More-Than-Human Deconstruction

Exploring Nature's Way of Rewilding Spirituality

Photo by Darla Winn

“We lost connection with the earth, sun, moon and stars, and then we constructed roofs and walls to meet with God. We domesticated our more-than-human nature with bricks and mortar, and let dogma deafen our souls to our mother tongue of nature. We have left our first love. We search for the divine in books and buildings, unaware that the universe calls our name through the rustling of the leaves, and woos our hearts in the quietude of a star-lit sky, and rolls infinity upon our feet through the tides of the sea.”

- Jim Palmer, Notes from (Over) the Edge

I drink Coke Zero, which is not a healthy beverage choice, partly because it contains artificial sweetener, specifically aspartame. Meanwhile, I have historically avoided fruit because it tends to be high in sugar. Yes, I realize that pairing those two things together is absurd.

While aspartame is proven to be unhealthy, fruits are a healthy part of a balanced diet. While fruits do contain sugar, it’s naturally occurring and comes packaged with fiber, vitamins, and other beneficial nutrients that slow down sugar absorption and contribute to overall health.

This is but one example of how human beings create artificial substitutes for what naturally occurs in nature. Here are a few other examples:

• Breast milk vs infant formula

• Soil fertility vs synthetic fertilizers

• Natural light vs LED lighting

• Traditional healing systems vs pharmaceuticals

• Human touch & care vs AI companions and social robots

The point is not that infant formula, synthetic fertilizers, LED lighting, pharmaceuticals or AI are inherently bad or serve no good purpose. I’m just observing how we often create substitutes for natural phenomenon and processes.

This can sometimes be based upon the hubris of control. Substitution often stems from the belief that nature is flawed or insufficient. In other words, anything nature can do we can do better, faster and more efficiently. The result can be epistemic violence. Replacing ancestral or indigenous knowledge systems with “modern” substitutes can erase entire cosmologies.

It’s ironic that a verse in the Bible points out that nature is the ultimate revelation of the existence of “God”. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20:

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

In other words, nature is a form of general revelation, a canvas upon which ultimate reality is inscribed. Nature is not just “out there”—it’s a lived experience that reveals deeper truths. We can infer attributes of the transcendent or divine from the structure and beauty of the cosmos.

Think of “eternal power” as the unfolding of the universe on a cosmic scale through the forces of nature. “Divine nature” could be understood as beauty, complexity and interdependence. Through nature we find a visibility of the invisible through patterns, laws and emergence. We also find accountability woven into nature through cause and effect.

In some respects, nature could drive religion out of business. We may not need sacred texts, religious doctrines, clergy or human belief-systems to know the highest truths. And the good thing about nature, is that it’s available to everyone, regardless.

Emily Dickinson wrote, “The Supernatural is only the Natural disclosed.” Dickinson subscribed to what could be called “natural supernaturalism.”

Natural Supernaturalism is a philosophical and literary concept coined by Thomas Carlyle in his 1830s work Sartor Resartus, and later expanded by M.H. Abrams in his study of Romanticism. It proposes a radical reframing of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural—not as opposites, but as deeply intertwined.

Thomas Carlyle wrote:

“Existence itself is miraculous… the supernatural is latent in the natural.”

Instead of seeing miracles as violations of natural law, Carlyle saw nature itself as miraculous—a revelation of infinite depth. His aim was to raise the natural to the supernatural, rather than reduce the supernatural to mere naturalism.

Natural Supernaturalism holds that existence itself is miraculous, and that life contains elements of wonder that can never be defined or eradicated by physical science. Natural Supernaturalism is based on the idea that nature (and its laws) is itself miraculous, being of infinite depth and infinite expansion. Natural Supernaturalism understands the “supernatural” to be found latent in the natural, and manifesting itself in it, or of the miraculous in the common and everyday course of things.

To break it down in comparison to religion:

Traditional Supernaturalism - God is external, transcendent, intervening

Naturalism - Nature is mechanistic, knowable, secular

Natural Supernaturalism - Nature is sacred, mysterious and revelatory, and human experience is a vessel for the divine

Nature as Deconstruction

I’ve recently published two major article on religious deconstruction and reconstruction:

• Going Through the Big 'D' and Don't Mean... A Subversive Guide on How to Deconstruct Everything

• Breaking Bad (Binaries): When Walter White is Your Deconstruction Counselor.

