At times, the news about our environment can seem bleak. We regularly hear tales of pollution, global warming, and destruction.

The challenge for us is not to lose heart, but to remember why it is that we want to protect our planet in the first place. There is tremendous beauty in all corners of the Earth: from sunrises to sunsets, from oceans to deserts. And we can help preserve them by using fewer resources, making informed decisions, and adopting one change at a time.

This is a message that kids often seem to grasp before adults, perhaps because it is their future we are talking about. This was the case in my own family. When I was 10, I read a book called 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. I tried to adopt as many of the practices as I could. I wasn’t able to convince my mom to get worms for a compost bin, but to this day she does buy recycled toilet paper.

As our seventh principle reminds us, we should respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Personally I find that the more time I spend in nature, the more I am reminded that there is something out there bigger than us.

On this Earth Day, I borrow the words of Jacques Cousteau, who so aptly said—

This is our hope:
That the children born today may still have, twenty years hence,
a bit of green grass under their bare feet,
a breath of clean air to breathe,
a patch of blue water to sail upon,
and a whale on the horizon to set them dreaming.

I light the chalice that it may be so.