Not our mother...

“The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy~

'Tis the season for outdoor adventures, and in this age of 'trees over people,' this is an excellent point to remember!  Go out and enjoy nature, but not as a goddess or mother, but rather as a friend, a blessing, an inheritance of which we are stewards!