The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Nature: The Elements 9781350046825, 9781350046856, 9781350046849

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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND NATURE

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Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion The Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion explore major and new areas of research within the field of religious studies. Topics covered by the volumes range from the intersections of religion and popular music, religion and race, to Christianity in America. Their focus is on cutting-edge research, and they make an ideal reference tool for researchers in the field. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music Edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg

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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND NATURE

THE ELEMENTS Edited by Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC 1B 3DP , UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © Laura Hobgood, Whitney Bauman and Contributors, 2018 Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. Cover design by Terry Woodley Cover image © Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur (1904), plate 96: Chaetopoda. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN :

HB: ePDF : ePUB :

978-1-3500-4682-5 978-1-3500-4684-9 978-1-3500-4683-2

Series: Bloomsbury Handbooks in Religion Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS

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L IST OF C ONTRIBUTORS

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Introduction Laura Hobgood and Whitney Bauman

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PART ONE: EARTH 1

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Backyard Gardens as Sacred Spaces: An Ecowomanist Spiritual Ecology Elonda Clay

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In a Body on Wheels in Touch with the Earth: Cycling as Religion and Response Laura Hobgood

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Pressure, Gestures: Sacral Work: Bodies Poetics Bobbi Patterson

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Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism Christopher Carter

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To Eat or Be Eaten? That’s the Question Ernst M. Conradie

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PART TWO: AIR 6

The Personhood of Air: The Ammatoans’ Indigenous Perspective Samsul Maarif

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Changing Atmospheres of Religion and Nature Forrest Clingerman

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Eco-Dao: An Ecological Theology of Dao Heup Young Kim

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Remembering the Air: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Spiritual Dimensions of Wind Energy Lisa H. Sideris

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CONTENTS

10 Con-spiring Together: Breathing for Justice Laurel D. Kearns

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PART THREE: FIRE 11 Recovering/Uncovering Animality Paul Waldau

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12 Feral Becoming and Environmentalism’s Primal Future Sarah M. Pike

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13 From Refiner’s Fire to Refinery Fires: Reflections on the Combustive Element of Fire Marion Grau 14 Fire, Religion, Nature, and Shona Culture Isabel Mukonyora 15 Protective Occupation, Emergent Networks, Rituals of Solidarity: Comparing Alta (Sápmi), Mauna Kea (Hawai‘i), and Standing Rock (North Dakota) Siv Ellen Kraft and Greg Johnson

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PART FOUR: WATER 16 Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, and the Compassionate Wisdom of Water Elizabeth McAnally

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17 Mountains of Memory: Confronting Climate Change in Sacred Mountain Landscapes Elizabeth Allison

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18 At the Mercy of Sacred Waters: Sanctification, Fetishization, Permeation, and Responsiveness Sigurd Bergmann

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19 Water from a Stone: Dams, Deserts, and the Miracle of Moses in the Modern World Catherine L. Newell

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20 Conclusion: Thinking with the Elements Jay McDaniel

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N OTES

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B IBLIOGRAPHY

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I NDEX

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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Interior of the Shrine of Madonna del Ghisallo, patron saint of cyclists, in Magreglio, Italy.

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Photo by the author.

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A ghost-angel bicycle in Georgetown, Texas. The bicycle is installed at the location where a young cyclist was hit by a truck and killed in January 2017.

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Photo by the author.

18.1 J. M. W. Turner, Fishermen at Sea, 1796.

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https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishermen_at_Sea#/media/File:Joseph_Mallord_William_ Turner_-_Fishermen_at_Sea_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.

18.2 J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm—steam-boat off a harbour’s mouth making signals in shallow water, and going by the lead, c. 1842.

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© Wikimedia commons .

18.3 J. M. W. Turner, The Deluge, 1805.

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turner-deluge.jpg.

18.4 The Baptism of Christ, fourteenth-century fresco, Pomposa Abbey, Codorigo, Italy.

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Shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license .

18.5 and 18.6 Dampfmaschinenhaus/Maurische Dampfmoschee (Moorish Steam Mosque), Potsdam, 1841–43. 228–9 Photo: © S. Bergmann, December 2010, September 2016.

18.7 Hermann Prigann, Waterlevel, transformation of a former water-pumping station (near Marl, Germany) into a landscape artwork, 2001.

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© Herman Prigann / BONO, Oslo 2017.

18.8 Art Without an Object but with Impact, by George Steinmann 2008–12.

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Photo: © George Steinmann/Pro Litteris, Switzerland 2016, © George_Steinmann / BONO, Oslo 2017.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Elizabeth Allison is Associate Professor of Ecology and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, where she founded and chairs the graduate program in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion. Her research and teaching explore connections between religion, ethics, and environmental practice, with particular attention to biodiversity, waste, ecological place, and climate change. Her articles appear in journals including WIREs Climate Change, Mountain Research and Development, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, and in edited volumes on Bhutan, religion, and geography. She is working on a book entitled Enchanted Earth: Religion, Environment, and Development in Modernizing Bhutan. Whitney Bauman is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University in Miami. His teaching and research interests are in Religion and Science, Religion and Nature, and Religion and Queer Theory. His publications include Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic (Columbia University Press, 2014) and with Kevin O’Brien and Richard Bohannon, Grounding Religion: A Fieldguide to Religion and Ecology, 2nd Revised Edition (Routledge, 2017). Sigurd Bergmann is Professor in Religious Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and lives in Lund, Sweden. His previous studies have investigated the relationship between the image of God and the view of nature in late antiquity, the methodology of contextual theology, visual arts in the indigenous Arctic and Australia, as well as visual arts, architecture and religion, and religion in climate change. He established the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment, and among his many publications are Creation Set Free (Eerdmans, 2005), God in Context (Routledge, 2003), In the Beginning Is the Icon (Routledge, 2009), Raum und Geist (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), Religion, Space and the Environment (Transaction, 2014), and Theology in Built Environments (ed., Transaction, 2009), Religion in Global Environmental and Climate Change (co ed., Continuum, 2011), Religion in the Anthropocene (co ed., Wipf & Stock, 2017), and Religion, Arts and the Environment (co ed., Brill, 2018). Christopher Carter is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego. His teaching and research interests are in Christian Social Ethics, Black and Womanist Theological Ethics, Environmental Ethics, Religion and Food, and Religion and Animals. His publications include The Spirit of Soul Food (University of Illinois Press, forthcoming), and The Future of Meat Without Animals (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Elonda Clay is a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands in Theology and Religious Studies. Her teaching and research interests include Africana religions and viii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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ecology and science, religion, and media. Her dissertation, “Genetic Journeys and Recycled Roots: Intermediality and Myth,” focuses on media portrayals of direct-toconsumer DNA ancestry testing and African American consumers of personal genomic services in the United States. She situates these portrayals within wider politics of representation, especially junctures in which media portrayals of race and genetics intersect with discourses about ethno-racial origins, genetic homelands, makeover television, (bio) racial uplift, and online ancestoring practices. She currently serves on the American Academy of Religion steering committees for Media, Religion, and Culture and Critical Approaches to Religion and Hip Hop. Forrest Clingerman is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Ohio Northern University. Using tools from philosophical hermeneutics (theories of interpretation), he has researched the religious dimensions of issues such as climate change, environmental themes in art and literature, and the concept of place. He is co-editor of Theological and Ethical Perspectives on Climate Engineering: Calming the Storm (with Kevin O’Brien, Lexington, 2016) and Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (with Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen, and David Utsler, Fordham, 2014). Ernst M. Conradie is Senior Professor in the Department of Religion and Theology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, where he teaches systematic theology and ethics. He is, most recently, the author of The Earth in God’s Economy: Creation, Salvation and Consummation in Ecological Perspective (LIT Verlag, 2015), Redeeming Sin: Social Diagnostics amid Ecological Destruction (Lexington, forthcoming) and the leading editor of Christian Faith and the Earth: Current Paths and Emerging Horizons in Ecotheology (T&T Clark, 2014). Marion Grau is Professor of Systematic Theology and Missiology at MF Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo, Norway. Her teaching interests are in constructive theology and her current research projects include a monograph on the redevelopment of pilgrimage and the reshaping of identity in Norway and an Arctic Theology of Petroleum economies and climate change in the Northern hemisphere. She is the author of Rethinking Theological Hermeneutics: Hermes, Trickster, Fool (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Rethinking Mission in the Postcolony: Salvation, Society, and Subversion (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2011), and Of Divine Economy: Refinancing Redemption (T&T Clark/Continuum, 2004). Laura Hobgood is Professor and Holder of the Paden Chair in Religion and Environmental Studies at Southwestern University. She has written several books on animals, religion, and nature including A Dog’s History of the World: Canines and the Domestication of Humans (2014), The Friends We Keep: Unleashing Christianity’s Compassion for Animals (2010), Holy Dogs and Asses: Animals in the Christian Tradition (2008) and she has served as an Associate Editor for the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. When she is not teaching or volunteering for animal justice causes, she can frequently be found on her bicycle. Greg Johnson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, where he is also actively involved in the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies. Johnson studies indigenous traditions and law, with a focus on burial protection,

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

repatriation, and sacred land disputes in Native American and Hawaiian contexts. Recent publications include Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited with Siv Ellen Kraft (Brill, 2017). Laurel D. Kearns is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion and Environmental Studies at Drew Theological School and the Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University. In addition to EcoSpirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth, co-edited with Catherine Keller, she has contributed chapters to volumes such as The Oxford Handbook on Climate Change and Society (Oxford University Press, 2011), The WileyBlackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice (Blackwell, 2012), The New Evangelical Social Engagement (Oxford University Press, 2013), Living Cosmology: Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe (Orbis, 2016), Grounding Religion (Routledge, 2017), and From Grassroots to Global (Cornell University Press, 2018). Her research is focused on religious involvement in ecological issues and movements, with particular interests in environmental justice, climate change, and food. In addition to her teaching and research in religion and ecology, she helps steer the Green Seminary Initiative. Her decades-long involvement in religious environmentalism has roots in the island where she was born, Sanibel, Florida. Heup Young Kim is the founding director of the Korea Forum for Science and Life and Professor of Systematic Theology at Kangnam University, South Korea. He has published numerous works in the areas of East Asian Theology, Interreligious Dialogue, Religion and Science, and Religion and Nature. His English publications include Wang Yang-ming and Karl Barth: a Confucian-Christian Dialogue (1996), Christ and the Tao (Wipf and Stock, 2003), and A Theology of Dao (Orbis, 2017). He served as a president of the Korea Society for Systematic Theology, a co-moderator of the Congress of Asian Theologians, and a founding fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion. Siv Ellen Kraft is Professor of Religious Studies at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. Her teaching and research interests are in Sami religion, indigenous religion(s), and contemporary spiritualities more broadly. Recent publications include Brill Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s) (edited with Greg Johnson, Brill, 2017), New Age Spiritualities in Norway (edited with Ingvild Sælid Gilhus and James Lewis, Equinox, 2017), and Nordic Neoshamanisms (edited with Trude Fonneland and James Lewis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Samsul Maarif is a faculty member of Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies (CRCS ), Graduate School, UGM . His main research interests include indigenous religions of Indonesia; encounters between “world” and “indigenous” religions; and religion and the environment. His publications include Pasang Surut Rekognisi Agama Leluhur dalam Politik Agama di Indonesia (The Tides of Recognition: Indigenous Religions in the Politics of Religion in Indonesia; CRCS , 2017); with Z. A. Bagir, and others, Studi Agama di Indonesia: Refleksi Pengalaman (Religious Studies in Indonesia: Reflective Experiences; CRCS , 2016); “Redefinisi Agama, Agama Dunia, dan Agama Leluhur” (Redefining Religion, World religions, and Indigenous Religions), (a book chapter edited by Ali-Fauzi, Bagir, and Rafsadi, Pusad Paramadina, 2017); “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forest Conservation,” Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology (2015); and “Being Muslim in Animistic Ways,” Al-J¯ami‘ah: Journal of Islamic Studies (2014).

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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Elizabeth McAnally is the newsletter editor and website manager for the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale. Her doctoral dissertation is entitled “Contributions to an Integral Water Ethic: Cultivating Love and Compassion for Water” (California Institute of Integral Studies, 2017). Elizabeth is the guest editor (with Sam Mickey) of the 2011 special issue of World Futures: The Journal of Global Education entitled “Nature and Eros: Love for the Planetary Era.” She has taught classes on philosophy, religion, and ecology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, the University of North Texas, Diablo Valley College, and the University of San Francisco. She practises yoga and Chinese internal arts, and enjoys singing and playing the flute. Jay McDaniel is Willis Holmes Distinguished Professor of Religion at Hendrix College in Arkansas. His main research interests are religion and ecology, interfaith dialogue, and religion and music. He is the author of many articles and several books, including Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), With Roots and Wings: Christianity in an Age of Ecology and Dialogue (Wipf and Stock, 1995), and Gandhi’s Hope: Learning from Other Religions as a Path to Peace (Orbis, 2005). He is on the board of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, and the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, with an office in Beijing. Isabel Mukonyora is Professor of World Religions and Theology, Western Kentucky University. Her main research interests come from questions to do with making history and social change the setting for an interdisciplinary approach to Christianity and the Religions of Africa in contemporary history. Her first monograph is an anthropological study of Christianity in Africa. Dr. Mukonyora teaches regular classes in Theology, helps younger scholars by undertaking peer-reviewing for academic publishers, and publishes journal articles and book chapters of her own, most of them drawing attention to colonialism, gender, politics, and, more recently, climate change. Catherine L. Newell is Assistant Professor of Religion and Science at the University of Miami. Her research focuses on the conjoined histories of religion and science, technology, and medicine. She is currently in the final stages of completing her first book, The Wheels of Titan: Faith, the Future, and the Final Frontier. Bobbi Patterson is Professor of Pedagogy at Emory University. She focuses her current scholarship on questions of place and space in relation to cultural, social, and life systems. Her interests in lived religion in communities also draws on theories and practices of Christian and Buddhist contemplative studies. Coordinating the Religion and Ecology Collaborative of Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion, she shares scholarly interest in how and when nature, ethics, and urban communities interact and generate resilience. With a longstanding commitment to the scholarship of teaching and learning, she remains engaged in various pedagogical projects focused on community and civic engagement, place-based pedagogies, and the discovery of richer paradigms for assessment. Sarah M. Pike is Professor of Comparative Religion and Chair of the Department of Comparative Religion and Humanities at California State University, Chico. She is the author of the books For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism (University of California Press, 2017), Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves: Contemporary Pagans and The Search for Community (University of California Press, 2001), and New

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Age and Neopagan Religions in America (Columbia University Press, 2006). She has written numerous articles and book chapters on contemporary Paganism, ritual, the New Age movement, the Burning Man festival, spiritual dance, environmentalism, and youth culture. Her ongoing research interests include youth spirituality in the US and ritual practices expressing and constructing relationships to nature. Lisa H. Sideris is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of science, religion, and the environment. She is author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (Columbia University Press, 2003), and Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge and the Natural World (University of California Press, 2017). She serves as co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. Paul Waldau is an educator who works at the intersection of animal studies, law, ethics, religion, and cultural studies. A Professor at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, Paul has been the senior faculty for the Master of Science graduate program in Anthrozoology since its founding in 2011. Paul has also taught Animal Law at Harvard Law School (2002–2014) and courses in Harvard’s Summer School since 2009 where he now offers “Animal Studies—An Introduction.” The former Director of the Center for Animals and Public Policy at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, Paul taught veterinary ethics and public policy for more than a decade. He has completed five books, the most recent of which are Animal Studies: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Animal Rights (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is also co-editor of the groundbreaking A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2006). His first book was The Specter of Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals (Oxford University Press, 2001).

Introduction LAURA HOBGOOD AND WHITNEY BAUMAN, EDITORS

“Religion and nature” has and will continue to be a difficult to define field of study, and this is not a bad thing. Casting a broad net allows for multiple voices to weigh in on the intersection of these (at times) contentiously debated terms and their (at times) contentiously debated relationships. There are volumes written about the various definitions of both “religion” and “nature,” so naturally these definitions proliferate exponentially when one begins to look at the relationship between the two areas these terms signify. Sometimes “religion and nature” (also known as “religion and ecology”) focus on the ways that traditionally understood religions, such as Christianity or Hinduism, might delve into their historical and contemporary resources to find support for environmental activism in areas like climate change. Sometimes its focus is on new religious movements within or outside of these same traditions, such as Green Buddhism or Paganism. Still other times “religion and nature” focuses on the negative effects that various religious ideas, rituals, and texts have had upon the rest of the natural world. Some scholars choose to focus on specific traditions, rituals, and figures within religious traditions in a way that constructively examines that ritual, figure, or tradition for its support of a “green” way of living (or lack thereof). Finally, many scholars focus on emerging “ecological” religious ideas and spiritualities that emerge from environmental activism, evolutionary thinking, cosmological thinking or even surfing, fly fishing, hiking, and biking.1 While various chapters in this collection engage with these approaches, we do not limit it to just one of them. This collection takes a somewhat different, elemental, approach but is aimed to be a useful introduction to the field of religion and nature/ecology for both students and scholars. Unlike some handbooks in the field which are based on specific religious traditions, this book will not be geared towards how specific religious traditions address environmental issues and concerns. Unlike other handbooks that address specific topics within “religion and ecology” or “religion and nature,” this text will not focus solely on issues such as climate change, species extinction, biodiversity loss, etc. Finally, unlike some works that focus on new eco-religious practices and traditions, this book will not exclusively focus on these practices either. Though all of these ideas and topics will be addressed throughout this handbook, it is organized around an elemental perspective. Contributors take “earth,” “air,” “fire,” and “water” to be the elemental metaphors around which the reflections in this book revolve. Such an understanding foregrounds our elemental entanglement with the rest of the planetary community and begins to ask questions such as: ●

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Earth. How do we look at our own embodiments and other bodies, and issues of specific embodiments in an elemental way as ecosystemic and as ecosystems in themselves? Air. How do we understand ideas, philosophies, values, theories, and morals as arising up out of the elements and returning to affect the planetary community? 1

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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND NATURE ●

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Fire. How does passion, desire, anger, and advocacy draw from the evolutionary history of our elemental entanglement and what differences can they make for the future planetary community? Water. How does creativity, but also despair, confusion, sadness, guilt, and other such emotions, help keep us grounded within the planetary community and what is their role in how we might change our actions in order to be more empathetic with the rest of the planetary community?

We hope this elemental framework provides a better mechanism for understanding the complex, “wicked,”2 eco-social problems we now face as a planetary community than models that take specific religions or specific issues as their focus. This elemental focus also follows some recent developments in critical theories that tend to focus on the turn to hybridity of processes, events, and flows rather than discrete traditions, problems, and things. These developments reflect an even longer “turn” toward thinking about things such as religion, ideas, and imagination within an immanent (but not necessarily materially reductive) framework. We think it will be helpful for the reader if we take the time here to explain these two “turns” because they ground our reasons for approaching “religion and nature” and “religion and ecology” in this text in an elemental way. This is not to say that all of the authors included in this volume will agree with these ideas or even our methodology. Nevertheless, we the editors have asked the authors to reflect on specific elements for the following two methodological and theoretical reasons.

THE (RE)TURN TO IMMANENCE Though one can find immanent ways of thinking about the cosmos in many different traditions around the world, including western ones, traditions of human exceptionalism have dominated the modern, globalized world.3 In other words, the idea that humans are somehow apart from the rest of the natural world, and that our ideas and imaginations are somehow not “of ” the world, have led to a notion that the human capacity of reason (and in some cases the human soul) transcend the evolving realm of nature in some way. One might think of the Platonic Forms, the Aristotelian teloi which direct individual and collective life, the idea of a Heaven that transcends the physical world and to which our souls (and sometimes bodies) will be resurrected after death into an eternal life. One might think of the Cartesian dualism, which suggests the “thinking thing” is dualistically separated from the material body and found only in the human being, or the Kantian a priori ideas and principles that transcend all embodied, earthly experience yet guide those very embodiments and experiences. Still yet, one can think of the hierarchies that historically meant one must be incarnated as a human male to achieve Enlightenment in Buddhism, or the hierarchy of persons in Hinduism, or the assertion of various heavenly realms in Jainism and other traditions which are thought to be “higher” planes of existence that transcend this earthly realm. Finally, one might think of the history and anthropology of the sciences in which human agents are able to manipulate and change a passive, “dead”, world of particles, plants, and things.4 All of these metaphors, and more, have played into an understanding that a) humans transcend the rest of the natural world in some way, b) and/or that there are higher realms beyond the embodied world where things such as ideas, reason, and souls are from, c) and/or that there is a better place beyond this Earth where we will end up and where there may or may not be some sort of

INTRODUCTION

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god or gods. These “transcendent” ways of thinking have not been without their problems and criticisms. The so-called “turn” to immanence, then, emerges in part as a response to the problems of transcendence. Though, again, there have been strong and viable traditions of thinking more immanently throughout many (if not most) of the world’s traditions, the transcendent way of thinking was taken up into colonial and industrial mentalities that quickly became dominant on a global scale throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The eras of exploration, slavery, colonization, industrialization, and globalization, then, spread certain sorts of hierarchical and transcendent ways of thinking about human relationships to one another, other plants and animals, and the Earth itself. Ironically, this transcendent and hierarchical way of thinking, which was taken up by the scientific mentality of domination from prior theological mentalities of domination, contained also some of the very roots of its undoing. Some might argue that the so-called scientific revolution (which often ignores the contributions from other cultures from all over the world to what we call science, and which should really be called a shift toward scientific ways of thinking and away from merely theological ones)5 itself contained the beginnings of a shift back to (or more exclusively toward) immanent ways of thinking. The Copernican and Galilean “shifts” for example, disrupted the cosmological (natural, philosophical, and theological) worldview because it de-centered the Earth from the universe. This led to a re-thinking of the purpose of humanity and a questioning of the place of “god” or “gods” in the cosmos. Newton would, a bit later, take out the need for a god to actively animate the world with his “billiard ball,” and “mechanical” understanding of physics.6 The only thing something like a God was needed for, was to get everything going, but after that, one could look to immanent causes of material effects. Much later the sciences of evolution and geology challenged the biblical account of the history of the world, it turned out to be older and longer than previously imagined, and challenged the ideas that species were created separately. Placing humans within an evolutionary framework meant too that art, philosophy, technology, and religious ideas all “emerged” from the evolution of life on the planet.7 Such shifts in cosmology, geology, and evolution (among others) lead toward more focus on the causes for events and effects within the material world (rather than transcendent divine causes). This, itself, was necessary for the shifts from natural philosophy to the natural sciences. The efficacy of these shifts in terms of technology transfer cannot be underestimated. The Industrial Revolution, advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation, and production technologies, are all the legacy of a shift toward looking for “natural” (that is immanent) causes for events and things in the world. However, humans were still seen as the manipulators, and thus as somehow apart from the rest of the natural world. Whereas these shifts towards immanence within the so-called natural sciences may have all but eliminated the notion of a transcendent god or gods from a naturalistic picture, humans filled the place that the gods once did. As is exemplified by one of the most important philosophers of immanence in the nineteenth century, Frederick Nietzsche, the space left by the death of a transcendent, omni-God, is filled by the near deification of the human being.8 Immanent philosophies, again, have been present throughout the history of most cultures in the world. However, the specific problem of the (re)turn to immanence was forced by a western style philosophy cum scientific method that understood humans as separate from the rest of the natural world. Toward this end, well before Nietzsche asserted that “God is dead,” Nicolas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno began countering transcendent theologies with pantheistic or at least panentheistic theologies that suggested

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THE BLOOMSBURY HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND NATURE

that god and the world were one, or at least that the world was within god and god permeated that world.9 Baruch Spinoza would, a bit later, argue for a full-blown pantheistic philosophy in which God and Nature were identical: the natural world (including the cosmos) was God.10 Disgruntled by the rapid changes that were being made during the Industrial Revolution, German Romantics such as Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Schelling, and later Ernst Haeckel, not to mention the Romantics in the U.S. like Thoreau and Emerson, drew from these earlier pantheistic ideas to forge a re-vitalized understanding of nature that understood humans as part of the rest of the natural world (to varying degrees).11 If God was Nature, or if the divine was immanent, and humans were embodied creatures, then humans and human reason, thought, emotions, and imaginations do not transcend the world, but are rather of the world. These shifts toward making the human immanent within the rest of the natural world were also met with a shift toward a focus on embodiment. Along with a focus on embodied reality came a focus on the diversity of bodies and how certain bodies (often male and white) had been defining reality for all other bodies. Feminist movements, civil rights movements, Indigenous Peoples’ movements, LGBTQ movements, and other liberation movements from all over the world began to argue for the de-centering of the patriarchal (white, hetero-, male) perspective and a re-centering of perspectives that included the multiply embodied realities of the human community. In addition, modern environmental and animal rights movements began to challenge the species boundary that made humans superior to the rest of the natural world. As these voices and movements grew, and these turns toward immanent ways of thinking coming out of philosophy and the sciences began to forge new ways of thinking about reality and the human places within that reality, new ways of thinking about the embodied reality and processes of everyday life began to emerge. Here, we want to discuss one of those thought threads that plays into the shaping of the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of this text: viz., the new materialisms.

THE NEW MATERIALISMS There are a whole host of philosophies and theories which have sprung up in the twentieth to twenty-first centuries to re-think humans, animals, and the Earth in a more immanent framework. The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead is one good example.12 According to this way of thinking, everything is made up of events/processes that are interrelated. There are no stable “things,” but rather multiple events make up any given “thing” that we humans see, and all “things” are interrelated in this ongoing process of interaction. The French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari drew from process thought and other theories to formulate their understanding of all life (ideas, thoughts, matter, energy, bodies, etc.) as existing on a single plane of being: there is no outside space of transcendence, in other words.13 Still other thinkers, such as Michel Foucault, began to understand history, identities, and ideas in an evolutionary perspective where there are no solid foundations in reality for male/female, gay/straight, sane/insane, etc., but rather these are all categories that are constructed over millennia of bio-cultural evolution.14 As such societal norms, whether couched in the discourse of “religion” or “science,” are never merely given and a priori, but are a posteriori and can be (and will be) changed over time and differently so in different places. Still other theories, such as emergence theory, suggest that everything—ideas, imaginations, values, aesthetics, bodies, brains, trees, etc.—emerges into existence in creative moments of autopoesies from “lower” levels.

INTRODUCTION

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However, higher levels cannot be reduced to “lower” levels and thus this is not a reductive view of the material world. There are multiple levels of analysis and all are equally real: physical, chemical, biological, psychological, philosophical, cosmological, etc. Emergent theorists, in other words try to tell the story of “something more from nothing but.”15 And finally, there are others who want to tell an immanent story about the whole cosmos through the scientific “big bang” story of cosmology. According to this, we are a part of a 13.7 billion-year-old process in which the universe “becomes conscious of itself.”16 What all of these various theories and philosophies have in common is that they attempt to describe all of reality without reducing things to mere matter or to mere spirit or ideals, without falling into a dualism between body/spirit, matter/ideas, brain/mind. In other words, they want to tell a non-reductive story about the evolving planetary community, of which humans are but a part. These attempts to tell an immanent, non-reductive, nondualistic, and non-anthropocentric story are at the heart of a theoretical framework that falls under the rubric of “the new materialism.”17 According to the new materialisms, the entire world is agential or vibrant.18 That is, there is some form of “agency” (if you will) “all the way down” to the subatomic level. Causality is diffuse and there are multiple causes for any given event, action, or embodied reality. One might think here of the microbiome of the human being, for instance. According to scientists, humans are more like an ecosystem made of various organisms and bacteria, to the extent that only one in ten of the cells that make up the human body are indeed human.19 Furthermore, we exist in the context of an evolutionary trajectory: we individuals did nothing to create our bipedal stature or our opposable thumbs; we were born into these developments. Similarly, we are born into histories of cultural and linguistic evolution: the language and knowledge in our heads is not our own, but was built up by others over millennia. Finally we are creatures with porous boundaries that open onto other creatures: we breathe the exhalations of plants, we eat transformed sunlight, our bodies and our waste become food for others, bacteria move in and out of our bodies, waters of the skies, rivers, and oceans run through our veins. All of these things mean that we are much less powerful individually and as a species than what previously imagined. From this perspective, the idea of mastery found in both religious and scientific traditions of thought is folly. We should understand our selves as actants among other actants in an entangled world constantly in flux.20 It is for these complex, related reasons that we have decided to take an “elemental” approach to understanding “religion and ecology.” We want to highlight how the flows of earth, air, fire, and water constitute our very existence, are the sources from which we emerge, and are the elements toward which we shall return. This assertion includes our embodied and physical reality as much as it includes our values, ideas, hopes, dreams, emotions, desires, and “spiritual” yearnings. Thus, we organized what follows into the four primal elements identified by many cultures throughout the world: earth, air, fire, and water. “Earth” examines bodies of many types, forms, sizes, spaces, and iterations—animal bodies, racialized bodies, earthly bodies. Though some traditional religions view bodies as potentially dangerous and polluted, as well as viewing the body of the Earth as a place to escape, environmental (and ecofeminist) approaches to thinking about embodiment challenge dualistic assumptions in complex ways. These essays analyze how the very materiality of life shapes and informs religious sensibilities while reemphasizing and, to a certain extent, embracing varied embodiments. Christopher Carter delves into the complicated history of gardening, slavery, racism, and racist dimensions of environmentalism and, also, of religion. His examination of how

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blood marks the soil and thus marks gardening for African Americans is a powerful critique of how much of the environmental and religion and nature movements ignore racism. Elonda Clay also digs into gardening from a multi-faceted perspective, but most specifically from Africana women’s ecoperspective. Her essay focuses as well on how backyard gardens are spaces for memory making. Laura Hobgood bases her contribution on the ways that certain engagement with activities in nature, in this case bicycling, tie human bodies to the Earth in unique and powerful ways. She asks: can bicycling be considered a type of nature religion? Bobbi Patterson examines the poetics of the body and the ways that bodies perform sacral work in the world. In her piece, not only human bodies, but the bodies of trees and other animals are also considered. Finally, Ernst Conradie looks at bodies as eaters and as the eaten. Is food fuel or ritual? How does consumption of bodies and an understanding of our own bodies as being consumed impact religious outlooks? “Air” deals metaphorically and literally with air. Metaphorically we analyze how things we can’t see or feel—ideas, ethics, values, morals, philosophies, theories—emerge from planetary contexts and return to affect those contexts. Literally, we look at issues of air: the connections of tree transpiration and the oxygen needed to fuel our lives; the pollution of the air and how this hampers our ability to think and imagine creatively together; the loss of bird species as a result of air pollution and how such species loss impoverishes our ability to use our every breathing moment to imagine new ways of becoming in the world; and the importance of breath in religious traditions. Air and spirit, of course are tightly connected in religious and literary imagery. We explore the connection between clean air, breath, and the capacity for life to continue on the planet. Forrest Clingerman asks how religions can connect thinking, doing, and feeling. He asks: How can religion and ecology integrate a conceptual relationship between humans and the environment with a perceptual one? Samsul Maarif examines the Ammatoans’ perception of air. This indigenous community in Indonesia focuses on the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans with the environment as a whole. Heup Young Kim delves into a theology of Dao, an overarching East Asian concept. This ecotheology, according to Kim, goes beyond cognitive and verbal expressions to be realized in bodily experiences, particularly in breathing. Lisa Sideris considers the spiritual elements of wind energy by looking at the complicated aesthetics of the technologies of wind energy. She argues that the assertive visibility of wind energy, its very presence on the landscape, forces humans to encounter sources of energy rather than keep them in hiding. Considering the connections between conspiring, respirating, and environmental justice, Laurel Kearns examines air pollution and interfaith work on addressing climate change and, specifically, clean air. Fire asks how passion, desire, anger, and advocacy draw from the evolutionary history of our elemental entanglement and what differences can they make for the future planetary community? This section examines the intersections between religion and direct action on behalf of ecosystems and on the bodies in those ecosystems. Specific foci include environmental justice/racism, activisms in the global South, responses to climate change and more. While directly focused on actions, these essays will also include the theoretical or theological bases for those actions. Sarah Pike looks at extremist environmental groups, particularly the Earth Liberation Front, and their movement to become feral in order to reintegrate with the Earth. She examines their temporary communal efforts connected to activisms, such as fighting pipelines and halting construction. Isabel Mukonyara looks directly at fire as it connects Shona women to specific cultural and religious roles. In addition, she describes two other ways that fire becomes sacred in Africa, with the Heroes Acre, Harare who use the fire of

INTRODUCTION

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guns to build Zimbabwe and with the Masowe Apostles, a Christian group with a high percentage of female leaders and healers. Paul Waldau moves into the realm of other animal bodies and humanity’s shared animality with these bodies. He argues for bringing together various paths to approaching the destructive human-animal dichotomy and poses the question “are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” Siv Ellen Kraft and Greg Johnson present a very contemporary activist issue, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Standing Rock camps, with all of its connections to climate change. They also show the intersections of activism as indigenous people from many other places in the world gathered in solidarity at Standing Rock. Finally, Marion Grau presents an elemental theology, focusing on sacramental fires in relationship to the “fire” of petroleum. Activists fighting the local and global impacts of the petroleum industry are included as participants in the fire of this battle. Water is connected to the watery chaos in the beginning of Genesis, and many stories of the origins of life begin with water. Even the contemporary scientific narratives suggest that all life begins in deep ocean vents. Water represents, then, the continuing natality of the planetary process. It also, however, represents chaos, confusion, despair, and change. “Rough waters,” “the calm before the storm,” and many other metaphors and religious stories involve the sea as the locus of chaos and despair. How are creative and destructive processes connected within the planetary community and how might we use guilt, despair, and fear in ways that re-connect human beings with the wider planetary community? This section looks, literally, at contemporary eco-social issues of water, but also at how such problems affect humans emotionally and how the degradation of waters are yet another way that we distance ourselves from the despair that we need to face in order to bring about a different planetary future. Elizabeth McAnally explores the water ethic in Mahayana Buddhism through the image of the compassionate bodhisattva. Included in this exploration are examples of contemporary actions and activisms performed and embraced by some Buddhists in South Asia. Sigurd Bergmann follows four different paths to ponder water as an element of human self-understanding. Visual arts, Christian Trinitarian cosmology, commodification, and architecture come together in the analysis. Glaciers as sacred and symbolic beings provide the window through which Elizabeth Allison ponders water. She contends that glaciers hold collective memory and that, as they melt due to climate change, this memory is dis-membered. Catherine Newell compares and contrasts the Sinai as described biblically in the time of Moses with Los Angeles today. Whereas God gives water in the Sinai, humans take water from the Colorado River in ways that are potentially devastating. The concluding chapter by Jay McDaniel urges us to consider several factors of what taking religion elementally might mean. Those in “traditional” world religions, those that consider themselves to be of “no” religion at all, and those who consider themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” can take part in an elemental religion that recognizes humans are beings among other beings in a planet that is alive. Rather than understanding ourselves as individuals doing things to one another and the Earth, we might begin rather to understand ourselves as comprised of and compelled by the various elements of the planet: all that is possible with human beings is made possible by the elements that make us up and enable the continuing process of life. This combination of ideas, eclectic but rich globally and thoughtfully, offers the reader the elements of nature and religion from unique perspectives. Our hope is that the essays can be used individually or as a whole to reveal the possibilities of looking at the intersections of religion, nature, and ecology.

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As with any volume, this volume would not have been possible without many contributions. First and foremost, we would like to thank the individual contributors to this volume. It has been a long journey and we are thankful to all of them for making this the wonderful volume it has become. Second, we would like to thank Lalle Pursglove, our editor and champion at Bloomsbury. Without her support and encouragement over the past three years, this project would have never come to fruition. We would also like to thank our institutions and intellectual communities that have supported this work, especially: Southwestern University; Florida International University; the Forum on Religion and Ecology; The International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture; the Religion and Ecology Group of the American Academy of Religion; and the Animals and Religion Group of the American Academy of Religion. Without these institutions, and the friends and colleagues that make them up, we would not be in the position to write such a volume today. On a personal note, Laura Hobgood would like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. Jimmy Smith to her current work on cycling as religion and to the editing of this volume as a whole. Finally, we would like to thank the planetary community and the life therein, without which nothing would exist.

PART ONE

Earth

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CHAPTER ONE

Backyard Gardens as Sacred Spaces: An Ecowomanist Spiritual Ecology ELONDA CLAY

This chapter focuses on backyard gardens as sacred spaces for the spiritual praxis of connecting and caring for the Earth. Using the framework of spiritual ecology, this work explores the spiritual and environmental understandings of women of African descent within the United States. I situate the long-standing practice of making backyard gardens within the frameworks of space/place and African American ecological heritage, attending to the intergenerational connections and ecological criticisms embodied in Africana women’s eco-narratives and intentional garden cultivation. Gardens and landscapes immerse humans in the cycles of nature; life, death, and rebirth, growing seasons, the rising sun and the waning moon, planting seeds, growth, and harvest. These cycles give rhythm to the reciprocal relationships of care for the earth by humans and life-giving abundance for humans by the earth. Backyard gardens are places of cultural memory, everyday gardening spaces overlaid with memories of food grown and enjoyed, backs hunched over and knees bending, dirty hands and setting suns. Places where our parents and grandparents look back at us and smile. Intergenerational memories also contribute to the embedding of backyard gardens as romanticized and/or nostalgic spaces. Backyard gardens are also expressions of earth care, self-sufficiency, and community in the forms of food, flower, and seed gifting as well as the sharing of gardening knowledge. What do stories from and about Africana women gardeners and the African American ecological heritage tell us about their relationships and interactions with the natural world? My interest is in exploring US African American gardening heritage, memories about African American women gardeners, and the implications of heritage and memory on the spacing of nature as sacred, located in larger frameworks of gender, race, space/place, and spiritual ecology. Garden stories offer slices of the lives of women who may never have written about their gardens or nature experiences, opening up to readers vibrant portraits of women who have traditionally been rendered invisible.

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TRACES OF BEAUTY AND BARE HANDS: MEMORIES OF GRANDMOTHER’S SMILE, ROSES, AND NEIGHBORS My interest in backyard gardens begins with the food, culture, and sustainability practices that are inextricably interwoven with the relationships I had with gardening women in my life. I would accompany my grandmother into her backyard garden during my visits at her house. Gardeners like my grandmother, Vorie “Moma” Clay, a woman of African and Native American heritage, were traditional knowledge bearers and folk herbalists. This project began with a memory of my grandmother standing amidst the corn, tomatoes, peppers, wild greens, and even wilder herbs in the simmering summer sun. She planted most of the garden in rows, each with its designated crop, but one corner looked like it was just totally untamed. This was the section where she had her medicinal plants. Her long, coalblack hair framed her face as she told me how dandelion greens help your eyes and polk salad is good for digestion. Moma Clay told me stories of how her grandmother (my great-great grandmother), a full Cherokee (Native American), had taught her everything she knew about the land and the earth, including the place of humans in it. “Sometimes,” she would say, “I talk with her here in the garden.” I cherish the recollection of an unnamed gardener that impacted my life as a child. For almost two years during my childhood, my family was homeless. During this time we lived in La Puente, California (near Los Angeles) as squatters in an abandoned house. My father managed to siphon electricity from the lines outside to provide some power for a small space heater and an electric hot plate. It was during this time that I met my first floral gardener, a white-haired Irish women well into her sixties, who maintained an amazingly beautiful rose garden in her front yard. After school, I would bob my little afro puffs past her yard, stopping to ask her questions and keeping her company while she pulled weeds, pruned, and fertilized the roses. We became fast friends. Often I would ask her for a rose for my mother, and she would send me home with lavish floral arrangements of Dream Come True yellow roses or Love’s Promise red roses, baby’s breath, and ferns. She shared with me the gift of momentary beauty amidst hardship. Another memorable gardener from my past was our neighbor, Ms. Alleen Wilson. I met her at eleven years old, when, after moving nine times in eleven years, my family moved into our first house. Ms. Wilson was a feisty little woman from the plains of Kansas. One of the joys of her life was her prolific backyard garden. From spring to summer she would grow okra, corn, collard greens, green beans, strawberries, carrots, peas, you name it. She no doubt had survived the Great Depression. She was the kind of neighbor that frightened you into coming over to see her garden. She used to yell across the fence like, “Girl, you better come over here and learn how to grow some food so you can go to the bathroom” . . . and “If I catch anybody in my house trying to get somethin’, I’m just goin’ introduce them to Pearl!” Pearl, by the way, was her 38 caliber pearl-handled gun. Ms. Wilson would always give most of her leftover harvest to families in the neighborhood, so after a couple of summers we were ready to take on the tasks involved in growing our own backyard garden. She showed us how to dig the hole, put in a tablespoon of Epsom salt, cover and water the plant, then move on to the next row. We would work in our gardens as the sun fell over the city sky, sharing stories, jokes, and news about the goings-on of our block.

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SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY Spiritual ecology has been defined as “scientific and scholarly studies of the dynamic arena at the interfaces of religions and spiritualities on the one hand, and on the other environments, ecologies, and environmentalisms.”1 Sarah McFarland Taylor, in her discussion of spiritual ecology, calls for scholars to examine the interfaces between religious forms, spiritual expressions, cultural systems, and environments; recognizing that “a plurality of ‘religious and cultural objects’ end up collected together and recombined with one another, producing some religious forms that are perhaps regional to that particular, localized area of intersection.”2 Spiritual ecology as a community of practice aims at “bringing spirituality and ecology together in ways that forge sustainable, meaningful and reciprocal relationships between humanity and the earth.”3 Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee has stated that “At the core of Spiritual Ecology is an understanding that our present outer ecological crisis is a reflection of an inner spiritual crisis.”4 As I have discussed in previous work,5 religion and ecology scholarship on US AfricanAmericans and religious environmentalism often conflates the category of race with the problem of environmental racism, which contributes to actual African American perspectives and practices related to religion and ecology remaining underexamined and undertheorized. Also, resources that are available on the topic of African Americans, Latino/a, and additional racial/ethnic groups’ participation in various environmental engagements are often excluded in syllabi on Religion and Ecology, Environmental Ethics, Religious Environmentalism, and Ecological Spirituality, a practice which contributes to the reproduction of “whiteness” within the field of religion and ecology.6 The absence of Africana and Latino resources on religion and ecology syllabi is more than mere silence; it is better described as a noticeable and “accountable absence”7 in pedagogical structuring that includes certain people of color while excluding others. As a result, religion and ecology discourses remain implicated in a racial system, what is known in the wider discourse of mainstream environmentalism as “the unbearable whiteness of green.”8 This raises the deeper questions of how whiteness informs the formation/construction of the professional identities of religion and ecology scholars. Lastly, there is a privileging of African American Protestant Christianity within the scholarship, which mutes diverse voices and neglects the environmental encounters and engagements from other Africana religious traditions and spiritualities.9 Spiritual ecology is structured to include wider varieties of Africana religious perspectives and multiple ways of relating worldviews to ecology and environmental concerns.10 Spiritual ecology as an approach to examine Africana religions therefore represents a significant pivot from a comparative world religions approach (the most popular in the field of Religion and Ecology) which highlights religious-ecological relationships and focuses on “greening” religious traditions by reinterpreting sacred texts. Instead, it [SE ] encourages scholars of religion to begin with the earth care practices and environmental heritage of Africana people who share a variety of worldviews, highlighting their practice-based ecological-spiritual relationships. I believe this will be helpful in the contexts of local and socially networked belongings and help to make visible practices that are overlooked by the “greening traditions” approach within the study of World Religions. In addition, historical ecology, geography, and African diaspora studies are valuable in assessing how place, diaspora, and migration relate to changes in ecological knowledge, creative innovation in rituals, and landscape transformations.

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Spiritual ecology also acknowledges the obstacles and limitation of itself as an ecological agenda, presenting the discrepancy between human ideals and actions as positive and negative potentials, not as eventual triumphant utopias or dystopias. Although humans may deem a place as sacred, this may or may not influence their behavior, leading to situations of further degradation and ruin.

