Bless his heart, Blue Eyes listened to me as I prayed out loud, sharing my thoughts with him on the walk back to the barn. He was so receptive as I sang hymns to him. He followed readily, and I put him safely in his stall. I cleaned his wounds and went home knowing he was safe in Love's encircling arms.

I stayed at home for a little while until I could get past the desire to blame someone for this accident. Blaming doesn't heal. I also needed to look beyond blaming people for the wider mistakes in the world. It seems that many decisions that impact our environment and make life unsustainable are based on greed. How can we make a fast buck? How can we meet our bottom line? How can we exploit this land to the hilt? I understand that money is a helpful tool in exchanging value for service or products, but the love of money can motivate wrongful actions that hurt our planet.

I realized that if I could separate the erroneous belief in the power of greed from the man of God's creation, I could lift my thought above a degraded mortal willing to exploit, and could see God's unselfish creation. If I could fill my thought with selfless love, love for God, love for my family, my neighbor, love for my students and their parents, I could make a real healing impact. So I began my love list.

Then I also asked myself if I expressed greed on occasion. I examined my own thought to see if I ever did things motivated by the love of money or the fear of lack of enough money. That took some soul searching. It would be a profitable search for each of us to think about our decisions and see if they are based on a fear of lack of money or love of money. The aggressive greedy thought of always wanting more feeds on the belief that man is an unfulfilled, empty, needy, fearful creature. We are not! God satisfies.

I saw that if I attacked the error of greed instead of attacking the contractor or the bulldozer man, I would see healing instead of anger. And that is exactly what happened. Blue Eyes had a wonderfully quick healing. The very next morning my daughter who always fed him came over to the barn with me. She said, "Mom, Blue acts like nothing bad ever happened to him." We both laughed because that is exactly what we had been praying to understand, that nothing bad can happen to God's idea. That next day he was well enough for my daughter to ride him and take him over his jumps like she did every day. All the cuts on Blue's face, chest and legs closed up and his hair grew back leaving no scars.

Very shortly a new wooden fence was put up replacing the barbed wire. Blue's fear had been replaced with dominion. My fear and worry about our world has been replaced with a confidence and dominion allowing me to give my best thoughts and prayers to becoming a spiritual environmentalist.

These two experiences are examples in individual ways of plants and animals being restored through prayer. It seems to me that if two and two is four, then the same principle can be applied to two million and two million equals four million. If we use our own individual experiences as opportunities to put into practice the spiritual principles of being, then we are practicing the principle that can be applied to any experience, no matter how big. As we prove God's sustaining love in our individual lives, we improve the whole world's experience. It is like the ripples on a pond. God's love reaching out, upholding and sustaining everyone and everything.

Speaking of ripples, I read in the weekly Christian Science Sentinel (Feb 21,'94) a wonderful account entitled "Environmental tragedy is not inevitable". A few years back an oil tanker broke up off the Shetland Islands in the North Sea. "The crude oil-cargo discharged into the sea to form an oil slick many miles in length." Birds, seals, salmon, people were all at risk and the news was full of the tragedy. An English woman tells how she and her friend prayed to stop looking for a change in the outward and start to gain a spiritual view of God's love and care for his entire creation. This turning point from a belief in material law to God's law brought healing and harmony to the whole situation. She felt the warmth and love of God's presence. Two days later the reporters and scientists were amazed when they could find no sign of the oil. It seemed to have disappeared. Birds in perfect condition were being released back into the sea. The local marine life remained healthy and not a single sea mammal death was attributed to the spill. WOW! An all powerful, spiritual God was acknowledged and look at the results in the human condition and the ecosystem.