Orthodox Biz Blog

Oct 30

2007

Di's 1st Blog: Eleos, Preserving the Environment of Life by Using Essential Oils

Posted by Dianne Tzouras in Marketing

Welcome to my blog. Please write me with your questions and comments.

How did I get here? I heard about Orthodoxbiz.com through an email from Glen Chancy, and so I was drawn into the fold of Orthodox Christians with businesses.

How to begin? As a retired teacher (but teachers never really retire), let mebegin by defining some terms. A blog is a web log or internet journal. Eleos is from the Greek for mercy, blessing, healing or oil. The environment is the earth on which we and the rest of life reside. Essential oils are the volatile liquids distilled from aromatic plants.

They say silence is golden, so why add more words to the blogosphere (blog world)?
Our beloved Saint John Chrysostom, the golden orator, used words to instruct and inspire.
Thus I will write about what I love and hopefully you, the reader, will find something of interest in my writing and return to see what else I have to say. Allowing myself time to reflect and the reader time to respond, I’ll write a few times a month.

What did I do this week? I set up a table at my next-door neighbor’s art event, an open studio, where I talked to people about life and showed them how to use essential oils. Whereas an artist uses pigmented oils to paint pictures, I use essential oils from plants to enhance my life.

Why are plants significant? Plants are our partners in nature. Crucial to our physical survival, plants release oxygen for us to breathe, but they also add to the beauty of the world and our enjoyment of it. Plants fashion our landscape, provide cover for animal species and, in the case of trees, embody a natural heating and cooling system as the seasons change. Many plants are edible as well as lovely, and they give us fiber and water to cleanse us, and nutrients to nourish us. I love to touch, taste and smell the vast array of plant foods (fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and spices) as they are transported and transformed from garden and kitchen to plate and palate. I am equally fascinated by the medicinal and nutritional value of plants. If we remove the fiber and water from aromatic plants by distillation, what remains are the essential oils, beautifully scented volatile liquids; they nourish us aesthetically, emotionally, and physically, and help restore us to health when we are ailing. Let us appreciate the awesome diversity of the plant world and our debt to the Creator Who made these life-giving gifts for us to enjoy.

What responsibility do we have to the earth on which the plants grow? The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Psalm 24). The environment or earth itself has been loaned to us, and we are its stewards. This has been eloquently stated by the present “Green” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and his predecessor, Patriarch Dimitrios. As Orthodox stewards, it is our duty to learn what we can do to take care of the earth, and thus to keep ourselves and the environment in a healthful balance.

Many blessings,