THE ECOLOGICAL HERITAGE OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES Complex entanglements of race, nature, and difference; diaspora, slavery and empire; racism, sexism, power, and privilege are integrally connected; they are braided into American perceptions of bodies, landscapes, and land use. Yet these are not the totality of human encounters with humans, diverse animal species, or the Earth as home. In more ways than one, backyard gardens have the effect of digging up the past while opening up potential for new growth. Sub-Saharan Africans and their New World descendants have long been excluded from the global history of gardening and landscaping.11 The agricultural expertise of enslaved Africans, their gardens, and their gardening practices, while never hidden, have only recently started to receive attention in geographical and historical ecology scholarship. Although slaves were forced to cultivate large quantities of colonial commodities such as rice, sugar, tobacco, and cotton, colonizers and slave owners gave little thought and even less effort to the sustenance of their workforce.12 Within the plantation landscape, enslaved persons were permitted independent ‘provision gardens’ near their quarters to grow food. Other enslaved persons kept gardens outside of the bounds of the plantation house. Klindienst explains: From the master’s point of view, provision gardens offered important benefits. They relieved some of the economic burden of providing for the slaves, and they discouraged runaways, because, as masters noted, slaves tended to become deeply attached to their gardens and their animals.13 Geographer Judith Carney refers to these small allotment gardens as the “botanical gardens of the dispossessed,” where foodways, planting methods, and survival strategies of African origin played out on plantation landscapes.14 Enslaved persons operated with a measure of autonomy, self-determination, and communalism on plantation landscapes: Keeping a garden and some livestock meant slaves could participate in trade, earning and saving money. It was common for slaves to sell their produce, sometimes even to their own masters . . . Growing traditional African foods from seed preserved a link to their homeland and their ancestors. Having the means to feed loved ones supported the family structure that slavery so often broke down. Cultivating a garden meant that slaves could grow herbs to use in traditional medicine and flowers for beauty. In all these ways, gardens could heal and empower. When emancipation came, many slaves not only had money to buy land, they had seeds passed down for generations. Most importantly, in their gardens they had kept alive a love for the land that even the dehumanizing experience of slavery could not expunge.15 Through gardening practices, ecological expertise, and cultivation of African food staples, fragments of African traditions evolved into a distinct African American gardening

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tradition that continues to reinvent itself in gardens today.16 African foods introduced to the Americas that have been documented in pictorial and archival records include: rice, yams, okra (gumbo), millet, coffee beans, palm oil, black-eyed peas, the kola nut, watermelon, hibiscus, ackee, and sorghum. Other plants that, although of Asian or New World origin, had been grown in regions of Africa for hundreds of years, were bananas, plantain, taro, sesame, and peanuts.17 In their book In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World, Judith Carney and Richard Rosomoff examine how the agricultural and gardening knowledge of enslaved Africans and Native peoples was a foundational requirement of colonialism and the trans-Atlantic slave trade as global systems. As European colonial governments separated and carried African people around the world, they also carried plants, seeds, and gardeners.18 Expertise, and the ability to adapt to the flora of new environments, provided sustenance, medicine, and spiritual well-being to enslaved persons. After the Emancipation of bondsmen at the end of the American Civil War, many plantation grounds fell into ruin, becoming what newly freed persons called “old fields.”19 Land ownership provided farms and gardens that allowed free persons to pursue limited social and personal agency, yet the growing persistence of anti-black racism in the forms of Jim/Jane Crow and racial segregation and violence and exploitation in the forms of sharecropping, lynching, and land theft meant that a landscape could be a site of promise one day only to turn into a site of violence and trauma the next day. The “psychic wounds of racism and racial violence” involving American landscapes and the genocidal history of white settler colonialism and slavery capitalism continue to be in dire need of being addressed.20 Wendell Berry, in his book The Hidden Wound, argues that the potential for ecological and spiritual balance cannot be successful until the difficult conversations about race and America’s unsettled ecological heritages are aired out and resolved. He identifies the root of the problem as a retreat from ethical stewardship and the search for solutions within “an economy based on exploitation of power, the exhaustion of natural resources, the misuse of people, and the waste of products.”21 Berry, in his reflection on how the damage of racism has created and continues to create a historically reproduced “hidden wound” that passively condones and is complicit with regimes of race that undergird capitalist societies, exposes the interconnectedness of earth’s ecological crisis and racism as problems of spirituality and stewardship; repeated moments of disconnection and inaction. While the ecological crisis is articulated as a spiritual issue, the root of racial problems is seen as a stewardship problem, the desire to be superior to the human condition; a desire that leads to the subjugation of certain groups of people and the labeling of these groups as inferior. The distortion of stewardship and denial of spiritual responsibility are inextricably linked to the exploitation and dehumanization of others, the desecration of nature, and the degradation of the Earth. Thus American ideals of freedom and prosperity cannot be separated from “the issue of the health of the land.”22 Berry defines stewardship as “the complex responsibilities of caretaking and giving-back” that “calls for prudence, humility, good work, propriety of scale.” This perspective on stewardship extends from the human shaping and racializing of garden or agricultural spaces and landscapes to the transformation of human economic structures, as the existence of the world “rooted in mystery and in sanctity . . . would still be an economy of use, necessarily, but it would also be an economy of return.”23

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SPACING THE SACRED IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN GARDENS When scholars talk about sacred spaces in natural environments, they often look for landscape features such as mountains, rivers, caves, lakes, and forests, not gardens. Yet, gardens are available sacred spaces that are frequently located the closest to our homes, our communities, and our hearts. This is often because gardens can maintain our treasured memories of childhood and curiosity, family and friends, food and harvest; memories of watching, listening, tasting, touching, and feeling the earth. How do we discuss the spatiality of nature as a sacred space? This begins with locating the sacred within nature. Sacred space is not limited to sacred places or religious architecture, that is, spaces associated with specific natural sites or local practiced places. According to Lefebvre, landscape embodies social relations, and, at times, serves as the locus of struggle between groups over their respective place in a given social order.24 While gardening is a spatial practice that results in a transformation of physical spaces of nature, gardens and landscapes are lived spaces experienced through meanings (representational spaces) that are overlaid onto the physical space, creating what is socially and culturally recognized as “nature” and “natural.” The interrelationships between spatial practices of gardeners and lived spaces of nature are part of the nexus where nature is re-shaped as sacred space. De Mul, in discussing the spatial practices notes: Spaces create . . . a repertoire of possible actions and interactions. . . . spaces do not simply exist, but are being disclosed by human action. Spaces grow, shrink and vanish or are being transformed by other spaces. Spaces therefore also have a temporal dimension, they always ‘take place’ in time. Contrary to the concept of space, which often is conceived of as something static, in ordinary language the concept ‘time’ already has a dynamical connotation.25 The sacred spacing of gardens in African American ecological heritage represents gardens as: 1. therapeutic and restorative spaces for healing; 2. centering spaces for spiritual practices, such as contemplation, meditation, and prayer; 3. sanctuaries for alternative practices of community or spaces away from regimes of race; 4. milestone markers or living memorials; 5. a family member, friend, or lover; 6. a living presence infused with the divine; 7. a mediator between God and humanity that facilitates communication with divine forces, ancestors, and nature spirits; 8. a source of sustenance and life-giving gift from God; 9. a reverence for life and connection with the Earth; 10. land is freedom; 11. the Earth and food as sacred (strong food ethic); 12. spaces for cultivating plants for medicinal, magic, and/or conjure purposes. In his book, Flirting with Space: Journeys and Creativity, David Crouch argues that space takes on or is given new significance in the process of spacing. Crouch describes

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spacing as “the potentiality of unsettling and possibly momentary re-settling of things, feelings and thought in the eruption of energies and in the vitality of energy and the interstices between things. . . . spacing happens in and through moments of different intensities; unevenness, disarticulation and re-articulation in things happen in these moments.”26 The experiential dimension of landscapes/gardens as presented/storied by gardeners emphasizes the process and encounters involved in our engagements of material and metaphorical worlds. Spacing is a process of co-constitution of relations between the body and space that are ongoing. Crouch states, “Articulating what landscape ‘is’, rather than how it emerges and happens, feels very incomplete.”27 While the plantations of US American slavery were experienced as places of oppressive, extreme agricultural labor as well as spaces of racial terror and collective trauma for African Americans, farms and gardens were often places and spaces that represented the hopes of freedom from forms of dominance, dreams of self-determination and flourishing, and possibilities for creative expressions and community flourishing. African Americans sought to re-inhabit and orientate themselves within nature outside of the contexts of slavery and their dehumanizing status as property, as well as to create and experience alternative places for the spirit, spaces differentiated from the regimes of race in American society and experience temporary moments free from the restraints, social codes, and demands of subjection placed on black bodies.28 By cultivating gardens as alternative spaces, African Americans were “responding to the specific historical conditions of domination.”29 Environmental historian Dianne Glave reveals that during slavery, Reconstruction, and the era of Jim/Jane Crow, gardening was vital to preservation and conservation in the rural South for African American women. Glave asserts: “Despite the limitations imposed by enslavement, sharecropping, and racism, including limited access to better land, agricultural methods, and plants or crops, these women took some patches and attempted to make them their own through aesthetics and conservation efforts.”30 Philosophical historian Michel Foucault, in his description of gardens as heterotopias, notes: . . . perhaps the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden . . . The garden is the smallest parcel of the world and then it is the totality of the world. The garden has been a sort of happy, universalizing heterotopia [third space my emphasis] since the beginnings of antiquity.31 As heterotopic spaces, gardens are also in-between space; a real space that reflects/mirrors a utopian space. In this sense, African American gardens have functioned historically as in-between or third spaces for alternative practices of earth care, community, foodways, plant-based medicine, and spiritual selves away from slavery, Jim Crow, and racial segregation. This heterotopian orientation, with its mobile and adaptable sacred space, became a common practice of African diasporic peoples. In this next section, I turn my attention to representations of what Chidester and Linenthal describe as the poetics and politics of sacred space as demonstrated in garden stories from African American ecological heritage. They note: “In the poetics of the sacred, ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ [built] sacred sites were equivalent as positions in which power was localized.”32 Whereas US American churches have in general been sacred sites where race and power have been examined in the field of religion, landscapes as sacred sites where race and power are localized have not received the same attention. This coexistence of the poetics and politics of sacred space in African American garden stories

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shines light on American landscapes within both substantial and political definitions of sacred space.

THE SACRED SPACING OF GARDENS AND EARTH AMONG AFRICAN AMERICANS For both African American men and women, memory, family, and community are significant aspects of spacing gardens as sacred. American Studies and Anthropology scholar Grey Gundaker asserts that: “Because you ‘make’ land, there is no such thing as empty space within the African American economy of land.” In her discussion of US African American landscape ideology, she states: “All healthy and healthful landscapes are productive. The concept of productivity does not align with binaries such as constructed versus natural, urban versus rural, nor does it presuppose that commodities must result. Productivity fosters interpersonal and interspecies relationships and promotes conditions in which these can thrive.”33 To identify the ways in which Africana gardeners relate these associations through their stories, I will explore texts that combine memories of past gardens with personal reflection on gardeners and gardening. The texts range from autobiographical books to nature poetry, fiction, books on food and sustainability, and personal essays. Much of the richness of these texts comes from descriptions of remembered gardens and farms in people’s own words. These texts highlight many of the meanings common to the earth and gardens as sacred spaces among African Americans. 1. Gardens have long been thought of as therapeutic and restorative spaces for physical, mental, and spiritual healing. Joyce Pettis, from the essay, On Gardening, or A Love Supreme, shares: Over the years, plants have come to mark numerous significant events in my life. Most of the azaleas and rhododendrons in the backyard were planted when I knew that my first husband’s multiple myeloma, one of the three kinds of bone cancer, had finally won its seven-year battle with him, and he had only a few months left to live. My husband could sit up in bed and watch my labor. As his strength dwindled, almost literally before my eyes, I mounted my own battle against death through the promise of life symbolized in plants. They were, as I later came to think of this time, my therapy and salvation.34 Lewa, an urban gardener from Detroit, Michigan, describes how gardening and friendship helped her during a time of deep grieving: My father had just passed and I came out to D-town (Detroit). The women told me, “You need to get in the dirt.” [They told me] I needed to literally to get my hands, connect with the mother [earth], the original mother. This is the spiritual quality to gardening. What I learned gave me a way to be alone with my thoughts, a safe space to get with my thoughts. Women were all around me, they saw a satisfaction to it. I saw a direct connection from the pain of mourning my father to what I was planting. I planted that whole of collard greens, look at me go. What a sense of satisfaction.35 Wanda Stewart, an urban gardener and homesteader reflects on her gardening practice in the video Heal the Land, Heal the Spirit:

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When I have spent all day out here digging in the soil and tending these plants I go in the house with the greatest high of all and I’m calm and I’m relaxed and I’m elated. And I’ve exercised and used my body in ways that are really resourceful . . . And I know there are so many lessons to be learned about how to live your life. How to grow your own seed; whether that’s your own life, or whether that’s your child. But tending a garden is not different from tending a life . . . Really what do I think it takes? It takes us going back and tending that soil again and working it through.36 2. Gardens and wooded areas are often favored centering spaces for spiritual practices, such as contemplation, meditation, prayer, ritual, and ceremonies. Here, meditation teacher and wildcrafter Marilyn White describes her use of gardens as a sacred contemplative space: Yes, my garden space is a sacred, pure cosmic and spiritual retreat and more! The sacredness of my garden can be considered to be magical as it is a path between the natural and the supernatural worlds. It is a spiritual path that I gain access to. In that realm of existence, I become one in the same with the garden’s essences, scents, senses and impulses that flow boundlessly in my personal journey. Those individuals were taught as I was taught that I was not complete without nature, because I am nature. I must quiet myself regularly and connect myself to the gardens or the woods in the city or closest available natural wooded patch of public land.37 Once used by enslaved Africans as hush harbors—those hidden places of gathering away from the slavemasters—and places of worship, woodlands and fields continued to be spaces for prayer and praise for generations. Otis Daise, sixth-generation farmer and gardener from St. Helena Island, South Carolina remembers: We used to have our own chickens, get the eggs. In the fall, we used to kill a hog and cure it with salt. We had a smokehouse. Everybody shared. It changed, I’d say about twenty, thirty years ago. When all the old-time people died, it changed. My mother’s generation. Them old-time people, they used to pray and sing in the fields. Got the hoe goin’, and everybody got a tune, songs like “Take Me to the River,” “River of Jordan,” “Do Lord, Do Lord.” They used to go along like that and then they make up songs too. All that gone.38 3. Gardens also function as heterotopic spaces, spaces away from racism and racial violence that offer Earthen sanctuary and safe spaces for alternative practices of community. In his poem, Root, writer Terrance Hayes conveys the freedom from racism he felt while in his parent’s garden: My parents would have had me believe There was no such thing as race there in the wild backyard, our knees black with the store-bought grass and dirt, black as the soil of pastures or of the orchards grown above graves. We clawed free the stones and filled their beds with soil and covered the soil with sod as if we owned the earth.39 Activist and womanist writer Alice Walker shares memories of her mother’s transformed countenance and the flow of her creative landscaping designs while she was gardening:

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And I remember people coming to my mother’s yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity . . . I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible—except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. . . . Guided by my own heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength—in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.40 4. Planting seeds and trees as acts of remembrance or as milestone markers are also a means by which gardens can become sacred spaces. Sacred trees may also represent living memorials that commemorate the struggles and sacrifices of African and African American ancestors. Janie, a character in Zora Neale Hurston’s seminal book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, demonstrates the African American tradition of memorial gardening: She had given away everything in their little house except a package of garden seed that Tea Cake had bought to plant... The seeds reminded Janie of Tea Cake more than anything else because he was always planting things. She had noticed them on the kitchen shelf when she came home from the funeral and had put them in her breast pocket. Now that she was home, she meant to plant them for remembrance.41 Trees and groves can also take on a special, even sacred, significance: In this landscape, where legendary storms wipe out homes, wash out sandy roads, take down trees—live oak, pecan, sea pine, palmetto, and pear—where fields of ripening crops and every flower or bush that cannot survive a salt flood perishes, old live oaks invoke the spirits of ancestors. One among them is considered the most sacred: the tree where, on New Year’s Day 1863, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was read aloud to the blacks of St. Helena Island, telling them that now they were truly free.42 5. The interrelatedness of gardeners to gardens is often described in the familial or in romantic terms of family member, friend, or lover. Writer Kendra Hamilton powerfully expresses this perspective in her poem, Southern Living: To love a garden is to be in love with possibility: for it can never, almost by definition, ever be complete. To love a garden is to be in love with contradiction: ravished by order yet ever open to the wild. But more than all these, to love a garden is to find your one true lover: for a garden can’t survive its maker, will die with the one who loved it, with only a sudden spray of roses in June amid a derelict tangle of wood sorrel and sumac to tell an eye that can read the land that either of you were ever there.43 Otis Daise, sixth-generation gardener from St. Helena Island, South Carolina emphasizes his land commitments through the language of family: I was born and raised right here. My mother, grandmother, sisters, and brothers, all raised right here. My great-grandmother, she started it off. She was a Smalls, Jane Smalls. All this land was hers originally, from 1861. All of this come from the land . . . We’re six or seven generations on this land. We all speak Gullah. My children and

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grandchildren, they all know Gullah. I love my land. I love right where I’m at. I know my neighbors, they love where they at too. You got to love your land. Just like you love your husband or wife. You’ve got to love it.44 6. Viewing the earth a living presence infused with the divine is connected to the healing and restoration of place. Social theorist, social justice activist, and ecofeminist bell hooks notes in her book, Belonging: A Culture of Place: To live in communion with the earth fully acknowledging nature’s power with humility and grace is a practice of spiritual mindfulness that heals and restores. Making peace with the earth we make the world a place where we can be one with nature. We create and sustain environments where we can come back to ourselves, where we can return home, stand on solid ground, and be a true witness.45 Charlene Chaney, a United Methodist clergywoman and third-generation gardener contemplates the sacredness and life-giving work of plants: I think plants are sacred and an example of God’s activity in the world. They nurture, nourish, heal and tend to give exponentially more to the environment they are in, than they take from it. They create oxygen and sustain life regardless of if we take notice of their activities or not.46 7. Nature can act as a mediator between God and humanity that facilitates communication with divine forces, ancestors, and nature spirits. Marilyn White shares one special encounter: On one most memorable visit that I had in a garden was when I requested for my Father to contact me concerning a problem that I had. I made a request for a sign/ omen. I walked to the cemetery garden space where he is buried aimlessly at first. And then I walked right to the location of my Father/Mother’s burial plot. I asked a question of him and my sign was for a ladybug to appear as a confirmation. Surely, within less than 6 minutes of my inquiry, a red, yellow and black ladybug flew on my lower arm. I smiled, my eyes literally opened like a child in a candy store. I allowed myself to cry and relieve the pressure from my concerns. I remember still, I remember the humor of my Father’s love in the elemental’ness of a ladybug. My father continues to contact me through various elementals (positive nature creatures). One has to be very conscious during the garden space of sacredness so that you can comprehend the necessary wisdom that speaks to your being through the solitude and stillness.47 8. Nature as a source of sustenance and life-giving gift from God is one of the most common perspectives of gardens as sacred spaces. Writer Nikky Finney remembers her grandmother’s land and food ethos as they were expressed in their Christmas meals: I believe my grandmother’s ambrosia was the family’s once-a-year extravagance. It was the most extraordinary thing she could make and do for us . . . Her Christmas ambrosia was the year’s bounty. It was as beautiful as holiday lights in a bowl. It was striking to the eye, exquisite to the tongue, and it fed the body and mind things that the body and mind needed to fully bloom . . . In her mind there was something sacred about her fruit. My grandparents were hardworking farmers who lived very close to the land. Everything they had and everything they respected came from the bounty of the earth and the hand and eye of God.48

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Womanist theologian and gardener Karen Baker-Fletcher connects her garden work to being at home with God, family, and her ancestral roots: When I am working in my garden, planting tomatoes or flowers, when I get my hands into dark, moist soil with its fragrance of life, I return to myself and my inmost parts. I remember who I am in a way if it feels like home. It feels like being at home with God and family, those who are near, far, present, and ancestral. There is a connection between the land, self, and God, even with one’s ancestral roots. Human beings are often experience of rootedness in the universe in the midst of grass, wind, trees, soil and sky.49 9. Another perspective is reverence for life and connection with the earth. In a playful memory from the poem Homeopathic, Frank X. Walker describes his childhood experiences of gardening with his mother and siblings: I peer into the window searching for that look on my mamma’s face, When she kicked off her shoes, dug her toes into the dirt teeming with corn, greens, potatoes, onions, cabbage, and beets; bit into the flesh of a ripe tomato, then passed it down the row. Enjoying our own fruit, we let the juice run down our chins, leaving a trail of tiny seeds to harvest on hungry days like these.50 Ecofeminist bell hooks shares insights from growing up in Appalachian rural Kentucky: Living close to nature, black folks were able to cultivate a spirit of wonder and reverence for life. Growing food to sustain life and flowers to please the soul, they were able to make a connection with the earth that was ongoing and life-affirming. They were witnesses to beauty . . . Recalling the legacy of our ancestors who knew that the way we regard land and nature will determine the level of our self-regard, black people must reclaim a spiritual legacy where we connect our well-being to the wellbeing of the earth. When the earth is sacred to us, our bodies can also be sacred to us.51 10. A cultural version of the agrarian myth, land as freedom, remains important to African Americans. Finney remembers her grandfather’s convictions: Land meant freedom to my grandparents. Complete freedom. It was “land,” my grandfather routinely reminded, “that was the very reason we, as a family, no longer had to work for the white people.” The white people, who at one point in history had erroneously believed that they had owned Black people. “When you own your own land,” he would say at the dinner table, “you don’t have to ask permission from anybody else what you should grow or be. You work your land.”52 Ralph Middleton, another fifth-generation gardener, explains why he returned to St. Helena Island, South Carolina after forty-five years of urban living: After slavery, most blacks stayed on the land here. We feel that we are part of the land. This is where we’ve been, where we’ve worked, for generations. You know your grandparents and great-grandparents planted here. We have memories about the land, about what they did here. So it’s important. It’s sacred. For Gullahs, the land is freedom. It is the ground of their dignity and the reason they have endured.53 11. Frequently, a very strong food ethic is related to perspectives of the earth and food as sacred for African American families. Venice Williams, executive director of Alice’s

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Garden urban farm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and self-described cultural and spiritual midwife explains: When we were born, we were born in the middle of someone else’s story . . . For me, I was born into a family with a strong food ethic. Very often, the food ethic informed everything else and was stronger even than our religious doctrine. So I was born into family where the cultivating of food, the understanding good soil, the love of food, of both preparing it and cooking it and the growing it and serving it and sitting at a table was one of the most important things we could do. So I come from a long line of southern farmers, of grocers, of community gardeners, and urban farmers . . . The table and food is sacred. The table and cooking and fire are holy. You are holy.54 12. The sacredness of garden space is also related to multiple uses of plants, such as cultivating plants for medicinal, magic, and/or conjure purposes. Sharla M. Fett lists several herbal medicines in Working Cures: Healing, Health, and Power on Southern Slave Plantations: Enslaved women cultivated some common medicinal herbs, such as sage, garlic, and calamus root, in their small garden “patches.” Della Barksdale remembered the patch of flag root planted by her mother and grandmother during slavery in Virginia. As an adult she continued to grow the tall grass-like plant whose root was chewed or made into a tea for stomach trouble. Another elderly woman grew jimsonweed in her garden that was used, among other purposes for headache and dropsy.55 Conjuring and rootwork have been interrelated with gardens and herbal remedies for centuries, as Yvonne Chireau notes: It was frequently reported that native African slaves carried Old World knowledge of herbs, roots, and other preparations necessary for creating toxic substances with them to the New World. Alexander Garden, an English commercial botanist in colonial South Carolina, asserted that Africans were uniquely adept at extracting lethal substances from local vegetation. “I greatly . . . suspect that the Negroes bring their knowledge of the poisonous plants, which they use here, with them from their own country.”56

CONCLUSION This chapter is my effort to contribute to the productivity of people, land, and earth as well as to the process of healing the damage racism and racial violence have caused and continue to inflict on American landscapes. The spiritual response to our ecological crisis cannot be successful without also attending to the “hidden problem” of racism as a rejection of stewardship and mis-recognition of the humanity of people of every color and hue. Toward the goals of examining the significance of backyard gardens to African American ecological heritage and current ecological practices, I aimed to demonstrate how Spiritual Ecology can be an effective framework to capture insights into meanings of gardens and earth care practices that other approaches gloss over. Recovering these gardening stories and garden memories can create opportunities for developing a more earth-inclusive spirituality as well as facilitate more dynamic and inclusive social-ecological relations. Further directions for this research would include qualitative research,

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participatory action research, or focus group interviews of African American gardeners, especially those with intergenerational ties to gardening or farming in local regions. Backyard gardens as sacred spaces carry forward the ecological heritage and resilience of our knowledgeable and resourceful ancestors, who made the lands of the Americas productive. In the spaces of these pages, I both imagined gardeners and gardens I’ll never know and remembered those that were close to me who taught me not only about gardens, but also about a life of growth and the sacredness of the earth. And so I am brought into a community of gardeners by my grandmother, whose garden is still intertwined with my memories of her warm embrace and baskets full of greens and okra, the Irish woman who gave me the gift of roses in bloom, Ms. Wilson’s sweet corn, and my mother’s juicy summer watermelons. This chapter ends the same way it began: in the backyard with hands reaching down into the earth, with a morning inspection of the summer’s turnip and kale greens, and with the bursting forth of new life from the tiniest of seeds. Ashe and Amen.

CHAPTER TWO

In a Body on Wheels in Touch with the Earth: Cycling as Religion and Response LAURA HOBGOOD

The Shrine of the Madonna del Ghisallo sits on a glorious hilltop overlooking a lake surrounded by mountains in northern Italy. This particular shrine is dedicated to cyclists, those who lived to ride and those who died riding. The walls are lined with bicycles belonging to the elite riders, medallions of the Madonna are available to adorn bikes and protect the riders, and sculptures of cyclists adorn the grounds outside. Because so much memorabilia has been donated to the Shrine, a museum was built next door. Each year several races go by and pilgrims on bikes climb the mountain to visit and, hopefully, receive protection from the Madonna. Not only at this shrine, but in many places, cycling functions as a religion for those who ride. There are major festivals, such as RAGBRAI ,1 a week-long ride across Iowa each summer that draws more than 15,000 riders. And there are deaths. Cycling is the single most dangerous sport in the world according to almost every measure.2 So why do people ride? Cycling is a sport and an alternative way of living that involves being completely in one’s body, being attentive to every bit of nature around you (the road, the wind, the animals, the skies, the cyclists’ bodies next to you), and being exposed to and in relationship with all of the elements. Anything short of being that connected and attentive is dangerous. But the sensory intake and the way one’s body becomes one with the bike is exhilarating. Arguably the most vital parts of the body in cycling are the points of contact that link the human body, the bicycle, and the ground. Hands and feet, along with ones body in the saddle, are literally connected to the machine which is then connected to the earth through wheels. Every crack and crevice in the earth, every incline and decline of the ground, every wet spot or rough spot is felt and absorbed into the body through these contact points. One’s body is in constant reaction to the body of the earth in order to keep yourself and your bike upright. While much cycling happens on paved surfaces that are human additions to the earth, those surfaces still reflect the undulations of the earth’s surface. The earth is also the hard surface on which one lands if a crash happens, particularly if the crash is on the humanadded pavements. When something goes wrong the earth, sometimes in tragic ways, collides with you. And when a potential crash is imminent, the safety of the earth’s soft 25

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grass and ground are a friend to the cyclist if he or she can make it to that more gentle landing place. Knowing the curves, the rising and falling, the gentle spots of the earth are integral to cycling. In addition, cycling, for many people, is a response to environmental concerns and broader issues of social justice. They ride as a way to avoid using fossil fuels both on a personal level and as a broader statement to a culture that increasingly relies on motorized, pollution and climate-change inducing vehicles. If the energy one can generate with one’s own body can efficiently move them from point A to point B, then fossil fuel use decreases. There are also many places in the world where motorized vehicle ownership or usage is simply out of the range of economic feasibility. In other words, some people simply cannot afford cars or motorbikes. Bicycles are an inexpensive and low maintenance mode of effective transportation that can change the lives of people. With this in mind, bike advocacy, activist, and justice projects have emerged in a number of localities. This essay explores the idea of cycling as religion and how that possibility involves the intersection of being embodied and being environmentally engaged. The story of bicycles spans widely, including feminist histories, economic empowerment, climate change activism, spiritual awakening, and incredible physical endurance. It also is a story of considering what matters most, of waking up on Sunday morning and “going to church” (which, in this case, is actually riding your bicycle). In conversation with some of the methodological and theoretical work of Donna Haraway, this chapter also explores how the body of the human and the machine/bike become a merged, cyborg body; they are one body in motion together moving on the body of the Earth. So how can cycling be religion, and a religion that is deeply intertwined with the natural world, including the earth that encompasses our own embodiedness? I suggest that cycling displays the necessary elements of religion including generally recognized sacred spaces, broadly shared rituals and festivals, historically embedded social and environmental justice practices, and deeply rooted connections with nature.

OUTDOOR EXPERIENCES AS RELIGION The December 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion featured three articles focusing on various outdoor (in this case, specifically aquatic) experiences as forms of nature religion: kayaking, fly fishing, and surfing.3 In his introduction to this focal section of the journal, Bron Taylor suggests that one can define nature religion as “a variety of beliefs and practices in which nature is considered a pivotally important symbolic resource.”4 Along the same lines, Robert Orsi introduces “lived religion”: To study lived religion entails a fundamental rethinking of what religion is and what is means to be “religious.” Religion is not only sui generis, distinct from other dimensions of experience called “profane.” Religion comes into being in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the realities of everyday life.5 In other words, these ongoing, dynamic relationships can, in and of themselves, constitute religion. In her article on whitewater boating, Whitney Sanford continues along these same lines, also drawing from Orsi: Whitewater boating is a practice that functions as a “lived religion”—to use Robert Orsi’s term, because it performs its work amidst the messiness of life, at the junctures

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of bliss, pain, ecstasy, fear, and life and death (1997: 6–7). It is not abstract and ethereal, but occurs in and through the material world.6 In a very similar way, cyclists encounter the material world and the possibilities of life and death, but also ecstasy and bliss. In his article on fly fishing as religion, Snyder adds the concept of “material relics” to these aquatic nature religions. Quoting Colleen McDannell’s ideas on material Christianity, he claims that the relics (in his case fly rods, reels, clothing) “signal visually who is in the group and who is not.”7 This concept is even more apparent in the world of cycling where the machine, the bicycle, is physically attached to the human body, an idea addressed in more depth below when considering Haraway and cyborgs. Cyclists ride on a simple, but elaborate, triangle. They have specially constructed shoes, cleats, pedals, saddles, helmets, kits, and the all important chamois. The apparel of cycling is, indeed, a signifier of whether or not one belongs to this community. Just as paddling, fly fishing, and surfing constitute a space where the lines of sacred and profane are blurred, so does cycling. Whereas much of religious life is, according to Sanford, located in the “mystical or ethical as opposed to ritual, and in the spiritual, not the physical,” these religions of outdoor experiences bring both the physical and the ritual back into play. Referring to whitewater kayaking, Sanford continues: . . . ritual is the performance, the lived practice in the water, and the physical negotiation of the frightening and the powerful that has largely been erased from our religious lives. And it is precisely in negotiating this juncture that paddling becomes a religious performance and binds the paddler to the sacred as manifest in the natural world.8 As will become evident in this chapter, the frightening and the powerful in cycling include trying steep descents at death-defying (or death-inviting) speeds, risking encounters with other road machines (cars and trucks), understanding that pavement is hard and will break you, knowing that road rash (burns from skidding on pavement) is going to be part of your life, realizing that the wind and that elevation are powerful forces (physics, gravity), and surviving in the blazing sun and chilling wind. Simultaneously, the exhilaration of all of the above and the mantra-like feeling of pedaling call cyclists back for more. Therefore, in the same way as fly fishing, kayaking, and surfing can function as religion, so can cycling. As Taylor, quoting Joseph Price, concludes, “naturalistic recreations offer symbols and orientations by which secular Americans have begun to organize their conceptions of the physical world and to render them meaningful.”9 But, while these three pieces focused specifically on the American religious experience, cycling is a global religious experience. It is definitely more important in European and some Latin American countries/cultures than in the United States. And it is a growing experience in Africa and the Middle East.10 Nature religions, according to Catherine Albanese in her seminal work Nature Religion in America, position nature as a symbolic resource but they do not, necessarily, have to consider nature as sacred itself.11 While many cyclists might not explicitly proclaim that nature is sacred, many would claim that their primary “material relic,” their bicycle, is, in some ways, sacred or, at the very least, an extension of their own body. The human body and the bicycle are cyborg. As Donna Haraway posits, the “cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a fusion of the organic and the technical forged in particular, historical, cultural

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practices.”12 Bicycles and cyclists are just such a fusion. As mentioned above, the human body and the bicycle are tightly connected through several contact points: feet/shoes/ clips/pedals, gluteus maximus/saddle, hands/handlebars/brakes/gears. Of these the one that is the most tightly bound is the foot/pedal connection where the human is physically locked into the bicycle. Every movement of the human body affects the movement of the bicycle, for better or, sometimes, for worse. And every bump in the road that the wheels encounter affects the human body as well. When one’s body is physically connected in cyborg style to the bicycle, a strong crosswind moves the entire cyborg. What does this mean for cycling as religion? Just as Haraway’s cyborg theories counter dualistic language and ethics, so does the human-bicycle cyborg rethink religion and ethics. On many surfaces, wheels move more quickly than bipedal humans. When walking is the only option for movement, it is tedious at times. Bicycles have provided and continue to provide freedom of movement and incredible opportunity for people who have otherwise been denied these advantages. For example, bicycles were an important component of the feminist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and they continue to be a part of social justice movements globally.13 This cyborg reality rethinks ethics and social boundaries. And it rethinks what can be a nature religion.

“I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE, I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE.”14 On a hot morning in Texas I was riding my bike, not an unusual occurrence. Suddenly a small figure appeared, mostly hidden in the shadows on the road in front of me. My riding companion and I swerved a bit to miss the critter, then looked at each other with surprised expressions. In near unison we exclaimed to each other, “Was that a tiny armadillo?” Armadillos appear frequently on the roads of Texas, but not one so small. So we turned around to make sure she was safe. I must say, this was one of the most precious animals I have ever seen! As we approached her again, we noticed that she was moving to the shoulder of the road, rooting around in the underbrush, and that she was heading back into the woods. Hopefully, we thought, back home to the safety of her den and her mother. The world is different on a bike. Driving a car means speeding along while everything becomes a blur. Walking or jogging often becomes slow and rather dull (though I do enjoy both). Cycling moves at an almost perfect pace. Quickly enough that you can cover quite a few miles, but slowly enough that you observe the world around you, indeed you must in order to survive, at a pace that allows for intimacy with the rest of nature. Bicycles allow for movement that engages with, rather than separates one’s body from, the world. This engagement begins while preparing for a ride. It is, for many, a ritual of preparation for a ritual of riding. What direction is the wind blowing? What is the elevation we will cover today? How hot, or cold, will it be out there? Where is the sun going to be? In precise order you fill your tires, dress in your sacred garb (the cycling kit, chamois, helmet, shoes), clean your chain, fill your water bottles, put important items in your jersey pockets, and mount your ride. For years I was a runner. I noticed, a bit, the hills. But I did not recognize them in the same way as I do on a bicycle. I had a ritual of sorts to prepare, but not in the same way as I do for a ride on a bicycle. One notices so few of these environmental and safety factors in a car, which literally encases your body from the world around you.

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In a car you create your own environment. But on a bicycle you are part of the entire earth around you. And being part of that earth means being open to and aware of what might come next. Is there a steep descent ahead? How do I slow or accelerate in order to lean into the body of the earth and make it safely around the next bend? How do I release my brakes in order for the bend in the earth and the gravity connecting me to her pull me safely around the corner? And how do I swerve when a squirrely squirrel runs right out in front of my bike?! It also means that, for many people, cycling becomes festival. The last full week of July each year is an epic one in Iowa. It starts and ends with a baptism of sorts as thousands of cyclists dip their rear wheel in the Missouri River, ride their bikes hundreds of miles across the state of Iowa, then dip their front wheel in the Mississippi River. The Des Moines Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI ) crosses the state via a different route each year but always starts and ends with the rivers. Indeed the entire ride is marked by the landscape of Iowa, from its waters to its cornfields to its undulating hills. Most participants camp, either in central grounds or in host yards (it is a lesson in beautiful hospitality), thus becoming very much connected to the land that is Iowa. A low estimate of participants in recent years is 15,000 cyclists.15 While not yet studied by academics to the extent that another annual U.S. festival, Burning Man, is, RAGBRAI offers, in many ways, a similar experience for cyclists.16 Riders move from small city to small city through this lovely state, rolling among fields of corn. Parties and festivals greet them in each town as they approach and pass through, often stopping to meet fellow riders, to eat, to drink (too much sometimes), and to celebrate being on their bicycles. New friends quickly become best friends. Serious relationships are made, children are created, serious relationships end, laughter happens, heckling and support of other riders takes place, collarbones are broken, shoulders are dislocated, but the ride goes on. In his article on RAGBRAI 2017 for the Register, columnist Kyle Munson stated that RAGBRAI “always has been more to me than a way to enjoy a week in the sun without burning precious vacation days. It’s my annual reminder to never lose faith in life’s ability to surprise” (Munson 2017). The ride started in 1973 when two of the paper’s employees announced their intention to ride across the state. As Munson describes it: No offense to organized religion, but one of the most powerful creation stories in my life has been that of the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa. Our gospel according to RAGBRAI preaches that columnist Donald Kaul and copy editor John Karras in 1973 published a blurb about their intention to pedal across the entire state. Any readers equally crazy were welcome to join them. The self-described “wannabe hippies” were awestruck when they reached the motel parking lot in Sioux City only to be greeted by some 250 bicyclists. The modern RAGBRAI on its denser days now funnels more than 20,000 riders from around the globe into remote rural corners that thirst for such a tourism boost. I’ve always taken this example as proof that true sweeping cultural change comes from a creative lark—not committee meetings and focus groups. 17 The stories of RAGBRAI ’s past do indeed become legend. While this festival rotates around cycling, that is its reason for being, it explodes into much more than that. In his book about RAGBRAI , Greg Borzo suggests that it’s not “just about the bike.” He calls this festival a “multi-faceted gem” because of the many different people it includes from “cooks and cops, musicians and ministers, mechanics

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and mayors, librarians and revelers, as well as cyclists,” who “all have their own take on this weeklong carnival on wheels” (Borzo 9). People get married on RAGBRAI , people have died on RAGBRAI , some go to conquer an illness, others go as a pilgrimage to spread the ashes of a loved one who also loved to ride. RAGBRAI has spawned other such festivals, though most would argue than none come close to the original. As Borzo claims, the “only certainty is that there’s nothing else like it anywhere in the world” (19). Still, according to the RAGBRAI history factoids, over 200 other rides have been inspired by this ultimate journey, including rides in Kansas, Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, and thirty additional states (plus the District of Columbia).18 Cycling as festival is, indeed, a rapidly spreading phenomenon. And, in this way, many people connect with the earth again on their bicycle. While riding you cannot be on a device, you will likely crash if you try, and you must be attentive to everyone, human and other animals, and every bend in the road ahead of you.

THE SHRINES OF CYCLING As described above, the shrine of Madonna del Ghisallo adorns a hilltop in northern Italy. As the legend goes, the medieval Count of Ghisallo was saved from bandits by the sight of the Virgin Mary at this spot, which had a roadside shrine. For centuries the Madonna del Ghisallo, as she became known, was the patron saint of travelers. After increasing numbers of cyclists rolled past the shrine and, unofficially, adopted her as their patron saint as well, Pope Pius XII designated her the Patron Saint of Cycling in 1949. In the early twenty-first century, cyclists still go on pilgrimage to the shrine. Here they can see a collection of sacred objects. Bicycles ridden by some of the greatest of all time, such as Eddy Merckx and Fausto Coppi, line the small chapel. Prayer cards and medallions of the Madonna are available and offered as protection for cyclists; one of the medallions is designed to be attached directly to a bicycle. The shrine also functions as a reminder that this is a dangerous sport, arguably the most dangerous sport in the world. On the altar of the shrine an eternal flame burns to remember those who have died riding. And the twisted frame of the bicycle ridden by Fabio Casartelli when he crashed and died in the 1995 Tour de France provides a poignant reminder that this sacred place is also a memorial. The museum mentioned above was added in 2006 and includes items such as the pink jerseys from each of year of the Giro d’Italia.19 Professional races in Italy often plan routes that pass through this spot; the Tour of Lombardy does so each year, and racers will stop to pay homage. This, however, is not the only shrine for cyclists. Spain and France each have their own official sacred places. Inspired by the shrine in Italy, a priest in France suggested that such a shrine would be appropriate there as well. Thus was the beginning of Notre Dame des Cyclistes, a chapel in the southwest of France.20 In 1959, Pope John XXIII agreed to designate the chapel as a sanctuary for cyclists. A prayer to Notre Dame des Cyclistes begins: Marie, nous te confions notre chapelle, Nous te confions tous les cyclistes amateur et professionnels, Du monde entire et de tous les temps.21 Each year there is also a festival marking the anniversary of the founding of the chapel and champion professional cyclists frequently attend. For Spanish riders, the Virgin of Dorleta serves as their patron saint with her shrine in the Basque country. In 1960 three riders, after convincing their local bishop to support

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FIGURE 2.1: Interior of the shrine of Madonna del Ghisallo.

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their petition, set off from the shrine in Dorleta to Rome in order to convince the pope to grant their request for a patron saint. Rather than travel by plane, train, or automobile, they covered the 1,800 kilometers across Spain, France, and Italy on their bicycles. Luckily, Pope John XXIII , the same pope who granted the petition for the French saint, was known as a huge cycling fan. He granted their petition, though the official designation finally took place more than a decade later in 1973.22 But these official European shrines are not the only ones central to cycling. In late January 2017, nineteen-year-old Tommy K. was on his regular evening ride. He was a promising young cyclist who rode for a team in Austin, Texas. But he lived in more rural Georgetown and was riding, before dark, on a wide shoulder on a very wide thoroughfare. Somehow a driver in a large pick-up truck who was going the opposite direction crossed several lanes and the shoulder, striking Tommy and killing him instantly. According to

FIGURE 2.2: Ghost-angel bicycle memorial at the site by the road where Tommy K. was killed in January 2017.

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the driver, he didn’t see the cyclist before hitting him and then, after knocking Tommy down, turned around and saw no evidence of an accident, so he left the scene. This tragic death of such a young man was shocking, but unfortunately too common. The next Sunday over 500 cyclists gathered for a Memorial Ride, stopping at the site where Tommy died, doing a thirty-mile ride (led by Tommy’s father), and then racing back past where he was killed. Many of the riders that day signed the ghost-angel bike that would later be permanently installed at the same spot as a constant reminder of the dangers of the road. Ghost and angel bikes, along with the memorial rides, are likely the most touching shrines for the sport. Ghost bikes first started appearing in 2003 and now there are hundreds of them in various locations around the world.23 An additional purpose for ghost bikes is to remind vehicle operators that cyclists have a right to travel safely on the roads. In 2015 there were 818 cyclists killed in vehicle-involved accidents in the US alone.24 This represented an increase of 12.2 percent compared with 2014. As more people ride bicycles and the roads become more crowded, ghost bikes could become too common of a shrine to this sport. Interestingly, and in a very touching way, they are installed in nature, on the spot where the cyclist died encountering the earth.

“WE WERE LIKE GODS FOR THE SPECTATORS”25 Professional cycling is a whole different world in myriad ways, but one that engages almost all serious cyclists as viewers and, in some ways, vicarious participants. The three Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, and Vuelta a España) draw the elite of the elite in the sport. While cycling is, arguably, a fringe sport (not every school has a cycling team, but most have a football team), those who are spectators of the elite racers view them with awe. This is particularly true in several European countries, such as Belgian Flanders. The Tour de Flanders is one of the most famous “spring classics,” the races that take place in preparation for the Grand Tours. It was first held in 1913 and has been run over 100 times. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, when the cycling museum in Roeselare (West Flanders) was closed for renovations, the exhibition was moved into a local church. Here, the connections between cycling and religion are not only apparent, but explicit. The curators even named the exhibit “Koers is Religie” (Cycling is Religion) and included as a centerpiece in front of the altar a large cross made from old bicycle components.26 Their own exhibition website states: Cycling is a Religion. In Flanders and elsewhere. This exhibition explains why, on the basis of two routes. In the side aisles of the Father’s Church visitors will discover “The Pilgrimage: a procession of cycling chapels,” while in the nave they will have the opportunity to follow “The Way of the Cross: Via Dolorosa of the cyclists.” On the way, you will have the chance to observe the unique Cycling Garments, a Peloton of Cycling Gods and the impressive Iron Cross.27 And the riders, the ones who can most gracefully commune with the natural elements, those who drive their bike through the wind, and up and down the hills and over cobbles, are idolized. As “Iron” Briek Shotte, who won the Tour de Flanders twice in the 1940s, said: “We were like gods for the spectators, the only gods they could see up close and with whom they could exchange a few words.”28 For these riders and their admirers (or worshippers), cycling is a religion. It is where meaning is found in life.

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CYCLING AS AGENT OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RAGBRAI , mentioned above, might seem to be an exercise in festival that is wasteful of time, food, energy, and materials. But for some riders, there is a different goal that is part of this ultimate cycling experience: zero environmental impact. In his article Munson focuses, in part, on a rider who has “zero waste” as one of her RAGBRAI goals. She will bring her own collapsible bowl, cup, utensils, and a cloth napkin (Munson). RAGBRAI can be a hugely wasteful event, but cycling as a whole is in tune with environmental ethics and, as I argue, nature religion. Though the Industrial Revolution sparked many assaults on the environment, one of the most commonly employed by humans as a whole is carbon fuel as a source of transportation, driving cars. Cycling denies that. Movements globally focus on cycling as a much more efficient and effective mode of transport. And, particularly in places where automobiles are too expensive for the vast majority of people, bicycles offer freedom. When I was twenty-one, I was lucky enough to go to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). My father was born and raised there, so our family went on a sponsored person-to-person trip to return to Lotumbe, his hometown. While there we met his best friend from childhood. For years, this wonderful Congolese man walked ten kilometers each day from his home to the high school where he was a principal and then ten kilometers back home. A bicycle there cost approximately $250 (USD ) when we were there. That was his salary for the year. Through a variety of avenues, we were able to assist him in getting a bicycle. Twenty kilometers on a bicycle daily versus twenty kilometers on foot is a life-changer. Bicycles have given people freedom. And women frequently grabbed onto this tool of freedom. As Susan B. Anthony declared in 1896, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a women ride by on a wheel.”29 Automobiles are expensive, they are a tool that makes the world move quickly, disconnects humans from the rest of nature, and offers sharp contrasts between those who have huge financial resources and those who do not. Bicycles as a mode of transportation are inexpensive, do not emit climate-changing gases, slow movement to a safer pace, connect people with communities, and transform transport into a more egalitarian mode. And, for those environmentalists who ride bicycles, this is a primary way to combat huge eco-footprints. Ride your bicycle, do not drive the gasguzzling SUV.

CONCLUSIONS: I STILL WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE Though the injury and death rates can be daunting, numerous people commit to commuting, exercising, and just playing on bicycles. Being physically connected to the wheels that are dipping in rivers, rolling down hills, climbing up hills, watching for animals along the way, enjoying festival and ritual, mourning death and celebrating life, all of these aspects are why cycling as a nature religion works. And the power of being physically connected to the earth through your bicycle’s wheels offers a sense of oneness with the ground itself. It is the powerful earth that allows for places to roll! So it is not surprising that a dear friend said to me once, “On Sunday morning I go to church. I ride my bike.”

CHAPTER THREE

Pressure, Gestures: Sacral Work: Bodies Poetics BOBBI PATTERSON

I go outside—often. These pilgrimages claim no particular destination, but they embed me in a place. They plunge me into a kaleidoscope of experiences. Their gestures of sounds, movements, colors shifts, and affections or energy transfers engage me as a conjuring. Fundamentally casting spells, circles, territorial frictions, bodies draw me into, expel, or allow me marginal access to their materiality, which widens, transforms, and rocks my senses of reality.1 We are engaging inhabitation. Distanced from human conjuring’s performative practices, these bodies’ pressures and gestures urge me to return to sensorial sign systems, the materiality that generates and fosters acts to which I belong by planetary gene code. No matter how much I contend that my flesh is other and sole subject, their “poetics stir new imaginaries”2 among our bodies. I go outside—often to inhabit, to bathe in this perpetual, indirect, preservation and expression of forces that redefine earth experience. My kayak paddle strafes the surface as a beaver, angry that I have endangered the young, slaps his tail. The movement of legs and the dirt’s soft yet repellent textures. The breathless hauling of a trek while the clouds gesture and signal rain, and, higher up, snow. Vital, inert, oxygen-bearing, and organic materialities as gas, flesh, stamen, and stone body destruction and reorganization. Despite the work of broom and mop, they flourish in my home; yet, outside, their rampant intersubjectivity through webs of experience transforms my knowledge. Expands beyond subject–object frameworks and analyses. Holiness as in process, elements colliding, rearranging, pressuring, transforming and expanding their reach through and beyond human versions of temple, creed, and text—as in Angkor Wat. Out here and within, bodies practice sacral work, as in effect or act continuing core processes of structure, pivoting change, evolutionary capacity-testing. Sacral experience points through and beyond humans to holiness, as in holy nerve, tissue, bone,3 still testifying amid drilling or stream paths dried over yet still claiming place and story, Out and in here, these musings attempt to dive, burrow, and intuit sacral works of/with/in bodies. They hope to swim, pressure, or breathe in and through alternate media from ooze, blockages, explosions, collapses, mergers, and digestive transformations. Not beyond the grasp of human social structures (politics, economics, and socio-cultural frame and powers), bodies in this chapter claim performative practices of gesture whose power sustains us, the planet, and cannot be contained. They can be conjured. I go outside—often to witness. 35

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Recasting contact as tuned to the ignored, overlooked, or denied proximity of bodies highlights experiential experiments in imagination and action. Acknowledging religious powers performed as the Haj, Via Dolorosa, and Kedarnat pilgimages, these pilgrim paths follow bodies of water unleashed at flashpoints of birth. They contemplate lotus leaf drifting ‘til seed springs forth. Dove-winged touch. Salmon-signed Ttinquit return. Bodies become Shantideva’s leather-covered, ethical sandals4 or Moses’ shoeless Decalogue. Apache medicine people wait for more-than-human bodies who instruct the Beauty Way. Evoking something like religion, sacral in struggle and fulfillment or meaning, amid monsoon—planetary purple rain, blistering sun, parched desert, snow melt, and rising seas. How many populations strain and evolve/transform amid what’s become a catastrophic journey through Anthropocene climate change. The tracks show direction. They generate holy experience, and are sacral expressions in place and express beyond material inhabitations.

PRESSURES—BREATHE Breathing. A function. An ongoing exchange of pressures, sometimes involving air. Bodies’ musculature, membranes, memories. Breathing is at once a process and pathways of sensibilities through bio-chemical swamps recycling and adapting from earliest explosive life. Inhabitation—inert, anoxic, organic—resists stability, taking in and ex-pressing earth and starborn sacralities evolve as multiple bodies. Planetary elements take shape at pivot points of elemental and complex chemical structure. Holy by position and process, these sacral resonances, through ever-shifting materiality, bring us back to earth, to soil, to bodies breaking apart and reconstituting what was, and is, and was never imagined. Bodies’ work, (w)hol(l)y unrecognized or usually overlooked by many religions requires closer attention. As in the attention to breath, use the dropping down in place as a starting point. Catch radiating movements of skins and surfaces under pressures, in and out, as they are squeezed and released. Attend to the pathways of pressures, fissures, breaks, explosions, how these repair amid the see-saw of crevasse and avalanche. Are these not holy paths; texts of an earth-kind? To attend to pressure is not to take over. It is to be taken over, to give way and release calcifying rituals numbly repeated. Human rituals easily rise above such pressures. The mind goes about its liturgies and holiness dies out of body-rhythm, where it has no sense of expansive or contracting pressures—like holding one’s breath. Dead, human rituals never quite release power or perceptive wisdom. Thus there is a call for pilgrimage, the intentional choice to go out or go deeply within to encounter bodies under pressures, materials in simple and seismic shifts. In transit while riding through breath, the pressures of attention lean in to senses able to orient and reorient amid pilgrimage transition. Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing become pressure-points of awakening to vital sacralities at the macro and micro level. They escape and/or expand certain structures or constructions of anthropic religious knowledge. They press beyond.

