The Steward's Equation
The Steward's Equation
Earth = Mission × Care2
Einstein's most famous equation says that a small amount of mass holds an enormous amount of energy. We borrow it to say something similar about stewardship: a mission, multiplied by care, can move the whole Earth.
Reading the equation
Three letters
Earth
What we are trying to move: the health of people, animals, land, sea and, one day, the habitats we build in space.
Mission
The work itself: the research, the restoration projects, the devices and the products that fund them.
Care, squared
Care for people and care for the planet, multiplied together. Neither one is enough without the other.
How the mission grows
Care compounds
In Einstein's equation the mass is fixed. In ours it isn't. Every act of care adds a little to the mission, and each step builds on everything before it, the way compound interest grows a savings account.
Put that growing mission back into the first equation and care appears twice: once to grow the mission, and once to multiply what it can do.
Small, steady care adds up faster than it looks. If care grows a mission by just 10% a year:
| After | The mission is |
|---|---|
| 0 years | 1× |
| 10 years | 2.6× |
| 25 years | 10.8× |
| 50 years | 117× |
Widening circles
One step at a time
The growth formula works one step at a time, and so does The Path of a Steward. Each circle of care grows out of the one before it:
- Self
- Others
- Earth & Animals
- Sea
- Space
A note on the science: this is a metaphor, not physics. In Einstein's E = mc², E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light. We have kept the shape of the equation and given the letters new meanings.