Brookings resident Carl Kline is an ordained clergyman, part-time teacher and occasional blogger.

I’m certain no one in Brookings was aware of it, but this past Saturday, a number of persons from Medicine Hat College in Alberta, Canada, were participating in a community-wide clean up in recognition of Earth Day. Also on Saturday, the United Church of Christ had an annual Earth Day Summit with Bill McKibben as a featured presenter.

Perhaps you didn’t know, today, April 22, is Earth Day. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes events in more than 190 countries, with 1 billion people participating. The theme this year is “Planet vs. Plastics.” The goal is to decrease the use of plastics by 60% by 2040. Since micro-plastics are already in our bodies, including: the brain, liver, kidney, blood, lungs, stools, breast milk, heart muscle, placentas, even new born babies; perhaps with Earth Day awareness and consistent action we can find ways to avoid future generations functioning more like Barbie and Ken than human beings.

Plastic is an important focus for Earth Day 2024, as it seems to get more prolific with each passing day. Why must we have donuts and cookies in plastic containers rather than in paper or cardboard? Why do I always have to struggle to get a coke bottle out of the plastic rope that holds it? And the plastic around my new toothbrush is so hard it could survive a bite from my incisors.

We will likely see more and more plastic in our lives as pressure increases to convert from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The fossil fuel corporations need to make their money someplace! If we aren’t going to buy their oil and gasoline, or use their coal, then we will just need to cope with plastic pollution, as 98% of our plastic comes from fossil fuels. It’s not that Exxon Mobil and Shell are facing poverty. The oil and gas industry, on average, has made $1 trillion dollars a year for the last 50 years.

We also need to recognize that besides the economic strangle-hold our economic system has on the earth, we seem to have lost our spiritual connection with the Creation. We need to recover a new earth ethic, an old earth attitude. The earth is holy. The earth feeds us, washes us, warms and cools us, even buries us. The earth is also home to sacred spots, filled with spiritual power, to help us humans live fully. The original peoples on this continent recognized these sacred spots.

One of those holy spots is near us. We call it the Black Hills. The Lakota call it Paha Sapa. Those hills are sacred! They tell the story of Lakota origins. You can hear the holy in the wind in the pines if you listen; see it in the still waters if you take the time to look. But unfortunately, we have made over the sacred face of the earth into our own image, with four white faces on ancient gray granite. We take gold from Black Hills mines to measure the wealth of the place, polluting the waterways and leaving our waste, at the same time missing the spiritual wealth of that sacred spot.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning says in her poem “For Those Who See,” when some of us see a burning bush (like Moses), we take off our shoes. Others sit round it and pluck blackberries. Enough with the berry pickers!

Sally McFague, in her book “Models of God,” asks us to consider a new conception of God. Give up the old man in the sky, sitting on a throne in the clouds with a long white beard. That is not God’s image, only our conception, created in our own image. If we want a meaningful conception of God’s body for our day, consider the earth as God’s body. What you do to the earth you do to God!

McFague’s work is some of the better theology I’ve read. It’s about time the old man in the sky was abandoned, as he has been a subtle excuse for dominating the earth and its creatures for years; a handy helpmeet for exploiters.

I’m afraid the pillage continues in 2024 as we build new human monuments on desecrated sacred sites. It is becoming clearer we don’t have an eternity of Earth Days ahead of us.

Nevertheless today, as Earth Day, is a good day to celebrate our good earth; to pray; to plant; to plan; to participate; to provide what resources we can offer for a return to the health and sacredness of our good Creation. And, let’s do our best to ditch the plastic.