Many people are speaking for the mountains -- The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, The West Virginia Environmental Council, Denise Giardina, those who gather at rallies to save our mountains, etc. The beauty of the mountains should speak for itself, but it doesn't when coal is beneath the beauty. I, too, want to lend my voice on behalf of our mountains (and streams, too).

I grew up here in The Kanawha Valley. Scholarships took me to Alderson-Broaddus College in the little mountain town of Phillipi overlooking the Tygart River. I have always had a feeling of kinship with the West Virginia hills, a sense that we belong to each other. One of my favorite psalms begins, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help." There is supposed to be a comma between "hills" and "from," and a question mark at the end of the verse. But, for me, that verse does not ask a question. It is a statement that my help comes from the hills. By help, I mean feelings of sustenance and love.

All my life, the beauty of the hills has nourished my soul, comforted me. I love to climb the hills, to stand on their tops and look out on their beauty. I feel that our state song has it right in saying they are "like our Prince Emmanuel’s land." John Denver had it right too, when he caught on that West Virginia is "Almost Heaven." I wish he were still alive and could come to sing us to our senses.

Yet for all their beauty, there came a time when I felt hemmed in by the hills. I wanted to know what the world was like beyond the Appalachians. So off I went to seminary in Rochester, New York, to learn about ministry with the thought of returning to my beloved hills and doing ministry in coal mining communities. By doing ministry, I was thinking in activist terms, as in doing justice work. Also, at the time I left (1969), I was unable, as a woman, to visualize myself as a typical church minister.

While in seminary, I met my husband and we lived in Rochester and Connecticut for several years before settling in Massachusetts. Between children and new experiences, my ministry took a different direction and I came back to West Virginia only for visits. When I first left, I would make an annual pilgrimage back in March to see if spring was really on the way (since I was living in The Land of Endless Winters -- New England). There is something so very special, actually holy, about West Virginia’s mountains in spring. I love the serendipity, after a climb, of looking down over a valley and seeing wild dogwood tatting its way down one mountain and up the next. Glorious!

When I am not physically here, I feel that the mountains are still with me and that I can evoke them to nourish my soul. I never expected, however, to have them "haunt me" when in the Fall of 1997 I went to Australia, that ancient and spirit-filled land. I wasn’t homesick, so was surprised at night to dream that I was in the West Virginia hills. Perhaps the hills were indeed calling me home, because soon after returning, I learned of an opening for Interim Minister at The Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Kanawha Valley.

It has been wonderful to be back here this year, to walk in the hills, to have them around me without having to evoke them. It is horrifying, too, to learn that my hills are being blown to smithereens, that the ancient beauty of creation is being sacrificed for greed and for the almighty dollar. There is nothing new about this. There has always been ugliness from coal mining, with more emphasis on the bottom line than for the lives of miners, for the hills, the streams and for the air we all breathe. It is worse now, however, because mine owners have figured out a way to remove mountain tops and politicians have allowed them to do it.

There is a theological basis for destruction of creation. St. Augustine, not my favorite saint, came up with the idea of original sin. This idea reinforced dualism, leading to the separation of the physical and the spiritual. The physical is seen as the lesser, even as sinful, and subservient to the spiritual. This concept has been used by those in power -- who tell us this is "God-ordained"-- to set up all kinds of hierarchies and systems to keep the powerful in place: men over women, whites over blacks, heterosexuals over homosexuals and humanity over nature, to name but a few. If you consider yourself above some other being in the hierarchy, you may exploit him or her. This, in turn, leads to the denial that we are all part of a beautiful, singing creation.

As a Unitarian-Universalist, I participate in a faith system that, among other things, affirms and promotes respect for the interdependent web of all existence. I realize that I am both inseparable from and responsible to the web of existence. So, when I hear about mountaintop removal mining and of the filling in of our streams, I ask: "Why is it all right to destroy creation by blasting off the tops of mountains and blocking miles and miles of what should be free flowing streams?" How can "justice roll down like water and peace like an ever-flowing stream" when waters are having their peace disrupted and are being treated unjustly?

When I went to hear Leon Sullivan at The Cultural Center recently, I was inspired. I was also made uncomfortable by the title of his book "Moving Mountains" because Governor Underwood, who thinks it is all right to move mountains by blasting them, was in the audience. The two men have very different kinds of mountains in mind. Sullivan's justice-based approach wants to move mountains of oppression. Underwood wants to create new oppressions for the mountains and for the people living near them or even for those living away who have to deal with acid waters and lowered quality of air resulting from destruction of the mountains.

I was heartened to see Underwood clapping and standing when Sullivan urged us to "stand up for extending the Sullivan principles globally." I’m not sure, however, that our Governor understood the implications in this plea. If so, he would have proposed legislation making coal companies and other corporations doing business in our state include standards for social responsibility and for human rights for employees. This would keep West Virginia from being treated as a "colonial entity" with its natural resources exploited and its people left bereft.

I have heard the argument that it is too expensive to mine in an ecologically responsible way. As someone who grew up in a home where there wasn't a steady income, I know how important jobs are. I will never believe, though, that creation must be destroyed in order for work to be available. And, I have to ask, for whom is it too expensive to mine coal in health and earth-respecting ways?

I think we have a colossal failure of imagination if all we can do is trot out stale arguments about the need for jobs. It is ironic that higher air standards have made going after coal more profitable while the way we are mining it causes great environmental harm.

I am just learning of new technologies for sustainable houses and other buildings. A new science building at Oberlin College, where my daughter is a student, is currently under construction and will be environmentally friendly. Buildings can be designed to use people-energy as part of the heating source. Photovoltaic cells can actively transform sunshine into energy. Why can’t West Virginia get involved in producing earth-friendly products for building and maintaining homes? Why can’t we be a leader in showing how to cooperate with the earth instead of leading in its exploitation ?

We need places in this world where we can be made whole, where we can rest ourselves so that we can blossom and grow. West Virginia is such a place. It is a gem of creation. Much of it is still wild and wonderful, inviting us to love and appreciate life. Growing up in the hills taught me that all life is sacred. I want to come back here and live for the long haul, not just for a year. However, I have difficulty breathing in the Kanawha Valley. Ongoing sinus and respiratory infections that accompany living here are not fun. When my daughter visits, her asthma flares up requiring her to take medication in order to breathe properly. We are not alone with these problems. They should not happen. They can be solved.

What must we do? The words of Henry Beston from "The Outermost House" give us a guideline for harmonious living.

"Do no dishonor to the earth lest you dishonor the spirit of humanity. Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, honor the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all...."