeredness and quick fixes. It is much easier to look at the fires in southern California and remark “Global Warming” and assume that chanting the magic words will change things. Our disconnect and the disintegration of our human-nature relationship has led us to believe we can fix nature like we fix our bodies. Diet pills, liposuction and fad diets work much better than habitual exercise, healthy eating and moderation. Similarly, we want to fix the environment with easy, quick fixes that will not inconvenience us. We are attempting to patch the deluge spewing from a severed artery with a travel bandage.

My roommate is no longer male, but is my wife. I can now structure my days a bit more according to my own interests and passions, rather than following the institutionalized regime filled with law enforcement stuff. I am also free from institutional food and am able to make my own meals, and more importantly, flavor my own meals. No more blandness punctuated by slight hints of flavor that vaguely mirrors what my mind tells me the dish should taste like.

Anyway, enough complaining from me, it suffices for me to say I am glad to be home.