Caretakers? I don’t think so!

The Spill Could Be Double The Size: This morning’s headline update on the oil spill in the Times Picayune. Underneath, a picture of P&J Oyster House on the last day of shucking operations after supplying restaurants in the New Orleans area for 130 years. They’re out of business now–maybe never to return, along with thousands of other small businesses in this area, closing every day. Because of the oil spill.

On the inside page of the TP, from our neighbors to the east: oil invades Florida’s inland waterways–sheens bursting through the booms, plumes sinking underneath them. Those beautiful white sand pristine beaches. Clear blue water, sun sparkling off the foam as it rolls toward the shore. And now? Oil everywhere. Saturating the sargassum grass at the Pensacola Pass. It’s on the beach. In the seaweed. All swimming and fishing banned. Covering birds and fish. I wonder if the bigger fish, like dolphen, will know enough to move out, or will they be covered too? Tens of thousands out of jobs lost along the Gulf Coast–not just people in the energy industry, but restaurants, fishermen and other suppliers. The damage gushes downhill, swamping us all with its misery.

God made us caretakeers of this beautiful creation. He created oil along with everything else. Human error is to blame for this mess. We need oil desperately until something else comes along to suply the energy we need, and if we can’t handle the chore ourselves, we’ll have to buy it from others who can. At what price?

So what’s happening? Apparently the regulators didn’t regulate. President Obama wasn’t paying attention–not early enough. Not deeply; not really. BP seems to have taken shortcuts–bits and pieces of info emerging now…possibly the wrong sand was used, possibly tests on the valves not completed. Shortcuts. MMS and Dept. of Interior employees and appointees buddied up with the people they’re supposed to regulate. Nice lunches? Parties? And this is the result.

God loves every fisher, every fisher’s wife and child. God loves every one of those oyster shuckers in the photo in the paper this morning. It makes me cry. In New Orleans, restaurants workers are family. Many stay in one job for their whole lives. Gone now. And God loves every little sparrow, every fish, every bird now soaked with oil, gasping for breath, unable to understand why it’s grounded and can’t fly.

The answer isn’t to shut off the valves. The answer is to handle the gifts that God has given to us carefully, safely, on an above-board transparent basis so that everyone is accountable. Accountability keeps us responsible if nothing else does. We’ve been given complex brains–we’re to use reason, logic. And most of all we’re to remember the words: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

After all, God gave us brains to use them, and to protect the helpless. We’re supposed to be the caretakers.