4 laws of Ecology (formulated by physicist and ecologist, Barry Commoner) 1.

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE humans and other species are connected / dependent on a number of other species. 2. EVERYTHING MUST GO SOMEWHERE no matter what you do, and no matter what you use, it has to go somewhere. For example, when you burn wood, it doesnt disappear, it turns into smoke which rises into the air, and ash, which falls back down to the earth. 3. NATURE KNOWS BEST Like it says, nature knows best. As much as you think it might help a place by repainting it, you are submitting the fumes into the air and in your lungs. Why not put siding on it? 4. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH Everything you do must have a reason behind it. For example, a class pizza party. In order to win the party, you have to fill out a survey, and submit it back to your teacher. This law basically means you have to do something in order to get something in return.

Three Views of Heaven and Earth I'm reading N.T. Wright's book Simply Christian and he gives a picture of three views of the "spheres" of heaven and earth that I found helpful and wanted to pass along. If you imagine heaven and earth as two circles there are basically three ways in which they can be joined: 1. They are coterminous. i.e. heaven and earth begin and end in the same place. All of heaven is right here and now. All of God is right here and now. This leads to pantheism and some of the eastern religions where we believe that the spark of divinity is in and through all things and that you and I and that sofa are all on a trip to self-awareness and enlightenment. We are all god and god is everything. 2. They are completely separate. This is Deism. We are here. God is way over there. And never the twain shall meet. He made us but then he left us to figure it all out ourselves. 3. They are joined at specific points where sometimes for a brief moment heaven bleeds over into the earth. Sometimes the places where heaven and earth meet are called "miracles" and sometimes "providence." This is simply a way of saying that something from outside this world affected something within it. That God comes down to touch us in a real way no matter how far away he seems. I had never thought of it that way but it makes a great deal of sense. "It doesn't help to wear a hat on your head if your posterior is exposed." ~ PW "Don't make crazy your normal and then wonder why nobody agrees with you." ~ EC

The Old Age view is that the earth will one day wear out and will be discarded and replaced by a totally different world.
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The New Age view is that there will be a steadily evolving humanity which will eventually become fully divine and live in harmony with the earth which is also seen as divine. The Age to Come is the biblical vision that the earth will be renewed, freed from all trace of sin, and it will become the venue for the kingdom of God. These three views of the future of the earth also reflect the basic worldviews they are built on. Each implies different things about the nature of creation, the nature of sin and the nature of redemption. The old age view emphasises the extent of sin and the corruption and contamination of this earth, but it does not recognise the extent of Christ's redemptive power. This view is not new: it had its proponents in the early church. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in North Africa in the second century, held that the earth was growing old and would one day wear out. You must in the first place know this, that the world has now grown old, and does not abide in the strength in which it formerly stood; nor has it that vigour and force which it formerly possessed... This is the sentence passed on the world, this is God's law, that everything that has had a beginning should perish, and things that have grown should become old, and that strong things should become weak, and great things become small, and that, when they have become weakened and diminished, they should come to an end.1 Cyprian considered that the moral and physical degeneration of the community around him was evidence of the old age of the earth.