As a soil scientist, this hits deep. Understanding the depth of the chemistry and physics while inhaling the smell of soil—remembering I am human. It calls up Genesis 2:7. 💜🙏🏽
My sustainability writing on Solarpunk Thinking is grounded in many of the concepts you discuss here, Jim. I’ve settled on a framework that asks us to nurture relationships of mutuality and justice with all subjects in an expansive community. One where those subjects are not separated by time, geography, or being human or not. Writing from Aotearoa New Zealand, I’m also influenced by matauranga Māori—indigenous wisdom.
Nature is miraculous. Toxic religion equates science with atheism and therefore denies followers the opportunity to observe the constant miracles that surround us in nature every day. I suppose that they’re afraid of people forming a more direct connection to God rather than one mediated by a pastor or parent. Like, watch a mama mouse raise 14 babies to adulthood in 3 weeks, and you might start thinking they are candidates for the best mothers among all mammals. Also, if they get stressed, they may eat one or two of their own babies. If they get VERY stressed, they may eat all of them. So nature proves that moral ambiguity is part of God’s plan, and we CAN’T have that.
An excellent article. It reflects why I became eco-conscious and ecumenical in the 70s. It de-centers the manifest destiny mentality that plagues our nation and the world.
What a stellar article. That Genesis verse has been major trouble for Evangelicals. They think it will all be destroyed.
First I really don't understand how humans thought God created the Earth as a home to be destroyed. If that logic was applied to their home, they would be appalled.
One other comment on the inclusion or non-human elements and residence of our Earth. The white Evangelicals seem to keep drawing the circle smaller. They are moving to rejecting many groups of people as non-human.
It’s a solid piece, but I can’t help noticing something that always shows up in these conversations. We talk about “rediscovering” the more-than-human world like it vanished on its own, when the truth is that non-white traditions never lost it. Indigenous peoples, Sufis, Taoists, West African lineages, First Nations, and so many others carried an ecological, relational spirituality long before Western philosophy decided to call it a breakthrough.
What gets framed as a modern awakening is often just colonial amnesia with good lighting. Mystics outside the West have been teaching unity, surrender, reciprocity, and kinship with the living world for centuries. They didn’t treat the Earth as a resource. They treated it as a relative.
If we’re going to talk about repairing the rupture, we have to admit who kept the thread unbroken. Some of us never forgot the world was alive.
As a soil scientist, this hits deep. Understanding the depth of the chemistry and physics while inhaling the smell of soil—remembering I am human. It calls up Genesis 2:7. 💜🙏🏽
My sustainability writing on Solarpunk Thinking is grounded in many of the concepts you discuss here, Jim. I’ve settled on a framework that asks us to nurture relationships of mutuality and justice with all subjects in an expansive community. One where those subjects are not separated by time, geography, or being human or not. Writing from Aotearoa New Zealand, I’m also influenced by matauranga Māori—indigenous wisdom.
Nature is miraculous. Toxic religion equates science with atheism and therefore denies followers the opportunity to observe the constant miracles that surround us in nature every day. I suppose that they’re afraid of people forming a more direct connection to God rather than one mediated by a pastor or parent. Like, watch a mama mouse raise 14 babies to adulthood in 3 weeks, and you might start thinking they are candidates for the best mothers among all mammals. Also, if they get stressed, they may eat one or two of their own babies. If they get VERY stressed, they may eat all of them. So nature proves that moral ambiguity is part of God’s plan, and we CAN’T have that.
An excellent article. It reflects why I became eco-conscious and ecumenical in the 70s. It de-centers the manifest destiny mentality that plagues our nation and the world.
This is right up my alley as I work in the herbal industry and as such I have has Braiding Sweetgrass on my reading list for a while!
What a stellar article. That Genesis verse has been major trouble for Evangelicals. They think it will all be destroyed.
First I really don't understand how humans thought God created the Earth as a home to be destroyed. If that logic was applied to their home, they would be appalled.
One other comment on the inclusion or non-human elements and residence of our Earth. The white Evangelicals seem to keep drawing the circle smaller. They are moving to rejecting many groups of people as non-human.
It’s a solid piece, but I can’t help noticing something that always shows up in these conversations. We talk about “rediscovering” the more-than-human world like it vanished on its own, when the truth is that non-white traditions never lost it. Indigenous peoples, Sufis, Taoists, West African lineages, First Nations, and so many others carried an ecological, relational spirituality long before Western philosophy decided to call it a breakthrough.
What gets framed as a modern awakening is often just colonial amnesia with good lighting. Mystics outside the West have been teaching unity, surrender, reciprocity, and kinship with the living world for centuries. They didn’t treat the Earth as a resource. They treated it as a relative.
If we’re going to talk about repairing the rupture, we have to admit who kept the thread unbroken. Some of us never forgot the world was alive.