Clearly, an important first step in keeping your lawn as habitat for the animal and plant creatures is knowing who lives there; this is essential. As knowledge of the creatures increases, respect and appreciation grow for them and the lawn is home. As your knowledge grows, your lawn also becomes weed free-- through simply getting to know the creatures under your care. Such weed-free lawns not only provide immense benefits for the creatures, but also for their owners: they provide the remarkable freedom to enjoy what is living there. Time is not diverted by scheming and working to displace and destroy all creatures save one: that one Eurasian grass plant often touted as the only creature worth our time and money.

Lawns kept as habitat for creatures are wonderful adventures-- but they are much more: lawns also are publications. Your lawn, my lawn, your church's lawn, proclaim something of who you and I are; our lawns publish our knowledge of the creatures under our care, and eloquently speak about how we see and serve Creation. Vibrant lawns, encouraged to become themselves, are windows on Creation.

Windows on Creation! As windows on the world as it could be, a lawn can point, in hope and eager expectation, toward a rich and dynamic world, full of life and beauty. Through this window-- through this interwoven fabric of plants, animals, and soils where plant and animal creatures are permitted to be the creatures they should be-- we also can envision a world in which all creatures join us in praising our Maker and theirs: "Praise God all creatures here below!"

Originally published in Green Cross Magazine, Summer 1995, pp. 14-14. Reprinted by permission of the author.