Caring about the Earth can cause huge ethical dilemmas, notes Elise Lazar, who also came to the SUWA dinner. This is her current painful dilemma: How do you love your neighbor who is building a house that you believe is too big?

Lazar describes herself as culturally Jewish, not as a practitioner of the religion. Still, when she read about tikkun olam, she connected with her religious heritage in a new way, she says.

Tikkun olam is explained, in Jewish religious thought, as the belief that as the world was created, the earthen vessel on which we live was unable to contain all of God's light. It is our duty, as his people, to keep working toward the world's perfection.

Last Christmas, Lazar gave out compact fluorescent light bulbs, including leaders of the LDS Church on her gift list. Along with the bulbs, she wrote a letter explaining the concept of tikkun olam.

In a similar way, E.O. Wilson sought to educate when he was in Utah last February. The Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist was raised as a Baptist. He no longer believes in God, but he knows how to talk to those who value creation as God's handiwork.

So he travels the country speaking about the shared values of science and faith. When he came to Utah, he met with LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.

Wilson's latest book, "The Creation," has been well received. But a small minority of reviewers thought it sounded condescending, were troubled by the way a nonbeliever like Wilson presumes to tell believers what their faith requires.

In person, though, Wilson's earnestness is evident. His specialty is insects, and he is passionate about the miracle of small details. He longs to preserve every vacant lot and field, every tangle of sunbaked weeds.

Meanwhile, the closest thing the United States has to Great Britain's "Living Churchyards" is the National Wildlife Federation's "Churchyard Habitat" program. Roxanne Paul of the NFW reports only one church in the state has registered as a habitat church, Murray Park Church of Christ in Murray.

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On a weekday morning, if you drop by the the Murray Park church, you'll see no sign of humans. But you will see plenty of birds.

The church's official certification of habitat is posted in the window of the tidy-looking building. As for the grounds, well, the lawn has been mowed and the surrounding natural areas feature some xeriscaping-type grasses as well as some random weeds, which have obviously sprung up naturally.

The Murray church owns only a small piece of land. Statistically, this is a small amount of habitat.

Still, every tiny step is significant, Emmi says.

"I think you start with one thing," she says. If you start with energy-efficient light bulbs, then pretty soon every person in your congregation has switched to the bulbs at their homes, too. And then maybe they all start walking to church or carpooling. And maybe the next thing you know, they've stopped spraying for weeds.

Emmi says the Quakers try to avoid spraying for weeds by asking each member of the congregation to pull a weed on Sundays.

She sounds thoughtful as she notes that the yard around their meetinghouse is starting to look a little ratty.

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E-mail: susan@desnews.com