WE START WHERE WE ARE To start, take notice. Re-cognize bodies urging us to sense, feel the pressures of their lure in the local.5 Marked and unmarked pathways are traversed and flown over by bodies within and not fully captured by human-centric structural power (political, economic, and socio-cultural). Amid bodied injustices, at the hands of humans emerge tracks and

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trails. Discover and follow those. Use local insights. Talk with, listen to, the long-time inhabitants. Wisdom sits; it grows earth-born in places, canyons, rivers, water oaks, and elders.6 Here stories are bodied in and through conflict and consilience. Multiple sensibilities embody pressure multiple interpretations. Who counts? Who and how is living and dying, sorrow and grieving, reparation and restoration, expressed? Real tissues, muscles, fibers, and filaments offer alternate languages to human expectations. They teach a few humans their stories born of body-knowledge under pressures. Breathe and wait. Hearing takes time. Speech as texts often falters. Held—as in no breathing—questions and curiosities pressure up realities of perilous exclusions and under-appreciated inclusions among bodies. Silence. Waiting. The bones will speak. The revenges of b(B)eloveds tell their tales in haunting flesh, in wreckages of bodies killed. Who can tolerate such pressures of fouled air, limbs, nervous systems, epigenetic distortions? Bodies practice amid such stark realities. They lose, win, flounder, and destroy. Stones, rhizomes, alley cats, primate toddlers will not hold their responses forever. Shifting, morphing, returning to primal patterns, they will bear the pressures of reproduction. They will try to conjure life as it skitters away in reaction to planetary death. When will the pressure be too much? Stones will shout. Bodies will change and reinhabit places of skin and teeth and tracks. But we may not recognize their reinhabitations. Their adaptive resilience7 may leave us breathless in an air-sea of noxious gases. To follow these adaptive bodies is to reintroduce ourselves to the interstitial spaces of life. We struggle to bear the newness of accountabilities ignored in planetary relationships. Bodies adapting to anthropic poisons teach their own style of defibrillation. Arrhythmias beat out of sync using alternate, off-beat pulses. Conjuring prophecies of their own, they press forward paying high prices but holding to their sacral tasks, evolving, adapting, dying, and birthing. Watch for bodies that do not make the transitions. They are books of prophecy. Attend bodies that shout their rage, the algae and insects that take over and carry lethal weapons. Breath-based rhythms are changing amid such imbalances and body-tensions. It is in the interstitial pressures we find the trends to sacral work. Choosing not to heed their lessons, we face dwindling air, aloneness, and prophesized doom. Bodies beat out the code faintly it presses against our ears. Witness the extravagantly divine devotion of countless bodies bowing, prostrating, singing praises at Iguazu Falls where Argentina and Brazil intersect. They lose breath, gasp in sacral clarity among myriad embodiments made of pressured water, spray, soaked soil, and showered shrubs. Choruses of other bodies praise, prostrate, and perform liturgies of cycles between death to life under uncountable stars above. To stand there as human is to fade in the pressures of sacral song, to fall subject to eons of pressured stone, life and death litanies of spray that thunder and, relentless, ever restless, fall. Our subject–object framework of bodies drowns under this pressure. We are held down as the ridges crash lessons out of their high-pressured truth. Can such worship, as in reverence, devotion, esteem,8 escape our consciousness? Dare we not acknowledge and reverence the worthiness of bodies in spray, chill winds, and continuously transforming flow? Such diaphramic dialogues draw new pressures pulsing through bodies as complex communications we do not recognize or hear. Trees speak to trees.9 Wolves howl across valleys the news of the moon. These are not mind-fabrications. They are expressions of flesh while we turn our hands into phones. We line our valleys with clear-cut powerbearing erector sets that feed our televisions’ chatter while we do not understand if their pulsings also destroy the lungs and soils nearby. Who notices the dust mites hovering over and through computers?10 Decapitations, mountain-top removals, behead bodies we

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believe will remain silent. But they spew poison into streams not of their own making. Forests choke on sick air. Children struggle with asthma. Death bears down without intent to defibrillate our choking hearts. We are running out of time. Clocks tick for bodies pressured in intersubjective webs. They can pressure back, escape, even change, but for how long; how fully? I go outside—often. I look and listen and touch, taste, feel with reverence. Intimate vitalities, materiality, bodies at their sacral worship. I try to go with the pressures, to reenter breath; to recalibrate my body as preparatory space for self and others (read self) as/ in/of body, to echo Luce Irigaray.11 In joy and pain, bodies gulp, gasp, swallow, and swell, seen and unseen. Dancing light on oceans gives room to the sun. Ecosystems within the coves boggle the mind’s capacities to contain webs of interlocking exchanges. Such subject–subject spaces do not erase death, but rather make room for resilient adaptation, always working with shape-shifting phases of resilience, stability, collapse, reorganization, and exploitation on multiple scales and at different levels.12 To ignore these interbodying relationships is to scald creek banks with downstream sewage until poorer, African American Atlanta children face “NO PLAY ZONE ” signs in their only parks. Interbody play is destroyed. There is no space, no place of grace. To breathe mouth-to-mouth resuscitation adds pressures on the planet. To turn back acid rain, coal sludge, hog-shit filled rivers crushes subject–object metaphysics. We need ventilation such as that found in the turning of a six-foot-deep rose bed, or grave, to release pressures too long held underground, ignored, denied. To attend to air shared among subjects pressures us to reverse the flows of sacral work from human to rest to all bodies. I can still hear the cacophony of breath in my southern home as our attic fan’s low rumble blows through my dream. Rooms of bodies aerated at night. Broken screens mixed inside and outside creatures in the pulsings of holy chants. The pressured legs of night creatures. I remember crawling lizards finding their ways in and out, wild dogs howling from open fields behind us until our collie could bear it no more and blew the screen porch. Whispers of bodies drawn in, held close, airing their nightlife, laughing couples parked on our dead-end street, the smooth subtleties of my parents’ voices amid moonlight. To ventilate pressures and breathe bodies with enough sacral space in between is to revivify the planet. To follow bodies as they investigate, expose, and discuss what needs to become utterable and can never be uttered. How does inter-spatial body-talk expand sacral work? How does this holy pressure teach lessons of winnowing through suffering compassion-bearing pressures to free and love all bodies?

GESTURING EXPERIENCE “You go down, crawl swift along, spot an opening, stand and walk a few yards, and go down again. The trick is to have no attachment to standing, find your body at home on the ground, be a quadruped, or if necessary, a snake. You brush cool dew off a young fir with your face.”13 Reframing experience less of the mind and more in the beak, swells, claws, and ribs turns attention to the pressures of body encountering. Spaces of intersubjective gesturing signal broader styles of communication, beyond—but not formally excluding—language and texts. Conjuring gestures not reliably aligned with syntax or grammar speaks of blended subjectivities,14 interconnection born of the present moment’s need, devotion, and joy. Who denies the liturgical forms of necks wrapping around necks, tails rattling,

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wings raised and drawn back in dance, waters spilling over/caressing rocks? Is this not holy work of communication through gesture? Is this not full-blown experience without objective space? Such gesturing bodies signal but their expressions and experiences cannot be fully translated by the old dual epistemologies and ontologies. They remain fluidly ephemeral amid present moment identity. They provide sacral hints that deteriorate even drive down to dust. Are they not truths? Experience recast as bodied gestures, reconsidered as holy work, happening as present-moment liturgies. Tectonic plates, hidden, savagely unpredictable, surge toward each other suddenly and slowly. These molten, fire-born bodies move and implicate bodies beyond count. Small and large waves bring other rocks to their knees, falling for mercy. Mountain goats and yaks choke in their dust storms as hills spew soils and stones racing toward chaotic rivers. In such mammoth gestural exchanges subjectivity in bodies multiples. Confusion explodes. Who can read the meaning of such sacrally destructive communications? Religions’ revelatory readings only path and paste. They avoid the movement itself and so translate through impingement. They offer metaphors of new turns of sign, while bodies sprout seeds in newly exposed soil and sucked away riverbeds. None dare tempt the plates by asking when the “next one,” the next gestures will come or how hard. Bodies live with what is real now. They bear codes and creeds of the past but future gestures are not totally bound by these. Eventually the air full of particulate matter will settle. Experience teaches us this through bodies seen and unseen, felt and fearfully denied. Who shook me? The elephant touches the black tape above her eye, seen in a mirror. She knows that “somebody” has joined “me,” her body. Her baby, left, after her death, survives by the hand of a human serving as a pacifier, a best nod toward biomimicry. How many other bodied gestures might school humans in space-bearing intersubjective living and experience?15 Guesses are coming in; many. Bodies of all kinds gesture loving and competing exchange, life-long dedication between male and female voles. Shared mitochondrial strips for good and ill. Creaturely ghost dances preparing for death. Gestured experience translates life and death, the core questions of holy ceremony or work. Bodies ask, beckon, beg, mourn, and play. Otters float on their backs in the Inside Passages of Alaska cracking open the meals served on their own bellies. Repertoires of mating, genetically crafted bird songs, complex, aesthetic imagination. Bodies generative work claim territory by scenting-spraying, invading, undermining, creating packs. Who could reduce this variety back into the constructed categories of colonial scientific epistemologies and ontologies? What to make of gender, race, and ethnic groups amid bodied gestures? Are they packs, tribes, collectives, groups? Sure! Bodies come together in spaces and places. But the structured hierarchies of human-making hit the living bodies of continual evolution with periods of stability and ongoing change. Ethics is communal, bodied, pressurized work sown through signs and signals and acts. Nuances of pressures require long-term observation. Interactions have patterns through experience as gestured communication and relationships—even if competitive. Who does not expect the same pay for equal work even in the primate world and likely beyond? This is not metaphor. This is flesh inquiring after, recognizing/re-cognizing bodied justice. The elders teach no extra bananas solely because you have strength, you are still young and can grab and go. Who does the most grabbing and going of minerals, sea creatures, urban properties? Questions and debates over ethical economies emerge in community, through bodies. Our experiences of justice reach for pressure, for fleshly gestures not translatable solely through ontological categories.

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This is the sacral work of bodies born of competition and empathy.16 And no body, even if it leaves its pack to die, actually dies alone. Unrecognized bodies participate and partake, grouts, witnessing ravens and buzzards, earth and sky. Ghosts sometimes communicate sacral sensibilities as tissues ooze, the last fire leaves vital eyes, hillsides succumb to flingings of mud and rock, and root systems collapse amid starved air. Bodies live a multitude of ethical exchanges. While dying, bodies generate next cycles through grammars of movement, genetic code, and adaptation. How to better understand “back from the dead?” Can we learn the translations of birthing postures with cosmic consequences?17 How do cells signal uncountable numbers of communicative biochemical gestures? The mountains cannot resist walking with the sea. They act on relationships. How long can humans push down the howlings inside for others lost, hated, and loved? Goats bleat in outrage when my dog faces them head-on. Squirrels cock their head upon the snap of twig. Communication is shared language though our translations still sound incomplete. The flight of Sandhill crane migrations across sky and countries mesmerize. But the stalwart mate refusing to leave her partner after being killed by a car seems “humanlike.” These cranes mate for life. They mourn in bodied gesturing.18 Stands the mother,19 to witness not explain. We are they; not the other way around. How the columbines stroke the winds of Coloradan meadows with their color. Why the river’s hydraulics pull and push and sometimes kill. The screeches of a turkey mourns the loss of a mate—day and night these intimacies are voiced. Tibetan doctors attend the pressures of pulses and read bodies. Bodies’ gestures convey grammars of cosmic origins, a poetics “always becoming” (Rivera 2015: 2). Fingertips on wrist. Hand on stone. Ant on leaf. Contact goes both ways. Do we not breathe more bodies than we know? Mites, particles, dust, an occasional bug on a hot summer’s night. Waves of cellular communication amid constantly collapsing stardust convey liturgies or works of ongoing replacement and substitution for the common good. We sense the bends of bodies toward interdependent gestures of love amid suffering. Ordinary boundaries are continually entered, crossed, ignored—and more than we know. What about how these rhythms and beats signal liturgical seasons beyond anthropic reckonings of time? Eons of contact, failure, and fulfillment embody evolution’s prayers, holy cycles day by day, as ordinary as monks. Vrata/Vratas by Hindu women and the bodies around them including fire hold the world together for a family. Water-pumping lilies gesture bloodlines. Moisture’s steady drips signal daily evisceration on stone until it is dirt. Could these touchings, beatings, gestures count as prayer? A sacral kaleidoscope turns bits of gestures, colors, and cells. Mandalas, prayer wheels of experience as cuddling, parading, clamouring, or swooning. Bodies move, reconstitute, tell stories, explain experience as moment-by-moment planetary collapsing and reorganizing. Pray the wheel of gestures that smothered Glenn Canyon. Embody swamping of stories still flowing, not fully silenced. Bodies remain translucent and sealed to the bottom. Turned again, the kaleidoscope of gestures reveals fires stalking plains and mountains segmented as objects of federal and local power. Collages of bodied gestures explain realities more vibrant than newly made mandalas. They bleed the work of holy/ wholly necessary gesturing, of tactile and sensing experience that resists anthropic attempts to dominate. They concretize in “absolute space and time”20 the rights of space between bodies—and the hopes, the prayers, the venerations of beautiful resistance to the last turn.

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The wooly adelgid’s pilgrimage from Asia sucks Georgia hemlock sap, signaling death. Such an unlucky gesture of hospitality; there is no dharamsala for the trees now covered in the female adelgid’s white filaments of wax, which smothers and kills. Below the trees, human fishers bemoan the streams’ heat, as it kills trout. The pieces fall apart as gestures of hope diminish. Prayers in the form of forestry surveys, open hearings, and advocacies of non-profit environmental kaleidoscope images that cannot cohere. Sacral prayers fall flat as a deadly procession of tree, stream, and trout wave their last goodbyes. All the while incandescent traces of Cherokee and Creek work soil at the bottom of the ravines and riverbeds. They remember where medicinal springs continue to flow following the sacred demands of Princess Trahlyta, buried near the source. Piled rocks mark her grave in a jerry-rigged mandala, sending out sensuous spells21 through gestures only bodies can sense. This is transformative work: raven turns into witch; dog into spirit-holder; medicine man into seer. What senses perceive and work the magic, the mysteries of sorcerers’ gesturing bodies? Intermediaries, ants to the small bowls of rice at the corners of a home doing sacral work, reconstitute balance in the world.22 Bodied gestures power bloom, blight, and begetting, another holy three. Acts of planetary circumambulations for the sake of compassion for all beings, of compassion to all sentient beings. Such mysteries gesture our experience. We are never fully separated, but return and return, ongoing remixtures of gene, seed, flesh, double helix. Who discerns what is and is not body? Gesturing shapes experiential knowledge. “If you think daylight is just daylight, then it probably is just daylight. Keep looking.”23 To recognize bodied experience requires pressure, attention as on pilgrimage. We cannot recognize the many bodies gesturing to us now. They are in pilgrimage with us, offering work, representing holy movements in communicative flux as kaleidoscope liturgy. These arts continually revive conflictive and connective communions, the breaking and sharing of spaces in-between.24 These arts gesture frictions, tractions, and rubbings as lesions of the painful embodied present. They sign crucibles of creativity born—too often—of broken and suffering moves, waves, communications. Bodies are not yet done. Their sacral work keeps on expressing in present-moment strategies of location, terror, and empathetic connection:25 as swoonings, shooting stars, rack-bustings of rams’ horns, thundering falls over sliding rocks, dirt slung by winds across deltas. Such bodied moves imagine those not fully perceived, often overlooked.26 They gesture resistance. Resilience. Sacral work is seen and unseen in materiality that thinks, moves, and claims being from intersubjective exchange.27 A stick in a night cave gestures. Now a snake; at dawn again a stick. Drawn animals memorialized in deep caves gesture bodies loved and well known. Indescribable these small trailings of tender connections displayed by brush and movement. In between us are air and subjects; creative imagination works holy senses. If taken in, we are changed. We never gesture, see, smell, touch, taste, hear, or act in relation with bodies the same.28 Inhabitory peoples sometimes say, ‘This piece of land is sacred’—or ‘all the land is sacred.’ This is an attitude that draws on awareness of the mystery of life and death, of taking life to live, of giving life back—not only to your own children but to the life of the whole land. Abbé Breuil, the French prehistorian who worked extensively in the caves of southern France, has pointed out that the animal murals in those 20,000-year-old caves describe fertility as well as hunting—the birth of little bison and

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cow calves. They show a tender and accurate observation of the qualities and personalities of different creatures, implying a sense of the mutuality of life and death in the food chain and what I take to be a sense of the sacramental quality of that relationship. (185–186)29

SACRALITIES OF/WITH/IN BODIES Bodies do; they offer holy work. They beckon, enflesh, reconnect humans to core or sacral dynamics of cells and tissues, energies, and evolutions holding up the sky and rooting below the sea. They cannot be pressured into subject–object positions of reason. Unreasonable, they pressure contact, communication, community. These three spaces, intersubjective, of tension as holy triggers, out imagination disrupting intimacies and resetting entanglements. Resonant of spiritual affections, body works attract, as in matter’s Big Bang or the misery and mourning in seas that graciously accept the melting icebergs and their bodied kin. Bodies’ holy work cannot claim permanency. Gestures are of pilgrimage and never alone. All bodies are plural and sometimes plural-partial, as in Thich Nhat Hahn’s “interbeing.” Consider gestures as pledges of in-between sacral structure, holy stuff. As bodies continually do and undo sacral work, devotion to the actions never fades— even in failure and death. Bodies are devoted to engagement. They cast material veneration and respect intoning moment-to-moment liturgies as work, nothing out of the ordinary and fully miraculous. Each turn, each gesture “. . . cannot fail to brush up against thousands of living dialogic threads,”30 setting tables of sacral feasting. They are a communion of sorts via body-coded sacralities that inflect suffering and love in their own styles. Who can withstand the torrents of a monsoon-bearing Kali Gandaki? What mouse can escape the falcon’s missile-diving sweep? How will hummingbirds gesture death as fertilizers’ poisons overtake them? These bodies are broken, poured out; who will challenge the powers of more-then-enough capital as part of bodied sacral work? As bodies’ arts spins webs humans have never seen, heard, or tasted, how will our bodies respond? What gestures can we join and hold dear? Is this holy ventilation that transforms, or just a human passing through for a short while? In blistering desert sun, amid long-lasting snowmelt, as cities sink, and human populations catastrophize, bodies remain on pilgrimage through planetary life over generations. Through minimal (purple?) rain, they do sacralities. From dust, to magma, to stone, to bone, bodies build, populate, interrupt, destroy. Who will fling the curse? Levertov’s “Fig Tree” body talks back, accusing humans’ barren hearts.31 Is nothing sacred left to gesture, no bodies bearing fruit, sharing communion? Will bodied sacralities devolve into ferried materialities back and forth across the Styx? Does no pressure, no gesture, remain, as bodies and their work fade from human memory, as body practices fade from memory, go unattended? As bodies of stars and suns send messages we can no longer sense. As climate change, the forces of evil come disguised as the good, and all appears well—we have no worries.32 And serious sacral lessons of impermanence and interdependence still cannot claim sacral attention, even at Standing Rock;33 the bodies work, their liturgies will continue unabated. Each week a small group of suicide attempters meets. Most of them are black, full of pain begotten by others, and suffering from mental illness. I sit with them. We try to relearn to breathe. They take their bodies seriously, feel the pressure, share gestures of

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listening, waiting, hugging, and crying. At the heart of the pulse of a giant city hospital, they keep returning to the sensorial, affections, breath, pressures, community. They go back to the body to re-member empathy as well as strength, to survive. The planet sits with them, all the bodies knowing their pressures of despair and hope. All work sacralities as liturgies of shared existence, experience, and holy hope. Bodies that will not let go of relationships and love—pressures and gestures. The final paragraph of the Tibetan teacher, Shantideva’s Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, gestures the pressure we must embrace as bodies among bodies; one of precious commitment, indisputable determination, eternal embrace through suffering. We pray and do this holy body work: For as long as space remains, For as long as sentient beings remain, Until then may I too remain To dispel the miseries of the world.34

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CHAPTER FOUR

Blood in the Soil: The Racial, Racist, and Religious Dimensions of Environmentalism CHRISTOPHER CARTER

Several years ago while volunteering for an after-school gardening club, one of the students whom I was trying to recruit to join the club asked a question that has lingered in my conscious ever since. The Garden Club was one of only a few after-school activities that took place at the “continuation school” (e.g. a school for students who are not on track to graduate high school in four years). As a person of color, I wanted to try and recruit as many students of color to join. After explaining to a young black student what we would be doing—gardening, learning about food justice issues in California, and cooking—he looked at me and said “What? Are you trying to make me a slave or something?” To be sure, the agricultural soil of America is covered in the blood, sweat, and tears of many forced laborers, among them African and African American slaves. The depth of psychological trauma embodied within black people with respect to their enslavement and forced agricultural labor is deep. I use the word “embodied” here because the student has no personal experience of enslavement. Yet, through oral histories and perhaps some academic exposure, his reflexive response was to equate the practice of gardening to slavery. Unfortunately, I do not believe that his story is unique within the black community. My experience of becoming more ecologically conscious caused me to question my “authenticity” as an African American man and as a social activist. “Shouldn’t I be working on important issues that are relevant to my community, rather than expending my creative energy working with (almost exclusively) white people on environmentalism, food justice, and animal rights?” so I thought. The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the reasons why black people have been reluctant to participate in the environmental movement writ large and to what extent Christian theology, particularly theological anthropology, may influence their reluctance. As such I’m particularly interested in exploring the impact slavery and segregation has had on black people with respect to ecological care, the role whiteness has played in reinforcing problematic notions of humanness as it relates to black bodies, and how these beliefs have contributed to the overwhelming whiteness of the environmental 45

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movement. I will argue that our definitions of nature and environmentalism have been framed through the lens of whiteness and white supremacy and that Christian theological anthropology has played a critical role providing ideological support in the construction of these definitions. In short, a primary cause of the dysfunctional relationship between human beings and non-human nature lies in a broken theological anthropology that has framed black and other people of color as subhuman and white people as ideally human. This framing has inhibited both groups from being able to value nonhuman nature in lifeaffirming ways. Ultimately Christians who are committed to caring for Creation we are going to offer a sustainable and inclusive solution to our current ecological crisis will have to redefine what it means to be human if we are to cultivate a holistic environmentalism.

THE WHITE RACIAL FRAME, ECOLOGICAL BURDEN & BEAUTY I define environmentalism as the social movement(s) that seeks to protect, preserve, and improve the quality of nonhuman nature. Environmentalism is a political and ethical movement grounded in the moral claim that nonhuman nature deserves consideration when human beings are making decisions that may harm the environment. In this way, environmentalism as I am discussing it in this chapter refers to organizations and individuals who are particularly concerned with environmental conservation and preservation. For over a century environmentalism in the US has been tied to ideological narratives that have shaped the way human beings seek to understand and experience nature. To be sure, the stories, myths, and ideologies that have shaped the modern environmentalist movement have been interpreted and retold through the lens of what sociologist Joe Feagin calls the white racial frame. The white racial frame is a worldview that interprets everything through the lens of the white experience. Indeed, it is the dominant worldview of Western society, and it encompasses a “broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, images, interpretations and narratives, emotions, and reactions to language accents, as well as racialized inclinations to discriminate.”1 In this way, the white racial frame explains how stories of settler pilgrims, frontier explorers, and cowboys portrayed as heroes and exhibiting an idealized relationship with nature were written alongside narratives of savage natives and simple-minded blacks; when viewed through the frame of whiteness it’s hard to “see” Native Americans and blacks as being anything else during the US colonial period. The dominant framing of whiteness as such as positive and people of color (particularly black people) as negative, has fostered a hegemonic superiority of a particular kind of white social values: political, economic, religious, and environmental, to name a few. As we will see below, the white racial frame is the dominant frame of the early American environmentalists and continues to be foundational to the environmental movement today. Given the framing of environmentalism through the lens of whiteness, it is no surprise that blacks and other people of color have experienced what environmentalist and English professor Kimberly Ruffin calls “environmental othering.” Othering in this sense refers to the myriad of ways that people of color have been denied access to the privileges of the environment (i.e. ownership of land, freedom to choose where one lives, access to National Parks, etc.) and disproportionately bear the burdens of pollution and environmental waste. Over a sustained period, environmental othering leads to what Ruffin has termed the “ecological burden-and-beauty-paradox.”2 This paradox helpfully illustrates the dynamic influence of our social order on how people experience the natural world.

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While Ruffin limits her use of the paradox as descriptive of African American experiences with the natural world, I find that it is also useful in examining the relationship between white people and non-human nature. As will be discussed below, the environmentalist movement, a movement that is predominantly white, has historically portrayed nature as something to be enjoyed at one’s leisure and thus it is primarily for the purposes of leisure that we must protect the environment. I will argue that this worldview ought to be understood as an ecological burden since it overlooks or minimizes human dependence upon the natural world for our survival. As illustrated at the beginning of this chapter, the ecological burden for black people emerges out of their racialization as a people particularly suited for agricultural work and the psychological trauma of chattel slavery. In this way, while African Americans have struggled with the ecological burden of forced agricultural work and segregation which has led to environmental racism, white Americans struggle to move beyond their ideological construction of the environment as something that can only truly be enjoyed by doing specific “outdoor” activities that have evolved from their re-telling of colonial narratives of Western expansion. The challenge for both whites and people of color will be to develop an understanding of environmentalism outside of the white racial frame, one that fosters a holistic sense of self, understands human dependence upon the natural world, and can enjoy the beauty and awe of nature.

ECOLOGICAL BURDEN OF WHITE ENVIRONMENTALIST LOGIC In her examination of former US Vice President Al Gore’s book and documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Ruffin argues that Gore’s work is reflective “of a strain of environmentalism informed by a limited triumvirate of W’s: wilderness, the West, and whiteness.”3 She notes that Gore’s narrative of traversing across the country with his wife in their fossil-fueled car to camp, hike, and visit national parks to experience and appreciate the physical beauty of nature “enact one of America’s celebrated environmental activities: white families journeying westward through America’s grand wilderness.”4 Most importantly, the latent message of this narrative is that recreation and leisure heighten our appreciation and value of nature, and this value outweighs the pollution one causes by taking such a trip. Lastly, Gore’s narrative also reflects the role that white privilege has played in framing our ecological narratives given that the people of color would not have been legally allowed the privilege of taking such trips until the passage of civil rights legislation in the late 1960’s. The three W’s that Ruffin identifies are parts of a larger whole that I describe as the white environmentalist frame. The white environmentalist frame is a sub-frame of the white racial frame mentioned above. While the white racial frame is foundational to the way most white people (and people of color who have uncritically adopted this dominant worldview) make meaning out of the world, Feagin notes that people are multiframers: “They have numerous frames for understanding and interpretation in their minds, and their frames vary in complexity from the particular micro-level framing of situations to a broad framing of society.”5 In this sense, while it is reasonable to assert that the current incarnation of the environmentalist movement is populated by predominantly liberal whites, the white racial frame is so comprehensive that they can reject certain elements of the traditional frame (e.g. stereotype that black people are inherently lazy) while consciously or unconsciously accepting other subframes (e.g. blacks don’t enjoy the

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outdoors). Thus the white environmentalist frame limits their capacity to see people of color as being able to offer critical insight of or to act as necessary contributors to their cause. And yet, because many white environmentalists could be considered socially and perhaps politically liberal, these same people would not see their bias as racist. Rather they would understand them as mere matters of fact, born out of years of their experience in the environmental movement. Their framing enables them to either overlook the historical experiences of people of color as agricultural laborers or to interpret those experiences through a whitewashed history. The ecological worldview of whiteness is the ecological burden carried by white environmentalists. The white environmentalist frame readily identifies the ideal human/ nature interaction as one of leisure and recreation (i.e. camping, hiking, fishing, hunting, etc.) and downplays the role of agricultural work and alternative experiences of nature. As I will argue below, this way of framing the environment finds its roots in, among other things, the narratives that have been constructed about the first white male “explorers” to travel to the North American West and the Christian Creation narratives. “Are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?”6 The previous sentence is the title of an essay by environmentalist Richard White which explores the relationship between work and the environmentalist movement. White argues that most environmentalists equate productive work in nature with the destruction of nature, ignoring “the ways that work itself is a means of knowing nature while celebrating the virtues of play and recreation in nature.”7 As such, environmentalists (again, most of whom are white) tend to believe that blue-collar work, whether it is in the woods, a refinery, on the sea, or in another type of factory, usually results in the destruction of nature in some sense. For them, nature is at its safest when it is protected from work as I have described it. However, the distrust of blue-collar work creates a human/nature dualism that most environmentalists would find problematic. One of the post-modern foils of the environmentalist has been the human/nature dualism that permeated enlightenment philosophy and thought. Enlightenment human/nature dualism argued that people existed above nature and that it was their destiny to control nature as such for our benefit. Much work has been done to deconstruct the aforementioned dualistic understanding of the relationship between humans and nature. Generally speaking, modern environmentalists have argued that rather than existing above nature, we ought to see ourselves as living within the earth’s ecology. To be sure, they also argued that spending time in nature for the sake of recreation was critical in order to cultivate the view that nature has value beyond its usefulness in producing goods for human consumption. This approach, however, has created a similar dualism. The distrust of work, of humanity’s ability to live within nature without destroying it, contributes to the larger Enlightenment tendency to define human beings outside of nature. In this way, for the environmentalist, an appropriate relationship with nature becomes one of leisure and play because these activities are understood to be the only ones that do not contribute to its degradation. “Saving an oldgrowth forest or creating a wilderness area is certainly a victory for some of the creatures that live in these places, but it is just as certainly a victory for backpackers and a defeat for loggers.”8 We can link the emergence of the nature-as-leisure worldview to the contemporary interpretation of the narratives of the some of the founding figures of the three W’s: Lewis and Clark, and Daniel Boone among others. For environmentalists such as Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, these figures play an important educational role in

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understanding how human beings ought to view and interact with nature.9 In this way, the pioneer figures are among those who have been chosen to play the role of the mythical “first white man whose arrival marks not just specific changes but the beginning of change itself.”10 The stories of the first white men are big-picture historical narratives laced with moral teachings that have been understood, interpreted, and transmitted through the white racial frame.11 These emotion-laden scenarios include stories about white conquest, superiority, hard work, and achievement. As such they are deeply meaningful to white Americans because they are consistent with the American mythology that if one works hard enough, one can succeed despite the limitations of race, gender, religion, or class. By selectively retelling these histories such that the pioneer figures of Lewis, Clark, and Boone are believed to be journeying across an unspoiled and untouched paradise, environmentalists craft an image of nature as being ideally separated from human activity.12 In this way, the actual challenging and dangerous work of traversing across lands unknown to them is altered to appear more like an extended backpack journey across the country to the American West. The stories of those early pioneers become stories of leisure and recreation personified; thus only by recreating their “adventure” are we truly able to have an authentic and transformative encounter with nature. In holding on to these narratives, white environmentalists have alienated people of color who do not find the same encounters with nature as meaningful or have been denied access to the natural spaces that allow hiking for such an extended period that they recognize these areas as hostile to their very presence. It should come as no surprise then that the environmentalist movement is overwhelmingly white. Indeed, the whiteness of the environmental movement is the second burden of white environmentalist frame. This burden exists, in part, due to the racist views embedded in the foundation of the movement by some of its principle figures. The origins of the “movement” began in the late 1800s with environmentalists such as Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Henry Thoreau, Madison Grant, and President Theodore Roosevelt. Muir and Pinchot are especially relevant because of their roles in creating the Sierra Club and several US National Parks respectively. Gifford Pinchot served as the Chief of the Forest Service during the Roosevelt presidency and oversaw a significant expansion in conserving lands that would be designated as National Parks. For Pinchot and Roosevelt, the conservation of land was inextricably tied to conserving particular kinds of American qualities such as strength and ingenuity, qualities that they believed evolved among whites in the frontier. Here too we can see how the narratives of the first white men, understood through the white racial frame, play a role in this ecological burden as well. Pinchot was a graduate of Yale University and advocated a nationalist political platform similar to many progressives today—a strong national government to curtail increasing corporate economic and political power. However, his political beliefs were grounded in the notion that a particular type of American way of life needed to be conserved. For Pinchot, conservation applied not only to preserving beautiful landscapes from development, but also to the human species. During his time in the Roosevelt administration, Pinchot became a strong advocate of the eugenics movement: “As gardeners and foresters would thin weak genetic strains and nurture the strong, so eugenic campaigners called for planned racial improvement through sterilization of people deemed inferior, beginning with anyone with a disability, and encouraged breeding by the racially superior.”13 In 1909 he submitted a three-volume National Conservation Commission (NCC ) report to the president, who subsequently presented it to Congress.

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The NCC reports volume on “National Vitality, Its Waste and Conservation” includes ten recommendations for “national vitality” and “conservation.” Recommendation ten argues for eugenics, forced sterilization, and marriage prohibition for groups deemed unfit.14 The report called for the creation and promotion of policies that favored eugenically fit marriages and framed marriages between the fit and unfit as taboo and akin to incest. The report concludes saying that: The problem of the conservation of our natural resources is therefore not a series of independent problems, but a coherent, all-embracing whole. . .If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren’s grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches—but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself.15 In the following decades, multiple states passed laws influenced by eugenics that outlawed various types of marriages and authorized forced sterilization among the mentally disabled, the poor, and people of color.16 Conservation, it seems, was not a movement intent on persuading people of color to adopt its principles. Rather one of its purposes was to show that some blacks were not quite “American” enough to understand its importance. American in this sense must be understood through the white racial frame and connotes the adoption of a way of being in the world that supports the superiority of whiteness among various races and white framing of social and political issues. As noted, John Muir was founding member and first president of the Sierra Club. After suffering an accident while working that nearly blinded him, Muir set out on his famed “Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf.” He reached California’s San Joaquin Valley in 1868, and the evocative landscapes of the Sierra Nevada moved him such that he made his home in Yosemite. He authored over 300 essays and ten books, and his notion of conservation and environmentalism evoked the language of spirituality.17 His effort to portray Yosemite as a sacred place akin to the cathedrals of Europe reveal that he believed that a Divine beauty was present within creation. And yet, black people and other people of color did not fit into his vision of beauty, conservation, or his environmental ethic. During his walk through lands devastated by the Civil War, he “spoke of Negroes as largely lazy and easygoing and unable to pick as much cotton as a white man.”18 Muir was quick to adopt the post-war ideology regarding the laziness of black people, an ideology created to ensure the poor and working class whites would maintain a sense of superiority over the newly freed African Americans. To be sure, with an attitude such as this, black people and other people of color would not be welcome within his new environmental conservation club. The Sierra Club is not unique in respect to its lack of diversity. As environmental groups began to emerge, they were mostly segregated based on race and class. Moreover, the majority of people who joined environmental groups were largely white and middle class, and this has remained a characteristic of these groups ever since. In 1969 a survey of the Sierra Club revealed that its members were mostly white and middle class and a study in 1975 showed that the majority of volunteers were white.19 The most recent data available on the subject of diversity in environmental organizations comes from Green 2.0 (formerly the Green Diversity Initiative). Green 2.0’s 2014 report, “The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations,” was written by Dorceta Taylor, an African American female professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.20 The report details the lack of diversity among conservation/preservation agencies, government agencies, and grant-making organizations. Perhaps the most disappointing statistic is that while initially 350 organizations agreed to complete a survey

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on diversity within their organizations, 150 surveys had to be dropped from the sample size because they answered too few questions. In fact, some respondents after beginning the survey stopped answering questions once they were asked about diversity within their own organization’s leadership. In this way, the survey reminds us yet again that inability to confront the truth of one’s racial bias is one of the primary hurdles of the white racial frame. Of 191 conservation and preservation organizations, their leadership and paid staff were 88.7 percent and 88 percent white respectively.21 Between 2010–2013, 77 percent of their interns were white, as were 87 percent of their new hires; this is despite that fact that many of these organizations profess diversity as an important issue for their organization. In fact, “in many instances, organizational representatives were significantly more likely to say diversity activities should be undertaken in their region than they were to say that their organization was likely or very likely to support the activities once they were put in place.” In short, merely believing (or conveying belief) that people of color should be more involved in the environmental movement is not enough to compel its leadership to actively change how they do their work to recruit more people of color into their organizations. Why is this the case? How can environmental organizations make the contradictory claim that people of color should be more involved in the movement but that they were not likely to support actions to diversify their organizations if they were put in place? I contend that this contradictory thought process is a consequence of their adoption and application of the white environmentalist frame. By this, I mean that the leadership of the environmentalist movement, both consciously and unconsciously, believe that black and other people of color do not “care” about the environment in ways that they think they ought to—the white way, i.e. to preserve an outdoor leisure lifestyle. This belief has been fostered by both social Darwin ideology (e.g. eugenics and arguments that certain humans are more “fit” than others) and an undercurrent of Christian theological anthropology that justified human domination of nature, more specifically white male dominance of all Creation, which I will address after my description of the ecological burden of black embodiment.

ECOLOGICAL BURDEN OF BLACK EMBODIMENT [A]“You can’t know where you are going until you know where you have been.” This is a popular colloquial saying within black communities and one that speaks to the importance placed upon keeping alive the memory of the millions who died in the purchase, transportation, and exploitation of black labor. Through familial, communal, and literary narratives black people have tried to make sense of their current burdens in light of the legacy of their most painful, if not their heaviest, burden—slavery. Without a doubt, the most significant ecological burden that Africans and African Americans have endured within the US was chattel slavery. Some may question the importance of keeping such narratives alive given the obvious pain holding these memories may cause. To those who hold such positions, I argue that maintaining the collective memory of slavery, forced agricultural work, and the legal discrimination of people of color is essential for environmentalist meaning-making. The embodied experience of both slave and slave master, oppressor and oppressed, must be included in whatever new definition of environmentalist we develop. The suppression of this history enables the white environmentalist frame specifically, and the white racial frame in general, to believe fictional memories and “alternative facts” about the colonial

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and racial history of the US Postcolonial theorist Frantz Fanon understood this well when he argued that one of the colonists’ goals is to alienate the colonized from their past by distorting, disfiguring, and destroying all alternative historical narratives except the one that presents the colonized as dependent creatures.22 In this way, the preservation of the narratives of the colonized have historically served as a counter-frame to the white racial frame, and thus are a critical counter-frame in my constructive conclusion. The retelling of their ancestral narratives enables black people to exert a degree of agency over their history and, in a sense, the history of their ancestors. In the 1930s, the Federal Writers’ Project, a program instituted as part of the Works Progress Administration, began recording the historical narratives of former slaves. These stories allow us to capture a glimpse of what the experience of slavery was like for millions of black people. Mary Reynolds was one such person. During her interview, she described slavery as: . . . the worst days was ever seed in the world. They was things past tellin’, but I got the scars on my old body to show to this day. I seed worse than what happened to me. I seed them put men and women in the stock with their hands screwed down through holes in the board and they feets tied together and they naked behinds to the world. Solomon . . . the overseer beat them with a big whip and massa look on. The niggers better not stop in the fields when they year them yellin’ . . . The times I hated most was pickin’ cotton when the frost was on the bolls. My hands git sore and crack open and bleed. We’d have a li’l fire in the fields and iffen the ones with tender hands couldn’t stand it no longer, we’d run and warm out hands a li’l bit.23 Mary’s story captures the physical and psychological trauma of black enslavement and dehumanization. The psychological message Mary and the other slaves were being taught was that the pain of the victim does not matter, indeed the victim herself and her black life did not matter. All that mattered was the slave’s ability to generate income for their master. Mary and the other slaves were discouraged from paying attention to the torture of one of their family members as if the life of the tortured soul is not worth caring for; their lives were to be understood as “other.” In this way, ecological othering can be understood as an extension of othering as it relates to ones’ humanity. In an effort to make sense of the way they were being treated the enslaved were taught to see themselves not as human, but as other. And yet the cries of the beaten one could be heard by everyone. These were not the cries of an “other,” but rather the painful screams from a likely friend. One can hardly imagine the pain and hurt flowing through the spirit of someone working all the while hearing the cries of someone you know being tortured. It is an enduring pain because, as Mary notes, she has the scars on her body to remind her. These scars would be a visual reminder of her pain, her suffering, her journey, and her resiliency. In this way, while Mary may have never been able to (or desired to) articulate the fullness of her experience of enslavement, she carried an embodied knowledge of the peculiar institution that she and countless others passed down to subsequent generations of black people to protect them from a similar fate. These stories were some of the ways in which elders were able to teach their communities to have a “healthy” fear of situational contexts that have historically lead to the harm or death of black people. Black theologian Howard Thurman argues that in cases such as this, for people of color fear “becomes a form of life assurance, making possible the continuation of physical existence with a minimum of active violence.”24 To be clear, I am not arguing that the narratives of abuse connected to the enslavement of black bodies and agriculture are used to instill a fear of nature or

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agriculture within the black community. Rather I am arguing that they have been used as a means by which black people can be aware of the ways in which our labor (and our lives) can be abused. As such, one might instantly question if the instructor has an ulterior motive when they express the desire to have you join a gardening club. After the abolition of slavery in the late nineteenth century, black people in the United States did experience a brief measure of self-determination during the reconstruction era. But ultimately the post-slavery black experience afforded former slaves and their decedents a muted freedom at best. This muted freedom would come to be defined by Jim and Jane Crow segregation, and a different set of ecological burdens. For instance, at the end of the Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman granted forty acres of land and an army mule to former slaves along the southeastern coast. This program would be temporary, as President Andrew Johnson would revoke Sherman’s orders and return the land to the former white plantation owners. Additionally, black codes were created, first in Mississippi and then in practically every southern state in order to maintain political, economic, and social control over the newly freed people. Black codes restricted the civil and economic rights of blacks and thus guaranteed a low wage working class for the white middle class and elite business owners. Vagrancy laws were especially harmful in restricting the movement of black bodies. A black man without a signed labor contract would likely be arrested as a vagrant and sentenced to jail or more likely re-enslaved to a white employer to work off their punishment.25 The black codes contained laws designating when, where, and how black people could congregate and refusing to abide by these rules could result in lethal violence in the form of lynching. In nearly every state, but particularly in the South, black people were subject to the terrorism of lynching, often by being hanged from a tree. Indeed the tree, as James Cone rightfully expresses, is the symbol of lynching for many black people.26 “Between 1882–1968 approximately 4,742 black people were illegally lynched by white mobs,” and about the same number of individuals were legally lynched (according to court records), fell victim to “private white violence,” or were murdered and discarded in a creek or river.27 In truth, we don’t know how many lynchings took place during this period, but the history of the US would lead us to believe that it was much more than the 9,500 for which we have records. Given this history, it becomes apparent that lynching succeeded in narrowing the environmental imagination of black people. Moreover, we also can begin to see that black people often interpret their experiences in nature through the white racial frame. By this, I mean that nature is understood to be dangerous because it has been racialized as such. The notion that a walk through the woods could more likely conjure a sense of fear rather than awe and serve as a painful reminder of the limitations placed upon black mobility makes sense in light of the embodied experiences of black people and the way in which nature has been framed. Jim and Jane Crow segregation played a similar, albeit less physically violent, role in restricting the movement and occupations of black people. The National Parks were not immune to segregation laws and adopted an informal policy of segregation based upon the local customs in the communities that surrounded the park.28 Despite these restrictions and the aforementioned psychological trauma noted above, there were some black people who visited or desired to visit National Parks. For instance, Shenandoah National Park (established in 1935) was hugely popular when it opened and was the first park to have over a million visitors, just two years after it opened. Shenandoah was particularly popular among blacks, so much so that park officials expedited the construction of a separate area on Lewis Mountain to avoid the challenges they were experiencing in segregating the

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white campsites.29 When the Lewis Mountain campsite opened, it was decidedly smaller than the white campsites and only 75 percent complete. With only forty campsites, the parks leadership ensured that the total number of black visitors would always be limited, even if the demand increased. At the same time, the notion that black people do not belong in these spaces or do not enjoy nature was present within some of the initial leadership of the National Parks. Unfortunately, these ideas have not completely faded away. In 2015 eight female professors were invited to Yosemite National Park to attend an event for academics; four were white or Hispanic, and four were black. The eight women were told to inform the gate agents that they were guests of the research station and that they were not supposed to pay entrance fees. The four women who were not black were admitted without a problem, while the four black women (who arrived at separate gates at different times) were questioned, made to fill out extraneous forms, and had to check in with the research center staff.30 To be sure, these women were not just the victim of the ecological burden of being black. They were also the victims of the implicit bias of the white environmentalist frame of the gate agents who were unable to imagine black women doing environmental research, especially black women PhDs. My experience at Yellowstone National Park in May of 2017 was not altogether that different from the aforementioned black women. I was the subject of many stares and exaggerated looks because I was often the only black person in a given area of the park. It seems as though my presence was as surprising to many of the other visitors as the flora, fauna, and nonhuman animals that surrounded us.31 The white environmentalist frame is one among many reasons black people have been reluctant to join environmental organizations and participate in the environmentalist movement writ large. With the notable exception of environmental justice organizations, black people have avoided participating in the environmental movement because their experience of ecological burdens outweighed their experience of ecological beauty and their input has not been desired. As already noted, many of the green spaces and National Parks that are being preserved and protected were at one time hostile to the presence of black and brown bodies. Moreover, the psychological residue of slavery and forced agricultural work on soil that they could not own and use for the benefit of their families created a disconnect between themselves and the land; urbanization has only served to further that divide.