Consider today’s article as part three.

I have noticed ways that we’ve possibly made the leaving-religion, religious deconstruction and spiritual formation process unnatural, by inserting artificial substitutes. Does leaving religion require a reading list and workshops? Does religious deconstruction mean consuming content on progressive theology, existential philosophy and Jungian psychology? In order to flourish spirituality, do you need a guru or a regimen of practices and disciplines?

Don’t get it twisted. This is not an anti-intellectualism sentiment. Neither am I writing off the fields of theology, philosophy and psychology. I’m not saying any of those elements aren’t useful. Rather, I’m asking the question if we have been too dismissive of the inherent religious deconstruction and reconstruction resources found in nature.

Nature can also serve as a powerful lens for religious deconstruction, not in opposition to faith, but as a way to reimagine it beyond inherited dogma. Here are a few ways that I have found that nature can be understood as a useful religious deconstructive framework:

1. Decentering Human-Centric Theology

• Nature reminds us that spiritual truth isn’t confined to human institutions or texts.

• It invites a post-anthropocentric spirituality, where trees, rivers, and ecosystems become co-witnesses to the sacred.

2. Embodied Epistemology

• Nature offers nonverbal, experiential knowledge—a counterpoint to scriptural literalism.

• Practices like forest bathing, stargazing, or gardening become rituals of reconnection, challenging the primacy of doctrine.

3. Temporal Disruption

• Natural cycles (death, decay, rebirth) destabilize linear, eschatological narratives.

• This opens space for cyclical, regenerative cosmologies—more aligned with indigenous and ecological wisdom traditions.

4. Mystery Over Certainty

• Nature resists totalizing explanations. Its complexity and unpredictability foster epistemic humility.

• This undermines rigid theological systems and invites a more mystical, contemplative posture.

5. Rewilding Belief

• Moving beyond institutionalized, domesticated, or colonized forms of faith—and toward something more organic, untamed, and alive.

• Rewiring domesticated faith with rewilded belief. A few examples of this shift:

  Institutional, rule-bound → Intuitive, Experiential

  Hierarchal/Patriarchal → Decentralized, Relational

  Doctrinal Certainty → Embracing Mystery and Paradox

  Colonial Theology → Ancestral Wisdom, Earth-Based Practices

  Fear-Based Obedience → Love-Driven Curiosity

6. Emergent Spirituality

• Fluid, evolving forms of spiritual expression that arise when traditional religious frameworks are critically dismantled.

• It’s not just what comes after deconstruction—it’s what grows through it.

• Emergent spirituality often includes:

  Embodiment: Moving away from abstract belief toward felt experience.

  Nature-based practices: Seeing the Earth as sacred and spiritually instructive.

  Syncretism: Integrating diverse spiritual sources without rigid boundaries.

  Activism: Linking spiritual growth to justice and liberation.

One could possibly illustrate a natural religious deconstruction and reconstruction process this way:

Institutional Religion

⬇️

Encounter with Nature

⬇️

Disruption of Certainty

⬇️

Rewilding of Belief

⬇️

Emergent Spirituality

Emergent spirituality is not a new religion—it’s a living process, a spiritual composting of what no longer serves, so that something wild, rooted, and true can grow.

Nature’s Way to Deconstruct to Reconstruct

When nature is used as a religious deconstruction pathway, it doesn’t just challenge theological dogma—it reorients the entire epistemic scaffolding of what counts as sacred, real, and knowable.

What follows are five ways to use nature as a reconstructive framework after leaving religion.

1. Re-sacralize the mundane - Treat cooking, walking, or listening as sacred acts. Let presence be your prayer.

2. Engage mythopoetically - Interpret your life as a myth in motion. What archetypes are you living? What symbols recur?

3. Cultivate ecological reverence- See the Earth not as resource, but as revelation. Practice reciprocity with the more-than-human world.

4. Live ethically, not dogmatically - Let your values emerge from compassion, not coercion. Natural supernaturalism is post-institutional.

5. Integrate science and spirit- Marvel at quantum entanglement, neuroplasticity, or cosmic evolution—not as threats to faith, but as invitations to deeper wonder.

