Guest Blogger, Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik: More Than the Eye Can See

This fall my family took a trip to Sequoia National Park, where we hiked through Crystal Cave, one of the marble caves found in the park. The cave is about a million years old, and filled with beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations. On our hike we learned about a new cave recently discovered in the park; it is called Ursa Minor, named for an ancient bear skeleton that was found inside. It?s likely that the new cave will never be open to the public -- too precious for the constant wear-and-tear of human visitors.
What struck me was that these caves have been forming for tens of thousands of years, silently growing underground undisturbed by human beings. These amazing works of natural beauty are just there, whether we discover them or not.
The Torah tells us God gives human beings dominion over the earth. Some have interpreted this to mean that the earth is ours to use as we see fit; others understand this to mean that we have a responsibility to care for the earth. The unexplored cave system in the Sequoias is a part of creation that most human beings will never see; the cave our guide told us about has only been viewed by about 20 people so far, and the park is committed to protecting it from the public, going so far as keeping the exact location a secret. And Ursa Minor is surely not the last such cave system in the world; no doubt more lie underneath the surface of our planet, never to be seen by people.
In a world that we have explored from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean, it is amazing to me that there remain such undiscovered places. As stewards of creation, sometimes the best thing we can do is act like the world was not created solely for our enjoyment.

[Posted by Rabbi Shawna Brynjegard-Bialik]