THE ROLE OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY In Lynn White’s infamous 1967 article “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” he argues that Christian theology’s assertion that human beings were supposed to have “dominion” over nature normalized the ecological exploitation of the Industrial Revolution. While White’s later work recognizes that multiple factors encouraged the exploitation of the environment, the article nonetheless awakened Christian theologians to the fact that they had not taken issues of environmental concern seriously. In short order they began to address issues of ecology and environmentalism within the framework of Christian thought. To be sure, Christian eco-theologians and ethicists did not explicitly espouse the racist views of many of the founders of the environmentalist movement. However, by not assessing the foundational principles and assumptions of the movement they were inheriting, one could argue that theologians created Christian versions of racialized environmental thought. Or perhaps it was the other way around? Perhaps it was, in fact, the environmentalists who inherited a racialized Christian theology

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that informed their various ecological beliefs. Indeed, even the stories of the “first white men” that the patriarchs of the environmentalist movement evoked have a decidedly Christian hue. To borrow from Lynn White, I contend that the “roots” of the ecological burdens that I have outlined can be traced back to modern interpretations of Christian theological anthropology. By theological anthropology, I mean the normative claims (i.e. the roots) that influence the way in which we understand and embody the God–human encounter, and how we have come to know ourselves as fully human. Our interpretation of this encounter situates how we understand ourselves in relation to others: God–human, human–human, and human–nonhuman nature. Within America there is no doubt that how we understand ourselves is profoundly connected to how we are racialized. In Being Human, black liberation theologian Dwight Hopkins writes that “theological anthropology grows out of culture; culture arises from particular selves and the self, and selves/self (at least in the US landscape) automatically involve the race of the selves/self who create cultures out of which we construct contemporary theological anthropology.”32 Modern and contemporary interpretations of what it means to be human were constructed around racial representation given that race was the signifying and dehumanizing factor that justified black enslavement and the genocide of Native Americans. In describing the invention of “man” as such as a theological problem of the Christian imagination of early modernity/colonialism, theologian J. Kameron Carter notes: This was an imagination in which the Word or “rationality” of God . . . was ideologically collapsed into or became wholly identified with the Word of (Western) man in his socalled rational superiority over his inadequate (because less than rational) Others whom he “discovered” in other parts of the planet.33 In other words, the Age of Discovery produced the image of the European man as an imperial God-man, which ultimately led to the production of white supremacy in relationship to non-white “others” and human domination over the earth and the other created beings.34 The theological anthropology that elevated Euro-American men above other human and nonhuman nature is the understanding of the human self that was the foundation of the environmentalist movement. Unfortunately, this theological anthropology also justified the exploitation of black and other non-white bodies and contributed to the rationalization of the black ecological burdens described above. When interpreted through the lens of theological anthropology, we can readily see how the idealized human–nature relationship of environmentalists strikingly mirrors the Genesis creation narrative’s prelapsarian human–nature relationship. To counter the narrative of the industrial age that an ideal relationship with nature was one in which human beings were capable of controlling and manipulating the earth’s resources, environmentalists argued that the ideal human–nature relationship was one of reverence and conservation, where people could enjoy the fullness and beauty of our planet. “In the beginning,” so to speak, there was no labor or toil; rather humanity existed in a state of perpetual enjoyment of their environment—a state of perpetual leisure. No longer would humanity’s relationship to nature be purely instrumental, rather they argued that human beings should value nature for its ability to give “us” (i.e. white people) a taste of what the creation narratives present as an idealized human relationship with nature. By this I mean that for many environmentalists, the value of nature lies in its ability to connect us to a deeper sense of our true human Self. Moreover, this connection is at its most powerful

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when we experience nature through outdoor activities which have been lost to modernity, activities that allow us to reconnect to the Self. Environmentalists have created a relational structure with nature wherein only those who can cultivate a relationship with and experience of the environment as one of leisure can be full human beings in the way in which God intended humans to be. In this way, the ecological burden of the white environmentalist frame goes unquestioned because it is consistent with the idealized human–nature relationship. The ecological burdens experienced by black people remain untended wounds because the dominant narratives of environmentalism and humanness were constructed to disregard and counter their personal ecological experiences. This is the foundational theological problem that flows beneath the surface of white environmentalist logic and is made known in the ecological burdens suffered by both black and white people. The above described theological anthropology limits the ability of all created beings to flourish by prioritizing the needs of a particular type of human (those who are white and male) over the needs of the rest of Creation. As it relates to African Americans, this theological anthropology is particularly burdensome because it reinforces theological and anthropological (e.g. eugenic) claims about black bodies that have historically justified their ecological burden as normative. For white people, the theological anthropology is burdensome because it encourages viewing nature through the white environmentalist frame which idealizes leisure and doesn’t take seriously alternative experiences with nonhuman nature. In order to experience the beauty of nonhuman nature in ways that are life-affirming for all people, white people and people of color must liberate themselves from a theological anthropology that justifies these problematic human–nature and human–human relationships.

FROM ECOLOGICAL BURDEN TO ECOLOGICAL BEAUTY While a fully constructed theological anthropology is beyond the scope of this chapter, I will conclude by beginning to fashion the structure of what a liberative theological anthropology would entail. I will also describe the consciousness shifting that both black and white people need in order to experience the beauty of nature in non-oppressive ways. At its most basic level a theological anthropology “interrogates what people are called and created to be and do.”35 I believe it is safe for us to work with the assumption that an important task that human beings ought to do is exercise care of Creation. However, who we understand ourselves to be has a direct influence in how we go about doing the work of care. Given this, for the purpose of this chapter, I would like to explore being rather than doing given that the ecological burdens I have identified connect us to existential ways of being in the world. As mentioned earlier the Creation narratives have played a vital role in shaping how we understand ourselves in relation to nature. Despite their baggage, I believe that they can be helpful in our reconstruction of the human self. Theological and secular philosophers alike have accused the first creation narrative of encouraging an anthropocentric view of nature. If read literally and through the lens of the oppressive theological anthropology described in the previous section, Genesis 1:28 appears to show God blessing and encouraging humanity to “subdue” and have “dominion” over the earth and other animals. However, practical theologian and Hebrew Bible scholar Ellen Davis has a dramatically different view of the text. Following Walter Brueggemann, Davis argues that Genesis 1 should be read as a liturgical poem that invites

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the reader to see Creation through divine perception and encourages a healthy imagination to think and feel in a certain way.36 I believe that this is the most fruitful approach to this text. Indeed, viewing it as a poem allows us to take every word seriously since, in good poetry, every word is deliberately chosen. Furthermore, this perspective acknowledges that poems contain a surplus of meaning, and therefore have the potential to say something new and meaningful to different audiences at different times. A fresh look at Genesis 1:26 (Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, NRSV ) from the poetic perspective offers us the opportunity to reimagine what it means to be created in the image of God. What does it mean for black people to be described as imaging God? How does a being created in the image of God reshape African American Christian attitudes towards other humans, the earth, and themselves? I contend that by embracing the biblical claim that they are created in the image of God, African American Christians can break free from the US theological and anthropological norm that designated them as less than human, or “Other.” In this way accepting that they, like Jesus, were created in the image of God becomes the liberatory response to the dehumanization of enslavement and forced agricultural work. Indeed, being created in the image of God means that they must accept that they are already fully human despite the continued dehumanization experienced by black people. For African American Christians, embracing the implications of the imago Dei is crucial because it allows black communities to begin to heal the psychological scars of forced enslavement and the dehumanization of their black bodies. Emilie Townes argues that communal lament can be formative for the black community because lament “names problems, seeks justice, and hopes for God’s deliverance.”37 In this way, communal lament enables the African American Christian community to acknowledge the suffering and pain caused by othering so that it can be addressed. Therefore, communal lament helps the “community to see the crisis as bearable and manageable—in community.”38 This is why the stories of African enslavement and forced agricultural work need to be told and re-told to our children. Telling these stories, sharing our pains and our triumphs is a part of the healing process. Because all African Americans must contend with the consequences of theological and anthropological dehumanization, communal lament can help them best address those complex psychological consequences. Townes notes that when we grieve and lament “we acknowledge and live the experience rather than try to hold it away from us out of some misguided notion of being objective or strong.”39 Consequently, a liberative theological anthropology for African American Christians requires that they name their ancestral experience of slavery as demonic in order to loosen its grasp on their consciousness so that they can begin to heal. Jesus’ embodiment as a human being created in the image of God is significant for African American Christian theological anthropology when we consider his embodiment in light of Jesus’ teaching of the greatest commandment—to love God with all one’s heart, soul, and strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Womanist theologian Karen Baker-Fletcher contends that to see Jesus as fully human and fully God is to see Jesus as “a manifestation of Spirit in Creation working in harmony with itself.”40 Building upon the Nicene Creed, which states that Jesus is fully God and fully human, BakerFletcher contends that Jesus is both fully Spirit and fully dust—fully God and fully connected to all elements that comprise the earth.41 If we follow Baker-Fletcher’s depiction of Jesus as both fully human and fully God, then loving Jesus requires that one must love both God and human beings, including ourselves. In this way, the unconditional love of Jesus requires an unconditional love of self. Moreover, the ability of African American

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Christians to love themselves also requires the capacity to define themselves outside of the frame of whiteness. The theological anthropology of white Christian culture has framed blackness as being inherently less human and therefore closer to nature. The natural reaction from black people has been to recoil and avoid the natural world for reasons of safety and to distance themselves from these false ideological impositions. I argue that a love of self creates the necessary space for black people to define themselves and their relationship with the natural world outside of the white racial frame. Doing so enables African Americans to explore the rich agricultural heritage that they possess. Chattel slavery ensured an indelible connection between African Americans and the American soil. However, if we reframe the stories of those who worked in the fields to privilege the history of African farmers, we discover that the African American connection to agriculture is not rooted in plantations, but in the highly regarded agricultural skills of the West African cultures of their ancestral past. Indeed, we must remember that one of the many reasons that West Africans were enslaved was because of their agricultural prowess. Furthermore, slaves carried different values in certain parts of the US and the Caribbean depending on where they originated because each region had varied but prized agricultural acumen. For instance, slaves who were from the coastal area of the Niger River region were especially prized in South Carolina because they had intimate knowledge of Carolina’s cash crop, rice. The variety of rice grown in South Carolina originated in the area that is known today as Senegambia, and it was cultivated by utilizing a uniquely African system of agriculture.42 In this way loving themselves enables them to embrace an agricultural history that finds its roots in their ancestral homeland. To be sure, the move to view nature and agriculture through the lens of Africa does not mean that one should overlook the tragedy of slavery and the following decades of meagerly compensated agricultural labor. However, it does mean that their agricultural history does not start or end with slavery, and this is important if black people are going to develop a holistic appreciation of the natural world. Loving themselves and seeing God in themselves is a crucial move for black people but the purpose here is not to solely identify the image of God with African Americans. To do so would be to replicate the oppressive theological anthropology which I seek to dismantle. A liberative theological anthropology acknowledges that all human beings image God and must equip people to see God in themselves and to see God in others. Solidarity then becomes the second component of a liberative theological anthropology for African Americans that informs who we ought to be and what we might do in light of our being. Solidarity begins with the cultivation of a critical consciousness wherein our personal experiences or the narratives of our particular group (i.e. gender, race, class, etc.) are not universalized as Truth. Seeing the other as a full human being means honoring the truth of multiple experiences and collectively discerning what action ought to be taken in light of those experiences. Catholic theologian Shawn Copeland writes that “through the praxis of solidarity, we not only apprehend and are moved by the suffering of the other, we confront and address its oppressive cause and shoulder the other’s suffering.”43 In this way, solidarity cultivates an openness that enables human beings to engage one another authentically. Within a liberative theological anthropology solidarity becomes a task, a praxis where responsible relationships between and among persons, between and among groups, and between and among humans and nonhuman animals and nature may be created and expressed, mended and renewed.44 Through the cultivation of responsible relationships within the black

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community and between themselves and nonhuman nature, African Americans will be able to unload their ecological burdens and tend to their ecological fears. Responsible relationship must also be extended to those within the white environmentalist community. For white Christians who are committed to environmentalism, embracing the implications of solidarity and the imago Dei requires a different focus. For white Americans, solidarity ought to begin with anamnesis, the intentional remembering of the exploited, marginalized, and minoritized victims of their historical legacy of oppression. As I have noted previously, the practice of recalling the past and naming the victims of history already takes place within most black communities. And while white communities may share narratives of their ancestral past, those narratives have been interpreted through the white racial frame and likely gloss over the pain and suffering of others who they believed did not matter. I agree with liberation theologian Dwight Hopkins that one aspect of America’s implicit yet dominant theological anthropology is historical amnesia.45 It is more convenient to forget (or never ask oneself) questions such as: what happened to those peoples who held claim to the land we currently call our own, why did the end of slavery bring about the black codes, when did women become legal adults, why did the federal government begin to give entitlement (welfare) payments to corporations? Historical amnesia prevents Americans and particularly white Americans from developing a realistic understanding of themselves. Conversely, the solidaristic practice of anamnesis requires a truthful engagement with history. A historical analysis that does not romanticize the past but is intentional about recovering the stories of those who have been oppressed and marginalized is requisite. Moreover, the stories of those whose voices have been silenced become prioritized because through the praxis of solidarity one apprehends and is moved by the suffering of another—you feel their suffering as though it is your own. Once these stories are accepted as true and meaningful, white environmentalists can begin to break free from the lens of the white environmentalist frame because the experiences of the oppressed can become the counter-frame that enables them to see the world anew. Jesus presents Christians with a perfect example of what solidarity ought to look like. In his first sermon, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah and his hearers that he has been anointed by God to liberate those who are oppressed and to usher in the year of the Lord’s favor.46 The solidaristic life praxis of Jesus, who was willing to empty himself and sacrifice his life for those who were oppressed, is an ideal model for how white environmentalists might practice imaging God. Because of the power of the white racial frame to center the white experience as normative, white Christians should focus on emptying of the self, rather than loving the self. This is not to say that white people do not need to love themselves in the ways in which black people ought to. Rather, I believe their focus needs to be on self-emptying because the dominant culture of the US is intent on making white domination normative. As such the move to self-emptying is a means to ensure that white people can cultivate a sense of self outside of the white racial frame. Paul’s writings about Jesus offer a helpful example of the way in which white Christians can seek to be in the world. In Philippians 2: 5–11, the Apostle Paul describes his understanding of what it means to have the mind of Christ, to be Christ-like. Paul writes that Jesus emptied himself of his power, took the form of a slave, and was willing to be crucified. The white racial frame and the white environmentalist subframe can be a totalizing way to experience the world. The primary means with which white people can heal from this burden is to empty themselves of their white world view. As Feagin and countless other sociologists have noted, this will be challenging because whiteness has a

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way of rearticulating itself in ways that appear innocent. However, I believe a critical first step is to adopt the fundamental assumptions of critical race theorists and those of sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant. While there are several relatively universal critical race theory assumptions, the most important for our purposes are: 1) racism is ordinary and not aberrational, it is the usual way society does business and the way most people of color experience the American culture; 2) the critique of liberalism and fundamental aspects of it, such as color blindness and equal rights.47 If white Christians and white environmentalists began to view the world through these assumptions, it would disrupt the worldview presented by the white racial frame. This disruption creates an opportunity for white Christians and environmentalists take the environmental experiences of blacks and other people of color seriously. Given that the opportunity to experience nature as leisure was dependent upon maintaining racist agricultural practices that exploited black and brown labor, nature as leisure can be exposed as a myth rooted in racist racial framing. To be sure, the disruption of the white racial frame worldview requires the development of authentic relationships across racial difference where environmentalism is deemed important to all parties. As I wrote above, environmental organizations struggle in this area. However, I believe that emptying themselves of their white worldview and adopting the two critical race theory assumptions should inspire some critical self-reflection among white Christians. Indeed, white people generally assume that racism is abnormal and liberal whites often believe that social structures are relatively successful at preventing racism. Adopting these two assumptions as the normative way to frame the world, so to speak, would cause them to reevaluate not only how they view the way they interact in the world, but most especially the way their organizations and corporations can be complicit in racism by operating under a business as usual mentality. Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s theory of racial formation can be helpful for white Christians because it builds upon the two assumptions mentioned above of critical race theory and reveals how the environmentalist movement could become an anti-racist racial project: “Racial projects connect what race means in a particular discursive or ideological practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning.”48 Given the role and import of colonialism, slavery, and genocide in the development of what is now the United States, we can rightfully describe the US as a racist racial project because America has been structured to distribute goods unevenly along racial lines. Indeed, the founding fathers of the environmentalist movement built into their understanding of environmentalism the desire to distribute the “good” of environmental protection in ways that would benefit whites and protect the environment in a manner that was meaningful to white people. One way white Christians and white environmentalists can empty themselves of their whiteness is to interpret their work such that they become anti-racist racial projects. An anti-racist racial project is one that undoes and resists “structures of domination based on racial significations and identities.”49 This requires environmental agencies and organizations working with the assumption that the status quo, what we understand to be racist, is normative. As such it is not enough to claim that diversity is an important goal, rather by encouraging their organization to become anti-racist racial project they will actively assume racism is at play in their hiring and their advocacy work. This understanding should promote critical self-reflection in ways where the white environmentalist frame would no longer be the way in which they would go about doing the work of environmentalism.

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CONCLUSION Despite the current framing of environmentalism as something white people do, the desire to enjoy and protect the natural world transcends race. While I have articulated how both black and white people have different environmental burdens, we share a common burden in that the planet that we share is currently suffering because of our collective inaction. The consequences of climate change do not know color, faith tradition, or class. And while poor people and people of color are suffering the most as a consequence of our current ecological policies, it is but a matter of time before predominantly white communities begin to feel the effects—Hurricane Sandy was but a prelude of things to come. By confronting the racial, racist, and religious dimensions of environmentalism we can begin to combine our efforts in order to care for and heal our planet.

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CHAPTER FIVE

To Eat or Be Eaten? That’s the Question1 ERNST M. CONRADIE

Any form of environmental awareness prompts or is prompted by an appreciation for what is material, bodily, and earthly. Such an appreciation is easily extended towards food, the sheer tactile delight of eating, aromas, herbs, and spices. In affluent societies such an appreciation is further extended towards the culinary arts, wine tasting, and fine dining. Yet, eating is obviously not only something that humans do so that such an appreciation would need to be deeply rooted in all forms of eating. Human eating will become shallow and superficial, indeed dualistic, without the recognition that the food that is eaten typically belonged to other bodies and that being eaten (alive) is hardly ever voluntary. Not surprisingly, plants and animals have developed defence mechanisms to avoid being eaten. As Steven Pinker observes: Except for fruits (which trick hungry animals into dispersing seeds), virtually every food is the body part of some other organism, which would just as soon keep that part for itself. Organisms evolve defences against being eaten, and would-be diners evolve weapons to overcome these defences, prodding the would-be meals to evolve better defences, and so on, in an evolutionary arms race. These weapons and defences are genetically based and relatively fixed within the lifetime of the individual; therefore they change slowly. The balance between eater and eaten develops only over evolutionary time.2 Admittedly, eating organic leftovers in the form of fruit, nuts, and seeds minimizes violence and only limits the potential of the seeds that are eaten to become plants. Every species can potentially produce far more offspring than can possibly survive on a finite planet so that each specimen must necessarily compete with others to survive and flourish. Limiting potential does not seem too harsh. In the case of eating fruit, the act of eating often helps with the distribution of the seeds. Drinking milk and eating cheese, honey, or eggs does not entail killing those that produce such products, but may well amount to theft by those in positions of power over other living beings. The exchange is not voluntary either. By contrast, eating some vegetables, all roots, and especially various forms of meat implies that one living metabolism is absorbed by another. While this cannot necessarily be described as a form of “violence” (pending definitions of violence), it begs numerous questions. Some (vegetarians) would suggest a distinction between uprooting vegetables and killing other sentient beings for food (meat). Such a distinction is not arbitrary but surely 63

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plants have interests of their own too. What about carnivorous plants? What about the evolutionary continuity between non-sentient and sentient forms of life? Where would one need to draw a line to legitimize eating other forms of life? Only where eating other humans (cannibalism) is concerned? Should eating (red) meat be outlawed as well so that “meat is murder”? And fish? Is sentience an appropriate point of demarcation? How far does the problem go back in evolutionary history? Would drawing any such a line apply only to humans or should carnivorous animals (and plants) be expected to change their ways as a prerequisite for a more peaceful nature? How, then, can human eating be situated in the evolutionary history of predation? In eating, the eater destroys the distinctive otherness of what is eaten by transforming that into the eater. Eating is a strategy of assimilation and, quite literally, incorporation. In his Phenomenology of Life, Hans Jonas offers a helpful reflection on metabolisms and the distinct ways in which plants, herbivores and carnivores have to absorb food.3 All living organisms require continuous self-renewal through the metabolic process. Plants dissolve and absorb nutrients through their roots by a process of osmosis. By contrast, animals require a mechanical stage of conveying and shredding before the direct chemical stage of metabolic appropriation. Through their roots plants are relieved of the necessity of movement, while such mobility enhances the freedom of animals but this implies a more precarious metabolism, an inability to become fully integrated in its environment and a temporal discontinuity between need and satisfaction. This gap between animal organism and environment is spanned by the role of perception, emotional embeddedness, and mobility. All animal life is therefore parasitic on plant life. Jonas (1996: 105) comments: Thus animal metabolism makes mediate action possible; but it also makes it necessary. The animal, feeding on existing life, continually destroys its mortal supply and has to see elsewhere for more. In the case of flesh-eaters, whose food is itself motile, the need is increased in proportion and forces the mutual development of that agility in which so many other faculties of the animal must participate. In this chapter I will address the very basic question: What do we do when we eat? With apologies to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the question is “to eat or not to eat,” i.e. to be eaten. Or perhaps this involves a logic of “eat and be eaten”! This is not too far from Shakespeare’s rhetoric anyway: To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; Hamlet’s Soliloquy, Act 3, Scene 1 One may, of course, offer physiological and biochemical explanations given the role of biting, salivating, tasting, chewing, swallowing, and digesting—and the tools (mouth, teeth, and a tongue) that our human evolutionary heritage bestowed on us for such tasks. However, the focus here is on how the significance of the very act of eating anything is to be understood. My interest is not so much on food (as a commodity or a symbol), appropriate diets, menus or recipes, but on eating. The issue at stake is not so much whether we eat (starvation), how regularly we eat (hunger), how much we eat (stunting, obesity, eating disorders, daily food choices), what we eat (the so-called omnivore’s

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dilemma amidst cultural preferences, religious taboos, health prescriptions, and vegetarian debates), how nutritious the food is that we eat (GMO foods, the use of pesticides), how we eat (culture), with whom we eat (commensality, companionship, and exclusion), where and in what setting we eat (the role of homes amidst contestations over family life), when we eat (the impact of working days), or how long it takes us to eat (debates on slow food). Each of these questions is intriguing in its own right and has an own body of literature. The “we” in the question requires some clarification given differences of class, culture, and gender and the likelihood of domination in the name of such differences. The question is best addressed within the context of food insecurity and food contestation,4 so that the “we” may refer primarily to the hungry. The hungry do eat from time to time, or else they will starve. They are not merely the passive recipients of food but are subjects whose agency matters. As Gustavo Gutierréz once noted, the poor are not merely poor; they are also people with normal human needs for beauty, meaningful relationships, productive labour, and an expression of their talents. I will assume that the “we” include Christian eaters, in fact 2 billion of them, many living amidst food insecurity, and will drop theological hints where appropriate. What, then, are “we” doing when we eat? I will also focus on human acts of eating without losing sight of how this is situated in evolutionary history in order to avoid a crude anthropocentrism or a disconnection between nature and culture. The story of evolution is often described in terms of the survival of the fittest and competition over food, habitat, and procreation. This is a story based on predatory habits, from the early appearance of parasitic bacteria to the emergence of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. It is also a story of procreation and therefore cooperation, especially amongst social species, but such cooperation (also for hunting and gathering) cannot and does not qualify the need for food. How, then, is this act of eating to be understood philosophically, ethically and theologically? More specifically, how is the role of predation, implied in the act of eating, to be understood? Our well-being depends upon the destruction and therefore ill-being of other life. Even if food is produced in a relatively “humane” manner, it seems nonsensible to think that the need for predation can be avoided. In fact, as many have argued, predation is in the interest of the prey; perhaps not in the interest of the individual animal that is killed but certainly in the interest of the species and in the well-being of the ecosystems in which they are situated. It is of course also in the interest of the one who eats and the evolution of the predatory species. In early hominid evolution, eating meat evidently contributed much towards the proteins necessary for growth in brain size. Vegetarian or vegan habits are now possible, but humans would not have evolved without scavenging and later hunting for meat. Would humans therefore need to “humanize” nature, by resisting and overcoming their predatory evolutionary heritage? If nature is (not so) good, is culture at least potentially a bit better? Does humanizing nature not amount to another, slightly more subtle, form of anthropocentrism in which the story of evolution culminates in the human species? For Christians, there are additional theological questions: Do we have to ameliorate the violence-ridden work of the triune Creator? Is the very act of eating (and the implied need for predation) not an almost inevitable manifestation of human sin? How, then, should the act of eating be understood theologically—with Manichean or Gnostic disdain over the crude biological nature of eating, with an Augustinian innocence or with a cultured Pelagian sophistication? How should the story of eating be told? As a story starting with Paradise where there was no killing for food (eating only seeds and fruits),

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to one of condoning the eating of meat, to a return to a vegan ideal? Could this version of the story help to make sense of (human) evolution? Or should the story be told along a development path from violent forms of predation to a humanized civilization? Does this version not remain anthropocentric? Or is this simply a story of the survival of the fittest? What would the moral of such a story be? As I will argue below, a satisfactory answer to this set of questions remains elusive. I will offer an eightfold typology of responses to this question, noting that all of these responses remain unsatisfactory in the sense that they cannot do justice simultaneously to scientific, ecological, cultural, ethical and theological considerations. One needs to factor in differences of species (who eats what), human gender (who produces the food, who prepares that, and who may eat first) and especially class (who eats well). The various positions may be plotted on an axis of condoning the use of force, ranging from (social) Darwinian positions to equally extreme forms of asceticism. In an inconclusive proposal it is suggested that eating is best understood as a form of intimacy, not enmity. Indeed, one becomes what one eats.

FOOD AS FUEL A crudely Darwinian position would situate eating in the context of an ongoing struggle for survival. Accordingly, food is nothing but fuel. Any organism needs to eat in order to live. The most basic rule here is that one needs to spend less energy in obtaining food than it yields in consuming it. Eating often implies killing and absorbing other metabolisms and this cannot be avoided. Such killing may be accompanied by more or less brutality, but this is only a matter of degree compared to “humane” slaughtering—or to ruthlessly pulling a carrot from the soil, or biting off the leaves of living plants (as herbivores do). To grow fruit and vegetables requires some pest control regarding insects, snails, and rodents so that some form of (indirect) predation seems inevitable. Indeed, nature is “red” in terms of claws but also teeth. That humans are equipped with a set of teeth is a reminder of our evolutionary heritage in this regard. At best eating implies scavenging for organic leftovers, including fruit, seeds, and nuts, but also decomposing plants and carcasses. Eating therefore assumes the death of such organisms. Death is implied in eating in three ways: eating is a daily reminder for multi-cellular organisms that they require food to postpone their own inevitable deaths; it requires the deaths of the other organisms that will be eaten; and there is the (for many) unpleasant reminder that one will eventually be eaten by other organisms. To assume that eating does not imply death may well hide a Gnostic if not a Manichean tendency. In fact, many other organisms feed off a living body (bacteria, mosquitoes, the recycling of poo). One may seek to prevent being eaten, ultimately through cremation, but then one may have to be reminded that the ashes from the crematoria at Auschwitz were released into ponds and rivers as food for fish (as I was told by a tour guide). The (violent) conflict embedded in this position is of course open for interpretation. There are different models that can be employed here. One may offer a capitalist eulogy for the advantage of competition in a “free” market, based on the same intuition that one (first) needs to attend to one’s own self-interests, including the need for food. Or, even better: food may be bought and sold as a commodity for self-enrichment far beyond one’s own need for fuel. Or one may employ a Marxist model of class conflict that will eventually yield a classless utopia. Alternatively, one may opt for a Freudian analysis of

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the conflict between the pleasure principle (eros) and the death instinct (thanatos) or perhaps a Nietzschean defence of human supremacy (see below), or a defence of an unashamedly colonialist quest for land and resources, or a white supremacist condoning of slavery. In each case the inevitability of food contestation lies at the very heart of the defence. Such embedded conflict may of course also attract a Macchiavelian or a Hobbesian interpretation. Some form of contract theory may well be required to curtail the use of force entailed in the very act of “grabbing a bite.” This allows for cooperation, but the purpose of such cooperation is often tied to the production, distribution and preparation of food in order to provide “fuel” for those in positions of economic power.

EATING AS A DEMONSTRATION OF HUMAN (OR MALE OR WHITE) SUPREMACY One may argue, along similar lines, that human eating epitomizes and symbolizes human power and indeed supremacy. This is not merely because humans (as omnivores) tend to be at the top of the food chain (although our evolutionary ancestors were often cat food) or because of the sophisticated culture associated with eating. There is a long lineage of authors that include James Boswell, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and more recently Richard Wrangham and Michael Pollan, who have described homo sapiens as a “cooking animal.” In human evolution, cooking significantly increased the availability of food for humans, also rendering it more digestible. Some argue that cooking was the main factor that allowed for the increase in the size of the human brain from approximately 1.9 million years ago. Since then, the teeth, jaws, and intestines of our human ancestors began to get smaller because it became increasingly less necessary to digest raw food. Cooking enabled humans to spend less energy on chewing and digesting food and this allowed for smaller guts and bigger brains. Our biological make-up now depends upon a diet of cooked food. Moreover, as omnivores our metabolisms are biologically dependent upon a variety of plants and animal for specific nutrients. Variety is for us humans a biologically necessity, not only the spice of life.5 What we eat quite literally shapes who we are. As Pollan puts it, we have a come a long way as a species; “we have indeed lifted ourselves out of nature red in tooth and claw, achieved a kind of transcendence. Cooking sets us apart, helps us to mark and patrol the borders between ourselves and nature’s other creatures—none of which can cook . . . Cooking transforms nature and, by doing so, elevates us above that state, making us human.”6 Indeed: “Cooking symbolically marks a transition from nature to culture, and also from nature to society, given that while raw is natural in origin, cooked implies a step that is both cultural and social.”7 Of course, eating what has been cooked then serves as a physical and symbolic reinforcement of such supremacy. Pollan admits that such an affirmation of human supremacy by domesticating, killing, cooking, and eating other animals “has never been anything less than a momentous, spiritually freighted, and deeply ambivalent occasion”.8 If eating symbolizes human supremacy, it may also become indicative of (white) male supremacy. Feminist scholars have described the interlocking dualisms associated with the pairs female and male, nature and culture, body and soul, brain and mind, passion and reason, private and public, earth and heaven. In terms of a hierarchy of senses, eating is associated with the senses of touch, smell, and taste—which are less differentiated and therefore allegedly rank lower than sight and hearing that are associated with knowledge. There is a tendency in philosophy, religion, and literature alike to associate food with the body, with what is female, with cooking in the domestic sphere (men tend to cook in

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public) and with appetite. If so, “civilized” men (with hints of white supremacy) may wish to overcome such bodily passions through knowledge and reason. However, instead of avoiding such passions, the bitter irony is that hunting, barbecuing, and eating thus becomes a way of demonstrating and reinforcing such male dominance—even in the act of succumbing to bodily needs.9 One can take the argument on human supremacy further for the sake of a critique of the plight of domesticated animals on large commercial farms that have been turned into meat factories, enforcing a life of pain on such animals and with considerable health hazards for humans consuming such meat. There is ample literature available in this regard that need not be repeated here. Does this imply that any domestication of animals necessarily lead to a form of slavery and exploitation? This would be overstating the case as domestication clearly has been in the interest of the domesticated animals if the sheer numbers of cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, and chickens are anything to go by. Such animals are more likely to survive in alliance with humans than on their own since they have lost the ability to fend for themselves. Admittedly, this comes at the cost of providing humans with their milk, eggs, and indeed their very flesh.10 Such supremacist views are seldom condoned in the available literature, but this seems to be a widespread cultural assumption. Why else would a society condemn cannibalism but condone the slaughtering of non-human animals for food? Why else would vegans reject eating meat but condone eating vegetables if there was no tacitly assumed hierarchy based on complexity, consciousness, or sentience? We swallow something else not only because of our need for fuel but also because we regarded ourselves entitled to do so given such hierarchies. Of course, we also do so often simply because we like doing so (see the discussion on hedonistic consumption below). It has to be said that such a notion of human supremacy may be understood as an extreme form of civility that is widely endorsed despite cultural differences. As Leon Kass notes, civility comprises behavior thought to be appropriate amongst “civilized” people, regulating dignified bodily posture, eating, drinking, excretion, sleeping, ordinary courtesy, propriety, politeness, and tactful speech. It is expressed most clearly in terms of eating practices—not so much what we eat but where, when, with whom, and how we eat. It is often contrasted with being barbaric, bestial, rustic, disorderly, and primitive. Such civility is certainly also contested, not only because of notions of civilization that it entails, but also because it seems to inhibit spontaneity, because it is a matter of etiquette more than ethics, or because it is not conspicuous enough as an example of high culture.11 Yet, such a notion of civility forms a crucial part of educating children in all cultures. The role of having a meal together and proper table manners should not be underestimated in understanding what we (humans) are doing when we eat (and not just feed)—even where no table is involved. This is distinctly different from the ways in which other animals eat, partly because it requires some preparation, hospitality, leisure, proportional justice (in allocating portions) and civil conversation. Human eating literally takes place at an elevated level and not off the ground. We lift our food up to our mouths rather than take our mouths down to the food.12 However, such cultured elevation cannot and does not abrogate the implied deaths of other living organisms (often the need for killing them) in order to eat. This is well recognized by Margaret Visser in a discussion of taboos around cannibalism in her The Rituals of Dinner: Somewhere at the back of our minds, carefully walled off from ordinary consideration and discourse, lies the idea of cannibalism—that human beings might become food,

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and eaters of each other. Violence, after all, is necessary if any organism is to ingest another. Animals are murdered in order to produce meat; vegetables are torn up, peeled and chopped; most of what we eat is treated with fire; and chewing is designed remorselessly to finish what killing and cooking began. People naturally prefer that none of this should happen to them. Behind every rule of table etiquette lurks the determination of each person present to be a diner, not a dish. It is the chief role of etiquette to keep the lid on the violence which the meal being eaten presupposes.13 Visser’s argument is that being human means to regulate the intake of food through a system of codes designed to control appetite and maintain a social awareness of the needs of others. This system is culturally induced by precept, example, and social conditioning in order to promote civility and to inhibit the violence embedded in killing other forms of life for food.

THE ASCETIC VISION At the other end of the spectrum one may find attempts (only amongst humans?) to minimize or at least lessen the use of force entailed in eating. This is epitomized in contemporary calls for a vegan or vegetarian diet, but this approach has roots in religious forms of asceticism and in the Sanskrit notion of ahimsa (to have compassion, not to injure). There are diverse ethical, environmental, health, and religious considerations that may be offered in support of such a diet. On each of these concerns there is a vast literature. My concern is not a specific diet but assumptions about what eating anything entails. The core intuition is to avoid violence as far as this may be possible, especially violence to sentient animals. Admittedly, the terminology is loaded. One may describe the very act of eating as an act of “violence,” but this depends on how violence is defined. To talk about animal “brutality” (with many famous examples) is likewise a matter of perspective. The message seems to be: if we eat beasts, we become beasts. In eating meat we are not ennobling the flesh but we are dragging ourselves down to the bestial.14 To say that “meat is murder” seems to assume a notion of personhood, unless one also wishes to admit to murdering carrots and cabbages. Nevertheless, in all forms of eating some use of force is required in order for one metabolism to absorb another. The underlying task remains the same whether the meal is animal or vegetable or mineral: devouring the stored energy of life in order to sustain life. Even plants deplete the bacterial life in the soil. Indeed, “Vegetarianism does not loosen us from the bloody tree of life.”15 Growing vegetables not only entails killing the plant in the end but also protecting the plant from other plants (weeds) and from eaters such as insects and rodents. Would one need to distinguish between the force used upon vegetables in cooking or baking them or in eating them raw? If this cannot be avoided, can force at least be minimized in order to establish a more “humane” society? It should be clear that this approach is attractive in order to reduce the levels of brutality in society (assuming some notion of what being a “brute” entails). It serves as a much-needed corrective to the excesses of consumerism. This argument may be used to promote a (more) vegetarian diet, i.e. then not so much as a principled position but as a critique of consumerism and of the treatment of animals on commercial farms.16 Yet, such an ascetic approach cannot and does not come to terms with the underlying problem of predation. It also raises odd questions about the relationship between nature

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and culture. In the name of compassion to non-human animals it seems necessary to reinforce a sharp distinction between humans and such animals. If all humans are to become vegetarians, does this apply to other predators as well? If not, how is human eating to be situated within an evolutionary context? Does a failure to address this question not point to an underlying discomfort with our own animality—and also with the animality of other animals?17 At best, the message seems to be that there is a need to steer biological evolution in a different direction with the emergence of human beings and of human civilizations, namely towards cultural evolution. To fail to do so is to allow our “animal instincts” to reign supreme. The ascetic ideal may thus be guilty both of erasing and of reinforcing a distinction between humans and other animals. Alternatively, all animals, humans included, may be called to live in peace and harmony with each other. Then evolution by natural selection is by definition in need of redemption! Such an ascetic approach is therefore not one that can be maintained consistently (a period of fasting cannot last forever either)—short of an act of literal self-sacrificing in order to offer one’s own body as food for others. The longer one lives, the more one needs to consume other living organisms—so that such self-sacrifice is best done sooner rather than later (if this argument holds, which is hopefully not the case!). To avoid such a conclusion one may opt for a revised form of Gnosticism where that which is material, bodily, and earthly is treated with some disdain. Accordingly, eating is a necessary evil. This is best done with a sense of shame over bodily functions (saliva, gluttonous desires, blood, guts, defecation) in order to discipline oneself to focus on the “higher” virtues pertaining to the life of the mind. It is not food, but food for thought that matters.18 The Jesus of the Gnostics ate and drank in such a way that food was not corrupted in him and so that there was no need for defecation. This approach is almost inevitably elitist and probably dishonest given the lavish feasts of the cultured elite—where slaves and servants are tasked to do the slaughtering but may not share in the feast, only in some leftovers. Some Gnostics were strictly ascetic by attenuating contact with matter through fasting and celibacy. Others were notorious for their orgies. Given the crudeness and brutality embedded in eating, one cannot but recognize the continued lure of the Gnostic temptation, in the longing for a different world free of necessity and harshness. Alternatively, one may opt for a Manichean dualism where the conflict between bodily desires and the life of the mind is acknowledged but not resolved. Accordingly, eating is indeed “from the devil” but this is a “necessary evil” in order to explore the “good”, the “true” and the “beautiful”. Such dualism may well be a more honest attempt to harmonize what cannot be easily reconciled, namely killing other living organisms for food and being “civilized.”

HEDONISTIC CONSUMPTION Hedonistic consumption is arguably a variant of a (social) Darwinian view on eating except that it focuses on pleasure rather than on inducing or avoiding pain. Eating is indeed pleasurable and this applies not only to humans but evidently also to other animals. Admittedly, the pleasure of the one who is eating comes at the cost of the pain of the one who is eaten. In such an emphasis on pleasure any notion of sacrifice is rejected as macabre, albeit that the mass slaughtering of animals is simultaneously condoned as “normal”—on condition that this is done at a remote location, far removed from the place where meat is to be consumed.19

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Such an emphasis on pleasure can be extended in different directions, including the sheer enjoyment of stimulated taste buds, gluttony, and the refined taste experiences associated with the culinary arts and wine tasting. The food and restaurant industry caters for a wide variety of tastes and invites clients to explore new products, exotic foods, and ever expanding levels of pleasure. Not surprisingly, this view of eating requires considerable attention to food preparation with the associated industry of sharing recipes derived from around the world. The association with the culinary arts is closely related to conspicuous consumption (see below) although the emphasis in the latter is not so much on the act of eating but on what is associated with eating. Either way, the pleasure of eating is enhanced by doing so with a fuller consciousness about choices made in terms of the production, distribution, selection, and preparation of food.20 The experience of pleasure in hedonistic consumption may therefore be extended beyond the taste buds to a general sense of well-being. This is expressed in the choice of food types but also, for example, in the accessories of fine dining: table dressing, crockery, glasses, cutlery, ambience and the like. In short, the world as food is the world humanized, albeit that food insecurity undermines such a lofty ideal.21 This of course also allows for social cohesion and conviviality. The salvific potential of this view of food is emphasized in a study document entitled “The Cultural Dimension of Food” released by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition: But the greatest challenge of our era is probably that of reacquiring a more profound, richer and more motivating relationship with the process of eating, in which the relationship with food is returned to an aesthetic one based on taste and pleasure. As has been mentioned on several occasions, time is decisive in this regard. Time which extends to allow new space for the eating experience. Just as important is regaining the aspect of conviviality which, in many ways, creates the possibility for a gratifying experience.22 In addition to the pleasure associated with culinary arts and a sense of homeliness, there are the related pleasures of instant gratification associated with fast foods, meals on the go, pre-prepared meals, and TV dinners. These may meet our needs for fuel, and may yield some pleasure, but it has to be said that they also diminish opportunities for conversation, communion, hospitality, and aesthetic discernment. This produces a culture where kitsch becomes exalted and where the superficial is glorified.

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION The notion of conspicuous consumption is derived from Theodore Veblen’s famous analysis suggesting that in the act of consuming (food) people often try to convey their social status in comparison with the consumption patterns of their neighbors. “Conspicuous consumption” is a form of cultural communication in which signals concerning wealth and social status are telegraphed to others with the aim of improving one’s social status by emulating the “leisured class.” This prompts the leisured class to invent other status symbols in order to demarcate their social identity. This leads to a spiral of social climbing where consumers are motivated by a mix of envy (keeping up with the Joneses) and anxiety to maintain their relative positions. Actually, “we” do not need to keep up with the Joneses but have to stay ahead of them. Conspicuous consumption is therefore consumption not merely for hedonistic excess; it also serves as a marker of class identity, of social stratification, and of adherence to norms of style and taste. It is not only a matter

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of what is being consumed but also how it is being consumed. The elite create distinction for themselves through their “superior” taste, distancing themselves from those with “inferior” taste (Pierre Bourdieu). Conspicuous consumption, flaunting the luxuries of success, receives little censure in a consumer society where people are socialized to accept the need for competition and acquisition. Traditionally, food and drink could not be hoarded so that hosting a feast (for all in a village) to share the surplus also functioned as a leveller—even though this enhanced the host’s prestige and influence.23 That consumption is a marker of social identity is not by itself problematic given people’s need to express themselves and to be socially acceptable (e.g. in terms of clothing and sanitation).24 Furthermore, the demonstration of more sophisticated products (e.g. a better washing soap) would naturally prompt others to experiment with the same product. The same may apply to food products and food types. However, when this generates a spiral of social desires, it can undermine the formation of virtue. It undermines the so-called four cardinal virtues of wisdom (e.g. being lured into buying on credit), justice (living only for oneself), courage (to break with consumer habits), and especially temperance. Such virtues would normally be required to govern human judgements and to moderate desires, to find a mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess.25 It should be clear that hedonistic consumption can easily revert into conspicuous consumption and vice versa. Are there other options available, ones that recognize the spiritual, religious, and theological dimensions of eating as one of the “elements” of nature?

EATING AS RECYCLING One may regard acts of eating as precisely that which a benevolent God declared to be “good” (if perhaps not perfect) about finite creatures. The whole world is offered by its maker as a divine banquet, a cosmic feast. All that is alive lives by eating. To eat is to participate in God’s gift of life.26 Predation, killing other organisms for food, absorbing other metabolisms is therefore not merely condoned or eschewed but praised as an integral part of a world that includes living creatures. In ecosystems nothing that lives is ever wasted but becomes recycled though the role of bacteria, fungi and worms. Holmes Rolston rightly insists that: Even grazers are predators of a kind, though what they eat does not suffer. Again, an Earth with only herbivores and no omnivores or carnivores would be impoverished— the animal skills demanded would be only a fraction of those that have resulted in actual zoology—no horns, no fleet-footed predators or prey, no fine-tuned eyesight and hearing, no quick neural capacity, no advanced brains. We humans stand in this tradition, as our ancestors were hunters. We really cannot envision a world, on any Earth more or less like our own, which can give birth to the myriad forms of life that have been generated here, without some things eating other things.27 Likewise, the extinction of species (including hominid species) is regarded as not by itself problematic (except for a radical loss of biodiversity) since this allows a niche to be filled by the emergence of other species. One has to stir the stew from time to time or else it will burn! From the perspective of the flourishing of an ecosystem, the death of individual organisms, including human beings, is necessary for the functioning of the food chain. Organic material

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is continuously being recycled. Fertility emerges from death—as many fertility cults have assumed. Such recycling suggests the principles of co-inherence and exchange.28 This position requires a radically non-anthropocentric approach. Human beings form part of the food chain. We humans have to eat in order to live; we have to absorb the world into our own bodies and transform the ingredients into ourselves, into flesh, blood, and bones.29 When we die, we become food for others and so we are “received back into the great sea of life and love which is God.”30 We as human beings should accept our own finitude, our own human scale and death as the final relinquishment of individuated ego into the cosmic matrix of matter and energy. The earth is the womb out of which we arise at birth and into which we should be content to return at death.31 Accordingly, all the component parts of matter and energy that coalesced to make up our individuated self are not lost, but are taken up in the “great matrix of being” and thus become food for new beings to emerge.32 One may therefore eat with gratitude but only if being eaten is accepted and, in the inevitable end, indeed welcomed and celebrated. Being eaten then entails the acknowledgement that we are nothing more than creatures, not the Creator; that our mortality is embedded in being creatures and that it requires an appropriate humility to know that we are derived from humus. Despite the description of humans as “creatures,” it is not obvious how this position may be regarded as religious in orientation. Berthold Brecht’s wry comment may help somewhat: “The slogan of hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of heaven: Eat and be eaten.”33 One may certainly extend such an ecocentric approach towards a theocentric position but the danger here is that a position that is adopted on other (perhaps plausible) grounds is merely legitimized theologically. Moreover, the holism assumed in both ecocentric and theocentric approaches begs epistemological questions. How can one detect what is good for an ecosystem if one is always embedded within a particular ecosystem? Or more existentially: How is the one being eaten to see how this may be good for the ecosystem? How can one see the whole except by constructing a notional whole from a particular perspective and position of power? Is it not arrogant to claim to know more than one can know? How can one see things from God’s perspective? Is this not a way of “playing God” and therefore of denying being a creature? Does such a position not amount to a defence of the powerful? Does such an ecocentric approach not run the risk of environmental fascism, i.e. sacrificing individuals for the sake of the presumed well-being of the group? What about caring for the weak and vulnerable?

