Science and Religion Need Each Other
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. (Psalm 19:1-4)
In these times of ecological unraveling, when the forests falter and the climate teeters, many among us feel the heavy weight of what some call “eco-depression.” It’s a kind of soul-sickness, a deep grief for the Earth and all her kin. As Quaker in Monteverde—a community rooted in both the living Presence and the living world—we are not immune to this sorrow. But we are not helpless, either.
What we need now is not just action, but inspired action. Not just knowledge, but wisdom. And this is where faith and science, long estranged in the modern mind, must come together as allies.
Science tells us the truth of our predicament—boldly, bravely, without apology. The data is clear: rising seas, shifting seasons, shrinking forests, species lost forever. But science, for all its brilliance, cannot tell us how to live in the face of this unraveling. It cannot soothe the soul or call us to sacred responsibility. That is the realm of faith—not dogma, but deep trust; not creeds, but conscience.
Faith, when rightly held, reminds us that we are not separate from the Earth but expressions of it. As Michael Dowd says, “Reality is God,” and we worship best when we honor the body of this planet as holy. And when we look closely, we see that what traditional religion calls “God” has always been here—not as a distant, invisible man in the sky, but as the living biosphere itself. It is the Earth that breathes us, feeds us, warms us with sunlight, cools us with rain, protects us with atmosphere. And when our journey ends, it is the Earth that takes us back and makes us part of the great cycle once more. "All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return" (Ecclesiastes 3:20).
That sounds a lot like God to me—not a pie-in-the-sky deity or a white-haired father in some far-off Medieval throne room, but a sacred Presence we live within every moment of our lives.
This shift—from believing in a supernatural being to trusting the sacredness of the natural world—is not a loss of faith, but its renewal. It is grounding God in reality.
And this is what liberates us from despair. When our motivation is rooted in love rather than fear, in duty rather than desperation, then even small acts—composting, speaking truth, planting a tree—become expressions of spiritual resilience. We become part of what Thomas Berry called “The Great Work.”
Here in Monteverde, among misty forests and both Costa RIcans and gingo Quakers, we have a unique opportunity. Let us be a community where faith and science speak to each other, where grief is honored, and where joy is cultivated—not because we know we will “win,” but because we are called to love the world well, no matter what.
