“Love for the Earth and Love for You”: Christian Nature Spirituality in Mary Oliver`s Thirst Abstract Moon-ju Shin (Sogang Univ.) Mary Oliver is considered a leading ecopoet in contemporary American poetry. She is a prolific writer who has published twenty books of poetry, six prose works, and four chapbooks and special editions. The purpose of this study is to bring to light a lesser-known aspect of Oliver`s poetry by examining Thirst (2006) from the perspective of Christian nature spirituality. Unlike her typical ambivalent attitude toward the Christian God and Christian faith, Thirst provides readers with explicitly Christian ways of seeing God and nature. Nature spirituality, which often is an expression of pantheism, equates God with nature and focuses on the immanence of deity in nature. In contrast, Christian nature spirituality expresses panentheism, a view in which God is both immanent in nature and yet transcendent of it. Christian nature spirituality is a way of relating to nature by way of the biblical commandment to love one`s neighbor. In Thirst, Oliver describes nature as neighbor and fellow creature, and she shows, in poems praising God`s wondrous works in creation, how love of God and love of nature are intertwined. Since nature reveals God`s love for creation, loving nature is a way to return love to God. Nevertheless, Oliver realizes the limitations of practicing such love. She therefore expresses at the same time a thirst for moral goodness, and it is this longing for moral perfection that leads her into a deeper, more loving relationship with God and His creation.