A way to think of nature’s way of religious deconstruction and reconstruction would be:

Nature ➡️ Perception ➡️ Symbolization ➡️Meaning ➡️ Sacred Action

In other words, we cultivate enjoyable ways of being with nature. We experience and interpret the natural world through our senses and cognitive processes. We use elements of the natural world, like trees, rivers, animals, patterns and cycles to represent or symbolize abstract ideas, emotions, or concepts. We embrace these symbols as deeply meaningful, and allow them to inspire who we are being and how we are living in the world.

Nature’s way is not escaping the world, but deepening your engagement with it, not waiting for miracles, but recognizing that existence itself is miraculous, not simply rejecting religion, but metabolizing it into a personal cosmology. It’s not a return to religion—it’s a transmutation. A way of living where the divine is not “out there” but woven into the fabric of being.

One way to think of nature’s way of post-religion reconstruction could be diagramed this way:

Nature offers compelling resources to a person’s religious deconstruction process. When inherited religious frameworks collapse, nature offers a non-doctrinal source of truth:

• It’s experiential, not propositional.

• It resists abstraction and returns us to embodied knowing.

• It invites phenomenological engagement—what does moss feel like, what does silence sound like in a forest?

This grounds spirituality in sensory immediacy, not metaphysical speculation.

Nature is also a rich symbolic reservoir. For example, in Taoism, rivers represent flow and surrender. The idea of nature as a symbolic reservoir suggests that the natural world isn’t just a backdrop for human activity—it’s a living archive of metaphor, myth, and meaning, continuously replenished and reinterpreted across cultures and epochs.

Nature can also be viewed as a Deconstructive Ally. Nature itself deconstructs rigid systems:

• Entropy challenges permanence

• Ecology undermines binary thinking (predator/prey, sacred/profane)

• Weather mocks human control

Nature is a philosophical provocateur, reminding us of impermanence, interdependence, and mystery.

Nature can also provide a post-deconstruction praxis. After the theological scaffolding falls, nature offers rituals without religion:

• Forest bathing as contemplative practice

• Seasonal altars as cyclical reverence

• Composting as spiritual metaphor (death → transformation)

These practices are accessible, pluralistic, and embodied—perfect for post-categorization spirituality.

A few useful books related to nature as a religious de/reconstruction framework:

The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World by David Abram

The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution by Carolyn Merchant

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures) by Donna J. Haraway

The option’s for religious deconstruction and reconstruction are not limited to:

• Reinterpreting the Bible

• Rehabilitating bad theology

• Recreating a new belief system

• Rebuilding a secular philosophy

It could mean some of those items, but it could also mean:

• Creating personal sanctuaries in nature that evoke peace and awe.

• Cultivating a liturgy of time based upon seasonal rituals and earth cycles.

• Practice “deep noticing” to dissolve the boundary between observer and environment.

• Practice “animist reframing” - treat trees, rivers, and stones as beings with agency, not as superstition but as a relational epistemology that decenters human dominance.

• Compost by deconstructing inherited dogma through ecological metaphor

  

• Create a symbol library with a living archive of nature-rooted symbols with layered meanings.

• Develop a ritual toolkit with Modular practices that can be adapted across contexts—e.g., for grief, celebration, transition.

In Summary

• Human beings create artificial substitutes for what naturally occurs in nature, which is problematic in some cases… such as religious deconstruction and reconstruction.

• Natural supernaturalism proposes a radical reframing of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural—not as opposites, but as deeply intertwined.

• Nature is a powerful framework for religious deconstruction and reconstruction, which aids rewilding belief and emergent spirituality.

• When nature is used as a religious deconstruction tool, it doesn’t just challenge theological dogma—it reorients the entire epistemic scaffolding of what counts as sacred, real, and knowable.

• When inherited religious frameworks collapse, nature offers a non-doctrinal source of truth.

• I should probably stop drinking Coke Zero and eat more fruit.

• Thank you for reading today’s article. If you found it meaningful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $5 monthly or $50 for a year. As a token of my appreciation I offer several perks including two free books and a free full membership to the Center for Non-Religious Spirituality.

“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
- John Muir