Professor John Moriarty talked about a North American indigenous story about a small mouse that learned from a buffalo and a wolf that the world was a world was of medicine. The buffalo and the wolf led the mouse to the edge of a river that was the medicine river. It was filled with Big Medicine and it saved and healed a sick mouse. Some indigenous people have learned this, he says, during a vision quest.

He contrasts this with average Europeans. As Moriarty says,

“when the average European stands up in the morning he sees an economic opportunity. When the average native American stands up he sees Big Medicine. The Earth is Big Medicine. Everything in it is medicine. Isn’t it a wonderful way to see the world and get in touch with it as medicine? We are destroying the medicines that would heal us.”

Again, Moriarty contrasts the European vision and the Native American vision:

“The European vision is to see God as transcendent. God is above us. God is out there.”  The Greek vision is to see the earth as divine. If you see the world that way you will be reluctant to put a scythe to it. And he says, “I am on the side of the Divine. I won’t abuse it in the way I won’t abuse a chalice. God is transcendent but God is also imminent.”

Such an attitude makes all of nature sacred.