PROVIDING FOOD FOR OTHERS THROUGH KENOTIC LOVE Yet another option is to challenge a legitimation of the use of force embedded in predation through a retrieval of kenosis. Accordingly, to focus on the survival of the fittest through killing and eating entails a one-sided reading of evolutionary history. There is, after all, not only competition for food but also cooperation, found especially amongst social species but also between species. Such cooperation by definition entails reciprocal (mutual exchange of benefits, burdens, and services), if not always equal relationships. This suggests that, perhaps, relatedness has an ontological priority over individuals requiring food. To establish and sustain relationships requires giving and receiving. This may be interpreted in terms of the Christological category of kenosis, i.e. self-emptying for the sake of the other, or (more appropriately) for the sake of loving relationships, based on

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mutual respect, mutual care and mutual trust. Whenever such relationships are distorted, this requires a spirit of forgiveness but also a willingness to make oneself vulnerable by waiting upon a reciprocal response from the other. Such self-emptying is not necessarily for the sake of the other (although that is sometimes required) but at best for the sake of a flourishing relationship—of which the one making the sacrifice forms part. Food is God’s gift of love for the sake of love.34 There is an almost overwhelming emphasis on kenosis amongst contemporary theologians.35 Some suggest that kenosis is not merely a contingent act in history to correct what is wrong, to restore broken relationships, best illustrated by the cross of Jesus Christ, but indeed an underlying cosmic principle. Accordingly, one may detect such a self-sacrificial pattern in the “birth” and “death” of stars, the formation of planets made from the “ashes” of “dead” stars, the emergence and evolution of life, and in human history alike. One may even suggest that kenosis offers a description of “the moral nature of the universe”.36 Eating is indeed only possible through the death of other living organisms. Death is necessary for new life. From a Christian perspective this approach may be more attractive than an abstract theocentric approach that celebrates the recycling of food in ecosystems. The Christian faith embraces a God who dies so that new life may be possible. However, in my view kenosis is best understood as a contingent response to human sin in history rather than as an eternal cosmic principle. It is thus an initiative aimed at restoring relationships. There is an added danger that the Son is called upon to patch up the Father’s botched job—one in which pain, dying, and death form an integral part of life and where the emergence of human sin is more or less inevitable, if not strictly speaking necessary. Indeed, human sin may then be understood as an extrapolation of the brutality embedded in nature, albeit that such brutality (killing for food) is balanced by self-sacrifice (being eaten). If kenosis is inscribed in God’s work of creation, one may expect it to be maintained eschatologically. This is no sacrifice to end all sacrifices but something like an eternal recurrence of a sacrificial spirit. Nietzsche would surely have something to say, while the feminist critique of the need “to bear one’s cross” is certainly relevant here. Is sacrifice not what is typically demanded from the victims of history? It may be dramatic to announce that it is the Messiah, the Christ, the Logos who is sacrificed for the sake of others, but there are grave (!) dangers in any construction where the one is sacrificed “for” the other. The emphasis on kenosis may also be coupled with a process of moral development to which it is more or less inversely proportioned. Accordingly, self-sacrifice is not an aim in itself but directed towards and precisely enables the emergence of reciprocal relationships based on mutual respect and mutual trust. Such relationships may not have characterized earlier phases of evolutionary history but with the emergence of humans and human civilization there is the possibility of a humane society that is epitomized by the humane treatment of non-human animals. A vegetarian and vegan diet thus represents a higher phase of cultural evolution. The attractiveness of such a process of moral development is undermined by an inability to come to terms with predation amongst non-human animals and the re-imposition of a sharp divide between biological and cultural evolution. Would African and Islamic cultures, with their affirmation of meat as something festive (for example as compared to Jainism, which often relies on Dalit labour), then have to be regarded as a lower form of civilization? Does this not amount to a premature inauguration through human effort of an eschatological dispensation that will abolish not only eating meat but eating anything?37

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EATING AS SUPERFLUOUS JOY A final option is to focus on the sheer joy of eating—at least for the one who is eating. This approach is similar to the one that describes the recycling of organic material in the food chain but offers a different interpretation, namely in terms of over-abundance of life, of food, of joy. Such joy cannot be reduced to hedonistic experiences of pleasure or consumerist over-indulgence since the abundance is precisely not taken for granted. Desire is not situated in lacking but as “an immersion in plenitude and sharing.”38 Here there is no Gnostic disdain for blood, guts, saliva, orgasm, or excretion. There is a recognition of the need to make sacrifices but this is for the sake of the feast (as illustrated in the film Babette’s Feast). The superfluous goodness of life is not primarily associated with the life of the mind but with being embodied. The goodness of life is celebrated not as a somber self-sacrificial gift that has to be received with an all too serious sense of gratitude but as something exuberant, pulsating, joyful, marvellous, even ecstatic. Marthinus Versfeld speaks of the “incredible largesse emptied upon the earth, which is itself superfluous.”39 It is through enjoying food that we glorify the Creator. To taste food is to taste God. Yes, life is short, but it ought to be lived to the fullest, with room for the festive occasion. The festive is the godly.40 Life is nasty and brutish too, but (at least for humans) that has more to do with the distortion wrought by sin than with the gift of life itself. Eating is therefore embedded in the joy of life. Through eating we taste the goodness of God.41 Food is God’s love made delectable. This emphasis on the sheer, pulsating joy of eating and drinking, of life in all its vulnerability, is exemplified in the writings of Robert Farrar Capon. Food is simply delicious and should not be reduced to what is useful or nutritious. He regards the preference for meaning over matter to be idolatrous.42 Amongst many quotable passages the following toast may suffice: We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute!43 Indeed, humans are not only preying animals but also praying animals and indeed playing animals.44 How is the relatedness of these three dimensions of human existence to be understood? Is playing a function of preying? Or is playing a function of praying? Or is life better understood as play than as a grim struggle for survival? It should at least be clear that eating is situated within this interplay. A definitive answer to this question would remain elusive and will probably undermine the play. In an eloquent passage, worth quoting extensively, Versfeld celebrates the superfluous nature of life and the joys of eating: The fallacy in popular Darwinism is that it is too broadly based on the notion of utility. This or that variation is useful. The splendour of the orchid, the quinine of the bark, are useful for survival. Hence the notion of nature red in tooth and claw. Each bit of life is one ego trying to get in ahead of the others. Capitalist nature! The result is a nature short of all superfluity and largesse which turns into egoism the glory of humility with which the thing, the substance, celebrates its own being. What is fundamental in reality is not self-preservation but generosity . . . Our devastation of nature is a consequence of our not seeing this. We see it as a welter of struggles for domination, by imputing to nature our own lust for dominion. We create a chaos of egos, and see in nature the mirror of our own society, a cannibalism

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of egos. The basis of nature conservation is a vision of nature as superfluous, and therefore generous because created in eternal generosity . . . The secret of nature and of the evolutionary process is humility, therefore we should see nature as play, as a great game rather than a grim struggle. If nature is, as St. Augustine said, an order of love, we can expect anything to happen because love is creatively spontaneous. It is this spontaneity that is bodied forth in the evolutionary process. The raison d’être of our convivium is not work but play. Natural selection presupposes the rich efflorescence of superfluity, so perhaps we should call it natural appreciation. Nature looks more like a dance than like a board meeting.45 Versfeld’s eloquent formulations remain anthropocentric. The ingredients bubbling in the pot are humanized through human cooking. His formulations are not always gender sensitive but his position does not assume class privilege, since he insists that feasting is not the prerogative of the affluent only. In fact, beggars may be better able to express such joy over a humble meal. One may well extend Versfeld’s analysis to include non-human forms of feasting on abundant food. Such an understanding of eating in the context of superfluous relationality is all too often interpreted in an anthropocentric way, namely that other living organisms are available as food for humans, being at the “top” of the food pyramid. It is possible to ameliorate a defence of the right to eat other beings by an ethical emphasis on gratitude, inclusive community, reconciliation, fellowship, companionship, hospitality, and an ethics of sharing and caring. There is lots of room for wonder and love around a table. As Loren Wilkinson observes, “It has not been given humanity the choice to eat without killing, nor has that choice been given to any living thing. But man can eat with wonder and love, recognizing his place in the household of life.”46 Nevertheless, this still amounts to an anthropocentric legitimation of hierarchy. If not, then the one who eats with joy cannot wish to avoid being eaten. The underlying problem of predation still has to be addressed. This position seems to do justice to the materiality of eating but such eating still comes at the cost of what is eaten. God nourishes, yes, but through the deaths of other lives.

EATING AND THE ECSTASY OF INTIMACY: A PROVISIONAL, MODEST PROPOSAL The positions sketched above all remain unsatisfactory in one way or another in terms of considerations that include the scientific (traction with evolutionary history), the ecological (the rootedness of human eating in ecosystems, disallowing sharp divides between humans and other primates, between sentient animals and other forms of life, or between what is organic and what is inorganic), the cultural (avoiding reductionist accounts of human eating merely in terms of a struggle for survival), the ethical (attending to anthropocentrism, speciesism, elitism, classism, sexism, racism amidst food insecurity), and the theological (doing justice to the soteriological focus and Trinitarian width of the Christian faith). One may nevertheless be able to detect elements of wisdom in each of the types sketched above. Only one approach would not suffice. Typically, we are inclined to give a diverging range of answers to the question why we are eating. The types outlined above are clearly in conflict with each other so that an eclectic approach will not do either— even though we may have to rely on such eclecticism to cope in everyday decisions. The

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danger of eclectic approaches is that the particularity of a context may provide an easy way out to legitimize eating practices. It should be clear that food insecurity tends to aggravate the debate since each of the types gain a distinct set of connotations when situated either in a context of relative abundance or of deprivation. The production, distribution, preparation and consumption of food is distorted by structural violence, what Christians would re-describe as the power of sin, prompting ethical debates on starvation, hunger, stunting, obesity, and an unsustainable food economy. However, such debates cannot avoid assumptions about eating and especially on the necessity of predation, exacerbating such distortions. For example: if food is a matter of fuel for survival, then the hungry may be deemed to be evolutionary failures. If food is a matter of hedonistic pleasure, then the hungry are constantly reminded that they are denied what the elite may treasure. In the case of conspicuous consumption the hungry are conspicuously absent. By contrast, if an ascetic ideal is pushed, the poor may well wonder how this applies to them. Similar comments may be made about all the other types discussed above. It seems to me that the question “What do we do when we eat?” therefore remains unresolved. Allow me to suggest a rather provisional proposal in response to this conclusion:47 Eating is not a form of enmity but of intimacy. Our mouths have multiple and competing functions—chewing, tasting, speaking, kissing—but they remain integrally related to each other.48 By eating we consume the world around us and are nourished by it, but also express a sense of communion with the world that eliminates rigid boundaries between interiority and exteriority.49 Eating may also become a form or erotic intimacy, namely as the desire to satisfy the appetite of the other.50 This suggests the need to undermine binary oppositions—as if the absorption of food can be classified in terms of enmity and intimacy, what is inside and what is outside. When animals eat, they transfer energy derived from bacteria into another organism, but in the process also feed numerous organisms living inside them. They themselves form part of larger ecosystems that are more fluid and interdependent than is often assumed. Our human bodies have porous boundaries, as eating and the excretion of body fluids indicate. This is illustrated precisely by intimacy, as is the case of mothers nursing babies, between lovers, and in sport. It is therefore facetious to make clear distinctions between subjects and their bodies, between materials and meaning. The food that we eat not only shapes our bodies, our moods, and our self-image but also our physiology and in the long run the evolution of our species. We do become what we eat. From the perspective of ecosystems (or in terms of the Gaia hypothesis), it is not possible to identify discrete, individual organisms since the life of any one organism is intertwined with that of others. In the language of deep ecology, the Self is not restricted to an individual self but to the emergence of Life itself. In the human species the evolving universe has come to self-consciousness. Eating does entail killing (absorbing other living organisms so that they no longer exist as discrete metabolisms), but that takes place in the interest of allowing life to flourish. Eater and eaten, the lion and the lamb form an intricate unity.51 The presence of the predator is in the interest of the prey. Distinct metabolisms do exist but only within the context of larger ecosystems where absorbing another or becoming integrated in another is not a sign of death but of the flourishing of life within ecosystems. Human eating can then be endorsed as something exuberant as long as one does not shy away from being eaten, if not soon yet, then certainly later. If one wishes to eat with joy, one has to accept that one cannot only be a predator but will also become prey.52 Being eaten happens throughout one’s life but this applies of course especially to being

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eaten in the end (even if cremated). The worms that consume our bodies are having a feast too. This convivium (Versfeld) is, in its own uniqueness, touched by eternity too. This is the meaning of compost, the humus from which humans emerge. This is where the resurrection of life starts, not only in the cooking pot but also in the grave. As Walt Whitman puts it: “Behold this compost. Behold it well! . . . The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves.”53 Robert Farrar Capon regards resurrection as the very clue to eating. He insists that death is not an accident that overcomes life; it is the driving force of life: “It is by the deaths of chickens, chicory, and chickpeas that you have lived until today.”54 This emphasis on resurrection will not resolve all problems. However, it does at least suggest that any theological interpretation of the act of eating (human or otherwise)—and predation as the correlate of eating—will need to be situated within an encompassing narrative of God’s work of creation, salvation, and consummation.55 The litmus test for any adequate theological interpretation of eating (and predation) is probably an eschatological one. How is eternal life (to use one highly contested eschatological concept) to be imagined? Will it involve both eating and predation (so that death has the last word)? Will there be eating but no predation (does this make any sense)? Or will there be no eating and therefore no predation (the Gnostic temptation)? What kind of life would such eternal life be? Or is our last best hope for life on earth to be recycled in order to continue as long as possible, if not forever (given the eventual heat death of the universe)? If so, what about the victims of history—will they never find justice? Although these questions on eternal life are of course highly speculative, they do help us to rethink the assumptions of living this life, here and now. Talking about eternal life is at best a radicalized way of re-describing and therefore interpreting this life. Of course these are speculative questions that cannot be answered. However, they at least indicate why the problem remains unresolved, why there remains, in my view, a collective inability to come to terms with eating because of a failure to come to terms with predation.

PART TWO

Air

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CHAPTER SIX

The Personhood of Air: The Ammatoans’ Indigenous Perspective SAMSUL MAARIF

The Ammatoan community of Sulawesi is well known as one of the adat (indigenous) communities of Indonesia to have succeeded in conserving their adat forest and tradition, despite the intrusion of modernity and their profession to be Muslim.1 Adat is commonly understood as a way of life, custom, or tradition, but identified with, and so reduced to, indigenous law in the literature whose development was initiated by Dutch orientalists, known as adatrecht (adat law).2 Since the Indonesian reformation era (in 1998), adat has been articulated as political positioning for “indigenous peoples” struggling for socio-political and cultural rights and recognition from the Indonesian state, as well as allying to the global indigenous people’s movement.3 Since then, hundreds of communities have joined an organization called Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Indigenous People’s Alliance of the Archipelago). They have made some significant political progress, including with the state through local government’s recognition and guarantee for their existences as adat communities along with their socio-political and cultural rights. The Ammatoan community is one of the nine indigenous communities that have been granted recognition and custody of customary forests by the Indonesian state. On December 30, 2016, President Jokowi of Indonesia officially granted these rights to nine of the country’s adat communities in an official ceremony at the state palace. In the ceremony, Jokowi conveyed that recognition of customary forests is not only about protecting traditional rights, but also about acknowledging Indonesian values and the nation’s true identity.4 The ceremony was held after the Minister of Environment and Forestry earlier signed decrees on nine adat forests, one of which was the Ammatoans’ forest. A year before, in mid-November 2015, the Ammatoan community was also granted recognition and protection through a local regulation by the local government of Bulukumba, South Sulawesi. This guarantee was a huge breakthrough: before that time, the Ammatoan forest—of just over 330 hectares—had been claimed by the state under the status of Limited Production Forest based on a decree issued by the Forestry Ministry in 1990s. Under such status, the forest was open to exploitation and development. Despite this status, the Ammatoans persisted in their claim that the land was their adat forest, and was thus under their sovereignty. 81

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The 2015 local regulation was preceded by Constitutional Court Decision No.35/ PUU -X/2012. This represented another milestone in Indonesian legal history, especially with regard to adat forests, as it guaranteed indigenous peoples’ rights over their adat forests. Adat forests since then belong to the adat communities, and no longer belong to the state. It also commanded the government to promptly formulate specific regulations (at the local level) that facilitate recognition and protection of adat communities, along with their forests and territories. For Ammatoans and other adat communities, the Constitutional Court Decision was crucial in that the state legalized their existence, and legitimated the adat forests and their local knowledge (ecology). The Ammatoans today, according to those laws, have the right to self-manage their life based on their indigenous tradition and to self-manage their forest and environment based on their ecological beliefs. The state’s acknowledgment and protection was of course not given without good reason. Ammatoans have proved that they have succeeded to effectively preserve their adat forest and their environment, and were even presented with an environmental award by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in 2016 to mark their success. Building on one year of fieldwork (2009–2010) and a series of annual visits since then, this chapter discusses the Ammatoans’ adat ecology, especially their perspective on the air. It begins with an overview of their adat ecology, which is the basis of their perspective on the environment, before focusing on their perspective on the air. For Ammatoans, who perceive the cosmos as occupied by many different beings—humans and non-humans are granted personhood—the air is a significant other person. Such a perception has led Ammatoans to navigate their life in the context that their well-being is dependent on the well-being of others (other persons).

AMMATOANS’ ADAT ECOLOGY Adat ecology is a set of indigenous ideas and practice that emphasize the interconnectedness and interdependence of humans and their environment, including the land, forest, stones, water, mountains, animals, and so forth. The existence and the well-being of human beings may be understood only in the context of their relationship to their environment, in that humans’ existence and well-being depend on the existence and the well-being of their environment. A sustainable life for humans is identical to environmental sustainability, and environmental degradation also results in human deprivation. In other words, if individuals destroy the forest and the environment, they basically destroy themselves. Adat ecology is a contextualized concept that has been developed in the literature.5 It is adjusted to the context of Indonesia, more specifically to the Indonesian adat communities, which have also been articulated as indigenous peoples.6 The main principle of that concept is that ecology is not only about a particular knowledge set, but more importantly is a way of life.7 It is about everyday practices. It describes aspects of everyday experiences and cosmological relationships between humans and their environments. It is not just about ways of survival, but about life itself. It is oriented to “action,” and not limited to perception only. Adat ecology is about ways of knowing and doing. It is dynamic, and develops and continually adjusts to people’s experiences and (environmental) changes. That is how the Ammatoans understand themselves in relation to their environment.8 For them, human and non-human beings (that include forest, lands, and mountains, among others) are agents of the cosmos. They all carry relational responsibilities for the cosmic balance.9

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Ammatoans’ adat ecology is based on inter-personal cosmology. For Ammatoans, the cosmos is occupied by different beings, humans and non-humans, constitutive of personhood.10 Those beings are persons. Their personhoods are recognized through several ways such as visions, dreams, myths, stories, rituals and traditions in which they show their engagement in relationship. One Ammatoan explained: To recognize yourself is to recognize other selves (in relationship). In fact, the only way to recognize yourself is by recognizing other selves. Once you recognize yourself, you recognize other selves that are essentially relative to yourself. Soon you realize yourself, you realize other beings, initiate to interact each other, and engage in relationships. Both you and the other beings you recognize and interact with constitute personhood. Recognition would determine the perception and behaviors by which you engage in relationship, in experiences.11 The interviewee continued: From the moment you are born, you observe your environment, other beings around you. You soon learn to know and recognize who and how other beings are in relationship with you. The more you observe, the more you know, comprehend and recognize other beings, and the more you understand how to respond, behave, and anticipate those beings. You eventually realize that you are in relation to and dependent on those other beings, the way those other beings are in relation to and dependent on you. You and other beings are interrelated and interdependent. What you do would affects others, and in turn affects yourself. Other beings respond properly to you in accordance to what you do and respond to them. You and other beings are inseparable. You know yourself through them the way they know themselves through you.12 Those other beings include humans and non-humans. Whomever comes to one’s recognition and engages in relationship constitutes personhood, for Ammatoans. Recognition of the personhood of other beings is essential to Ammatoan personhood. Only through knowing the personhood of other beings, may one recognize her/his personhood, and personhood is recognized only through relationships. In the Ammatoan cosmology, there are three main elements: the self; other selves; and the relationship between them. The existences of one’s self and other selves are recognized through engagement in relationships. In relationships, one must anticipate the consequences of both her/his own and other beings’ behaviors. If s/he performs well, which is always essentially seen in the context of relationship to any kinds of beings, s/he would most probably receive a positive response from other beings. The opposite may also apply: if s/he behaves improperly, s/he would affect other beings and would most probably affect her/himself negatively. Again, the self therefore must constantly contemplate the ways in which her/his own behaviors and other beings’ behaviors would bring about consequences to her/himself, and to other selves. To pursue positive consequences, for Ammatoans the self must be ethical, responsible, and reciprocal in relationship (to human and non-human beings). This is comparable to Native American beliefs.13 Being ethical is to understand that any behaviors would definitely affect other beings. The self must also be responsible in the sense that any behaviors of the self would bring about consequences that would affect her/himself. Finally, the self must always see her/his behaviors in reciprocal contexts because her/his behaviors are always in response to what s/he receives. S/he receives what s/he gives, and s/he gives what s/he receives.

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Those three behavioral characteristics—ethical, responsible, and reciprocal—are fundamental for the self, and any human being engaging with any other beings whom he/she comes to know and recognize (as person). The three are the principles of interpersonal relationships. A being (human and non-human) is examined in this context. A being constitutes personhood only if s/he engages in the three principles based on inter-personal relationships. The three principles are also the principles for cosmic balance. Acting out of accordance with these three principles would ruin the cosmos, would destroy the environment, and of course the actant would suffer him or herself. They are described as “monsters”, irreligious and un-ecological.14 That is how the Ammatoans perceive themselves, the world, the cosmos, and the environment. They become a person only if they perceive other beings as persons. Their relationship with other beings is thus inter-personal.15

THE “AIR” AS A SIGNIFICANT OTHER BEING Many of the non-human beings constituted as persons by Ammatoans actually deserve further explanation. Here however, I focus specifically on the “air” as a significant other being constitutive of a person. Ammatoans have several ideas about the perception of air as person. For them, a person consists of four elements: soil; water; fire; and air. The Ammatoan perception is comparable to what Luce Irigaray talked about in terms of human beings. For Irigaray, human beings are composed of four elements—air, water, fire, and earth—and they also live within these four elements. The four elements determine human attractions, affects, passions, limits, and aspirations.16 The Ammatoans go farther in that the four elements are the essence of the different realms of life, broadly understood as referring to an individual, community, and environment. Each individual consists of the four elements, which manifest both physically and behaviorally. In the physical body, the soil manifests in flesh, water manifests in blood, fire manifests in bones, and air manifests in breath. The four elements in an individual’s body must grow together proportionally to guarantee the balance (well-being) of bodily life. Someone may have healthy breathing, for example, only if the other three elements are healthy. Healthy breathing, in turn, would affect the health of the other three. Therefore all four must be taken care of simultaneously. If one of them is unhealthy, or not taken care of properly, the other three will be unhealthy, and the body will be unhealthy. The well-being of each is therefore necessary for sustainability and quality of life. In the behavioral sense, the Ammatoans relate the four elements to a set of four basic values as codified in their Pasang ri Kajang (oral tradition), their authoritative source of reference for their life.17 The four values are fundamental for the cosmic balance. The Pasang says: “Appai paggettunna lino a: Lambusuk, gattang, sakbara, apisona” (the world has four pillars: honesty, resoluteness, patience, and self-sufficiency).18 To achieve the highest level of Ammatoanness, one must commit to observe the four fundamental values: lambusuk (honesty); gattang (firmness; resoluteness); sabbarak (patience); and appisona (self-sufficiency). Honesty is represented by air, resoluteness by fire, patience by water, and self-sufficiency by soil. For Ammatoans, the body and behaviors may not be separated. The well-being of a body depends on behaviors. As noted above, to take care of the body, consisting of the four elements, is to observe the four values. If someone is found sick, one or more of the body’s four elements must have been in trouble. The body is in trouble because the four

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values must have been ignored or disobeyed. An Ammatoan should commit to consistently observe the four values in order to make his/her body healthy. The community is also seen in such a context. A healthy community “institutionalizes” a system that facilitates the observation of the above fundamental values, representing the four elements. The Pasang says: Lambusunuji nu karaeng Rigattanguji nu adat Riksabbaraknuji nu guru Apisonanuji nu sanro Because of your honesty you are the king Because of your resoluteness you are the adat Because of your patience you are the teacher Because of your self-sufficiency you are the healer.19 The four characters: king, adat holder, teacher, and healer, are symbols of a (adat) community institution. Those four must perform the four fundamental values for a healthy, peaceful, and sustainable community, and symbolically represent the four elements. The king represents the air, the adat holder represents the fire, the teacher represents the water, and the healer represents the soil. In that context, a healthy, peaceful, and sustainable community must observe and fully care for the four values, which are basically the environment. The environment is seen to also consist of the four elements. The soil, the land, and everything that grows on it, such as trees and forest, the water of rivers and the sea and everything in it, the fire, and the air must all together be taken care of in order to sustain the environment. The four are all interrelated and interdependent. Each has its own tasks and duties, and their tasks and duties are interrelated to that of others. If one is damaged, then the others are affected. If the forest is destroyed, fire would be impossible, the water would be damaged, and the air would be unhealthy. The environment is in danger, and (human) life is in trouble. The four elements are all significant others, including the air, and they symbolize the unity of individual, community and the environment. In one occasion during my fieldwork, an Ammatoan explained that an individual represents the community, and the environment. An individual is the small picture of the environment: a (life) body breathes just like the environment does. The participant said: “Everyone wishes to have healthy breath, just like the environment does.” A person should take care of her/his body in the same way that s/he takes care of the environment. A good environment would breathe well. An Ammatoan explained that their (adat) forest, when taken care of properly, produces good and healthy air (which is how the forest breathes), from which other beings, including the Ammatoans, breathe. The forest’s breath—the air—becomes the source of energy for the Ammatoans and other beings. In that context, the air is understood to constitute personhood because it offers energy, and (a source of) life to other beings. As constitutive of personhood, the air also depends on the personhood of other beings. It offers (a source of) life only because it receives energy and (a source of) life from other beings like the forest. The forest offers energy/life to the air because it grows properly or is given energy/life by the soil. The soil does so because it has been taken care of by humans, in this case the Ammatoans. The humans are able to look after it because they receive energy/life from the air. All of the beings

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mentioned here are thus inter-related, and all other beings dwelling in the shared environment are seen and perceived in that context: in inter-personal relations. This perception of inter-personal relations is so strong that the Ammatoans have taken any amount of risks in order to preserve their land, their forest, their territory, and their environment. They refused asphalted roads and electricity installations, and even digging the soil in order to construct their own water wells, let alone deforestation! Their main reason for these refusals has been that such actions would offend and destroy the personhoods of those forest beings, and would eventually ruin their own lives. To hurt the forest by felling a tree(s) (in restricted forests), for example, would be to hurt their own (human) bodies.20 Their perception becomes ever stronger when they compare their territory (environment) with others in cities where the forest is gone or absent. One study participant said persuasively: “You can easily experience the difference: in cities, you can hardly breathe because they do not have forests. They took them away. They instead have bunches of vehicles that produce polluted air. The air is polluted by different sources . . . It receives bad energy. The air in cities has nothing to offer but pollution: [it is] dangerous to human beings.”21

THE “AIR”: MEDIATING THE INTERCONNECTEDNESS OF THE WORLD In October 2009, an Ammatoan said to me: “It’s time to harvest mushrooms. Would you join in?” When asked how he knew about it, he explained, “The air has said so.” The air at that time felt cold, and the coldness was of a particular kind that Ammatoans recognized as the air telling them that the mushrooms growing wild in the restricted forest were ready for harvest. “Coldness” is understood as the purposive action of the air. In this case, the purpose was to communicate that mushrooms were ready to be gathered by beneficiary beings, especially the humans. Through the air, the Ammatoans communicated with the forest and mushrooms for what they should properly do. The air became the media of communicating, facilitating interconnectedness among the relevant beings. Before entering the forest for the mushroom harvest, the group of harvesters met a ritual specialist. They communicated and confirmed their finding (from the air “information”) with the specialist. After being confirmed, a (specific) ritual (of mushroom harvest) was performed. The specialist approached the forest, and performed the ritual by chanting and by specific gestures (moving his two hands around, up and down). He communicated with the air, with the forest, and the mushrooms. He contextualized the inter-personal relationship. After the ritual (re-contextualization of inter-personal relationships), the specialist reminded the humans about the “rules” of entering the forest for the mushroom harvest. We were told not to offend the forest. Yelling was not allowed, being critical to whatever appeared must be avoided, and whatever appeared to one’s eyes ought to be accepted. This was the proper way to know, recognize, and interact with the forest. The harvest must be appropriate, and nothing must be taken beyond that which was needed. The mushroom harvest was only for consumption, and not for selling. Those rules were principles of inter-personal relations, and the Ammatoans committed to following them. It did not take too long to enter the forest, and we found mushrooms to harvest. There was an abundance, but we took/harvested only what was needed. Indeed we left much more than we took, what was left was meant for those with whom the air may communicate.

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Not everyone in the community realized it was time for the mushroom harvest, though. Only those who received information from the air, those who engaged in a relationship with it, knew about the harvest. Those who entered the forest and harvested mushrooms may have shared their experiences with others, and if they were interested, they would have needed to first ask a ritual specialist to perform a ritual. The ritual, again, is a way to communicate, recognize, and re-contextualize inter-personal relations, including with the air. In another case, I was also told that when the air feels hot, rain usually will not come. Thus one should then bring water for the Ammatoans’ planted crops so as to avoid the future harvest potentially failing. The hotter the air feels, the more likely it is that the harvest could fail. The Ammatoans would then begin to investigate the situation: why does the air feel so hot? The common prediction would be that someone may have committed a transgression of fundamental values in terms of the Ammatoans’ adat ecology. The heat is understood as the purposive action as a response(s) to certain unlawful actions of a being(s), especially of the humans. As a response, a gathering is conducted. The issue is seriously discussed, and a ritual of addingingngi (literally, to cool down the heat) follows. Addingingngi, which is a ritual for a placation, is performed in the forest before planting rice and corn, or when agricultural and social problems are encountered, as described.22 Its purpose is to communicate with the air, to find reasons why the air happens to be hot, to solve problems of any kinds affecting interconnectedness, and then to negotiate to cool down the air. The Ammatoans observe and detect any potential cause/reason. They inquire about the safety of trees in the restricted forest, they investigate individuals’ commitments to their indigenous values, and so forth. Most of the time, the reasons for the hot air are not decisively detected, but the Ammatoans are sure that there must be something wrong and that the air has reacted in response. The Ammatoans appreciate the impact, the dangerous consequences of the heat of the air. It would ruin their crops. Therefore, even without detecting any reason and knowing only about potential dangers (of the heat), the Ammatoans perform the ritual of addingingngi. It is to demonstrate (and re-contextualize) their primordial commitment to inter-personal relationships in which the Ammatoans, the air and other beings are involved. Addingingngi is the second largest of the Ammatoans’ comunal ritual. For addingingngi, every male adult in the community is supposed to participate. Women are also involved but mostly in the preparation of the ritual.23 It is performed at least once a year. In addition, it is also an immediate response. Through this ritual, the Ammatoans consistently re-contextualize their relationship with the air. The ritual is the demonstration of the Ammatoans’ commitment to that relationship. It strengthens the primordial oath that the Ammatoans and the air (and also other beings) must take care of one another, to guarantee the well-being of both, and sustain the life of both.

CONCLUSION Throughout their lives, the Ammatoans experience the presence of the air. Their experiences have proven (for them) the truth of their primordial oath of inter-personal relationships with the air, as coded in their authoritative guiding reference of oral tradition, Pasang ri Kajang. They have come to learn that when they mistreat the air, the air mistreats them too. If they make efforts to take care of it, on the other hand, they receive reciprocal positive treatment from the air. The Ammatoans are fully convinced by

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experiential evidences that the air constitutes personhood.24 While this may seem like a foreign concept to many non-indigenous and modern scientifically minded people, it is not a far cry from what we know about the causes of climate change, for instance. When we abuse our interrelatedness with the burning of fossil fuels, we heat up the air and atmosphere, and it has devastating consequences. As a person, the air has a distinct identity. S/he is different from other beings, autonomous, but also related to other beings. Her/his presence is recognized, her/his actions are purposive and affecting, her/his promises are trustworthy, her/his threats are intimidating, and her/his punishments are felt. Her/his actions and behaviors are mostly predicted, although not always, because s/he is in a shared web-system with all other beings. As already explained, the air like all other beings gives something for what s/he takes, and the other way around, s/he takes something for what is given. Occasionally, the air does not meet the expectations of human beings, or human beings mis-predict her/his behaviors. Among the reasons for this is that s/he is in relation not only to a single being, but rather all other beings in a shared web-system. The Ammatoans’ misbehaviors toward fire would very potentially affect the air. When Ammatoans discover unexpected dangerous behaviors in the air (s/he becomes hot, causing the failure of the harvest), it is not because the air is just wildly irresponsible and unethical, but rather a being (human or non-human) must have committed some wrongdoing, transgressing the primordial oath of inter-personal relationship. The Ammatoans therefore must be always watchful not only with regard to their own behaviors but also toward other beings, like animals, fire, water, and so forth. Like other beings, Ammatoans have to cooperate with other beings in their environment to carry the primordial oath. Different kinds of rituals involving other beings are therefore important in this context. The air, like other beings, has power. Her/his power, however, is understood in a relational context. Her/his power is shareable. Most of the time s/he shares her/his power with other beings much more than s/he gets in return, both in expected and unexpected ways. S/he may offer more energy than what s/he receives from others, but s/he may also sometimes give bad energy out of proportion to what s/he receives. For this reason, (because of their recognition) the Ammatoans are supposed to give more than what they take, too. They learn such lessons from the air, and other beings. Even if they discover that no danger is caused by the air, they still perform the ritual of addingingngi annually. Power in that perception is understood as a gift. Power and gift for Ammatoans are synonymous: power is what one gives, and the gift is power. Power therefore may not be abused, but should be used wisely and shared in order to strengthen the inter-personal commitment to relationships, and for cosmic balance. The above perception, which is based on their adat ecology and religious system, requires Ammatoans to refrain from activities that may harm or offend other beings. They must avoid activities such as constructing paved roads or using electricity in their territory.25 The Ammatoans manage their territory and forests and perform rituals related to that management as arising out of their specific, elemental indigenous understanding of ecology. It is for the well-being of the air and other beings that the Ammatoans negotiate and navigate modernity and development. It is for cosmic balance.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Changing Atmospheres of Religion and Nature FORREST CLINGERMAN

RELIGION, NATURE, AND AN IMPOVERISHED WORLDVIEW What is the task that confronts interdisciplinary scholars of religion and nature? Scholarship usually is seen in terms of reasoned, critical evaluation of a subject. In the case of the study of religion and nature, scholars evaluate (using various methods) the parameters of the relationship between religion (defined in various ways1) and nature (similarly defined in various ways). What makes studying the intersection of religion and nature intriguing, however, is that contemporary political and cultural meanings of both religion and nature are stymied by conflicts in understanding. This situation raises questions about our ability to approach either subject using only disinterested observation. Religion matters for individuals and communities, for both good and ill. Religions elicit passion and frame our understanding of the world, but also can impede alternative views or encourage extremism. Likewise, nature matters. Environments and material being can promote flourishing, just as environmental crises threaten the health and well-being of human and non-human alike. In the case of religion and nature, then, the topic and methods have a real bearing on individual and social existence. This means there is sometimes an additional step to religion and nature scholarship: emerging from the critical step some argue for the need for motivated application,2 otherwise called “engaged” scholarship. The task becomes how to balance critical and normative claims of an interdisciplinary, scholarly conversation. In the case of religion and nature, the inclusion of critique and retrieval—a scholarly trajectory borrowed from early feminist scholarship, among other places—has manifested itself in a slogan of sorts, which has become a way to define the task in the field: scholarship in religion and nature attempts to remedy the effects that our impoverished worldview has on nature. A worldview is an all-encompassing, conceptual structure used to understand the world and one’s place in it. At its core, identifying worldviews as the fundamental object of concern means the field is rooted in how our conceptual frameworks help or hinder our ability to properly know religion and nature (both separately and together), especially if that worldview is secular, scientific, and rooted in a modern view of nature as instrumental. Placed in contrast to indigenous and traditional knowledges, the stereotypical “Western view of nature” is permeated with all-encompassing structures of anthropocentric domination: spirit/body dualisms, mechanistic and instrumentalist models of the biological 89

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world, economic globalization, industrialized capitalism, the disenchantment of nature, and so forth. Is this the motivation and cause of our contemporary environmental crises? If so, conversations of religion and nature might concentrate on remedying the distortions of worldview at the heart of humanity’s destructive impulses. But this concern with a destructive worldview rests on some assumptions. Foremost, it assumes that religion—however that term is defined—is always a unique, influential, and an essential part of the conceptual structure of individuals and communities. Such an assumption can be traced back to the theological underpinnings of the field of religion and ecology, and of the field of religious studies more generally. From this assumption scholars and practitioners highlight how political and ethical responses to nature should be understood within the larger, religiously-influenced conceptual structure. Thus Mary Evelyn Tucker writes: “. . . religions have been significant catalysts for humans in coping with change and transcending suffering, while at the same time grounding humans in nature’s rhythms and earth’s abundance. The creative tensions between humans seeking to transcend this world and yearning to be embedded in this world are part of the dynamics of world religions.”3 Following this line of thought, what becomes necessary in order to remedy the ills of the material world is for religions to enter an “ecological phase,” positively effecting changes to our worldviews. This assumption has the benefit of linking scholarship, lived religious communities, and the public square. Leaders from several religious traditions, as evidenced most recently by Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, have followed this path.4 The encyclical makes a claim that is at the heart of more scholarly “ecotheologies”: insofar as the material world can and should be considered a divine or spiritual creation, a significant cause of environmental degradation is overly-spiritualized theology and the resulting impoverishment of our interpretation of the material world. The “green” Ecumenical Patriarch5 and the Dalai Lama6 are similarly well known for their environmentally themed pronouncements. In a nutshell, then, one way to define the role of scholars of religion and nature is show how scholarship can work together with religious communities to investigate how structures of belief can be mobilized as the foundations of spirituallymotivated environmental action. But it also points to a second, related assumption: a proper nature-loving worldview (that is, the alternative to the dominant worldview of the present) is one that necessarily includes religious environmentalism. The promotion of a spiritual “ecological civilization” and the so-called “greening of religion” are names for this conceptual response: it is first and foremost seen as the manifestation of a spiritually rich antidote to environmental ills, which emerge from the shallowness of an unacceptable conception of nature and religion together. What is truly green, in other words, is by necessity what is truly spiritual. A green religion is an essential part of the curative force of a renewed worldview. The greening of religion takes a number of forms. Most often from the perspective of extant religious traditions, it takes the method of suspicion and retrieval—a long-standing religious tradition must clarify the deleterious ways traditions have failed, before illuminating underrepresented but hopeful aspects of past thought and practice. For example, attempting to theorize a connection between Christian belief and a responsibility towards things in the material world (understood in terms of God’s creation) starts with recognizing how connecting theology and creation has been an intellectual impulse for centuries. Thus some argue that there is an “ambiguous promise” of religious thought, as H. Paul Santmire’s foundational book The Travail of Nature claimed about Christianity. Providing a summary of the history of Christian views of nature, Santmire illustrates how

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Christian theology contains both spiritualizing and ecological motifs towards creation.7 He argues that the history of Christian belief is best interpreted when it embraces an ecological message (in Santmire’s examination, this was accomplished by using metaphors that are positively oriented towards the natural world). Others have followed Santmire in attempting to retrieve ecological voices from within the Christian theological tradition.8 Seeing theological undercurrents as essential to environmental ethics is particularly apparent in the US context, where modern environmentalism has been rooted in theological views of spiritual redemption, as Evan Berry has shown.9 And extending beyond Christianity, many of the authors who contributed to the watershed Harvard series on religion and ecology undertake the greening of their respective religious traditions. Uncovering these assumptions, we begin to see that they are neither self-evident nor unproblematic, particularly when they result in scholars prioritizing ideas and concepts in their quest to find a solution to environmental issues. The problem that presents itself is this: ideas themselves lead to debates over the proper role religious communities should play, and by no means do concepts always result in a productive or positive force for good. In fact, in some cases ideas might be irrelevant or detrimental to our interpretations of the natural world. For example, the idea that scholars and practitioners can—or optimistically already have begun to—guide religious traditions to a “green” future is justifiably not without its critics. Yet the claim that religion can serve as a force for environmental renewal has been met with the prominent response that Christian belief structures were the cause of environmental degradation. One of the touchstones10 of the interdisciplinary study of religion and nature is Lynn White’s 1967 essay, “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis.”11 This influential essay argues that there should be a critical evaluation of Western theology as at least one intellectual cause of global environmental change. White’s thesis was that many of the environmental problems facing contemporary society were outgrowths of Western theological modes of thinking about the world. The theologies of the medieval era—and the manifestation of these theological tendencies through science and technology—were particularly influential, according to White. But other potential theological causes of environmental damage can be suggested: the dualistic tendencies of certain strands of early Christianity, the Protestant work ethic, the individualism of modern Christianity, the religious roots of the scientific revolution, or the emphasis on eschatology within contemporary evangelical theology are a few possibilities. Debate over White’s thesis has animated scholars of religion and nature for decades. To some degree, White’s thesis has unwittingly directed the work of scholars, foreclosing other opportunities, questions, and issues. Even as theologians and scholars disagree with some of the broader strokes of White’s interpretations, later assessments of White’s work seem to show that “it was clear that Christianity provided a potent source of attitudes toward nature, whether viewed as something to be used, cared for, or reverenced.”12 Even so, others are not certain that White’s thesis was correct. For example, Chuvieco, Burgui, and Gallego-Álvarez explored the connections between national environmental indicators and religion, which seemed to diminish White’s claims.13 Along a similar vein, religious ethicist Lisa Sideris has argued that some religious environmentalists place too much reliance on large scientific narratives—narratives such as “the Universe Story,” which is meant to offer an amalgam of scientific and spiritual meaning. Such quasi-scientific myths place too much authority on scientific knowledge, and devalue other forms of knowing, including religion.14 Bron Taylor has offered an analysis of some of the ways scholars have

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been motivated to respond to White’s claims through work toward “greening religion.”15 He argues that for many scholars, “the religion and ecology movement can be viewed as a religious revitalization movement as well as a new, ecumenical, religious movement.”16 But, he asks, has the response to Lynn White’s argument (in its general contours) really led to the so-called “greening of religion”? Taylor suggests a more complicated and pessimistic picture of religious environmentalism. Throughout the foregoing, we see that critique and retrieval in the study of religion and nature is imperative, yet it is limited when it overemphasizes concepts and values without including affective or lived experience. In other words, while scholarship focused on remedying our worldview has deepened our appreciation of the issues, it nonetheless is still limited in its scope. Discussions of religion and nature seem to lead us to this: just as the claim that religion is the cause of environmental degradation does not account for all of the complexities of religion or nature, so too the claim that religious environmentalism will be our environmental savior does not capture the depth of transformation that scholarship of religion and nature aspires to. Something is missing if we assume our task is solely focused on conceptualization,17 and this impasse cannot be conquered simply by fixing our broken worldviews. But what if we attempt to find a different way of seeing the task of studying religion and nature? This alternative would not focus on religion and nature as a remedy for conceptual superficiality, but instead would take seriously the need to bring together the discordance that we have uncovered between concepts and materiality, the promise and perils of religious belief, the space between religion and nature, and so forth. In the next section, I wish to suggest a possibility for a different perspective. I suggest that scholars should reflect on something that bubbles under the surface of our worldviews: a need to connect thinking, doing, and feeling. We can ask: How can religion and ecology integrate a conceptual relationship between humans and the environment with a perceptual one? In asking this question, religion and nature scholars acknowledge how the ambiguities uncovered through the critique of worldviews moves us beyond the world of ideas and into the world itself. While worldviews are important for understanding how we conceive the world, they are not completely adequate framed for expressing how we perceive or feel about it.

THE FIELD OF RELIGION AND NATURE AS INTERPRETING ATMOSPHERES What might serve as the groundwork for engaged scholarship to marry the perception and experience of the material world, on the one hand, and the thinking of religious values, on the other hand? How do scholars do what they do, especially as creatures who are—among other things—thinkers, citizens, and embodied beings? How can a scholarly groundwork provide the needed tools to understand the relationship between the perception of the material world and the conception of religious values—and thereby to offer a way to engage the world? As seen above, there are a number of benefits to focusing on how religious worldviews make connections between values and the natural world. However, while the study of worldviews can uncover the distortions and failures of our thought processes, as well as offer alternative ways of thinking, the exclusive focus on ideas neglects other aspects that are important for our experience with both religion and nature. For example, definitional overviews of religion often include Rudolph Otto’s discussion of the Holy as mysterium tremendum et fascinans or Tillich’s idea of God as

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“the Ground and Abyss of Being”—that is to say, defining religion must not simply account for doctrine, but also the nearly elemental, primordial quality that coexists yet is distinct from the rational and conceptual functions of religion. Thus the work of Otto, Tillich, and others suggests how conceptual involvement is incomplete without an affective and sensible engagement with the divine. Indeed, these aspects of religion are some of the most influential—as seen in such things as meditation, ritual, communal meals, fellowship, and so forth. So too nature is understood not solely through the detached objectivity of science, but also through more emotionally grounded and materially connected ways. Walking, breathing, standing, dancing, and swimming are some of the many sensual modes of knowing nature, just as literary, artistic, and meditative knowledge offers us a deeper appreciation of nature. In a nutshell, while the debates over remedying our worldview are important, without some way of incorporating—embodying and sensing—nature with perceptual and affective modes of understanding we risk an incompleteness of vision. Rather than focus solely on conceptual interrogations, then, the field of religion and nature can broaden its reach through its ability to reflect on the depth of meaning in the interpenetration of interpretive and aesthetic engagements with nature (indeed, in many places it unconsciously already has expanded in this way). To reiterate, this includes—but is not limited to—belief structures and worldviews. Yet it is significant to see that the scholarship of religion and nature also offers a nuanced reflection on how we feel and sense nature. In the remainder of this chapter, I wish to make the case that scholars of religion and nature can see their task through a second, additional slogan: scholarship in religion and nature attempts to scrutinize the pressing human need to explore our changing atmosphere. Why reflect on “atmosphere”? A reflection on atmosphere can extend and challenge a narrow focus on worldviews as the remedy for environmental ills. Situating this in spatial terms, atmospheres and worldviews engage one another: atmospheres complement the ground of our concepts by illuminating the hazy envelope that surrounds our world. To look to our atmosphere suggests ways of breaking through boundaries and obstacles that impede our view. One cannot have a view of the world without peering through the atmosphere, just as the atmosphere is meaningful only as it is bundled close to the ground upon which we dwell. This is backed up by our discussion thus far: in the debate over the place of one’s worldview in environmental engagement, there is a common thread, regardless of whether one sees religious worldviews as beneficial, damaging, or irrelevant: human engagement with built and natural environments is both hermeneutical or interpretive (on the one hand) and aesthetic or perceptual (on the other). The concern over worldviews implicitly shows that to encounter nature and religion includes a commitment to disinterested knowledge, yet also is open to something more. One’s worldview, after all, is fundamentally hermeneutical: it is a quest to understand the depth of our involvement in the world—a depth that is manifested in the surrounding atmospheres. Already this correlates the scholarship of religion and nature with the concern for meaning, on one hand, and with our irreducible ground in materiality and sensibility, on the other. The field of religion and nature has an implicit concern for uncovering meaning and understanding. Scholarship on religion and nature, in other words, has always been involved in fostering a debate over the conflict of interpretations, more than simply an objective analysis of religion and nature. This has been more explicit in relation to biblical studies, as seen in the Earth Bible Commentary series and elsewhere (a helpful discussion

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of this is found in Raymond Person’s commentary on Deuteronomy, where he examines the impact of ecological hermeneutics and the Earth Bible).18 Similarly, several works in the field (for example, Mark Wallace’s Finding God in the Singing River, Anne Mary Dalton and Henry Simmons’ Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope, and Bron Taylor’s Dark Green Religion,19 to name a few) have suggested, in their own unique ways, novel approaches that highlight the interpretive, reflexive dimension. Environmental philosophers have also modeled this hermeneutical stance, showing how the focus on interpretation provides dividends for our understanding of existence and our normative claims about nature.20 This recommends that the field of religion and nature serves society and religious communities by critically and reflexively reflecting on the meanings that our environments and our religious traditions have. Through the focus on meaning, transformation becomes the entry point to a different perspective that we can call a religious hermeneutics of nature. Scholars therefore work with an underlying sense that religion and nature is an area of transformative hermeneutics. Is it the transformation of religion, nature, or both? And is this transformation conceptual, social, material or affective? These become points for reflection and scholarly debate. The hermeneutics of nature is located in the broader “spatial turn” in scholarship, effectively becoming a hermeneutics of place. While it is not always acknowledged in religion and nature, this turn toward examining the complexity of place should not be underestimated. We are always already involved in some place or another, after all. Our thinking is situated in place, and our actions and feelings are as well. A spatial turn in religious studies means letting go of an exclusive focus on history and culture, in order to allow for a more nuanced understanding of materiality, particularity, and embodiment. Religion and nature is seen as an interpretive concentration on human and more-thanhuman experiences of places and landscapes, for these locations of particular experiences are the frameworks for the meanings we bring to the world. That is to say, “nature” and “religion” are meaningful—and capable of being studied—only when happening somewhere, at particular spaces and times, and in particular places. So what happens when religious studies approaches nature with this type of hermeneutical mindset? What is discovered is that religion and nature scholars have an altogether different perspective than scholars in the natural sciences or previous generations of scholars of religious studies: it is a perspective that locates and embodies religion and nature. Interpretation occurs in place, which in turn influences how worldviews are conceived and contextualized. It is difficult to make sense of one’s worldview within a disembodied, non-spatial grounding of “religion” and “nature,” for all too often we assume worldviews have an all-encompassing, absolute quality that positions them everywhere and nowhere. Instead, a hermeneutically-oriented scholarship understands how religion and nature are radically distinctive and fleshy—as localized within individuals and communities, spaces and times. Such scholarship rises above the conceptual ground and into the atmosphere, especially in light of the radical atmospheric changes that we are confronting. In addition to acknowledging the hermeneutical nature of scholarship of religion and nature, we must also define the meaning of atmospheres in the context of the field. One of the most obvious definitions attached to atmosphere is the one associated with meteorology and physical systems: it is the layer of air surrounding a planet. The atmosphere of Earth is particularly important for life itself and thus for human civilization. Human beings, as material, biological beings, interact with the air around us in unconscious but continuous ways—the atmosphere is essential for existence of life itself, even though

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it is usually invisible and unnoticed. As legal scholar Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos writes, “We are not aware of the earth’s atmosphere. An atmosphere is a perfect enclosure.”21 It pervades our existence, because it surrounds us and we breathe it in. The physical atmosphere creates a veritable skin around the planet, controlling temperature and filtering light. It creates a diffuse, sensible envelope that sustains us and intertwines with all living things. Of course, the atmospheres that we are concerned with are not merely the physical, for the meaning of atmosphere is not solely oriented toward the physical. Instead, a second way of encountering an “atmosphere” is when the term is used as a fruitful and multivalent trope for reflecting our engagement with the world. Tim Ingold argues that atmosphere is an important idea, for it “. . . holds the key to the way we, as living, breathing beings, embrace and are embraced by the world around us.”22 Ingold notes that this importance is not just when we see the physical atmosphere as a medium, but also when atmosphere is seen in its connection with our emotional and perceptual surroundings. There is a second usage, then, that “. . . has to do with the evocation of feeling, and is roughly equivalent to what Walter Benjamin (2008: 22) called ‘aura’ and Ludwig Binswanger ‘mood space’ (gestimmter Raum).”23 In other words, it is in the very nature of an atmosphere to be a non-definite, intertwining “quasi-thing,” which exists in the spaces between subjects and objects. This second meaning makes the atmosphere important for understanding our connections with other things and beings, in spite of being difficult to pinpoint or fully define. Recent philosophers have begun to reflect on this sensual and phenomenological sense of atmosphere. One author who has popularized this view is Gernot Böhme. As Böhme writes, “We sense what kind of space surrounds us. We sense its atmosphere.”24 He also suggests that “[a]tmosphere is the common reality of the perceiver and the perceived. It is the reality of the perceived as the sphere of its presence and the reality of the perceiver, insofar as in sensing the atmosphere s/he is bodily present in a certain way.”25 In saying this Böhme suggests that, contrary to a precise conceptual framework that can only be rendered by abstract thought, an atmosphere is best approached through a gamut of interrogations, including emotions, feelings, and senses. There are many ways atmospheres manifest themselves; this plurality, according to Böhme, allow us to see their importance for understanding such things as art, architecture, aesthetics, and emotion. In similar fashion, philosopher Hermann Schmitz offers a phenomenological definition of atmosphere as an “area-less space” that involves our felt-body and its sense of surroundings. He writes, “an atmosphere is a total or partial, but in any case comprehensive, occupation of an area-less space in the sphere of that which is experienced as being present.”26 This view of atmosphere is associated with the felt-body; while the material body has boundaries and a demarcated, individual sense of space, the felt-body is whatever is perceived as one’s own at a given space and time. Thus Schmitz suggests that “[t]he felt body is usually a surging of blurred islands . . .”,27 rather than a clearly defined thing. To “corporeal stirrings” of our felt body comes about in and through atmospheres—feelings of space, hunger, pain, movement, and the like. Atmospheres, then, are found in between things, a connection that complicates the relationship between subject and object, perceiver and perceived. An atmosphere serves to emotionally and sensibly deepen our experience as bodies among other bodies. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos supplements and challenges the phenomenological definitions of Böhme and Schmitz. He writes, “[a]tmosphere is the excess of affect that

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keeps bodies together. And, further, what emerges when bodies, human and nonhuman, are held together by, through and against each other.”28 This definition of PhilippopoulosMihalopoulos is oriented to what he calls an “affective ontology.” This is a way around phenomenology, while at the same time reinforcing some of the important elements of such phenomenological readings of atmospheres. Rather than focus on the “in-between” or subject–object relations, his affective ontology sees atmosphere (in the singular) as exceeding consciousness, and therefore it “dwells in elemental materiality.”29 As such, “Atmosphere is a process of engineering of the elements.”30 While there is debate over how to understand these competing definitions of atmosphere—especially when viewed in the context of the interplay between Earth’s material atmosphere and the sense of atmospheres as quasi-things between other things—a few important themes emerge. First and foremost, atmospheres are closely attached to our perception, sensibility, and (on an explicitly scholarly level) aesthetics. This is most important: atmospheres surround us and mark the way we see, taste, hear, smell, and touch the world. The discussion of atmospheres allows us to comprehend our engagement with religion and culture as an utterly sensible experience. Gernot Böhme has suggested that the atmosphere is at the core of what he calls a “new aesthetics.” The vocabulary of “atmospheres” is, as Gernot Böhme notes, an abundant one: “we have at our disposal a rich vocabulary with which to characterize atmospheres, that is, serene, melancholic, oppressive, uplifting, commanding, inviting, erotic etc.”31 This vocabulary points the way toward using aesthetics beyond theories of judgment and the arts, and towards nature and production—specifically, the production of intersubjective atmospheres. Thus the discussion of atmosphere calls scholars of religion and nature to examine more closely the methods and vocabulary found in aesthetics. A second common theme in the discussion of atmosphere is the irreducible embodiment that joins the self and the other. The sensing of atmospheres occurs between things, joining them together and offering an intersubjective engagement. That is to say, sensing atmospheres provides a manifestation of the ways that we are bodies in the midst of other bodies. Pauline von Bonsdorff acknowledges that our existence is tethered to our ability to conceptualize and frame the world through language. Yet, she writes, “[w]e live in language, but also in action, places, atmosphere, among others and in our body.”32 Therefore, she says, “The question of atmosphere is presented in an awareness of others: humans, animals, trees or expressive artefacts.”33 With this we see how religion and nature connects with fields such as animal studies, ecology, policy, and the like. Finally, the discussion of atmospheres suggests that it is important to reflect on affective and emotional responses to the natural world. Such emotional responses are imperative: for example, the tragedy of climate change needs to acknowledge the importance of mourning, according to Ashlee Cunsolo Willox.34 The atmospheres that surround us illuminate the emotions that are attached to our perceptions of things. Here fields such as environmental psychology, ecocriticism, and ethics become associated with religion and nature. Taking these different descriptions of atmosphere seriously, we find the term useful for trying to interpret religion and nature in its spatial fullness. We can summarize this utility in this way: the study of religion and nature is tasked with reflecting on the intertwined mental, moral, and psychological environments that surround us as embodied creatures. If atmospheres are both what surrounds us physically as well as provides us with diffuse modes of perceptual and emotional engagement, then religion and nature is a study of the atmosphere, especially as we distill the atmosphere that surrounds and weaves together our conceptual worldviews.

