You will find that the Ukraine war, like any other war, is a disaster for the animals, plants, soil, and air that are all part of God’s miraculous world. If you remember your whole faith and do a simple Google search, then you can easily enter another level of anguish. It is also a tragedy for the many Russians who oppose it or who are simply powerless to stop it. The war is a disaster of epic proportions for the Ukranian people. The war in the Ukraine is the most recent example. Or something comes onto the scene that just doesn’t allow me to escape. Sometimes, too, I try not to see what I see or distract myself with (and I hate to admit this) YouTube videos.īut those attempts to avoid the wounds or keep them from my heart only work temporarily. And because the pain can be overwhelming, I sometimes begin to allow a callus to grow around my heart. That combnation of being aware of the degradation of God’s Creation and of feeling alone in that awareness is something I often feel. When was the last time you were at a call for prayer and someone lifted up a concern related to Creation? It’s also usually the case in church culture. This is often the case in general American culture. You may also have noticed that you are largely alone in seeing that harm and experiencing that ache in your heart. Like a dam under construction that will drown villages and forests. I’m sure you’ve become aware of the wounds done to God’s earth nearby and around the world. I know you know the truth of that statement. Once you understand the fascinating elements (plants, animals, microbes, etc.) of God’s earth and how those elements relate to each other ecologically, then the purposeful and unintended damage we do to Creation becomes painful to contemplate. This is a prime example of the truth of Aldo Leopold’s words: “The penalty of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.” Her heart hurts to see these vulnerable plants suffering harm in slow motion. But now she knows what to look for and knows the damage the practice does. And my wife, being who she is, wants to save every tree she sees in this condition. They were, of course, there all of the time. The tree will slowly die.Įver since she learned about mulch volcanoes, my wife has been dismayed to see them seemingly everywhere. Rotting these tissues away is like applying a tourniquet too tightly to a human limb – it cuts off vital circulation. These vascular tissues carry nutrients from the leaves to the roots and from the roots to the rest of the tree respectively. This eventually leads to damage to the phloem and xylem layers beneath the bark. Just one reason is that the constant contact of wet organic material starts to break down the surface of the tree’s trunk. Mulch volcanoes look innocuous, but they’re actually harmful to trees for multiple reasons. This makes it appear that the tree trunk is erupting out of a sloping, volcano-like mound of mulch. People create mulch volcanoes when they pile up mulch high against the trunk of a tree. My wife Mayumi recently learned about “mulch volcanoes” from the Master Gardener class she is taking through the University of Illinois Extension. Row of mulch volcanoes (photo: George Weigel)