When 'religion' starts to feel off or skewed, I am always drawn to Christian mystics like Francis of Assisi. Francis left his life of privilege and dedicated himself to a life of service. "The compassion Francis had for everyone, deserving or undeserving, and his sense of identification with nature, has made him an attractive figure to many people today, and not just to Christians. It is perhaps no surprise that in 1979 Pope John Paul II declared him the patron saint of ecology. "