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CONCLUSION: CHANGING ATMOSPHERES AND HUMAN FLOURISHING This chapter began with the acknowledgment that the field of religion and nature seeks an engaged scholarship, and it is now possible to see why this engagement is possible as a scholarly work. A concentration on worldviews shows how religion and nature is oriented toward critique and retrieval. The focus on atmosphere extends beyond this, to provide a scholarly metaphor for engagement: we interpret how we are engaged through the atmospheres between each of us and the natural world. In brief, the field of religion and nature is not just the conceptualization of worldviews, but more importantly the interpretation of atmospheres. Even further, it is a reflection on the pressing human need to explore our changing atmospheres. Changes to our atmosphere put engagement to the test, because it is in light of radical environmental change that we can more fully see the need to balance a discussion of worldviews with the need to better understand the unseen atmospheres around us. On the physical level, our investigations of atmosphere become meditations on critical evaluation, personal experiences, memories, imaginative possibilities, fears, and hopes related to global climate change. The Earth’s atmosphere is not a static thing; as its chemical make-up changes, this material atmosphere also precipitates changes throughout a number of other Earth systems. Thanks to human industrialization, use of fossil fuels, and other impacts, the makeup of Earth’s physical atmosphere is changing in ways that are harmful for ecosystems, species, and individual beings. Anthropogenic climate change is the most recent example of how the changes in unseen physical atmosphere of Earth are intertwined with the changing patterns of human and non-human life. Our physical atmosphere is changing; these changes have short- and long-term consequences for human and non-human flourishing. This provides us with an example of the engaged work that can be done in religion and ecology: how can the study of religion promote a better understanding the physical, emotional, and conceptual violence that happens through human industrialization and fossil fuel use? A more significant atmospheric change has also been occurring in recent decades. There has been change, which is a mental, moral, and psychological flattening to the “quasi-things” serve as the context for our emotional and sensual link to the otherness of the natural world. For example, our contemporary experience of environments and spaces has been inundated with the superficial, the globalized and the consumeristic, just as increasingly our lives have occurred in “non-places” (in the words of Marc Augé).35 Furthermore, whereas previous periods of culture might have been influenced by religion and spirituality, the atmospheric elements of contemporary engagements with nature might no longer contain the same types of religious or spiritual resonance. Thus examining our sense of place as manifested in built and natural environments, we are shocked to discover how the uniqueness, fecundity and particularity of places have been changed— and in some ways reduced—through globalization, loss of local businesses, political segregation, and systemic discrimination (especially in built environments), while also reduced by invasive species, loss of biodiversity, extinction, and other threats (especially natural environments). In turn, this results in changes to our intersubjective atmospheres. Otherwise stated, emotions and perceptions, sights and sounds, “auras” and other diffuse ways of encountering places in the world—all of these are under threat due to aesthetic and hermeneutic alterations that are affecting our being in the world. And so too the atmospheric connections with religion have changed: our interpretations of ritual,

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spirituality, and the materiality of religion are all atmospherically different, for example. Thus physical changes to Earth’s atmosphere are replicated and amplified by the changes to our affective and perceptual atmospheres that surround us. All this leads to a new challenge for scholars of religion and nature: to examine how our changing atmospheres have impacted religion and nature. These changes require an engagement with our ethical, political, and spiritual ways of being, insofar as they threaten to obfuscate the satisfying balancing act that manifests a sense of human flourishing. For religious communities in particular, the need for such a balance is necessary for human spirituality and psychosomatic wholeness. By encountering atmospheres and engaging the changes that we find ourselves in the midst of, we find it imperative to consider new questions: How can we effectively uncover our embodiment in the atmosphere? How might religion help or hinder our attachment to place, compared to an alienation from it? What are the ways that religions creatively are sensitive to environments, and how might our senses lead us to new ways of re-imagining the world? In what ways does our current atmosphere prevent human and non-human flourishing, as well as offer hopeful possibilities?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Eco-Dao: An Ecological Theology of Dao HEUP YOUNG KIM

ECO-DAO: DAO (道; WAY)1 AS ECOLOGICAL ROOT-METAPHOR Dao is an overarching concept for East Asian thought. With its adoption as the rootmetaphor, I have proposed that the theology of dao (namely, theo-dao) is a proper paradigm in this age to think towards a ‘theology without walls’ or ‘trans-religious theology’.2 Theodao aims to surmount the chronic dualism of contemporary Christian theologies between the paradigm of traditional theo-logos (classical and inculturationalist theologies) and its modern alternative, theo-praxis (liberationist theologies). As its Chinese character consists of two ideographs, meaning “head” (knowing) and “vehicle” (acting), dao connotes holistically both the source of knowing (logos) and the way of acting (praxis) in unity; that is to say, the logos in transformative praxis or the praxis in transformative logos. Hence, dao, a holistic root-metaphor, does not force one to choose between either logos or praxis, but embraces the whole of ‘both-and’ to enable a person to participate in a dynamic movement to be united in the cosmic track. The dao, also meaning “ultimate reality,” embodies the transformative praxis of the cosmic trajectory of life in the unity of knowing and acting. Logos, the dominant root-metaphor of Christian theology for the last two millennia, is rooted in the Greek hierarchical dualism and further reduced to technical reason by the influence of modernism. Thus, it has become an inappropriate root-metaphor for ecological theology. Instead, I argue that dao is a more proper root-metaphor for the theology of ecology and life. First of all, dao is “the most life affirming” root-metaphor.3 Further, as homologous to hodos in the biblical Greek, it is a more biblical term than logos. Jesus said, “I am the way [hodos], truth, and life” (Jn 14:6a); that is say, the ultimate way (dao) of life. Jesus did not identify himself as the incarnate logos but rather as the dao toward God (Jn 14:6b). Furthermore, the original title for Christianity was hodos which was translated as “dao” in the Korean Bible (Acts 9:2; 19:9; 22:4; 24:14, 22). At the core of daoist thought is to return or act according to nature as it is (無爲自然). Neo-Confucianism also adopted this thought emphatically. In Chinese characters, nature means “self-so,” “spontaneity” or “naturalness,” i.e., “the effective modality of the system that informs the actions of the agents that compose it.”4 In other words, nature in East Asian thought is the primary “self-so” (natural) manifestation of the dao (the Way). Dao is an ideal root-metaphor for ecology, because its ontology, cosmology, and spirituality 99

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per se are precisely ecological. For this reason, I propose to make use of dao as the rootmetaphor for an apposite paradigm of ecological theology; namely, eco-dao.5 Furthermore, the “ontocosmology” of dao (the Great Ultimate) entails profoundly “a sense of cosmogenesis” (or cosmogony) which Thomas Berry and Brian Swim advocated with their prophecy of the eco-zoic era.6

THE GREAT ULTIMATE (太極; T’AEGŬK/TÀI JÍ)7 AS ONTOCOSMOLOGY An axiomatic view of Confucianism is the “anthropocosmic vision” that affirms the “mutual dependence and organic unity” of Heaven and humanity.8 The Doctrine of the Mean, one of the Confucian Four Books, states, “What Heaven imparts to man is called human nature. To follow our nature is called the Way (Dao). Cultivating the Way is called education.”9 This anthropocosmic vision sees that humanity (anthropology) is inseparable from Heaven (cosmology) and conceived as its microcosm. Hence, East Asian anthropology is cosmocentric in contrast to the anthropocentric approach to cosmology prevalent in the West.10 This anthropocosmic view presents “inclusive humanism” which Confucian scholar Cheng Chung-ying sharply distinguishes with the “exclusive humanism” dominant in the West since Descartes’ dualistic rationalism. Whereas exclusive humanism “exalts the human species, placing it in a position of mastery of and domination over the universe,” inclusive humanism “stresses the coordinating powers of humanity as the very reason for its existence.” Cheng contested that “humanism in the modern West is nothing more than a secular will for power or a striving for domination, with rationalistic science at its disposal . . . Humanism in this exclusive sense is a disguise for the individualistic entrepreneurship of modern man armed with science and technology as tools of conquest and devastation.” In contrast, he argued that the inclusive humanism rooted in Confucianism “focuses on the human person as an agency of both self-transformation and transformation of reality at large. As the self-transformation of a person is rooted in reality and the transformation of reality is rooted in the person, there is no dichotomy or bifurcation between the human and reality.”11 Over against the essentialist and exclusivist view of the human person, inclusive humanism stresses the “between-ness” or “among-ness” of the person. (The Chinese character for the human being, 人間, connotes in-between-ness). In inclusive humanism, a person is not so much a static substance (an isolated ego) as a network of relationships in constant change (Yì 易).12 This relational vision of being in continual change is called “ontocosmology.”13 This Confucian/Daoist (Neo-Confucian) ontocosmology is basically related to the notion of the Great Ultimate. In An Explanation of the Diagram of the Great Ultimate, Zhou Dunyi (1017–73) stated: The Ultimate of Non-being and also the Great Ultimate! The Great Ultimate through movement generates yang. When its activity reaches its limit, it becomes tranquil. Through tranquility the Great Ultimate generates yin. When tranquility reaches its limit, activity begins again. So movement and tranquility alternate and become the root of each other, giving rise to the distinction of yin and yang, and the two modes are thus established.14 The Great Ultimate, symbolized by a circle enclosing yin and yang, denotes the complementarity of opposites. The circle signifies “an inexhaustible source of creativity,

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which is one and undifferentiated,” and the dynamic process of yin–yang interaction is “always ready to be differentiated into concrete and individual things.” It is “the constant fountainhead amidst all things and provides the integrative and purposive unity of any type or any individual token while, at the same time, it also serves as the impetus for the diversity of things as types of tokens.”15 The Great Ultimate so conceived entails precisely a cosmogony (or cosmogenesis) of the dao in the continual process of unity in multiplicity or diversity in unity. This Neo-Confucian ontocosmology is also pertinent to Daoism, as Laozi states: [D]ao produced the One. The One produced the two. The two produced the three. And the three produced the ten thousand things. The ten thousand things carry the yin and embrace the yang, and through the blending of the material force [ki/qì] they achieve harmony.16 This statement refers to the dynamic creative process of dao in the metaphorical symbolism of the Great Ultimate. It produces the One, the Two (yin-yang), and the Three (offspring of yin-yang). “The whole is both absolute and relative, it is both one (singularity) and two (plurality) at the same time.”17 The creativity of dao is the cosmogenetic (or comogonic) process of the Great Ultimate through the dynamic yin–yang interaction and always in the process of change. It stipulates the dialogical paradigm of harmony and equilibrium in East Asian thought, in contrast to the dialectical paradigm of strife and conflict in Western thought. The Great Ultimate “signifies both a process and world qua the totality of things in which there is a profound equilibrium from the beginning and a pervasive accord or harmony among all things at any time.”18 In this regard, the Great Ultimate is a prototype of “the cosmogenetic principle” which Berry and Swimme try to articulate; “differentiation, autopoiesis, and communion throughout time and space and at every level of reality.”19 Inclusive humanism rooted in this ontocosmology of dao developed a vision of “cosmic togetherness” in an organismic unity with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things. In the Western Inscription, Zhang Zai (1022–1077) beautifully expressed it thus: Heaven is my father and Earth is my mother, and even such a small creature as I finds an intimate place in their midst. Therefore, that which fills the universe I regard as my body and that which directs the universe I consider as my nature. All people are my brothers and sisters, and all things are my companions.20 Wang Yang-ming (1472–1529) further expanded this eco-daoian vision in his doctrine of the Oneness of All Things:. The great man regards Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body. He regards the world as one family and the country as one person. As to those who make a cleavage between objects and distinguish between the self and others, they are small men. That the great man can regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body is not because he deliberately wants to do so, but because it is the natural humane nature of his mind that he does so. Forming one body with Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things is not only true of the great man. Even the mind of the small man is no different. Only he himself makes it small.21 Here the universe is depicted as a cosmic triune family and a human being as a cosmic person, a member of the cosmic Trinity.22 From this vantage point, Cheng suggested a

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Confucian-Christian idea of the Trinity: “[W]e might see God the Son as the ideal human, God the Father would be heaven (the creative spirit), and God the Holy Spirit the earth (the receptive co-spirit), or agent of the world which testifies to the accomplishment of the divinity.”23

KI/QI (氣)24 AS METACOSMIC ENERGY As in the cited passage of Laozi, ki/qi is regarded as the medium and the source of force to enable unification and harmony among all creations through interaction of yin and yang. For this reason, Mary Evelyn Tucker argued that the philosophy of ki/qi has profound potentialities as an ecological cosmology.25 However, ki/qi is not just a philosophical or metaphysical notion but also, more importantly, a physically materializing and ubiquitously embodying reality. However, it is difficult for the analytically and scientifically oriented modern mind to know and realize it. It requires purifying one’s mind (kenosis or self-emptying) to experience its subtle movements and covert reality through psychosomatic practices, which sometimes requires rigorously ascetic disciplines, such as meditation, contemplation, yoga, and East Asian martial arts (most of all, proper breathing exercises are crucial). Zhuangzi had Confucius saying: “Make your will one! Don’t listen with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit [ki/qi]. Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all things. The Way [dao] gathers in emptiness alone. Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.”26 This passage stipulates three ways of knowing toward the enlightenment of dao, namely: (1) objective; (2) intuitive; and (3) spiritual. The first way of knowing (epistemic) is based on an objective (scientific) observation through sensory organs such as ears and eyes. The second one refers to an intuitive perception through the operation of the “mind” (psychic) which, though more advanced than the first epistemic one, still remains within the limit of a penultimate recognition. The final one is the right path to attain the enlightenment of dao by a spiritual realization of ki/qi, the metacosmic energy, in and through the human body. This accurate way can surpass flaws and limitations of the objective and the intuitive knowing. However, it needs a rigorous discipline of selfcultivation and self-empting to attain emptiness or vacuity (“the fasting of mind”), which is the precondition to realize the movement of ki/qi. Thus, eco-dao as a new ecological theology underscores the realization of ki/qi. However, it is not easy for the modern people to recognize ki/qi. For its subtle and apophatic movement is beyond cognitive knowing and verbal expressions but needs to be realized in and through bodily experiences (even beyond intuition), particularly through breathing. This point is crucial in this technocratic era, not only in danger of a total destruction of ecosystems, but also challenged by the movement of transhumanism that advocates the maximum use of science and technology to end up or upgrade the species of homo sapiens to the post-human by substituting the problematic bio-body with a superman-like machine body.27 In this regard, the distinction of Thomas Berry between “the Technozoic” and “the Ecozoic” is insightful and significant.28 The Reformation accelerated “an intensively anthropocentric turn” of Christian theology29 and dissociated the anthropocosmic unity implicit in the medieval Christianity, and the Industrial Revolution promoted the use of modern science to massively exploit the body of the Earth. Furthermore, transhumanists are now contriving a revolution for an extinction of the human body, preaching a technozoic gospel for an omnipotent and

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eternal post-human without death and diseases. However, the significance of breathing lies in the fact that the cybernetic post-human with machine bodies cannot breathe. Their source of energy is not a metacosmic and life-giving energy like ki/qi, which is psychophysical (spirit and matter) and interpenetrating (in and out) phenomenon, but an electrico-chemically working machine, like batteries (cf., the Matrix movies). Hence, I argue that a spirituality of body and breathing in theory and praxis (eco-dao) is what is imperative to move in the Ecozoic and resist against the Technozoic. The movie Star Wars is prophetic here, with the visionary slogan of Jedi knights like Yoda (a messianic daoist warrior): “May the Force [ki/qi] be with you.”

BREATHING AS SPIRITUALITY In fact, a simple way to experience and realize the ki/qi is to feel and discern its movement through the practice of breathing in and out. Zhuangzi said: “All things that have consciousness depend upon breath [息]. But if they do not get their fill of breath, it is not the fault of Heaven. Heaven opens up the passages and supplies them day and night without stop. But man on the contrary blocks up.”30 The Book of Changes stated that “the successive alteration of one yin and one yang is called the Dao [一陰一陽之謂道].”31 This symbolic statement has profound philosophical implications and has produced manifold interpretations in the history of East Asian thought. Simply speaking, however, using the metaphors of yin and yang and dao, figuratively describes the phenomenology of breathing; the way a life is sustained by a successively, alternating movement of inhalation (yin: breathing air and ki/qi in) and exhalation (yang: breathing air and ki/qi out). Another important point is that the term ki/qi connotes not only the metacosmic energy but also air in the sky, as air in the Chinese character literary means the ‘ki/qi in the emptiness’. In the process of breathing, when inspiration reaches its limit, it alternates to the expiration, and vice versa. In the diagram of the Great Ultimate, therefore, there is an eye (a small circle of yang) inside the yin, and another eye (a small circle of yin) inside the yang. They symbolize the “inness” (inclusion) of yang “in” the yin and of yin “in” the yang, or the existence of “the inner connecting principle” between yin and yang (when yin reaches its limit, it becomes yang, and vice versa). This insight of the inness or the inner connecting principle in yin and yang resembles the notion of perichoresis (coinherence) in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, such as when as Jesus says, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (Jn 14:11). Breathing is not just a process of the inhalation of fresh air with oxygen and the exhalation of used air, but also, more importantly, a bodily embodiment of ki/qi in the process of this yin–yang alternation. Through breathing of ki/qi, humans sustain life in comm-union and communication with that of the universe. “The [ki/qi] involved in human breathing is the [ki/qi] of universe . . . Heaven (or Nature) and humans are basically not two.”32 Hence, ki/qi, life-giving metacosmic energy, and breathing (often mutually interchangeable terms) have profound spiritual implications for eco-dao. This is similar to the passage in Genesis which states that “the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath [ki in the Korean Bible] of life; and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7 NRSV ). The spirituality grounded on the ontocosmology of the Great Ultimate and the kenotic dao does not imply an abstract metaphysical cosmology or an individually isolated ascetic discipline. On the contrary, the spirituality of ki/qi (breathing) entails the concrete trajectory of the revolutionary and subversive life force. As the divine breath (sum)

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initiated the creation of cosmos and inspired humans to life, it is a cosmogonic (or cosmogenetic) life-giving force (ki/qi) that can make all things alive. A clue to understanding the mystery of the hidden but dynamic metacosmic power of the dao is the principle of “reversal” and the power of radical return.33 In the Christian Bible, Jesus also speaks of the principle of reversal: “Blessed are you that are hungry now, for you will be filled. . . . Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry” (Lk. 21: 25); “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all” (Mk 9:35); or “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt. 16:25). A vivid metaphor of dao’s radical power of return is a feeble fish’s jumping up against the mighty downstream in order to return to its origin.34 Another reversal/return metaphor in the Daodejing can be found in the gendered nature of yin and yang. Daodejing describes dao with basically feminine metaphors such as “mother of all things” and “the mystical female.” This feminine vision is based on Laozi’s principle of “reversal.” Laozi gave preferential option to the strategy of yin (weak, soft, small, empty) rather than yang (strong, hard, big, full).35 This yin principle of reversal is closely connected with the principle of return. The principle of reversal and radical return entails the spirituality of dao with the paradoxical power of weakness and emptiness. Eco-dao embodied with this East Asian spirituality of dao can strengthen ecological theology, extending it beyond Christian resources. The spirituality of dao with the yin principle of reversal and radical return with the paradoxical power of weakness and emptiness could empower resistance to merciless processes of genocide, biocide, and ecocide. In fact, this yin principle is in accordance with the life-act of Jesus. The lifesaving mystery of his resurrection entails a Christian principle of radical return (the victory of life over the power of death). His crucifixion on the cross denotes a Christian principle of reversal with the paradoxical power of weakness and emptiness (cf. Isa. 53:5, Lk. 6:20–21, 1 Cor. 1:18). And the yin strategy resonates with the biblical “preferential option for the poor,” a famous idiom of liberation theology. However, the preferential option should be extended to the wounded ecosystem as a whole, including endangered species, in addition to minjung (the poor, women, the oppressed, and the underprivileged).

KI-SOCIOCOSMIC BIOGRAPHY OF THE EXPLOITED LIFE AS A HERMENEUTICAL KEY Korean minjung theologian Kim Yong-bock argued that the social biography (the underside history) of minjung is a more authentic historical point of reference for theological reflection than doctrinal discourses (the official history) superimposed by the Church in the orientation of Western rationality.36 This was an important time for Asian theology. The recognition of minjung as the subject of history rectified traditional theologies that tended to regard minjung as the object of mission and control. Nevertheless, its exclusive focus is on the political history of God and such an anthropocentric history hinders the full use of the depths of Asian religious and ecological thought. East Asian theology should also include the underside histories of life systems on Earth, expanding its hermeneutical horizon beyond the historico-social to the socio-cosmic (both social and cosmic). It requires a fusion of horizons (or “a new synthesis”) between the sociobiography of minjung and the anthropocosmic vision so as to construct a sociocosmic biography (story, narrative) of exploited life.37 Then, an important task of ecodao is to monitor and articulate such a sociocosmic narrative of the exploited life encompassing not only the oppressed people but also the other sentient beings and the insentient things in the whole

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ecosystem under the exploitation of industrial-capitalist imperialism and scientifictechnocratic fundamentalism. East Asian anthropocosmic visions entail a symbiosis of the life network through the metacosmic communion and interpenetration of ki/qi, which I call a ki-anthropocosmic vision. This vision (symbiosis) cultivates more suitable human relationships with other lives and things in the cosmos than both societas (by contract) and communitas (by fellowship [koinonia]) which are still anthropocentric. However, eco-dao should not halt at a romantic hermeneutics of retrieval but rather employ a critical hermeneutics of suspicion (e.g., why is it that East Asians who inherited beautifully ecological traditions now live in the most polluted regions in the world?).38 Eco-dao needs to focus on a sociocosmic biography of the exploited life as a hermeneutical key and attempt to find a way to rejuvenate the broken sociocosmic network of exploited life by the communicative and transformative force of ki/qi, a metacosmic energy which is salvific, both emancipatory and reconcilatory. By embodying the ki/qi spirituality of reversal and return, eco-dao finds a way to implement a sociocosmic transformative praxis (the dao) to heal and revitalize the wounded mother Earth. In fact, this ki-sociocosmic (or pneumato-sociocosmic) narrative resonates with the consummate Christian story of Jesus Christ, pneumatologically empowered by the paradoxical power of the cross (reversal) with an eschatological hope for resurrection (return). Pain is a way for the sentient body to send an urgent sign and message to an ignorant consciousness to make it aware of possible physical problems such as the coming danger of diseases. For this reason, eco-dao pays close attention to the sociocosmic biography of exploited life to hear signs and messages of pain from the body of Mother Earth. In his doctrine of oneness of all things, Wang Yang-ming ecologically expanded “the sense of commiseration,” the first of the Confucian “four beginnings” to be a bona fide human being:39 Therefore, when he sees a child about to fall into a well, he cannot help a feeling of alarm and commiseration. This shows that his humanity [rén] forms one body with the child. It may be objected that the child belongs to the same species. Again, when he observes the pitiful cries and frightened appearance of birds and animals about to be slaughtered, he cannot help feeling an “inability to bear” their suffering. This shows that his humanity forms one body with birds and animals. It may be objected that birds and animals are sentient beings as he is. But when he sees plants broken and destroyed, he cannot help a feeling of pity. This shows that his humanity forms one body with plants. It may be said that plants are living things as he is. Yet, even when he sees tiles and stones shattered and crushed, he cannot help a feeling of regret. This shows that his humanity forms one body with tiles and stones. This means that even the mind of the small man necessarily has the humanity that forms one body with all. Such a mind is rooted in his Heaven-endowed nature, and is naturally intelligent, clear, and not beclouded.40

ECO-DAO AND LAUDATO SI’ The recent encyclical of Pope Francis on ecology, Laudato Si’, is impressively resonant with the views of eco-dao in various ways. First of all, the proposal for “integral ecology” is in favor of the eco-daoian project I have outlined here, making genuine dialogue with, and utilizing our own religious and wisdom traditions beyond, the wall of traditional

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Christianity. The emphasis on “cultural ecology” is remarkable.41 This point is particularly significant for developing and developed countries in the Global South, where the logic of development is still strong and robust and where in many cases ecological destructions are creating greater dysfunctions with accompanying destructions of local religious and cultural traditions, which are irreversible in most cases. The document states: Rather, there is a need to incorporate the history, culture and architecture of each place, thus preserving its original identity. Ecology, then, also involves protecting the cultural treasures of humanity in the broadest sense. More specifically, it calls for greater attention to local cultures when studying environmental problems . . . Culture is more than what we have inherited from the past; it is also, and above all, a living, dynamic and participatory present reality, which cannot be excluded as we rethink the relationship between human beings and the environment.42 The document makes an imperative claim that ecology should be built in the context of “the constant and active involvement of local people within their proper culture.” Furthermore, it asserts rightfully: “Nor can the notion of the quality of life be imposed from without, for quality of life must be understood within the world of symbols and customs proper to each human group”.43 Second, the emphasis of the universal interconnectedness resonates with the East Asian theanthropocosmic (and ontocosmological) vision in the communicative unity of God, Earth, and Humanity. “The creation accounts in the book of Genesis contain, in their own symbolic and narrative language . . . suggest that human life is grounded in three fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor and with the earth itself.”44 As already noted, St. Francis’ ecological vision of a cosmic family has many echoes of the Neo-Confucian vision as in the cited passage from the Western Inscription: “Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth.”45 The eco-daoian suggestion for a sociocosmic biography of the exploited life is relevant to the encyclical’s points on the issues of biodiversity, global warming, desertification, etc. The “new synthesis” of ecology and social justice issues (liberation theology) is in accord with the eco-daoian fusion of anthropocosmic vision and minjung theology: “Hence, every ecological approach needs to incorporate a social perspective which takes into account the fundamental rights of the poor and the underprivileged.”46 Third, the critique of “unhealthy dualism” is in consonance with the theo-daoian criticism of the “either-or” mentality in the Western thought.47 The claim of the inseparability of spirit and body is a core claim of theo-dao and eco-dao; “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.”48 At this juncture, it is worth remembering that Christianity, with the doctrine of the Trinity (both one and three), and Christology (both divine and human) already had overcome Greek dualism (either one or three; either divine or human). Further, the critique of modern anthropocentrism is honest and consistent with that of theo-dao. “Modern anthropocentrism has paradoxically ended up prizing technical thought over reality, since ‘the technological mind sees nature as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere “given”, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape; it views the cosmos similarly as a mere “space” into which objects can be thrown with complete indifference’.”49 Furthermore,

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the encyclical asserts: “We no longer speak of sustainable development apart from intergenerational solidarity.”50 The intergenerational solidarity has particularly significant implications vis-à-vis the challenge of transhumanism which attempts to impose “a tyranny of the present over the future” and over the past as well.51 Fourth, the focus on humanism is a breakthrough in Christian theology. It is consistent with the theodaoian criticism of “exclusive humanism” developed under the influence of modern individualism, and it seems to endorse the theodaoian proposal for “inclusive humanism” based on the Neo-Confucian theanthropocosmic vision. “We urgently need a humanism capable of bringing together the different fields of knowledge, including economics, in the service of a more integral and integrating vision.”52 The appeal for an integral ecology highlighting human ecology sounds almost like a Neo-Confucian statement. The document states that “an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human”.53 Moreover, the encyclical underlines the exercise of a concrete spirituality such as ascetic practices, calling for “ecological [interior] conversion” with rejecting “self-interested pragmatism”.54 This is in accord with an ecodaoian interest in self-cultivation, self-empting, and spiritual discipline of ki/qi. Fifth, the view of the Trinity as “a web of relationship” converges with the theodaoian view of the Trinity. The encyclical asserts that: “The Franciscan saint teaches us that each creature bears in itself a specifically Trinitarian structure, so real that it could be readily contemplated if only the human gaze were not so partial, dark and fragile. In this way, he points out to us the challenge of trying to read reality in a Trinitarian key.”55 In a similar Trinitarian key, a Neo-Confucian scholar suggested a new synthesis based on the ontocosmology of the dao and the Great Ultimate: If Heaven embodies the spirit of incessant creativity and the development of life and Earth the everlasting receptivity and consistence of love, then the human must embody their combination in a harmonious fusion and should apply both in appropriate measure in thought, emotion, and conduct. Heaven is a symbol of the cosmology of creativity and development; Earth is a symbol of an ecology of the combination of the two, this producing the ethics of integration and fulfillment of values. Hence, we see in the Confucian sage the trinity of Heaven, Earth, and human that embodies the unity of cosmology, ecology, and ethics. It is important to see that the unity of the three is based on and unified in the ontocosmology of the Tao and t’ai-chi [the Great Ultimate].56 Finally, the encyclical presents a hint for a Christian theology of the body in which eco-dao has a special interest: “Christianity does not reject matter. Rather, bodiliness is considered in all its value in the liturgical act, whereby the human body is disclosed in its inner nature as a temple of the Holy Spirit and is united with the Lord Jesus, who himself took a body for the world’s salvation.”57 Thus, eco-dao and Laudato Si’ share many common points that enable mutually constructive and fruitful dialogues. Especially, I would like to highlight the spirituality of breathing and the insight and reality of ki/qi, a recuperating and outpouring metacosmic energy with the yin principle of reversal and return. In and through a constructive dialogue (or new synthesis) with the Orthodox tradition of Jesus Prayer and liberation theology’s insight of a preferential option for the poor respectively, for example, those eco-daoian perspectives could help develop a more concrete ecological theology and spirituality of incarnation (body) for an ecozoic period. These are only some examples for

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which eco-dao can make substantial contributions to ecological discourses in the years to come, anticipating and foretelling the Return of the Dao (of Jesus Christ): Attain complete vacuity, maintain steadfast quietude. All things come into being, and I see thereby their return. All things flourish, but each one returns to its root. This return to its root means tranquility. It is called returning to its destiny. To return to destiny is called the eternal ([d]ao). To know the eternal is called enlightenment . . . He who knows the eternal is all-embracing. Being all-embracing, . . . he is one with Nature. Being one with Nature, he is in accord with [d]ao.58

CHAPTER NINE

Remembering the Air: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Spiritual Dimensions of Wind Energy LISA H. SIDERIS

Air is at once powerfully omnipresent and strangely absent. It envelopes all things and makes our very existence possible, yet it remains unseen and largely unnoticed. Air is invisible but not exactly intangible; we can feel it, yet somehow cannot touch it.1 The mysterious qualities of air, wind, and breath suggest something vital and sacred, a source of “all that is ineffable, unknowable, yet undeniably real and efficacious.”2 At the same time, as David Abram suggests, air in all its forms is perhaps our most taken-for-granted element, an “intimate absence from which the present presences, and thus a key to the forgotten presence of the earth.”3 Building upon Abram’s insight that remembering the vital presence of invisible, efficacious air can engender a deeper ecological consciousness, I argue that the very visible nature of wind energy has the power to make visible many other unseen, or willfully ignored, connections and presences in the human-nature relationship. With the emergence of climate change as a threat to all life, perhaps it is now becoming possible to recall the presence of air and its ubiquitous sacred power. In what follows, I explore the significance of that which we can and cannot see—or choose not to see—in the world of energy and the environment, with special emphasis on wind power.

THE FORGOTTEN AIR Across many languages and cultures, air, wind, and breath are understood to be intimately associated with soul or spirit, a life-giving and all pervasive presence.4 Indigenous traditions have long recognized the awesome significance of air, yet modern Western cultures have for the most part undergone what Abram calls the “forgetting of air.”5 For the Navajo, air has properties of awareness that all beings and the land partake of: “Air that circulates within, through, and around one’s particular body . . . [and] one’s own intelligence is assumed, from the start, to be entirely participant with the swirling psyche of the land.”6 As that which enables awareness and conscious thought, wind serves as a means of “communication between all beings and elements of the animate world.”7 The 109

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process of forgetting the air has also been one of gradual desacralization. Having become a dumpsite for our pollutants, air presents itself—or, rather, absents itself—as a desacralized “atmosphere:” an abstraction removed from sensuous experience that is rapidly undergoing human-induced warming. The idea of air as a form of mind or awareness in which all beings participate might sound strange to persons of European descent. Yet similar associations are readily discernible in English terms like “psyche,” derived from the Greek word signifying soul and mind, as well as breath and wind.8 Abram argues that ancient Mediterranean cultures, not unlike some Indigenous traditions today, considered air to be a mysterious presence that invisibly connects humans to all other living and nonliving entities. In the sixth century BCE, the philosopher Anaximenes defined psychê as air or breath that knits together and gives life to the universe.9 Co-opted by Platonic philosophers, psychê gradually shed its intimations of a vital, enlivening reality.10 Invisible psychê came to be associated with the rarefied Platonic realm of incorporeal Ideas. Air, meanwhile, came to signify nothing more than empty space. This shift in perspective brought with it the belief that mind, psyche, or spirit exists only within the human skull.11 Even while the Platonic view embraced an oral-poetic universe rife with sensuous and animistic forces (as in the Phaedrus), deep ambivalence toward the bodily and the sensuous realm (understood as the intellect’s “subordinate ally”) inflects Platonic philosophy. In this subtle devaluation of the animistic and sensuous realm, we see “the seeds of nature’s eventual eclipse behind a world of letters, numbers, and texts.”12 The Platonic, rational version of psychê, Abram maintains, was “not at all a part of the sensuous world . . . but a thoroughly abstract phenomenon now enclosed within the physical [human] body as in a prison.”13 These changes contributed to stripping air of sacred significance and simultaneously denigrating supposedly “mindless” nonhuman creatures—those believed to lack humanlike consciousness or animacy. Abram’s narrative suggests a connection between the gradual retreat of all that is deemed conscious, aware, and ultimately valuable to the inside of our skulls, and an attendant rise of humans’ destructive power over nature. This destructive power is perhaps seen most alarmingly in the warming of the Earth’s climate. Is it possible for us moderns to recover some of wind’s forgotten presence, and in doing so, recover a neglected sense of connection to the living earth? I propose that the very visible nature of wind energy—and, particularly, the way in which (invisible) wind makes nature’s power more visible to us—is integral to grasping the aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual value of air. This argument entails a foray into the perceptual and aesthetic experience of wind energy.

WIND AESTHETICS A confession: I have always loved wind turbines. A large section of Indiana farmland that I occasionally traverse on the way to visit family has lately become populated with rows of these imposing, graceful structures. Glacial activity that long ago flattened the landscape of northern Indiana rendered this region of the state far more suitable to wind farms (and agriculture) than the hilly, clayey, relatively forested environs of southern Indiana. My fondness for wind turbines is difficult for me to explain. As a general rule, I am not drawn to modernist or industrial-looking designs, and I respond negatively to many tall structures, including virtually all skyscrapers. It is also difficult to separate the sleek, physical beauty of turbines from what they represent: hope and recovery for the planet; the gracious and forgiving power and autonomy of natural forces; the possibility, as David

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Suzuki says, that “we’re finally getting somewhere.”14 Or as philosopher of aesthetics Justin Good puts it, there is “something satisfying about the idea of gathering energy . . . from a source as invisible and ubiquitous and as familiar and natural as the wind.”15 People who perceive wind turbines as beautiful may sense a connection between their visual appeal and the more quaint and traditional allure of wind-powered technologies with longer histories and somewhat simpler mechanics: “sailboats, wind chimes, kites, the older Dutch windmills and the iconic mechanical wind pump towers found on farms all over the American Great Plains.”16 Not everyone agrees, however. The aesthetic appeal of turbines, or lack thereof, is a significant and perennial factor in public debates about the siting of wind farms. In addition to rehearsing concerns about potential wildlife impacts or noise (both objections worth taking seriously) many people strongly oppose wind energy on visual grounds. In a case that gained some notoriety in the UK, aesthetic objections intermingled with spiritual concerns. Martin Wharton, the (now retired) Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, contended that the proliferation of wind farms threatened to disfigure “God’s Creation” and industrialize the landscape. These transformations, his arguments suggest, are a form of desecration—a threat to the spiritual heritage of a region associated with Northumbrian saints like Cuthbert and Hilda. In condemning wind farms, the bishop also expressed doubts that wind energy will make a significant enough dent in carbon emissions to justify spiritual and aesthetic harms.17 I will return to the idea of wind energy as an affront to—or, alternatively, an expression of—sacred creation. There are many others who (unlike the wind-weary Bishop) wholly affirm wind’s potential to reduce carbon emissions, but simply prefer not to see the turbines. Concerns that scenic landscapes and vistas will be marred and disrupted by wind farms have driven protests all around the world. Environmental literature has a convenient and somewhat dismissive acronym for people who express these sentiments: NIMBY, or not in my backyard. (Or in the case of off-shore wind, “Not in View of My Deck.”18) The NIMBY appreciator of wind energy may share my ecological sensibilities to some extent, but feel compelled to decry the ugliness of wind farms.19 Is there hope that these perceptions of ugliness can be changed? Some scholars maintain that there exists no universal or stable sense of what is pleasing to the human eye. To take one widely noted example: visitors to the Eiffel Tower are generally unaware of the vehement opposition to the “useless and monstrous” tower led by prominent artists and architects of the late nineteenth century.20 Today the Eiffel Tower seems to many the very symbol of culture and sophistication. Natural features of the landscape also elicit a range of responses in different times and places. Mountains, widely considered beautiful, inspiring, and even sacred, were once disparaged as hideous, wart-like deformities.21 Forests, in medieval times, signaled darkness and evil, but today they are highly valued by many as wild areas of retreat from the ugliness of artificial human environments. Indeed, as Abram suggests, even how we experience and value air may vary significantly from culture to culture and over time. If such preferences are more malleable than hardwired, then wind energy opponents may come to see turbines as a natural or at least pleasing feature of the landscape, rather than a jarring symbol of technological encroachment or unwanted industrial intrusion. In many areas, wind farms have already become a boon to tourism. A number of bed and breakfasts, including one in Indiana, tout their proximity to wind farms as a special attraction.22 Like lighthouses—another common tourist destination—turbines might eventually be welcomed as aesthetically appealing and interesting structures that also perform a vital function in the context of humans’ relationship to powerful natural forces.

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In fact, the perceived functionality of turbines accounts for some of their aesthetic appeal. Rotors catch the eye and draw our gaze upward, inviting contemplation. The mesmerizing movement of whirring blades, particularly when viewed in a landscape neatly arrayed with similarly spinning turbines, creates visual interest, but also—and importantly—“signifies their usefulness.”23 A turbine in motion suggests an object achieving its purpose: “To see functionality as form shaped by purpose is pleasurable, and it is the perceived purposiveness which strikes us as beautiful.”24 An idle turbine feels disappointing to viewers and may be perceived as unattractive. This line of argument, of course, does not explain why many people, myself included, fail to find other highly functional designs pleasing. “We could look on as beautiful a host of industrially-produced artifacts that are highly ‘functional,’ ” but ecologically “irrational.”25 The design of factory farms (arguably an extremely functional way of feeding vast numbers of people), or the industrial functionality of a coal-fired power plant might be seen to express optimum functionality. Yet rarely are they considered points of interest in a positive sense. So: while spinning turbines convey a certain functionalist beauty, there is something else at work in an aesthetic appreciation of turbines. Upon closer inspection, this “something else” may effect a shift in our appreciation of wind energy from the realm of aesthetics to that of ethics. Here functionality coheres with the ecologically satisfying idea of harnessing energy in ways that fit humans into a larger network of connections. The reality of this network can be made more visible and undeniable by the power of wind.

SIGHTS UNSEEN Environmentalists often worry about the unseen quality of the damage we inflict on nature and living bodies (including our own). Rachel Carson famously called attention to the proliferation of poisons that are “unseen and invisible,” and whose presence is detected only when they wreak havoc on the equally unseen, complex ecology within the body.26 “In this unseen world minute causes produce mighty effects; the effect, moreover, is often seemingly unrelated to the cause.”27 Remembering these connections and relationships—understanding that all bodies are permeable to chemicals released into the environment—is critical to environmental awareness. Related to these reminders is the familiar environmental credo that there is no such thing as away. Tragically, plastic bags casually tossed into a garbage bin in Indiana turn up in the digestive tract of marine creatures thousands of miles “away.” Some forms of waste—Styrofoam containers and plutonium—persist for hundreds and thousands of years as “hyperobjects.”28 There is no away; there is only out of sight. In a coal state like mine, one is implicated in the proliferation of toxins with every flip of a light switch, but out-of-sight arrangements make that connection easy for many of us to avoid. Often the highest concentrations of toxins, as with the coal ash ponds that litter my state, are intentionally sited near the poorest people in the region.29 Climate change provides another example of impacts that remain largely out of sight and out of mind, accruing to future generations, and often falling disproportionately on communities far removed from wealthy, polluting nations. In a very real and frankly disturbing sense—distinct from the clichéd celebrations of benign and harmonious “interconnectedness” that pervade environmental discourse—an ecological sensibility demands that we acknowledge interconnections that we prefer not to see. “Yes, everything is interconnected,” Tim Morton writes. “And,” he adds, “it sucks.”30 Why? Because once we begin to perceive these connections, we understand that we are caught up and complicit in these complex webs, and that there is no exit and no

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easy solution. The ecological thought is difficult “because it brings to light aspects of our existence that have remained unconscious for a long time; we don’t like to recall them.”31 Once you have begun to think the ecological thought, Morton insists, “you can’t unthink it.”32 You have to face it. Increasing the visibility of how we generate energy and deal with its by-products may be an important part of confronting what Morton identifies as aspects of our existence that remain unconscious.

