To speak of creation as our home is to speak of creation as relationship. The word creation implies relationship, unlike the word nature, which holds no inherent religious meaning. “Creation” points to a “Creator,” a God who creates. The distinction between creation and nature is an important one because when we discuss the integrity of nature, especially from the Franciscan tradition, we are really talking about creation, the relationship of the natural world, including humans, to the Creator. “Creation,” therefore, means relationships between the human and nonhuman created order, the place of the human person within that order, and the response of the person to the created order in its relationship to God.
In this respect, talk of an “environmental crisis” from a Franciscan perspective must immediately signal a “religious crisis” simply because environment is more than nature alone; rather, it is that realm of God’s goodness in the natural world that shares with us humans a deep longing for God.
—from the book Care for Creation: A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth
by Keith Douglass Warner, OFM, Ilia Delio, OSF, and Pamela Wood
