[BalaGire]

Hi Nina, You wrote " In the case of Greece I can not imagine how can a person deliberately can cause such harm to the creation of God... There is a prophecy from Saint Kosmas Aetolos: "People will become impoverished because they will have no love for trees.""

Nina, I have a book about St. Kosmas Aetolos by Bishop Augustus (Augoustinos) from Florina. I am having great difficulty in reading it because of the difficult language plus its in Greek Katharevousa.

Do you know of any website where I can download this saint's writings?

This prophecy is so right. When people lose touch with nature, when they are surrounded on all sides by so many artificial materials, so much junk TV, junk food, junk everything, when so many people are crowded together, how can they find peace. How can they find God? Last week I visited an auntie of mine who lives in an apartment in the middle of the city. The apartment is in a nice part of town but there are so many buildings built close together. She told me that nearly every night she can hear bitter quarrels between people and she just can't understand why people have changed so much since she was a child.

Where I live, I can hear various birds, the murmur of the pines, my wind chimes, the water dripping onto the roots of my vegetables, etc. Peace and contentment. We rarely quarrel in our house and are at peace with nature.

Man needs nature, he needs to feel the earth with his hands, he needs to see things growing, to eat the fruit of his labours, to become aware that everything in nature is connected and just to slow down and enjoy life.

Elder Paisios also told us that hard times were coming and that we should each own a small block of land. Plant trees and vegetables, be as independent as we can be, live as simply as we can so that we do not rely too much on others. I don't know whether we are approaching these "hard times" or not but things seem definitely to be getting worse each year.

Effie