HEAVENLY AND HELLISH ENERGY Consider once again the standpoint of the NIMBY objector to wind turbines, for whom the wholeness of the landscape or seascape appears ruptured or marred by the presence of a wind farm. It seems that there is something deeply problematic in this individual’s preference: the apparent or wished-for wholeness of nature that she defends simply conceals the “life-denying” energy regimes that currently supply us with power and light.33 Put differently, the problem is that this individual would be satisfied with her view of the landscape (call it a “viewshed”), so long as the details of energy production were hidden—say, below ground—so as to maintain the illusion of naturalness, an image of wholeness. An energy system that is ecologically satisfying inevitably disrupts this illusion. It is interesting to note, in the context of thinking ecological thoughts, the frequency with which wind energy’s supporters—perhaps even more than wind’s detractors— remark on the visible aspect of wind power. A NIMBY-ish desire that energy production be obscured from view calls to mind an increasingly popular distinction between “fuels from hell” and “fuels from heaven.”34 Below-ground energy sources like coal and gas— fuels from hell—cannot, I would argue, provide the same ecological satisfaction as fuels from heaven, like wind, tidal, and solar power. Not only are fuels from hell exhaustible, meaning that as time goes on, more energy is needed to get energy, but their emissions cannot be fully absorbed by nature. Hence, climate change. By contrast, renewable energies require initial investment, but the energy return remains strong because the sources of energy—sun and wind—are themselves “free.” The only significant emissions come from the creation or upkeep of facilities for generating, storing, or distributing energy. Moreover, above-ground energy occupies land for energy production but without consuming or contaminating the land, as below-ground sources typically do. A final and important point to note is that because “heavenly” energy is sourced from the biosphere—above ground—“the installations for harvesting renewables from sun, wind, and waves are all visible.”35 The impacts therefore are also largely visual. The principal impacts of wind farms, Paul Gipe concurs, are “clearly visible for all to see” because there is nothing like a “containment building” shielding them from view.36 For example, the observable and unobscured nature of wind machines provides a “sharp contrast to the mysterious, largely concealed activity of nuclear reactors.” Thus, the costs—if one considers the sight of wind turbines a cost—are “not obscured, buried, or shoved off on future generations.” And this is a good thing. It is an asset of wind energy that it “cannot be hidden from view.37 Back to the NIMBY objector, then: It seems there is something dishonest about wishing not to see the physical manifestations, the visible evidence, of the energy regimes that make our lives possible. These so-called intrusions on the landscape are “the entropic tail” of our preferred way of life.”38 “Perhaps,” Good suggests, “the perceived industrial ugliness that [wind opponents] see in the project is the kind of ugliness that Narcissus would have seen in the lake if he had suffered the same ecological derangement that we

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do.”39 The story of Narcissus reminds us that “the perception of beauty is often connected to self-knowledge.” Wind farms—in all their assertive visibility—help to restore selfknowledge, making our denial about energy consumption harder to sustain. There is something beautiful about that. Good’s commentary on environmental self-knowledge, beauty, and denial shows certain affinities with Morton’s ecological thought. Morton cites various examples of failures to think the ecological thought. Among these is a case involving residents of a Scottish island who nixed an offshore wind farm because it would spoil the view. Morton defends turbines as a possible form of environmental art. As he sees it, they present a sublime aesthetic (rather than an aesthetic of the beautiful) owing to the “slightly frightening size and magnificence” of turbines.40 More to the point, he suggests that the ecological choice is itself made “visible” in the turbines’ imposing presence, creating a sense of an ethical sublime. Perhaps, he ventures, it is the very “visibility of choice” that makes wind farms unsettling to some: “visible choice, rather than secret pipes, running under an apparently undisturbed ‘landscape.’ ”41 Those who object to the sight of wind farms are in essence saying: “ ‘Leave our dreams undisturbed!’ ”42 They seek the beauty of an overly idealized Nature (with a capital N) made possible by avoiding knowledge of our entanglement with energy regimes. Morton is critiquing this sort of avoidance scenario when he advocates ecology without nature. The Scottish wind farm, he concludes, is “truly a case of the aesthetics of Nature impeding ecology.”43

WIND AND SPIRIT I previously claimed that the desire to avoid seeing our energy regimes and their impacts contributes to environmental injustices of various sorts. If so, then making the invisible visible, rather than sending it away, burying it underground, or shoving it off into the future, is one way to begin addressing these injustices. Perhaps nowhere is this connection between environmental injustice and NIMBY-ism clearer than on tribal lands. Native nations have historically played a significant part in energy production, largely through lease of coal, oil, and gas reserves. Native American activist and writer Winona LaDuke, a strong advocate for wind energy on tribal lands, notes that many tribes receive a mere “pittance” in exchange for their resources.44 Worse yet, chemical toxins are not distributed across populations who consume energy but “breathed in locally by largely Native communities.”45 Expanding development of urban and suburban areas, especially across the American West, has been made possible by energy and mineral resources extracted from tribal lands whose inhabitants are left to contend with social and environmental costs. Wind development on tribal lands is not without concerns. Careful assessments must be conducted—as indeed they should on all potential sites—to determine possible impacts on plants and animals, particularly species that have both biological and symbolic/religious significance to native communities. While wind farms, as I have noted, do not consume the land they occupy, their impacts can be problematic in other ways. Construction may damage historical sites, or disrupt religious rituals or cultural and spiritual practices.46 In Nantucket, a particularly controversial case forged an unlikely alliance between billionaire industrialist William I. Koch who owns a summer compound on Nantucket Sound (and whose family grew rich on fossil fuels) and two Massachusetts tribes, the Mashpee Wampanoag of Cape Cod, and the Aquinnah Wampanoag of Martha’s Vineyard. The proposed off-shore wind farm dubbed “Cape Wind” raised protests from the tribes

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because turbines would interfere with a sacred ritual that demands an unobstructed view of the sunrise. Construction also threatened to impact burial grounds considered sacred by the tribes.47 Often there are no simple solutions to wind energy controversies like these (isn’t that what we would expect from the ecological thought?). In some cases, rejecting a proposal for a wind farm might be the right decision, particularly when disruption of sacred beliefs, rituals, or lands is threatened.48 With regard to tribal lands, LaDuke argues that it is often the case that wind energy puts power—in more than one sense—back into the hands of Indigenous communities. Renewable energy sources like wind offer the prospect of democratized power production for native people, and for people generally. Centralized fossil fuel production that currently dominates American life “has served to centralize political power, to disconnect communities from responsibility and control over energy, and to create a vast, wasteful system.”49 Democratizing power production on wind-rich native lands can help restore peace, equity, dignity, and health, as well as a more stable source of employment, since the fuel supply is, in LaDuke’s phrase, “courtesy of the Creator.”50 Decentralized energy might also foster greater incentives to use it wisely and efficiently, for communities everywhere. Writer and climate activist Bill McKibben argues that with localized sources of wind power, “you’d understand where your juice came from, and what it really cost”—however you reckon the costs—“instead of having the current out-of-sight, out-of-mind relationship.”51 (An added bonus, McKibben and LaDuke both point out, is that wind turbines, unlike centralized power plants, are an unlikely target of terror attacks.) Wind energy offers an imperfect but promising way (there is no perfect way) to heal a ruptured wholeness—not the wished-for wholeness of idealized Nature, but a larger wholeness that wind power enhances “by moving away from the ethical liabilities of the military-petroleum complex” and its myriad social and environmental injustices.52 To sum up so far: These arguments for wind energy coalesce around the importance of making energy demand and production more apparent, and thereby acknowledging chains of interconnection we often prefer to ignore. But LaDuke’s reference to “the Creator” suggests another dimension to wind that transcends, but also encompasses, wind power’s efficiency, beauty, and social and political benefits. As I noted at the outset, drawing on Abram’s work, many cultures have discerned in air, wind, and breath a quality of sacredness and mystery. LaDuke similarly invokes the Lakota understanding of wind as an enveloping, invisible, omnipresent spirit called Taté (pronounced “taa-tay”) that gives life, motion, and thought to all things. The four winds—North, East, South, and West— structure the world of the Lakota Nation, their sense of space and time, and their ritual practices. The wind is considered wakan, a “holy or great power.”53 The Lakota, LaDuke writes, “are looking to harness Taté and play their part in moving us from combusting the finite leftovers of the Paleozoic”—i.e., fossil fuels—“into an era or renewable energy.”54 LaDuke eloquently evokes the power of wind as that which brings “remembrances of ancestors, the smell of new seasons, and a constant reminder of human insignificance in the face of the immensity of creation.”55 If, as LaDuke claims, air understood as ubiquitous, powerful wind serves as a salutary reminder of humans’ smallness vis-à-vis the immense creation, air understood as the changing climate seems to suggest human significance and power—albeit, a destructive significance. For with climate change, humans seem now to have usurped the wind’s rightful place as a transformative, ubiquitous agency; an entity endowed with the godlike capacity to change the seasons. The turn to wind as a means of combating climate change

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seems especially appropriate for a species in need of constant reminders of our dependence on the larger, living webs that wind and air make possible. We can hope that wind energy might sweep away some of our arrogant pretensions, and erode idealized notions of Nature that serve to screen us from our own destructive patterns. Taté brings reminders of the past, LaDuke writes, but it also heralds change, motion, and transformation. The hypnotically spinning blades of a wind turbine offer an appropriate symbol, a visible representation of a much-needed energy transformation. Their slightly frightening size and sublime magnificence could serve to remind us of the immensity of creation, and of our own relative insignificance. The power of a wind farm derives only indirectly from human ingenuity; ultimately, the power of wind comes to us, as LaDuke says, courtesy of the Creator. Whether or not one assents to the idea of a creator, there remains, I think, something particularly compelling—something ecologically satisfying—about (re)turning to invisible, ubiquitous wind as a way of purifying toxic air and combating climate change. Wind farms, standing as a testament to Western society’s slow awakening to the remembrance of air, may come to symbolize the awesome power of wind to heal even itself.

CHAPTER TEN

Con-spiring Together: Breathing for Justice LAUREL D. KEARNS

Take a deep breath, and another. Our lives depend on it. The trees depend on it. The air depends on it. The average human takes between 17,280 and 23,040 breaths a day, twelve to sixteen per minute resting. The giant tortoise only takes four per minute; the hummingbird, 250. No matter how frequent, simply understood, each breath involves inhaling air, converting the oxygen, and exhaling carbon dioxide. But it is not just we animals that breathe; plants breathe in their own way, taking in the air, and through photosynthesis, breaking it down so they can use the carbon dioxide, and exhaling most of the oxygen produced.1 This process is called transpiration; for animals, it is called respiration. Basically, all living creatures need each other in order for this exchange that creates our air to work; plants and animals, humans and trees, con-spiring.2 This is a new/old way to understand conspire: to breathe together, stemming from the same Latin root, spirare, to breathe, as in respire/respiration and plant transpiration. But is also means to work together. Thus we conspire, respire, inspire, breathe together, a potent symbol of reciprocity and communion, and of what living in a planetary context demands. Not only do plants and animals breathe, but the planet also breathes, building up carbon concentrations in the winter months when the leaves are off the trees, and ideally absorbing it all when they leaf out in the spring. Yet that balance has been disrupted; the planet can no longer “clear” its “lungs.”3 Climate change and air pollution bring the need for conspiring, among humans, and with the planet, into an even sharper focus. In this chapter, I propose ways that meditating on the significance of breath in various contexts may enable us to breathe together—conspiring—in ways that I hope reach across the boundaries of species, race, class, ethnicity, and nation and between religious traditions to do this important work.

RUACH: THE BREATH OF LIFE, THE AIR WE BREATHE . . . Hear in the stillness the still silent voice, The silent breathing that intertwines life; YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh / Yahhhh elonhenu Breath of life is our God, What unites all the varied 117

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forces creating all worlds into one-ness, Each breath unique, And all unified. . . . Rabbi Arthur Waskow4 In the context of my locale in theological education, I often take students outdoors to learn from the “Book of Nature,” which theologians throughout history have considered a revelation of God. Known as the “university in the forest,” the class meets under the magnificent oak trees.5 Over the years, contemplating the trees, our breathmates, those beings with roots in the ground, reaching for the sky, I have encouraged my students to think about the planet’s respiration. What if followers of the Abrahamic traditions viewed the air, the atmosphere, as God’s breath, and our con-spiring with the trees/plants as the exchange of God’s breath, an interpretation embraced in the Jewish Renewal movement through interpreters such as Rabbi Arthur Waskow (an excerpt of his liturgy starts this section)? How might that change things? This approach involves resisting the classic connection between spirare with spirit, and spirit as something disembodied, and turning to understanding ‫ חור‬or ruah/ruach, which is often translated as spiritus in Latin and spirit in English, as a way to re-materialize breath, air. This eco-hermeneutical reading of the biblical texts, starting with the book of Genesis, is inspired by Jewish understandings of ruah, and by Ted Hiebert, in “Air: The Most Sacred Thing,” in which he takes on the inherited assumptions in translation and challenges them, pointing out that in Hebrew, the same word ‫ חור‬or ruah, is used for breath, air, atmosphere, wind, and spirit. Yet, as these terms indicate, the way ‫ חור‬is translated into English has very different connotations, and it is worth understanding the implications of recognizing the different aspects of ruah. Perhaps most important, Hiebert comments, is that: Air is not regarded as a material element of the natural world, which as a created substance, is empty of divinity. On the contrary, air as both atmospheric winds and breath is described in the Hebrew Scriptures as having a divine character. It originates from God, it is God’s, it is a medium of the revelation of God, and it is an indication of God’s presence. For the biblical theologian, ‫( חור‬ruah) is sacred.6 This sacredness is clearly conveyed in the opening verses of Genesis: God’s ‫ חור‬swept over the surface of the water. The Christian King James Version (KJV ) translates ‫ חור‬as spirit: “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters,” and has become the dominant Christian understanding, resisted in translations such as The New Revised Standard Version (NSRV ), which translates it as “the wind of God.” Neither of these fully convey the strength of the term; ‫ חור‬as breath is what enlivens everything, and this is where translations of ruah as Spirit can mislead us.7 Catherine Keller, a leading process theologian, in her extended reflection on pneumatology and spirit in Face of the Deep, comments that “the pneumatic oscillation—storm, wind, breath, spirit, who is not some thing sent from a God above, but who ‘is’ whatever is divine . . .”8 Understanding ‫חור‬/ ruah as God’s breath and sacred presence reduces the separation that can result when spirit is seen as something separate from the body, for breath by definition is not separate. Hiebert and Keller both argue that because of a western body/spirit dualism read back into the text, we miss the significance of breath and spirit as the same, and often see spirit as something separate from the body. In their readings of the text, one comes to see the

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Hebrew understanding that God’s breath, and thus God, animates the whole world and every living thing. The creation story contained in Genesis 2 is a good illustration of ‫חור‬/ruah as God’s breath; the term is part of the phrase translated in English as breath as life: “God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being” (in the KJV, “the man became a living soul”).9 It is somewhat similar in the Qur’an account.10 Breath is the signifier of life. This phrase, breath of life, is found in many places, perhaps notably in the Noah account as descriptive of all the animals on the ark, or in Psalm 33:6 (“By the word of the Lord the skies were made, and by the breath of his mouth all of their creatures”), implying that ruah is what animates all creatures, what makes everyone alive. This recognizes that humans and animals are creatures (stemming from “created”) enlivened by God’s breath, erasing some of the great distance propounded by anthropocentrism. Indeed, it infuses all living creatures with the sacred presence. When ruah is translated as spirit, or even soul, and only when referring to humans, this close connectedness between all creatures is lost. As Hiebert aptly phrases it: “all living beings share the same breath, and breathe the same air.”11 In this phrasing, it is clear that translating ‫ חור‬as “spirit,” also misses the importance of the atmosphere, the air, which surrounds us, as spirit is often seen as removed from the material world. In English, however, the term “atmosphere” can also seem somehow removed, something up above or outside. Many do not grasp that what goes into the atmosphere, into the air, affects humans, affects all life. This is one of the challenges in addressing climate change, greenhouse gases are largely unseen, yet can be very harmful. Yet the Hebrew term conveys how humans and all creatures are inseparably linked to the environment, correcting the idea that the environment is something outside us. Not only does understanding air as God’s breath establish the community of human animals and other animals in theologies that have often made sharp distinctions; it also brings plants into the circle of relatedness, for they are essential to the creation of air, of atmosphere, essential to the act of breathing. The living biotic community of earth exchanges God’s breath, recreates God’s breath. For us conspiring plants, animals, humans and others, this understanding of the infusion of God’s breath expands Lynn White’s “democracy of creatures,” or Thomas Berry’s “communion of subjects.”12 Perhaps this is another way into the theological conversations that engage process thought, vibrating materialism, panentheism, or animism that challenge the dualisms so inherent in many segments of the “Abrahamic” faiths, while still recognizing difference. Jay McDaniel, another process theologian, names God/spirit as “the breathing” explaining that he wants “to stress that the actual presence of the divine center in our lives and in the universe is dynamic rather than static, flowing rather than fixed, rhythmic rather than reified. In this sense the Breathing is similar not only to fresh air, but to the process of breathing itself.”13 These practices of breathing in—in-spiring—can also be the basis of con-spiring, working together. But if the air isn’t fresh, if the atmosphere is warming, then the removal of trees and plants through deforestation, and the air pollution that clogs the lungs of so many is the defilement of God, the destruction of the breath of life, and some pay a larger price than others. This brings me to my second point on conspiring: environmental justice. But first: Take a deep breath, a deep breath of God’s breath, of plant and animal breath, of each other’s breath. Exhale it slowly. You have just engaged in an interspecies ritual of communion. Now take another one, after all our lives depend on it. Just like we recognize how essential it is to breathe, we must recognize that air is sacred, it is the essence of life.

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I CAN’T BREATHE A Small Needful Fact Is that Eric Garner worked for some time for the Parks and Rec. Horticultural Department, which means, perhaps, that with his very large hands, perhaps, in all likelihood, he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow, continue to do what such plants do, like house and feed small and necessary creatures, like being pleasant to touch and smell, like converting sunlight into food, like making it easier for us to breathe. Ross Gay14 “I can’t breathe.” These are the haunting words of Eric Garner, the breath-giving planter in Ross Gay’s poem, in the sickening video of his being choked to death by police officers in Staten Island, New York, on July 17, 2014. These dire words have become one of the symbolic statements of the Black Lives Matters movement, summing up the societal, cultural, and physicality stifling conditions of racism and violence toward blacks in the US, both overt and systemic.15 Melanie Harris, in “Ecowomanism and Ecological Reparations,” explores the links between white supremacy, violence toward people of color—particularly black and brown—and environmental violence in the form of environmental racism through centering “the voices, experiences, and perspectives of women of color . . . on environmental justice.”16 This is crucial work, because challenging the human/animal division in our religious thinking cannot forget what ecowomanists remind us—that black men and women have long been denigrated by comparing them to various animals, a negative dissolution of the human/animal divide.17 The attitude behind this dismissal shows why we need to link “social justice to Earth justice.”18 For Harris, the connection between the justice concerns of unmasking racism and the challenges to the deeply ingrained dualisms in much western religious thought reminds us of the “peculiar familiarity to the ongoing structural nature of the violence that the Earth has faced (eco-violence) and the structural forms of violence that black women have faced historically.”19 Many activists, religionists, and scholars, however, do not make the connection between the structures of inequality, racist policies and actions, and the environmental conditions that make it so that many people of color around the globe have little choice but to live in polluted areas. Thus “I can’t breathe” are also the words of lower economic status people and people of color, who live in conditions where they literally can’t breathe. To bring attention to this, the environmental justice movement redefined the environment as “where we live, work, and play.” In all too many eyes, environmentalism has been a white space about places where people don’t live, and thus, seemingly not relevant, as the excerpt from Joshua Bennett’s poem below illustrates.

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The environmental justice movement, officially formulated in the early 1990s, builds on a long history of African American, Native American and Latinx environmental knowledge and concern.20 The United Church of Christ has issued two reports on Toxic Wastes and Race, all demonstrating the direct correlation between where toxic and hazardous waste sites are located, and communities that are poor or people of color.21 Asthma rates are four times higher in urban areas such as Harlem, the Bronx, Newark and Trenton, New Jersey; in New Jersey, more people die of respiratory problems than by gun violence.22 Even rural settings are not safe from crippling air pollution; residents near CAFO s (concentrated animal feeding operations for pigs, cows and poultry) or fracking and mining blasting sites of fossil-fuel extraction are forced to keep their windows closed at all times, and report higher than average respiratory problems.23 A portrait of River Rouge, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, gives a detailed picture of how bad the air can be where poor and primarily black residents can’t breathe.24 Within a three-mile radius, there are fifty-two heavy industry sites: “22 of these either produce over 25,000 pounds or handle more than 10,000 pounds of toxic chemical waste, putting them on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory Program.”25 For years, the area has been out of compliance with the Clean Air Act with regard to sulfur dioxide, or SO 2—a known contributor to asthma—as a result of two old coal-fired power plants, located just a few miles away, which annually pump out 34,000 tons of sulfur dioxide. The one located in River Rouge is rated the ninth-worst power plant in the US in terms of impact on health outcomes. These are not the only contributors—there is a US Steel blast furnace, the Detroit wastewater treatment plant that emits VOC s (volatile organic compounds) and a cement manufacturing plant that also emits SO 2 (SOX ), as well as mercury and lead. Both US Steel and the cement manufacturing plant contribute fine particulate matter that further clogs the air.26 The air stinks, and tastes of grit, yet Marathon Oil, another SO 2 emitter, was recently granted a permit to increase its emissions. Not surprisingly, asthma rates are high in the area: According to the latest state data, more than 15 percent of Detroit’s adults have asthma, a 29 percent higher rate than the rest of Michigan. Detroiters are hospitalized for their asthma three times more frequently than other Michiganders. Being black ups the rate significantly: Black Detroiters are hospitalized for asthma at a rate more than 150 percent that of their white neighbors—and Detroit is 83 percent black.27 Paul Mohai, a veteran environmental justice researcher at the University of Michigan, compared where students attended school with air pollution levels; 82 percent of black students went to schools in areas with high pollution, compared to 44 percent of white students.28 Often, such as in the New York/New Jersey region, those air pollution rates are taken from samples at the top of school buildings; students walk to school at tailpipe level, so that diesel fumes, another asthma contributor, from trucks and buses, are under measured. Struggling with asthma and other respiratory problems has a profound effect on students. Asthma causes missed school days, and sleep deprivation, and thus often affects academic performance. The lack of oxygen to the brain can impact cognitive development, and the steroids that many children take contribute to hyperactivity and attention deficit. The latter further affects their ability to learn, but also is more likely to result in disciplinary actions that cause more missed school days. In schools such as these, it is gravely misleading to mainly blame teachers and administrations, or even school curriculum, for lower test

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scores. Students in such areas are not in comparable learning environments with their suburban or wealthier counterparts, and part of the problem lies outside the classroom, in the air outside. But it is not easy to fix quickly. A baby’s development may have already been affected in their mother’s uterus, and a genetic disposition toward asthma is now being considered an epigenetic factor. A study in Fresno, California, the state’s most polluted community as a result of diesel exhaust and agricultural pesticides, led medical doctor Kari Nadeau to conclude that the children of immigrant farm workers and people of color, often living below the poverty line, were more likely to be born with asthma.29 This was due both to the effects of air pollution breathed in by the mother, which then can delay or damage lung development, and the effects of altered genes. Air pollution can impair immune development in utero, further strengthening the chances that children will develop asthma.30 Many religious groups do make the connection. In an effort to get constituents to connect to environmental injustice, Reverend Mitch Hescox of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN ) comments: “Every child, born and yet-to-be born, deserves the promise and holy covenant of clean air and a healthy climate. Pollution from dirty vehicles and power generation is literally taking their breath away, and action is needed to help protect our kids and other susceptible populations, like the elderly.”31 The EEN have also called on evangelicals to support restrictions on mercury emissions from coal-fired plants and other forms of air pollution as part of the movement. As part of this campaign, the Evangelical Environmental Network placed TV ads, radio spots, and billboards in the districts of several “pro-life” senators, urging support for the strengthening of EPA rules.32 As both examples show, the effects of air pollution can be inscribed in our bodies and all animal bodies, as well as those of future generations. Globally, we know that conditions in US cities are good in comparison with mega-urban areas around the globe such as Mexico City, or some cities in China, etc. What does it mean for millions and millions of people to not be able to breathe clean enough air to be healthy enough to thrive? Air pollution defiles the future; it defiles God’s breath. Combating air pollution is a cause that cuts across the theological spectrum, connecting those concerned with environmental injustice, with those who see themselves more as ecological stewards. As those concerned about the direct violence, and the slow violence just described, that demonstrate that for many, black and brown lives don’t matter, we need to take a deep breath, and make the connections. Working for justice must be as essential to our religious understanding as breathing is essential to living. Take a deep breath, a deep breath . . . if it is clean air, be grateful for it. Exhale it slowly. Now take another one, recognizing that all our lives depend on it. When you take that deep breath, connect it to the dismantling of racism, sexism, economic inequality and other forms of structural injustices so that others too can breathe freely, literally and figuratively.

BAD AIR . . . So, no, my house doesn’t have solar panels on the roof my parents don’t own a hybrid automobile I never really considered myself an environmentalist until the day I realized that it is all connected the neighborhoods that host toxic waste facilities

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are almost always communities of color the chemicals in the water make our little girls look grown before they are old enough to deal with the consequences my little brother can’t run quite as fast as I could when I was his age because the smog has its fingers pressed firmly around his windpipe until the day we can exhale away this pain you will hear my voice cascading across the sky unmistakable as the sound of a crashing pesticide plane begging Mother Earth to have mercy on her children. Excerpt from UltraViolet, Joshua Bennett33 The environmental justice issues of air pollution, which disproportionately affect the young, the old, the poor, and people of color who live in the smokestack-plume communities, or near highways, factories, refineries, mining/fracking sites, or concentrated animal-feed lots, are one part of the larger picture of climate injustice, and a piece missed when the focus is on rising temperatures or sea levels, or extreme weather events, all of which are extremely significant results of a changing atmosphere. The more land that is drilled or mined, releasing greenhouse gases, the more trees cut down and land cleared, so that they don’t absorb carbon dioxide, the more dust/top soil that blows away, the more fossil fuels or forests are burned, releasing more greenhouse gases that combine to trap more heat, the more the planet’s breathing is affected. All of this contributes to climate instability as a result of the defilement of the atmosphere, and its magnitudes of injustice threaten all of us creatures—plants, humans and other than human animals, although not equally. Between the effects of air pollution, and of the multi-faceted impacts of climate change on public health through drought, excessive heat, changing disease vectors, rising water and extreme weather events, a majority of the globe are already paying the price for our greenhouse emissions.34 And yet, it is hard to get people’s attention and committed action to change. There has been a great deal of research on communicating about climate change, and what has become clear is that talking about the science, the facts, may not be the way to change the majority of people’s minds.35 Matthew Nisbet has analyzed the various frames involved in scientific debates,36 and it is clear that the climate denial movement makes use of such framing to sow doubt and confusion, following the rule book honed in promoting cigarettes and undermining related health concerns about the effects of smoking (another form of bad air, or destructive breathing).37 Of course, even recognizing that human-induced climate change is real, and that our religious traditions indicate that we should care, does not mean that individuals change their actions. Climate communication studies suggest that an effective way to stimulate actions is to emphasize the positive health benefits of breathing cleaner air.38 Research shows that even those who dismiss climate change, respond positively to the need to reduce air pollution from cars and energy production and consumption.39 Leiserwitz et al. suggest that not emphasizing climate change, but rather public health, may be the way to convince various segments on reducing emissions.40 Religious groups have embraced this approach, as most people resonate with not being able to breathe well, or having to breathe dirty air, as a clear way to bring in environmental justice issues.

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A statement signed by over 10,000 clergy and leaders in US black churches illustrates this approach: As leaders in the Black Church, we view climate change as a moral issue and one of the greatest public health challenges of our time, particularly for black and other marginalized communities. Breathing dirty, carbon-polluted air, that causes climate change contributes to thousands of asthma attacks, hospital visits, and premature deaths every year. Black and lower income communities are often hit the hardest by climate change in the United States.41 A recent resolution of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME ) denomination, one of the largest and oldest historically black churches, also makes a similar observation: “We can move away from the dirty fuels that make us sick and shift toward safe, clean energy like wind and solar that help make every breath our neighbors and families take a healthy one.”42 It was also part of the approach of the Evangelical Climate Initiative’s “What would Jesus Drive?” campaign regarding ground transportation emissions that emphasized the biblical commandment to love your neighbor (Mark 12:31: “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”) The evangelical challenge is: How can one care for your neighbor if the car you drive and the electricity you use contributes to asthma, to respiratory problems, to your neighbor’s ill health, to the deterioration of the planet? This approach of connecting health with climate concern may be part of the explanation of the results, surprising to some, of a 2014 survey by the Public Religious Research Institute that pointed out that Hispanic Catholics and black Protestants are the religious groups most concerned about climate change (and most likely to have heard something from the pulpit), joined by Jews and “non-Christian others,” all of whom are more concerned than the general American public, and more concerned that white Christians of any group.43 This research provides a corrective to a frequent characterization that people of faith in the US are unconcerned. Rather, it is that the majority of white Christians are pretty unconcerned. Catholics as a whole are more concerned than Protestants, but taking race/ethnicity into account indicates that some of the Protestant/Catholic difference may be the high concern among Latino Catholics. What is the difference? Simply put, they can imagine how it will harm people like themselves; they have a moral imagination. Among the religious groups surveyed, white evangelicals are the least concerned. Yet, in my analysis of this data, the PRRI survey also challenges the frequent assumption (the sociological data on this has long been mixed) that certain conservative Christian beliefs and attitudes, whether it be about salvation, the end times, personal religiosity, God’s omnipotence, tensions between religion and science, and biblical literalism, are correlated with either skepticism or dismissal of climate change.44 This is the assumption often made when analyzing the low levels of environmental concern among evangelicals and, even more so, fundamentalists. On all of these measures in the PRRI study, white evangelicals, black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics look quite a bit alike, yet their level of concern over climate change is quite opposite. What is behind these substantial differences? The data set shows that political affiliation, having heard something from the pulpit, geographical locale, and concern over how it will “affect people like you” and the poor in developing countries positively correlate with the religious groups with the highest level of concern. In other words, their own experience, and empathy, unites a religious concern for justice and love for your neighbor, the stranger, and the “least of these” into recognizing the seriousness of climate change revealing a different

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understanding of religiosity and reading the bible. Realizing that air, and air pollution, recognizes no boundaries created by wealth or status or nationality or religion or human/ animal, can expand our notion of who is our neighbor, and who is affected. For example, all of New Jersey is out of compliance with the Clean Air Act standards, and that includes some of the wealthiest and poorest towns in the nation. The view of the planet from space reminds us that no human socially constructed boundaries divide the atmosphere, so that what is purchased in the US connects us to the air pollution where our clothes, our food, our energy sources, our technologies are produced and the human and ecological communities that are degraded in the process. Take a deep breath, a deep breath of air. Exhale it slowly. Think of all the ways that planetary systems are interconnected. Air pollution and climate change respect no political boundaries. Just as a butterfly’s wings can have an effect, that breath of air is about far more than filling your lungs. It connects you to everything.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH . . . Though I float miles above, I am a part of that Life, Tied to her through her breath Which I take with me In a tank on my back I am afloat in the infinite sea My heart races There is no up or down . . . But there is worship There is the bursting of my heart There is the cry from the most profound depths: See where you live, Humanity! See your own Self! This tiny, miraculous island of life Adrift in the vast cosmos We are so alone, so fragile. There is nothing more glorious So said the Saint: “Because the divine could not image itself forth in any one being, it created the great diversity of things so that what was lacking in one would be supplied by the others and the whole universe together would participate in and manifest the divine more than any single being.” And the writer of Hindu texts: “I am Beauty among beautiful things.”

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For all eternity there is but one Earth. I will tell them, I will make them understand . . . Plunging back into you in a ball of fire, I will not forget your face, I will remember you, Jewel of the Universe, Most Holy Ground, Home. From Epiphany, Angela Manno45 The religious, spiritual insight of the interconnectedness of the world and gratitude for the earth, so beautifully communicated in Manno’s poem from the perspective of an astronaut, is common across religious traditions. Perhaps the most vibrant area of interfaith work is on environmental issues, particularly climate change, based on this common recognition. But proclaiming that all religious traditions value the earth is not enough; we need to understand what works in communicating so that we can work together, and we need to change practices. Kari Marie Norgaard’s Living in Denial lists the levels of denial of climate change, from flat out literal denial that it isn’t happening, to interpretive denial, or arguing about technicalities, such as pointing out the problems with proposed solutions, to implicatory denial, or socially constructed ways to minimize the acknowledgment of climate change and the demands then for action.46 This socially organized denial is a way of collectively distancing ourselves from the associated emotions of fear, helplessness and guilt as a way to manage those emotions, and religious traditions often play a part. Norgaard surveyed her students—most in the age cohort that we know is the most concerned, and who are, in many ways, the most angry—about how they manage such troubling emotions of fear and helplessness, and the resultant guilt for not doing enough when they run away from those emotions. They reported that people just don’t talk about climate change much or shun those who do, and so the students often tune out or change the topic. These mechanisms of emotion management are not just true of millennials. We all recognize that there can be a benefit of emotional control aimed at avoiding conflict or escalating argument, but it can also shut out those with passion on the topic. This too seems to be changing with the 2016 US election, unfortunately, to where the levels of anger and rudeness are at times startling, as is the denial of evidence of global warming or the shutting down of scientists and the stifling of scientific reports.47 So how do we overcome the denial, the despair, the feeling of helplessness? Recognizing the potential for interfaith work, a recent introductory study looked at what language and narratives work best for different religious groups. The language of justice concerning who is affected by interlocking systems of privilege and neglect, as explored above, is prevalent in Jewish and Christian climate change activism, but does not necessarily work as well across religious groups. What language works is worth noting. The analysis was based on six focus groups in five faith traditions—Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism, Islam (male and female Muslims met separately)—as well as expert interviews. These were then used to formulate an online survey testing specific language frames.48 The study recognizes that religious beliefs and concepts do not easily translate from one context to another; they are embedded in cultures, and enacted in different ways, although practices such as blessings and various breathing meditations are common ground. Religions are always lived and enculturated, and cannot, should not, be talked about just as traditions of beliefs and doctrines divorced from culture and action.

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Doing so can lead to an emphasis on what are the best or correct ideas, but the “correct” beliefs do not necessarily lead to the same actions, or indeed, to any action.49 Hence, the recent collection of religious statements on climate change, including Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, try to strike a balance between challenging and/or reclaiming religious worldviews, with prescribing the needed actions. Almost all religious traditions are grateful for the earth, for the food, air, and water that sustains us. This is often expressed in the practice of saying a blessing, or in Christian parlance, grace. Emphasizing “Earth care—earth as a precious gift” is one of the approaches recommended in a recent study of communicating about climate change across religious traditions. For example, the International Islamic Declaration quotes the Qur’an (55: 10): “He laid out the earth for all living creatures.”50 The Indigenous Elders and Medicine Peoples statement to the United Nations declares: “We recognize our umbilical connection to Mother Earth and understand that she is the source of life, not a resource to be exploited.”51 Both, in very different ways, point out that the earth cannot be owned, nor appropriated for the benefit of humans only. The Hindu Declaration on Climate Change addresses this: “We must consider the effects of our actions not just on ourselves and those humans around us, but also on all beings. We have a dharmic duty for each of us to do our part in ensuring that we have a functioning, abundant, and bountiful planet.”52 The direction of such gratitude can lead to a recognition of overarching importance: what we all have in common is that there is just one Earth and that everything is connected. The Hindu Declaration on Climate Change quotes the S´r¯ı mad Bh¯agavatam (11.2.41): “Ether, air, fire, water, earth, planets, all creatures, directions, trees and plants, rivers and seas, they are all organs of God’s body.”53 This resonates with the work of the Christian eco-feminist theologian Sallie McFague and her many volumes on the implications of thinking of the earth as God’s Body. The Buddhist Statement, also issued in advance of the Paris meeting, declares: “Our concern is founded on the Buddha’s realization of dependent co-arising, which interconnects all things in the universe.” The Buddhist statement points to the centrality of this interdependence, noting “that we are violating the first precept—‘do not harm living beings’—on the largest possible scale.” The Islamic Declaration reminds readers of many verses in the Qu’ran that echo this connectedness, such as Qur’an 6:38: “There is no animal on the earth, nor any bird that wings its flight, but is a community like you.” So, whether we understand the earth as community, or God’s body, or mother, or infused by the presence of the sacred or divine, the breath of life, the resulting ethic should be one of restraint and respect. Often, however, when groups want people to change their actions, they use language designed to show how bad such actions are, so that those actions can be curtailed, restrained. The study found, however, that the language of sin, karma, blame, punishment, and disobedience doesn’t always work; in other words, people are often more motivated by positive messages than by guilt, even though using such language is an attempt to come to terms with one’s impact. Recognition of the widespread and severe impacts of climate change can easily lead to despair and overwhelming grief. A recent widely read and debated New York magazine article was titled “The Uninhabitable Earth—Too Hot for Humans.”54 Such headlines can take one’s breath away in their sheer starkness. In the same week that people around the globe celebrated the ratification of the international climate accord agreed to in December 2015 in Paris, the result of over twenty-four years of hard work, scientists confirmed that no monthly greenhouse gas (GHG ) average went below 400 ppm in the past year, well past the upper limit of 350ppm. Joanna Macy,

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stemming from her work on despair in relation to the threat of nuclear annihilation, has continued her work of “coming back to life” in relation to another global threat of destruction, anthropogenic climate change.55 My students, my friends and colleagues, my children and relatives, all express their fear and despair, their sense of powerlessness, their frustration, their apathy, their anger at these headlines. I join them. I want to pause and acknowledge this difficult space for us as teachers, as students, as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, religious and political leaders, citizens of the planet. If anything should lead to an anxiety attack, it is the hot future of the planet, now even more imperiled with the US backing out of the Paris Climate Accord under the Donald Trump administration. Such guilt and grief can be paralyzing; people often are not motivated to act from despair. Many religious traditions and rituals offer ways to lament, and ways to hope or act, even when things seem bad. The practices of deep breathing found in so many religious traditions, for example, Hindu yogic, Muslim Sufi, Buddhist Zen, Jewish Kabbalah, contemplative Christian, and indigenous practices of attunement to breath as a form of meditation and/or prayer, are one such response. Scientific research, through measures of stress reduction and sense of well-being, continues to confirm the deep wisdom of these varying religious practices of deep breathing and meditation.56 Returning to our “breathmates,” the trees, Wohlleben, in The Hidden Life of Trees, reports on the findings of a Korean study that when the older women who were being studied “were walking in the forest, their blood pressure, their lung capacity and the elasticity of their blood arteries improved.” No such improvements were noted on excursions into town.57 Perhaps this is why the idea of “forest bathing” has caught people’s attention, or cities such as Milan, Lausanne and Nanking are encouraging buildings with vertical forests. Certainly, Wohlleben comments, “forest air is the healthiest air” in part because of all that trees filter out of the air, in addition to the oxygen they emit. Once more we are reminded of our dependence on the vegetal world. These practices of breathing in deeply, in-spiring, can also be the basis for deeply con-spiring, working together for our common future. Throughout this chapter, I have tried to offer some new ways to think about the many aspects of climate change, by thinking about air and breath, whether it is the plant-animal respiration exchange, rereading biblical texts through a better understanding of ‫חור‬, acknowledging the environmental racism and injustice of air pollution, connecting health impacts to the gases that contribute to global warming as a way to expand societal recognition and support, recognizing the importance of working together in interfaith coalitions, or dealing with despair through breathing or meditation. In so doing, I have suggested that one of our most automatic actions—breathing—can be a source of inspiration, motivation and moral imagination, and a way to challenge religious and secular worldviews that would have us forget our deep interconnectedness, our deep dependency on the planet. In the 1982 Pulitzer Prize novel The Color Purple, the author Alice Walker, now viewed as a founder of ecowomanism, has the feisty, independent Shug comment: “My first step away from the old white man [a dominant image of God] was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people.”58 In so doing, Shug becomes aware of the divine all around, by starting with the trees, and with air, and by suggesting that a new religious imagination is needed. Rabbi Waskow ends “The Sh/ma, A Jewish Invocation of the Unity” on a similar note of connectedness: “Honor the web that all of us weave—Breathe together the Breath of all Life.”59 So let us con-spire together, interbreathe in all our many forms, places, and

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faiths in order to take the breath of the divine, the atmosphere of life, the planetary basis of our lives, or however it is so named, more seriously. Take a deep breath, a deep breath of air. Exhale it slowly. Now take another one, after all, our lives depend on it. Just like we do not willingly stop breathing, we are not going to give up, we refuse to be numb, to collapse into despair. That will get us nowhere. Each breath contains the elements of life, and now of our destruction. Do not let the latter take your breath away.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Recovering/Uncovering Animality PAUL WALDAU

A new perspective impacting the ancient and still ever-so-vital intersection of religious traditions and the natural world is the reemergence and deepening of perhaps the oldest of human perspectives on both ourselves and the world—we are animals now, we have always been one kind of animal among many others, and we will always be animals. Noticing and taking seriously our own animality is more than a formative influence in how we encounter our shared Earth—it is the very foundation of those encounters. This acknowledgment of humanity’s past, present, and future fuels a creative fire stirring countless human individuals to explore the overwhelming mysteries we call “nature” and those complexes of caring, believing, and reacting that we name “religion.” Because reaffirmation of our animality stands to shape in decisive ways how we encounter and share earth, air, and water, such a re-affirmation will inevitably impact even the most humancentered forms of religion. This is so because dis-covering and re-covering our multifaceted human animality leads to a crucial un-covering of those cultural and religious narratives that have prevented modern humans from noticing and taking seriously salient features of our day-to-day life as Earth creatures. At stake is a full, health-producing embrace of the fact that each human lives unavoidably in a nested series of more-than-human communities. Embracing this most basic of human realities has the prospect of infusing each of us with a full appreciation of life, for thereby we can come home to the realization that our fellow living creatures co-inhabit every part of the Earth on which we live, populate the air we breathe and exhale, and share with us a common origin in the vital waters that nourish the land and cover three-quarters of our shared Earth home. Earth, air, water, and the living fire of shared animality are our vital heritage as each stirs within us and without us, too.

A MODERN RE-EMERGENCE The return of a concern to engage honestly the plain truth of humans’ animality is what drives a forthright question used by a pre-eminent primatologist as the title of a 2016 book—Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?1 This question is begged by multiple human claims. It follows, for example, from our species’ exaggerated claims of superiority. Protagoras’ well-known assertion that “Of all things the measure is Man”2 and the Abrahamic traditions’ claim that humankind is the created world’s raison d’être suggest that “we” can easily understand “them,” that is, less exalted creatures. 133

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Importantly, though, the same question is also begged by altogether humbler claims made by our species—it follows from, for example, Aldo Leopold’s 1949 exhortation that the human community should alter its self-evaluation “from conqueror of the landcommunity to a plain member and citizen of it.”3 Most industrialized human communities have ignored such advice in favor of self-serving claims to moral self-righteousness as our allegedly “higher civilizations” harmed their own natural environments and at the same time colonized, pillaged, and enslaved less “developed” indigenous human communities in newly conquered lands. Leopold’s assertion that humans should aspire to act as “plain members and citizens” of a shared Earth amounted to an exhortation to adjust our selfevaluation in ways that nurture our ability to co-exist with, even actively protect, all animals, human and nonhuman alike. Such a change would be radical in the original sense of that term, namely, “going to the root” (radix is Latin for “root”)—alternatively, such a claim can be a flame that sheds light on the many inherited claims that humans are separate from the rest of the Earth. Such flames have been lit all around the world today in many human precincts, only a fraction of which can be spotlighted here.

INTO THE REALM OF OTHER ANIMALS—COMPANION ANIMALS ON FIRE Most humans know little, if anything at all, of the vast realm of nonhuman life on Earth. This is true for many reasons, not the least of which is that there are tens of millions of species in this realm (this domain thus being a great deal vaster than the admittedly diverse realm of human life, of which most contemporary humans are also astonishingly uninformed). One subdomain of the nonhuman realm is, however, today much better known than in previous centuries—this is the group commonly designated by humans as “companion animals” (humans are, of course, equally “companion animals” for the nonhumans we place in this category, but our linguistic habits remain inattentive to this fact). Domesticated dogs, cats, horses, and dozens of more “exotic” animals today might find themselves categorized as “companion animals.” But many members of even the most familiar “domesticated” species live beyond human control and are not claimed by any humans as their property—such animals are often referred to as “feral” animals. Owned dogs, cats, and horses are, then, only a fraction of these familiar species. Of the roughly one billion dogs alive today, only about one quarter fit into the common paradigm of an owned animal living with a human family.4 The dog–human relationship is ancient, although precisely how ancient is a continuing subject of debate—many scientists suggest that the current consensus is that dogs were domesticated (or as many researchers now observe, dogs and humans co-domesticated each other) sometime between 32,000 and 18,800 years ago.5 Companion animals are interesting for many other reasons as well. In some industrialized countries, it has been the case since the 1990s that the number of households with companion animals has outnumbered the households with children.6 A related phenomenon is that in some legal systems around the world, companion animals that are owned have received innovative legal protections.7 Yet the fact that un-owned companion animals (statistically, the majority of dogs and cats alive today) only rarely receive such innovative protections (overwhelmingly because of heroic efforts by volunteer animal

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protectionists) reveals that legal protections for companion animals still are dominated by unmistakable vestiges of human-centeredness. The pattern of actual legal protections reveals, then, that even though some human communities now utilize legal systems to protect favored nonhumans, human-centered values overwhelmingly remain the norm. The upshot is that the long history of basic harms done by human societies to all other nonhuman animals remains largely unchanged. The work of scientists and historians continues to expand the already well-developed corpus of knowledge about the complexities of humans’ long-standing relationship with companion animals. Historians have for decades provided perspectives on the mixed motives and deep symbolic significance of “pet-keeping.”8 Social scientists and media have for decades regularly reported on the diverse attitudes and practices involving companion animals in dozens of societies worldwide.9 Specialists in the human–nonhuman bond now provide best-selling accounts that offer insights into the unique features of the most familiar companion animals.10 Cognitive science research on dogs in particular is, relatedly, increasing exponentially. As suggested in 2013, “We have learned more about how dogs think in the past decade than we have in the previous century.”11 What is at stake is, to be sure, more than a better grasp of companion animals. Thinking about dog genius will not only help us enrich their lives but also broaden how we think about human intelligence. Many of the same concepts used to study dog intelligence are being applied to humans. Perhaps the greatest gift our dogs will give us is a better understanding of ourselves.12 The combination of science-based research with public policy work pursued today by animal protectionists (whether companion animal owners or nonprofit organizations) has the prospect of increasing public awareness about the actual realities and abilities of certain nonhuman animals. This in turn exposes the public, the scientific establishment, educational institutions, and policy-makers to the possibility of implementing changes that could benefit not only non-owned companion animals but also those other categories of nonhuman animals that suffer the most harmful practices permitted by existing public policy. Because protective attitudes toward companion animals, while admittedly co-existing today with certain abuses (such as convenience euthanasia13), are presently sustained by the daily efforts of, literally, tens of millions of humans, it is natural to wonder if such attitudes will lead to changes that might benefit not only non-owned members of the companion animal group, but also wildlife, food animals, and nonhuman animals used in research and entertainment. In addition, there may be much more development of humane education for a wider group of young humans, and thereby all of us may enjoy more informed social ethics and religious values in on-the-ground communities as they work locally to be responsible citizens. Such developments have the potential to ignite a commitment to confront the moral contradictions inherent in humans’ mistreatment of so many nonhuman animals. At stake, then, are humans taking full responsibility for disturbing falsehoods, self-serving evasions and the double standards long used by human societies to justify subjugation of the morethan-human world and other-than-human life forms.

