Pastor Gregory Hughes said, “God loves the world. So as part of humanity, we need to wake up and love the world.”

True Life Ministries holds an annual baptism off the coast of Georgia, near former cotton plantations. Reverend Dr. Ambrose Carroll, Sr., founder of Green The Church, said, “We’re ex-slaves, migrant farmers, people who spent eons with our hands in the ground. Even though we don’t speak the language of environmentalism, it’s very close to who we are.”

Chris and Rolawn Rehmann participate in the first Ash Wednesday service after the Camp Fire burned through their rural community of Paradise, California. The Camp Fire was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the State's history.

The Diocese of Victoria, Texas, holds an annual mass to bless seeds and soil. Bishop Brendan J. Cahill said, “How blessed we can be to take care of and provide for the world in which we live. From us, and from our farms, there are people being fed.”

Each year, more than 100,000 members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make a pilgrimage to the sacred grove of oak trees in Palmyra, New York, where Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in a ray of light through the leaves.

The Passover in the Desert festival, organized by Wilderness Torah, was part of a national revival of Earth-based Judaism. Rabbi Zelig Golden quoted the Talmud, saying, “The only thing greater than Torah is rain.”

During the Passover in the Desert festival, participants submerged themselves in a canyon stream on the edge of Death Valley National Park. Mikvahs, Jewish ritual baths, must be in collected rain or water from a natural spring.

Imam Dawood Yasin performs Wudu in a high mountain lake. Wudu, ritual washing, is done in preparation for each of the five daily prayers in Islam.

Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim college in the United States, hosts backpacking trips to link prayer with the rhythms of nature.

Manjit Toor looks through the colorful air of a Holi festival in Utah. Celebrating the arrival of spring, Krishna temples use the Hindu holiday to promote pacifism and vegetarianism.

New Vrindaban, a Hindu community in West Virginia, teaches the principles of compassion, vegetarianism, and simple living.

Upaya Zen Center in New Mexico offers workshops on ecological dharma. Teacher and gardener Wendy Johnson said, “Conservationists must begin to treat this shrinking into separateness, our becoming lost to the connections between ourselves and the rest of life, as a root cause of biological devastation.”

At the Khmer Community Potluck for Environmental Health in Washington, the Moon Dance compares true love to the beauty of the moon. Between performances, Buddhist monks taught the audience how to compost and recycle.

Rhonda PallasDowney and Kate Watters teach spiritual gardening in Arizona.

According to the Pew Research Center, more than a quarter of Americans say they are spiritual but not religious. Brent Hermann said, “I’m definitely not religious, but being in wild spaces is humbling. It reminds me how small my place is within the beauty and complexity of the natural world.”

Shiprock is called Tsé Bitʼaʼí in Navajo, which means "rock with wings." The formation figures prominently in Navajo mythology as a giant bird that carried their ancestors from the cold northlands to the warm southlands.

Debbie Tsosie puts the finishing touches on Phil Moosomin’s Grass Dance outfit at the Northern Navajo Nation Fair Pow Wow in New Mexico. In the origin story for the Grass Dance, a boy who could not walk saw prairie grass sway in the wind and envisioned himself dancing.

Natural burials at White Eagle Memorial Preserve Cemetery care for the dead with minimal environmental impact, conserving and fertilizing wild land. Cemetery director Jodie Buller said, "Our burials honor the Earth, the deceased, and the families and friends who love them both."