No one meant to kill the birds in the Gulf of Mexico, or the fish, or the turtles. No one intended to ruin the wetlands of Louisiana. The oil spill was an accident, a terrible accident.

Now is a time to grieve over the damage done to so many strands of God’s creation by this terrible event. Eleven lives were lost in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The teeming life of the Gulf of Mexico, which supports the livelihoods of fishermen and shrimpers, has suffered a catastrophic blow from which it is not likely to recover in our lifetimes.

Now is also a time to reflect on the harm done to our beautiful world, not just by this event but every day, by our enormous demand for energy. We are not tending the garden God gave us, we are destroying it. 

Mountaintops in West Virginia are blown to rubble and dumped into streams in a relentless search for more coal. Precious water resources in the west are ruined by contaminated wastewater from gas drilling. And most important of all, the very climate on which the world depends for agriculture to feed us all is being recklessly altered by vast emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants. We don’t know all the consequences of this global science experiment, but we have been warned. If we later rue what we have done, it will not be an accident.

So now is a time for grief, for reflection, and perhaps for repentance – but it can also be a time for hope and determination. 

Whether we are concerned about the environmental impacts of fossil fuels or simply their cost and availability, we can see that we must change the way we produce and use energy. And all we have to do is open our eyes to see the answers that God has given us – the sun and the wind and the water.

Just as the Israelites were given manna and water to survive in the desert, God provides the world with clean energy freely and in abundance. Enough sunlight falls on the earth every three hours to supply all of the world’s energy needs for a year. Power from the wind and rivers, from waves and the tide, even the heat of the earth can be tapped to meet our needs.

Great progress is being made in new technologies to capture those inexhaustible energy resources efficiently and inexpensively – but in most cases clean energy is still a little more expensive today. Many people and many parishes have faced that fact and made the choice to purchase it anyway. They recognize that to do otherwise – to choose fuels that harm our neighbors and harm God’s gift to us – is to ignore the two great commandments.

We can do better. We can vote with our pocketbooks and speak out with our hearts to move away from the energy system that has wrecked the Gulf of Mexico and the mountains of West Virginia toward a new system that will be an example to the world of living in harmony with all of God’s creation. It is a deeply personal choice that each of us must make – a decision between us and God.

Reid Detchon is a past chair of the Environment Committee of the Diocese and of St. Columba’s and serves on the steering committee of Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light (www.gwipl.org).