COMPANIONS MADE FOR EACH OTHER? In her 2009 book Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond,14 Meg Olmert offered constructive insights into humans’ own animality as she examined how human development took a fascinating turn in our ancient past. Olmert’s framing builds

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an account of our past which clearly identifies us as eminently one animal among others in a multispecies world. Thousands and thousands of years ago, our ancestors dreamed of unions with animals that would make them stronger, braver, faster, and wiser. In their dreams they surrendered their humanity and took on the shape and power of wild beasts. It was these mergers with the animal form and spirit that humans believed to be their ultimate achievement. They knew it was only with the help of animals that they could navigate this life and cross over into the next.15 Although Olmert adds immediately that for our earliest ancient forebears, “The dream of animals as protectors and allies was just . . . a dream. Waking relationships with animals were more of a nightmare,”16 she then says of more recent forbears and us, “But the dream did come true. This book is about the science behind that miracle—the miraculous but decidedly natural story of how and why animals and humans can stop being enemies and even fall in love.”17 This account goes a long way in revealing why the companion animal relationship, which in its best features is often referred to in contemporary literature as “the human–animal bond,” receives so much attention. “Our” preoccupation with “them” takes place for what can only be called “very animal reasons.” Our abilities to care about and protect others are, eminently, abilities developed by a wide range of mammals, birds, fish, and other living beings. Olmert’s analysis that humans built relationships by learning from and partnering with other animals, models something truly remarkable about humans’ ability to become “plain members and citizens” of a far-more-than-human world. To be sure, Olmert’s account does not purport to be a definitive account of all of humans’ relationship possibilities with any and all nonhuman animals—we still struggle with many living organisms that can threaten us, make us sick, and even kill us if we do not protect ourselves and our loved ones (including the nonhumans whom we choose to protect). Olmert’s account does, however, affirm unequivocally a number of key benefits and insights that flow from recognizing humans as gifted animals working with other, differently gifted nonhuman animals. In this regard, Olmert reveals that in the past, some humans had already achieved lives that exhibited a pattern that was far more communal than it was “exceptionalist” (an influential and prevalent notion today asserting that humans alone are morally significant—more on this claim below). While Olmert at times describes this process in lyrical terms, as in her opening lines quoted above when talking of our ancestors “dreaming of unions,” the foundation on which her claims stand is a combination of scientific observation, historical reflection, and assessment of current lifestyles that have led significant numbers of people to speak confidently of certain nonhuman animals as “family members.” While such an attribution is not meant in a strictly biological sense, it is fully accurate as an ethical affirmation. The benefits of this connection are many—Olmert contends that our human ancestors’ brains developed during thousands of years because our type of animal worked to observe, then ultimately bond with, certain of our neighbor animals. The biological bases of her claims touch on multiple topics, such as her references to mirror neurons, which humans have in common with many other mammals, that likely were involved as our human ancestors began to pattern themselves after other mammals. As centuries and eventually millennia passed, humans continued to watch and learn patterns of life that improved humans’ self-care, made more efficient our migrations when needed, helped us create a safer world for our lives in local communities that included other animals, and honed our

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awareness of advanced hunting techniques by other animals that could be emulated by human individuals and groups. Olmert focuses on wolves in particular, arguing that in some manner members of this social mammal group worked in concert with their neighboring humans in ways that, over time, promoted a modus vivendi. The key players on both sides were likely individuals of each species who experienced high levels of a powerful hormone that acts, in technical terms, as a “neurotransmitter” in many vertebrates’ brains. The biology and chemistry are extraordinarily complex, involving many other key substances such as vasopressin, and contemporary scientists now know that oxytocin affects many animal functions and thereby plays a special and powerful role in a variety of bonding situations, such as that of mammalian mothers to their own offspring or that which takes place in certain pair bonding. The intraanimality aspects of these complex, oxytocin-related features is evident in the fact that new mothers are attentive to their own baby, of course, but also to other babies, including those of other species. The connection of humans’ animality to that of other vertebrates could hardly be more apparent than these shared underlying biochemical realities that prompt connections between members of different species. Further, these connections reveal that sharing is an animal reality that goes beyond species membership to other kinds of beings that have comparable anatomy and shared chemistry and brain architecture. As our human ancestors’ brains increased in size, our ancestors began other cognitive work involving nonhuman animals—“In all of art since the cave paintings, it is probable that animals are represented more often than any other class of things in nature.”18 Relatedly, the origins of music are integrally tied to human fascination with nonhuman animals. As with dance, the perceived realities of other animals’ lives greatly impacted early music. Animal imitation was a highly practiced art through both voice and instrument, and early musical instruments were made from animal parts and often carved into animal shapes.19

CHALLENGING THE SEPARATION NARRATIVE Despite humans’ early fascination with and imitation of other animals, and despite the connection described by Olmert and the prevalence of nonhuman animal themes in early humans’ arts and narratives, separation has long been a dominant claim. In a very real way, this separation narrative was anchored in the element described by Olmert’s words “waking relationships with animals were more of a nightmare. . . .” An example of a separation narrative from the first century of the Common Era is the distorting overstatement by Philo of Alexandria of a continuous war between, on the one hand, humans and, on the other hand, other animals “whose hatred is directed . . . towards . . . mankind as a whole and endures . . . without bound and limit of time.”20 Given the human species’ evident fascination in ancient times and again in modern times with our fellow animals, there is no longer a need to be dominated by a separation/ enemies narrative. It is noteworthy that many contemporary animal protection efforts, and even Olmert’s imaginative framing of issues, retain relics of the dominant language used about human animals’ relationship to nonhuman animals. For example, Olmert talks of “mergers with the animal form,” when in fact humans are now and have always been as fully “an animal form” as have wolves, or elephants, or fish. Humans’ dreams were, in Olmert’s account, of other animal forms which were imagined as more powerful than the human animal form, just as ancient humans perhaps imagined other animals to be more spiritual than those ancient humans felt themselves to be.21 These intuitions had practical

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value and supported potential connections precisely because all the living beings involved (that is, both the humans and nonhumans) were animals with a partial overlap in abilities and awareness. While many ancient humans were sufficiently in touch with our own animal capabilities for nurturing fine-tuned talents to notice other animals and to take them seriously, it is pertinent that today contemporary humans often lack these abilities but yet again look to expanding our native sensibilities along these lines. Discussion of this matter is helped immensely if one speaks in science-based terms rather than the anti-science themes usually associated with use of the word “animal” to mean “all other living beings, but not humans.” Recognition of humans as animals, of course, fosters awareness of a key feature of the etymology of “animal”—anima is Latin for “breath”, and animalis means “having breath.” In light of the fact that these terms came also to mean “spirit” and “life,” humans can illuminate, especially through an embrace of other lives and other spirits, that human life lived fully in terms of our own animality can become a constructive, communal and ethical force. Ethics is now, and has always been, clearly an eminently animal ability, just as belonging to a community is fully natural and “animal” as well.

OUT OF THE FIRE AND INTO THE FRYING PAN— DOMESTICATED FOOD ANIMALS Rivaling the power that flows from recognition of humans’ shared animality is the intentional eclipsing of this reality that is the essence of modern food production. One prominent voice observed, “What is perhaps most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections.” Discussing the transformation of living chickens to the commercial product known as the Chicken McNugget®, the same author observes that buying this consumer product requires the purchaser to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly . . . in terms of the animal’s pain. . . . But forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat.22 Such a view contends with major claims about the human species, such as the opening line of Aristotle’s profoundly influential Metaphysics that “All men by nature desire to know.”23 For modern consumers, such a claim is far more ideology than truth given that careful consideration of how humans have oppressed each other, and of late have been handling their impacts on nonhuman animal individuals and communities, suggests that Aristotle’s claim is an extraordinary overstatement. At the level of ordinary citizens, many consumers turn away from harsh production realities by declaring in un-Aristotelian fashion, “I don’t want to know.” At the level of political, religious, scientific, education, or business leaders, uncaring attitudes about matters beyond the species line are rampant as well.

HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM—“USING THEM AS WE SEE FIT” Such self-inflicted ignorance and the justification of profound but avoidable, clearly unnecessary harms on nonhuman animals are regular features in modern societies. The

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ground on which defenders of such harms stand is “the claim that humans are, merely by virtue of their species membership, so qualitatively different from any and all other forms of life that humans rightfully enjoy privileges over all of the Earth’s other life forms.”24 This exceptionalist claim’s corollary that it is morally justifiable to draw a sharp contrast between human life and nonhuman life is premised upon two companion ideas—first, “human life is regarded as sacred, or at least as having a special importance” such that therefore “the central concern of our morality must be the protection and care of human beings.”25 Nonhuman lives, then, do not deserve the important moral protections afforded human lives, and the upshot is that nonhuman lives thus have no moral standing at all whenever human privilege is at stake. Privileges for humans thus fall like ripe apples from the tree of morality—“Therefore, we may use them as we see fit.”26 The exclusion of nonhuman animals from moral protections is a central feature of modern economies because modern policymakers, educators, and even religious community leaders, with little or no reflection, hold domination over any and all nonhuman animals to be the unassailable prerogative of humans and even the order of nature.27 Such claims are as unreflective as they are virulent and harmful— they are an exclusionary ideology that goes far beyond simple human-centeredness. In fact, challenging human exceptionalism in no way requires condemning healthy forms of human-centeredness, for as is evident in everyday life, humans can, with great generosity, focus on our own species in healthy and productive ways even as we respect and coexist with nonhuman animals. There are, however, forms of human-centeredness that without question destroy the interests and lives of nonhuman individuals and their communities on the basis of an exceptionalist claim that all humans, but only humans, deserve fundamental protections of a moral or legal nature. Human exceptionalism of this ilk is, ironically, also responsible for the destruction of many human individuals’ and human cultures’ relationship with the more-than-human world. Especially problematic are those extremely virulent forms of human-centeredness that create obvious harms to nonhuman individuals and communities such as the factory farming example included below. There are, tragically, additional hidden effects from human exceptionalism because this exclusivist attitude so characteristically promotes a virulent mix of self-inflicted ignorance and many different failures to notice or care about the harms we create for nonhuman animals. Consider the masking of problems implied by a summary of current attitudes penned by a prominent American political commentator who was the senior speechwriter of President George W. Bush. Matthew Scully observed at the beginning of a bestselling 2002 book, “no age has ever inflicted upon animals such massive punishments with such complete disregard, as witness scenes to be found on any given day at any modern industrial farm.”28 Factory farming is a hellish kind of fire, such that several prominent Jewish and non-Jewish voices have taken the controversial step of comparing such practices to the Nazi murder of millions which today serves as a paradigmatic example of human-on-human oppression.29 Contemporary industrialized uses of living beings as mere resources sits at the hellish center of the concentric rings formed by the astonishingly diverse harms and insults to the more-than-human world perpetrated by humans who practice human exceptionalism. Also at this hellish center one finds that arrogance and insensitivity are an inevitable by-product of human exceptionalism as it dominates modern humans’ identity. Such an exclusivist view is the cornerstone of public policy and political rhetoric in most industrialized countries, just as it is the linchpin of modern legal systems and raison d’être of the narrow focus of much institutionalized education on humans

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alone. The consequence has been that, based on centuries of tradition, modern institutions continue to perpetuate a lack of awareness of the more-than-human world, and thereby many humans have come to expect, and thus demand, complete power over nonhuman animals as a corollary of being human.

REIMAGINING BIOLOGY Many sciences using undreamed of technological advances are experiencing a golden age currently, the upshot of which is that interested individuals can see much further into the realities surrounding us and within each of us than could any human in the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Olmert’s use of the biochemical overlaps in vertebrate lives is a fine example of the power of new discoveries, but consider as well how other fields have opened up perspectives that rival the revolution in humans’ awareness of our similarities to other animals. Astronomy has helped us see unimagined worlds—as recently as 1923, it was the overwhelming consensus in modern societies that the galaxy in which we are located (and that which our human societies have universally noted in the night sky and variously called “the milky way,” “way of birds,” “the way of the white elephant” and much more) was the entire universe. But in that year the nearby Andromeda galaxy was identified as a separate galaxy—today, scientists estimate that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, each of which has hundreds of billions of stars.30 The microscopic world has “expanded,” so to speak, just as exponentially. It is now suspected that the number of microorganism species is in the trillions, which dwarfs the estimated 10 million species of “macro” animals visible to the unaided human eye (of which fewer than 5,000 are mammal species, fewer than 10,000 are bird species, and another 7,600+ are amphibian species and 10,000+ more are reptile species). So biology, too, is experiencing a golden age of discovery. This is particularly relevant to human lives because, for the reasons Olmert suggests and many more, humans have multiple reasons to be fascinated with other animals. As members of one species sharing evolutionary descent with hundreds of other eminently social primate species, each human is heir to primates’ special abilities in communication, intelligence, learning by imitation, and general conceptual abilities. As mammals, too, humans’ biological realities naturally blossom into a series of special abilities like familial loyalty and caring. We mobilize these intellectual and emotional abilities inherited from primates and mammals whenever we connect with other mammals such as dogs, cats, and horses. Beyond these deep heritages, there is yet another reason biology intrigues us. Biological realities are inherently complex, for they include the complexities of the merely physical world and more. . . . living beings have been affected for . . . billions of years by historical processes. . . . The results of those processes are systems different in kind from any nonliving systems and almost incomparably more complicated. They are not for that reason necessarily any less material or less physical in nature. The point is that all known material processes and explanatory principles apply to organisms, while only a limited number of them apply to nonliving systems. . . .31 Not only are the material processes analyzed by physics and chemistry evident in biological phenomena, but these material processes have undergone historical development (evolution) that has produced processes that are qualitatively more complex than the

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physical realities studied by physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, or mathematics. Nonhuman animals, then, incite particular fascination for any curious being, for our own animal realities and those of other animals feature complexities that go beyond the many complexities we notice in the parts of our world that are inanimate. Biological phenomena, then, have a particularly rich and inviting diversity and complexity.32 In The Biology of Wonder, Andreas Weber stirs a creative fire that flames up as we recover our multifaceted human animality and use our shared animality to discover all that we and other animals are. Weber marshals great detail as he argues that humans and their fellow living beings must be recognized as truly creative, evolutionary forces whose lives and significance do not—and cannot—exist apart from nature. Weber’s work illuminates why human experience must be seen as but one example of how all living beings are interconnected and part of Earth’s complex, dynamic relationships. The upshot is a foundation for an ecological ethos. In this encompassing vision, Weber helps one see why wild animals are such an intriguing experience for human animals. Further, such an affirmation helps us understand why humans are reimagining, and thereby re-stoking the fires that drive, our sciences, our ethics, and our holistic senses that nurture a sense of communion with not only the natural world but also the multifaceted spiritual dimensions so evident when one looks at humans as a collective over time and place. Burning into the human imagination such a multispecies appreciation of human and nonhuman animals alike opens up greatly an important human front as well, for it increases greatly reasons for taking the views and lifeways of indigenous peoples seriously as a full form of humanity to be celebrated. In all this, there is the bracing realization that long before human exceptionalism held sway, human cultures were attuned to the natural world in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate.

GOING WILD Although many contemporary members of our species today pass along the view that the Earth was designed for humans or that today the Earth is rightly dominated by humans as the most intelligent and moral species, it is clear that both secular and religious realms can contribute to our species’ understanding of other animals. One secular vision that has ignited an enriched, holistic approach to humans as integral parts of the larger biological community is found in a 2014 book entitled Go Wild.33 While the title makes obvious the book’s potential connection to nature, its subtitle signals the human health and psychological dimensions of what is at issue—Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization. But there is much more in this book than human-centeredness. Its authors—John Ratey, a medical doctor, and Richard Manning, an environmental journalist—discuss the importance of eating a natural diet and honoring the natural rhythms of the human body promoted by sleep, deep awareness, and biophilia. Their wide-ranging book touches as well on how the architecture of the human brain and the biochemistry of the human body overlap fundamentally with the architecture and biochemistry of many of our animal cousins.34 Of the greatest relevance to the question of humans’ relationship to other animals, Ratey and Manning cite a proverb stating a profound insight available in a great variety of indigenous cultures—“every animal knows way more than you do.”35 The source for this intriguing claim is Richard Nelson’s respected 1983 work Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest,36 which is cited by Ratey and Manning in the

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moving chapter on the importance of meditation for human health. These authors connect the attentiveness of a meditation tradition to the awareness patterns of those who have been raised in a healthy small-scale society—benefits flow to the human individuals who notice details and fellow travelers in the more-than-human world that every living being occupies. The implication is that noticing other animals and taking their lives seriously has health benefits for humans attuned in this way to their surroundings. Thus, while it is true that human civilization has brought achievements that have enabled members of certain societies, and that such benefits should be honored forthrightly, the “progress” of the human species toward today’s “civilizations” has been framed in ways that also mislead and harm us, making us sick in ways that Ratey and Manning describe in great detail.37 Of particular significance is the medical/health view taken of the importance of exercise, especially that performed in the natural world. Not only are health benefits available, but also awareness of how becoming aware of a local part of the world matters to so much that makes us human. For any animal, humans included, there never was, and never can be, an “is” without a where.38 And yet, as most of us know, modern humans are in several senses of the word “dis-placed.” Being rooted in a particular place is an animal need, and modern science reveals well how humans’ inattentivenesses to place and, more generally, the natural world risk us becoming unhealthy unless we re-establish this key dimension of our irrevocably animal lives. Ratey and Manning’s book has a fire theme, as it were, for we create hells for ourselves and children when we ignore the power of place.39 Surely, then, if one wants to understand humanity, human abilities, and the world of which we are a part, one needs to see place, local worlds, and our special abilities tied directly to them. An undeniable implication of this fundamental human need is that our learning requires immersion, which of course challenges the institutions and environment that we call “education.” Humans, as animals who are unavoidably and irrevocably relational, related and immersed in a specific “there” (place), getting in touch with these deep-seated needs requires getting into parts of the world about which we hope to be educated. Ratey and Manning’s seemingly human-focused treatise can stand for two propositions, although these are not its primary focus by any means. By talking about the conditions of human thriving, these authors suggest that (i) a living fire we ought to tend is recognition that we share animality with many other creatures, and (ii) our explorations must have elements that are cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and even interfaith in nature if they hope to feature responsible acknowledgment of multiple views (including respect for the eminently human and diverse achievements of indigenous peoples). Indeed, it is worth considering whether, just as “every animal knows way more than you do,” so too every other culture “knows” as much as more than your own birth culture does.

BRINGING TOGETHER TWO PATHS In the spirit of the above humilities, consider how issues of human self-understanding are not separate from, but actually a subdivision of, the generosities that we call “animal protection.” Creating a “humans versus animals” approach to “human rights versus animal rights” is a radically misleading dichotomy, for animal protection is, given humans’ undeniable animality, a path to human self-understanding. So, in the spirit of the affirmation “there is no path to peace” because, in the matter of choosing a full human

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life, peace is the path,40 we can also affirm that there is no path to humans’ recognition of the importance of animality—recognition of our animality is the path itself.

The First Path—Animal Protection When today’s humans transcend the tradition of separating humans from other animals (for this is the thrust of acknowledging that humans are now animals, have always been animals, and will always be animals), humans self-actualize. The implications of this go beyond Viktor Frankl’s classic observation that “self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence,”41 as this comment has long been taken to apply to individuals. To be sure, Frankl’s insight is a most valuable insight for each of us as an individual. But there is an additional sense in which this claim is also true for the human species as a whole. This has in fact been the message of many religions, many ethical systems, and various wisdom traditions anchored in small-scale societies. Both the individual-level of self-actualization and the parallel species-level actualization are needed to ignite our species-wide exploration of the overwhelming and elemental mysteries we call “nature.” The worldwide animal protection movement advocates for much more than other animals—it also re-homes humans, inviting us to return to one of our most natural communities, namely, the larger community of all life. Concern to notice and take seriously, then, the denizens of the more-than-human world within and out beyond human-dominated precincts is, along with caring for human animals, one of the most generative and vivacious elements in our ethical lives—it spurs education of both the learning and unlearning kinds.42 Noticing other animals and recognizing that many kinds of living beings excite humans has long been a core feature of the many kinds of caring, believing, and reacting that we name with our generic noun “religion.” In this vein, one can easily comprehend the fact that each religion is today uniquely alive in each place where its adherents live fully. Religious sensibilities are, of course, diverse around the world but such differences (from earlier forms of the same religion, or from other contemporary religious claims) confer on individuals within that religion a chance to be alive and responsive in each and every moment and place. Claims that humans are animals are supported widely and firmly today by countless lines of evidence developed in not only our sciences, but also in our critically thought out ethics, in our non-speciesist forms of ecological awareness, and in our spiritual lives pursued in ways responsive to local places and presences. It is the combination of such affirmations of humans’ embeddedness in a far-more-than-human world that vivifies the broad communal commitments so aptly summarized by two seminal comments from Thomas Berry. Indeed we cannot be truly ourselves in any adequate manner without all our companion beings throughout the earth. The larger community constitutes our greater self.43 Indeed we must say that the universe is a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects.44

The Second Path—Recovering, Discovering, Uncovering Human Self-Recognition Consider the power again of de Waal’s simple question: are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? While de Waal meant to phrase the question so as to direct attention to human animals’ knowledge of nonhuman animals (a purpose evident in the framing of the question with non-scientific terminology whereby “animals” means only

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nonhuman animals), the question, if taken literally and scientifically, has power well before we answer it. The question on its face literally pertains to our knowledge of ourselves (human animals) as fully as it pertains to our knowledge of other animals’ intelligence. If understood in this way, the question reveals how a second path converges with the first path of animal protection. Along this second path, we, as human animals, recover our animality and discover that human animality overlaps greatly in many cases with other-than-human animals. We thereby uncover a possibility of self-recognition for each of us that is available only when we acknowledge the many nested communities to which we belong and which, together, comprise our larger community. What fires might we light to illuminate this convergence? How do we begin to grapple with the basic thrust of de Waal’s question? A first step is to see human exceptionalism as a disconnecting and dysfunctional narrative, for through its many dismissals of nonhuman animals it presumes the question before us to be a minor question. For the most reactionary of exceptionalists, the question as posed is, further, basically irrelevant and even irreverent, for such humans contend that humans alone can be understood as made in the image of a deity. But realism about more than science—realism about religious traditions broadly, about ethics, about humility and honesty regarding our everyday lives—already drives our own species’ contemporary recovery of humans’ long-repudiated animality. And in the recovery is discovery. And in the discovery is the key to un-covering the full story of how our species’ recent claims of separation have been nothing short of naked self-interest, and often merely one subgroup of humans elevating itself over others—as when men have claimed they alone are the paradigm of humanity and rationality, or when one religious subgroup in a religious tradition claims it alone is the true answer while the claims of all other subgroups and all other religions are false and blasphemous. Along the second path, such dysfunctional assertions of self-interest are seen to drive the thin reasoning and selfishnesses that have always driven human exceptionalism and the denial of our own animality. Also along this second path, one learns that “recover” has many meanings. One of these meanings is embodied in phrases like “she began to lose her balance, but then recovered.” Another distinct, but altogether relevant sense to the harms done by human exceptionalism can be sensed in the phrase “he’s a recovering alcoholic.” These nuances of “recover” can be detected in Ratey and Manning’s manifesto about recovering human health by Free[ing] Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization. A third sense of “re-cover” applies as well—consider what is at issue in the phrase “We re-covered the dead body after the funeral shroud slipped off.” We want to bury the dysfunction that is human exceptionalism—to immolate it in the fire of our zeal for connecting to nature, to replace it with a conscious, integrating choice to fully actualize human ethical capabilities by transcending any dysfunctional forms of humancenteredness. Thereby, the two paths mentioned above converge and full self-actualization for our species and its remarkable individuals becomes possible again. Through such possibilities, each of us can “re-cover” in all senses, and allow the Earth to heal (recover) as well.

EXHORTATIONS TO SELF-ACTUALIZATION Once one notices the dysfunctional features of human exceptionalism, one begins to notice how often others have begged us to acknowledge that self-transcendence is

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necessary for not only individuals, but our species as well, if we are to surmount arrogance and embark on an integrated attempt to full-actualization of the human spirit. An example from Plato’s dialogue “Statesman” reveals that challenges to humans’ arrogant claims regarding their status over other animals have had a high profile in many traditions. Suppose now . . . that some wise and understanding creature, such as a crane is reputed to be, were, in imitation of you, to make a similar division, and set up cranes against all other animals to their own special glorification, at the same time jumbling together all the others, including man, under the appellation of brutes,—here would be the sort of error which we must try to avoid.45 Such caveats abounded in ancient Greece,46 and in one sense modeled aspects of the skills today often referred to as “critical thinking.”47 As a twentieth-century British ethicist observed, “we are always comparing our ignorant conception of animal being with an overdrawn picture of a very cultivated man.”48 The same ethicist suggested, “one’s ethical, as well as one’s ontological framework is determined by what entities one is prepared to notice or take seriously. . . .”49 If one has been “prepared” by education dominated by human exceptionalism, one fails to grasp why it is a serious matter to notice that humans are but one type of living being in a larger community that is truly mixed and fascinating. But as this ethicist’s comment reveals, each individual human’s ethical abilities are malleable. We are challenged again today to allow ourselves and our children to notice and take seriously the living beings around us. Exceptionalist education has also blinded contemporary humans to the fallacies that compromise exceptionalist logic. A contemporary anthropologist has argued, “I aim to show that the story we tell in the West about the human exploitation and eventual domestication of animals is part of a more encompassing story about how humans have risen above, and have sought to bring under control, a world of nature that includes their own animality.”50 This researcher has worked hard to help modern humans notice and take seriously, and thereby honor, small-scale societies as offering insightful wisdom traditions whose voice and perspectives enrich humans’ self-understanding. Finally, an American philosopher and ecologist has recently written forthrightly about the value of coming home to our own animality. Owning up to being an animal, a creature of earth. Tuning our animal senses to the sensible terrain: blending our skin with the rain-rippled surface of rivers, mingling our ears with the thunder and the thrumming of frogs, and our eyes with the molten gray sky. Feeling the polyrhythmic pulse of this place—this huge windswept body of water and stone. This vexed being in whose flesh we’re entangled. Becoming earth. Becoming animal. Becoming, in this manner, fully human.51

CONSTRUCTIVELY CHALLENGING HUMAN-EXCEPTIONALISM Given that human-exceptionalism imprisons us, deadening awareness of our membership in the larger community of life, we need to remove the funeral shroud covering our animality and thereby re-vivify our deadened awareness caused by language choices like “humans and animals.” If we speak plainly, honestly, and with acceptance of our own animality, we come home to a truly salient fact—humans’ achievements are those of an animal. The good news is that this achievement has often been attained by the many

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humans who have broken through to the realization that we belong to the larger community of life and that our species can again thrive, if each of us so chooses as an individual to push our human group to be responsible, plain citizens of our larger community. Much is at stake, of course, yet in an embrace of our own animality is a glimmer of what is to come. We can finally acknowledge that the heritage of modern citizens has been impoverished due to the prevalence of education in the key of human exceptionalism— this has been a dual tragedy (one for humans, another for nonhumans) that justifies Helvetius’ quip that humans are born ignorant, not stupid, but they can be made stupid by education.52 For many reasons, then, re-covering and then un-covering our animality offers each of us a key to understanding the elements of religion and nature. Such work is more than a formative influence in how we encounter our shared Earth and its air and water—such work and the encounters it actualizes are, in fact, the foundation on which we stand as we actualize as fully as possible our life on Earth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Feral Becoming and Environmentalism’s Primal Future SARAH M. PIKE

In 1998, due to a fire set by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF ) to protest the construction of a Vail, Colorado ski resort in endangered Canadian lynx habitat, four chair lifts and three buildings were damaged or destroyed—the largest being the 33,000-square-foot Two Elk Lodge, which was reduced to a heap of ash and twisted metal. The arson cost an estimated $24 million in damage.1 The ELF announced that the fires were “only a warning, a shot across the bow” and promised: “We will be back if this greedy corporation continues to trespass into wild and unroaded area . . . For your safety and convenience, we strongly advise skiers to choose other destinations.”2 During the late 1990s, many of the activists involved in the Vail arson set other fires in which no one was harmed, but property damage was significant. After the Vail fire, mainstream environmentalists and residents debated the action. Many people who opposed the ski resort decried ELF ’s extremism but sympathized with their goal to shut down the resort. Robert Alsobrook, a local environmentalist and biologist put it this way: “I don’t support what ELF did, but I do think that the fires were a kind of Boston Tea Party in the fight against development.”3 A year earlier, on the Celtic holiday of Beltane, ELF issued a communiqué explaining the motivation behind a series of subsequent arsons, including the one at Vail: We are the burning rage of this dying planet. The war of greed ravages the earth and species die out every day. ELF works to speed up the collapse of industry, to scare the rich, and to undermine the foundations of the state. We embrace social and deep ecology as a practical resistance movement. We have to show the enemy that we are serious about defending what is sacred. Together we have teeth and claws to match our dreams. Our greatest weapons are imagination and the ability to strike when least expected.4 It is this burning rage to defend what is sacred (the Earth and nonhuman species) and their particular understandings of the wild and the future that underlie activists’ motivations to engage in such defense that I explore in this chapter. While radical activists may appear to be at the fringes of environmental thought and action, they reveal and address crucial issues concerning how human communities might respond to and shape environmental change in the twenty-first century. They are situated within and motivated 147

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by a larger North American primitivist, anti-civilization movement that seeks to “rewild” humans and the planet by fundamentally changing the ways we interact with and relate to other species.5 Radical activists like the ELF are heroes to other activists, bringing into being this future vision that positions humans as equal to but not above other species, but to those outside radical environmentalism they are often seen as “eco-terrorists.”6 Cable Network News reported in 2005 that in the view of John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism: “The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the ecoterrorism, animal-rights movement.”7 Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, environmental and animal rights activists have been aggressively pursued by the FBI , as journalist Will Potter illustrates in his book Green is the New Red, an account of the persecution of “eco-terrorists.”8 In 2005 the federal government made highly publicized arrests in what FBI agents dubbed “Operation Backfire,” the largest round-up of ecoactivists in American history that included many of the activists who participated in the Vail arson. Two years later, ten defendants were convicted on federal arson and vandalism charges, receiving sentences ranging from three to thirteen years. Although no one was hurt or killed in any of the actions, federal prosecutors had argued for life sentences. The ELF arsonists and other radical environmentalists such as those involved with Earth First!, another loose network of radical environmentalists, feel rage and despair over the impact of contemporary human civilizations, especially our development of and resource extraction in wilderness areas. The situation is dire to them, so many radical activists favor confrontational strategies that align with their sense of being involved in an urgent struggle for the future of life on the planet. Malcolm X’s dictum “by any means necessary” is often invoked by activists, and they draw inspiration from the Zapatistas, Spanish anarchists, Palestinian Intifada and IRA , among others.9 There is a revolutionary fervor born of desperate times among radical activists. They frequently cite their frustration with working through official or aboveground channels while forests and nonhuman animals are dying.10 Many activists’ sense of urgency is due to grief over environmental destruction and an accompanying rage over what is being lost.11 “I feel like I’m in perpetual mourning,” Earth Liberation Front activist Daniel McGowan, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for two arsons (at Superior Lumber company and Jefferson Poplar Farms, both in Oregon in 2001), told the filmmakers of “If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.”12 McGowan grew up in New York City and remembers that when he moved out West in 1998 and visited old-growth forests: “I’d never seen trees like that before.” But it was not just trees that had a considerable effect on McGowan. He was shocked by “the arrogance” of clearcut logging and felt that the trees were “just butchered,” wondering then why he and his friends were being “so gentle” with their activism. After years of letter-writing for environmental causes, McGowan became involved with the Earth Liberation Front because, “when you see things you love being destroyed,” you just want to destroy. Awe in the presence of ancient forests and grief over their destruction became motivating factors for McGowan, leading to his willingness to take more extreme actions, such as arson.13 For this radical wing of environmentalism, destruction and apocalypse are both necessary and inevitable. Their hoped for, post-apocalyptic future is a return to what they understand to be a pre-industrial, primal, pagan past. The promise of this future offers many radical environmentalists hope and fuels their activism, while others are more pessimistic. Some may desire the survival of small communities after the collapse of the

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“Capitalocene,” as historian Jason W. Moore calls it, but many assume there will be a devastating and chaotic period that humans may not survive.14 Those activists I interviewed repeatedly told me that the end of civilization and perhaps the end of biotic life will come, if not in their lifetimes, then in the not too distant future.15 On the CD “No Compromise,” an Earth First! compilation, the band Rizana characterizes the collapse this way: “ancient beauty covered in concrete, destroyed forests, there’s nothing left to eat/ blow up the mountains, pollute the streams/ it takes more than dreams to fight the machine/ locked up our hearts sewn shut our eyes lookin’ up to the smoke and charred skies.” As Rabbit, an editor on the Earth First! Journal collective put it, “We are in such a fucked state . . . if civilization as we know it collapses, probably the best case scenario, we’re all going to die.”16 But if they do not die, activists believe humans should be prepared to bring other, less environmentally destructive lifeways into being and they must do so by becoming wild and helping the planet become more wild.

REWILDING THE SELF AND PLANET In addition to protecting wild places and helping along the collapse of industrial societies, many activists emphasize human animality and the need for us to “rewild” our lives, becoming more feral than civilized. Rewilding the human self is a personal transformation that mirrors the transformation of ecosystems by rewilding and reverses domestication. “There’s another way to live,” argue Laurel and Skunk in the zine reclaim, rewild, “There’s another, older world beneath the asphalt of what’s mistakenly referred to as the ‘real world’. . . . Humans can belong as certainly as any forest, worm or wolf. The trouble is we’ve forgotten who we are, what we’re for, and where we came from.”17 In the same zine, Griffin writes, in “Human Domestication: Sickness of Separation,” that “Each one of us is a wild animal suffering, isolated from our true livelihoods & homes in the arms of the true Mother . . . It is possible to become feral by overcoming the numbness of the civilized condition & become fully human.”18 Activists and other rewilders want to uncivilize themselves by reestablishing deeper connections with other, wilder species. Rewilding of the self in a community of other species is a reaction against domestication, which activists see as a social ill linked to capitalism and consumerism. These rewilders are part of a diverse movement that complements the rewilding visions of writers and activists like Dave Foreman and George Monbiot who advocate for mass restoration of ecosystems and especially the reintroduction of large predators.19 Rewilders try to live lightly on the land, often adopt ancient spiritualities, and try to learn skills their distant ancestors practised before industrialization. “Nature” and “the wild,” then, tend to mean places and states of being that are undomesticated or less controlled by humans, and usually set in opposition to industrialized “civilization.” In “How Do We Go Wild,” activist Wolfi Landstreicher hopes for the eventual “overturning of domestication” and advocates a positive vision of the future as well, which is “wildness—especially as an aim for individuals to achieve in revolt against domestication and civilization . . .”20 Radical environmentalists and other rewilders embrace a world beyond the human when they imagine cities decaying as forests thrive. In the zine feral: a journal towards wildness, the narrator of the poem, “Ned Ludd was Right,” describes city buildings as “ugly monstrosities of steel and glass and concrete, overpowering in their hugeness and sterility.” He dreams they are in ruins, “being eaten by a forest.”21 In “Coastal Remains,” a similar vision of the future, “warrior poet” Sean Carr dreams of “creeper vines reaching over concrete/of trees to shadow the shore/and

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gulls to roost in the apexes/of mansions long abandoned beside the sea.”22 Since many activists see humans as the most destructive invasive species, they celebrate other species’ invasion of the human-made world. Activist music, poetry and art work clearly express these kinds of future visions in which going feral entails the undoing of civilization and rewilding of the planet. In the poem, “A Handful of Leaves,” Sean Swain imagines the future as a return to the “Stone Age”: A prayer for the children of the next Neolithic, That we leave to them A field of lilies where a Walmart once stood, Salmon upstream from the ruins of a dam, Kudzu vines embracing skeletons of skyscrapers, Cracked and overgrown ribbons of nameless superHighways. As this poem suggests, activists’ imagined future is one in which plants and nonhuman animals take over the planet and reverse the steady onslaught of industrialization and environmental devastation that came before. Undoing domestication means not only allowing the wild to take over civilization, but also returning to an imagined past in which humans have a much reduced impact on the Earth and other species. Ironically, becoming more feral is for activists and other rewilders the way to become more authentically human.

A PRIMAL FUTURE AND THE PRIMITIVE SKILLS MOVEMENT When activists construct oppositions between the destructive practices of civilization and the liberating promise of “the wild,” they imagine a wild, primal future. This primal future is a reaction against technologies that are seen as the root causes of destructive environmental practices such as mountaintop removal and hydro-fracking and a return to the past.23 Kite, an activist who worked with the Buffalo Field Campaign, sees it this way: “I look at the average North American and I’m certain they will consume us into chaos . . . Those of us willing to see what is going on are still a small minority with no real power to make changes.” But this view, he explains, need not lead to despair. Instead, “I know a lot of other people who share my perspective. We can’t stop civilization, we can’t stop the coming collapse, but we can provide examples of community based survival, and a more sustainable relationship with the earth.” He believes the only rational approach is a return to localized economies and community based living, where the community includes other species.24 While most radical environmental activists are focused on protests and specific campaigns, such as blocking pipeline destruction or mountaintop removal, some attempt to create communities at action camps or during their gatherings that offer an alternative vision of how humans might live together. In most cases these are temporary communities. However, a number of former activists move away from the front lines of campaigns to permaculture communities and organic farms, or become involved with the primitive skills movement, which overlaps with radical environmentalism in a number of ways.25 Primitive skills communities model relationships of interdependence with a material world full of vibrancy and agency. They work out complicated relationships, especially around eating, with other species, both plants and animals. By stripping away layers of

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civilization and technology, activists and primitive skills rewilders starkly reveal our deep entanglement with the existence of other beings, both living and nonliving.26 One gathering in particular, Wild Roots, Feral Futures, exemplifies the convergence of activism and primitive skills. Wild Roots, Feral Futures is promoted as an opportunity to “Visualize Vast Wilderness, Actualize Industrial Collapse.” According to one participant who wrote a message on “Rewild Resist,” Wild Roots, Feral Future’s blog, “WRFF attracts a variety of people: college students, older hippies, drifters, radical faeries, liberals, anarchists, socialists, families with small children, musicians, train hoppers, activists, conservationists, farmers, and those who refuse to be categorized.”27 Wild Roots participant Christina Wulf explains that sharing with other activists “individual epiphanies—some moment, imprinted on us, when the wonder of the wild became manifest,” helped her to see that environmental activism is not so much revolutionary “as it is a reconnection. Tracing our human bloodlines back a brief genetic distance, a handful of centuries, we can re-learn how to live on this earth in balance with breathing forests and all their inhabitants.”28 For activists like Wulf, relearning and reconnecting to what they see as an ancestral past is the best way forward amidst an expected and sometimes eagerly awaited apocalypse. Activists and other rewilders at Wild Roots, Feral Futures and similar gatherings want to undo domestication and uncivilize humans by reestablishing a deep connection to other species and teaching primitive skills. Rewild.com, for example, is dedicated to “creating new cultures inspired by ancestral lifeways.” Most rewilders hope to adapt ancient skills like metal-working, hide-tanning, hunting, and gathering wild foods to contemporary life. They aim to live with the smallest possible environmental footprint, treating the forest like a garden and learning skills their distant ancestors practiced before industrialization. Their models vary from Paleolithic cave dwellers and Native Americans to medieval blacksmiths and basket-makers. What is wild for these rewilders is the exact opposite of all that is tame, a point brought home for me at the primitive skills gathering Falling Leaves Earthskills Rendezvous’ storytelling fire. A young man named Chris told the tale of a starving wolf who was unable to find any deer one winter. The wolf smells something good to eat and finds some sheep grazing in a field. Approaching the sheep, he meets a dog who is there to protect the sheep from predators. The dog regales the wolf with a seductive description of the easy life of a sheepdog, the shelter and food provided by her master. The wolf notices how well-fed the dog looks and asks where she gets her food. The dog says “you could have all this too, if you just come with me.” Then the wolf notices the dog’s collar and asks what the collar is for. Once the dog explains the collar, the wolf is horrified and wants to quickly get as far away as possible from that life, even though it means being hungry, so he heads back into the forest.29 A network of primitive skills teachers and activists across the country offer workshops and organize gatherings like Wild Roots, Feral Futures. Falling Leaves Earthskills Rendezvous is another such gathering that moves from activism to living a lifestyle that many activists aspire to. Just after the Fall Equinox in 2014, I traveled to the southeast corner of South Carolina near the Georgia border to attend Falling Leaves. After setting up camp, I found my way to an open meadow scattered with tented workshop areas. In various workshops I met people carving wooden bowls with knives, learning to shoot with bows, weaving willow baskets, and making buckskin moccasins. The five-day gathering also included classes on making corn husk dolls, kudzu bale houses, woven mats and slings, as well as walks to identify trees, edible and medicinal plants, animal tracks, and mushrooms. People who attend primitive skills gatherings like Falling Leaves come from

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varied backgrounds and religious worlds that range from atheist to Pagan. Peter Bauer, who runs a blog on rewilding called “Urban Scout,” observes that at most of such gatherings, “you may find yourself between a Mormon and a rainbow child.” At Falling Leaves I met a Christian software engineer, as well as teachers, college students, and artists. At one communal meal, I sat across from an US Army veteran who told me with a laugh, “I’ve never been around so many hippies before.” A “city rat” who grew up in New York City but never felt at home there, he had come to the gathering to learn skills to help him live more self-sufficiently on a piece of rural land he had purchased a few years earlier.30 In order to create a sense of spiritual community among such a disparate group, Falling Leaves Earthskills Rendezvous included opening and closing ceremonies in circles and each day began with a morning circle. Steven “Snow Bear” Taylor, a co-founder of the gathering who spoke at the morning circle, suggested that primitive skills communities, even temporary ones like Falling Leaves, address our “poverty of the soul.” During the week, participants bonded over their shared interest in learning skills, acquiring knowledge from elders in the community, and connecting with what Snow Bear called their “collective ancestors.”31 A sense of loss and longing permeates activist and other rewilding communities. Although many activists and primitive skills practitioners are matter-of–fact about the impossibility of returning to a primordial past, they yearn for what they see as a purer and simpler aboriginal lifestyle. Thousands of miles west of Wildroots homestead, the organizers of the Buckeye Gathering of Ancestral Arts and Technology in northern California express their own form of paleonostalgia. We are at a unique juncture in history, with an increased awareness in the possibility of our own extinction from not living responsibly and in harmony. Relearning to tend the land will take patient, imperfect steps. As elements converge that lead to collapse of systems, so converge streams of reawakened instincts and increased consciousness. Many of us long for the clans and tribes that we know in our bones . . .32 Rewilding is about changing how rewilders look at the world around them, a transformation that happens internally and through learning new bodily, tool-using practices. But there is also sometimes a change in how they look to the world, a style seen at primitive skills gatherings and workshops. For many rewilders this transformation is expressed on the body by wearing animal hides and bone jewelry. One way rewilders undomesticate themselves is by sloughing off the skin bestowed on them by society. Lynx Vilden is a prominent primitive skills teacher based in eastern Washington. Photos of Vilden on her website show an extremely fit middle-aged woman wearing a buckskin dress and moccasins with students wrapped in animal skins and homemade felted wool blankets. At Falling Leaves Earthskills Rendezvous, some participants dressed like anyone in the outside world, while others wore buckskin tunics with leggings and handmade felt hats. During the Saturday evening fire, a “Procession of Earth Spirits” included children and adults wearing leaves and flowers in their hair or dressed as ogres and fairies dancing around the campfire to the beats of a dozen drummers.

LIVING LIGHTLY ON THE LAND: WILD ROOTS HOMESTEAD The emphasis on reversing the timeline of Western civilization that permeates rewilding communities is a wholehearted rejection of contemporary life. More than nostalgia for

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the past, this is a judgment about the kind of future other Americans strive for. And it is a judgment shared by an alternative culture of fellow primitivists across North America and Western Europe that at the same time seem both pessimistic and hopeful. In their apocalyptic expectations, they relish civilization’s demise while harboring a deep love for the Earth and its creatures. As Lynx Vilden puts it on her blog: “Come live wild and help make the world a better place.”33 Some former environmental activists decided to do just this when they founded Wildroots Homestead. Wildroots (no connection to Wild Roots, Feral Futures except for the shared goal to return to human culture’s “wild roots”) is located in the Smoky Mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina, where a middle-aged couple, Tod and Talia, are living and teaching “earth-based lifeways.” I visited the homestead in 2014 and woke my first morning at Wildroots to yodeling—Tod’s signal that he was about to make the morning fire. Tendrils of smoke rose from the two pieces of wood that Tod was rubbing together between his palms—what’s called an “Egyptian bow drill” for making fire the low-tech way. In a few minutes, Tod had a fire blazing under the “stove”: two slabs of clay with a grill on top in the outdoors “kitchen” area. Soon water in the blackened kettle was boiling and tea–a blend of yarrow, plantain, nettle, holy basil, and wild mint foraged from the woods and the garden—was brewing. Breakfast consisted of fried eggs cooked in bear fat and the daily staple of “mush,” a porridge of dumpstered oats, chestnut pieces, and meal made of acorns gathered from the land. Before long our stomachs were full and we began planning a hike to gather more acorns.34 Tod and Talia live on land in a community started by environmental activists who grew disenchanted with direct action. Natalie, a former environmental activist and earlier member of the Wildroots community explained to photographer Lucas Foglia why she had left behind road blockades and tree sits for the mountain homestead: “A lot of us who live here came with a kind of post-activist outlook—realizing that the world is really messed up, that nature is being destroyed, and being incredibly dissatisfied with consumer culture and the whole idea of success in modern society. All of us wanted to live close to the land, and realized that the way things are going to change is not through activism.”35 Activists and primitive skills homesteaders alike are interested in reviving indigenous and ancient knowledge that draws us into more direct relationship with the sources of our food, fuel, clothing and shelter. If “civilization has severed the web of life” because humans have distanced themselves from nature, as historian Roderick Nash argues in his essay “Wild World,” then rewilders try to bridge that distance.36 Tod and Talia say the skills they teach are endangered, just like the many species threatened by human habitation. According to the Wildroots website, “Some of these skills are as old as the human species itself. The surest way to protect earth-based lifeways, or ‘earthskills,’ is to practise them, and pass them along as we move through this alienated modern life.”37 For Wildroots community dwellers, living more intimately with plants and nonhuman animals is the antidote to the alienation they feel in the broader society. Their intention is stated clearly on the website: “Just as we propagate endangered native plants in the ecosystems from which they have been displaced, or re-introduce wolves into areas from which they have been extirpated, we can reclaim our ancestors’ lost knowledge of living with the earth.”38 While some of them once felt an urgency to make changes happen through direct action, now they learn about the past and work more slowly through observation of the world around them in order to change their own hearts and habits.

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The Wildroots community gets its food wherever it can, without spending money and with the least environmental impact possible. While they don’t hunt themselves, Tod and Talia eat what comes their way. In iron cauldrons over wood fires they process roadkill and nonhuman animals that hunters or neighbors drop by. One night they dined on a can of bear meat and venison mixed with alpaca meat from an aging pet they had butchered for a neighbor. They glean food from dumpsters in nearby Asheville and harvest vegetables and herbs from their garden as well as gathering wild foods like acorns and chestnuts. While sorting chestnuts, Tod offers me one that is full of worms and pops some worms into his mouth. Insects are also sometimes on the menu, since nothing edible is excluded from their diet. But not all rewilders escape from civilization in the same way. Urban hunter-gatherer Peter Bauer lives in Portland, Oregon, where he blogs about rewilding and primitive skills and directs “Rewild Portland,” an environmental education organization that offers free skills workshops on topics such as “Acorn Flour,” “Spring Nettle Recipes,” “Flintknapping,” “Archery,” and “Dandelion Donuts.” Bauer aims to undo domestication too, but within a highly domesticated urban environment. His diet includes roadkill and dumpstered food and he looks for places in or near the city to trap other animals. As a rewilder named Devin put it in response to Bauer’s blog, the “modern scavenger” gathers “stuff that would otherwise be thrown away by other predators . . .” which includes anything from roadkill to the leavings of butchers and taxidermists. As gleaners, rewilders take what is left behind and decry the wastefulness of most Americans.

THE FRAUGHT PRACTICES AND AMBIGUITIES OF REWILDING Activists’ and other rewilders’ vision of the future is fraught with tensions: atheist anarchist activists are suspicious of any form of spirituality, institutionalized or not, transgender activists accuse the primitive skills movement of being transphobic and essentializing gender in their primitivist visions, vegan activists are troubled by the reality of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle promoted by the larger primitive skills movement, and activist communities endlessly debate the meanings of violence and non-violence, especially arson, in discussions of how to bring their desired primal future into being. In addition to these contested issues rewilders are cautious in approaching contemporary Native American communities given the tragic history of colonialism.39 There is often a troubling slippage in comparisons of Stone Age humans and American Indian cultures, as if the latter only exists in the past. Yet rewilders also acknowledge the formerly indigenous lands they live and gather on, voice their respect for Native American traditions, and invite Native teachers to present at their gatherings. The Buckeye Gathering of Ancestral Arts and Technology is held in Concow Valley Band of Maidu country and offers scholarships for Native Americans, prioritizing Native American youth. For Buckeye’s organizers, the history of genocide and marginalization of indigenous peoples “makes healing our present relations important to us.”40 For this reason, many primitive skills gatherings sit in an uncomfortable relationship to contemporary Native American cultures. Although not all rewilders are white Europeans, the majority are. In 2013, Wild Roots, Feral Futures organizers invited a Lakota elder to hold a workshop. When he arrived at the gathering he noticed a medicine wheel that had been made out of rocks at the site and was offended. He launched into an angry speech about white people who have no

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awareness of their own heritage and steal Native people’s traditions. He left the gathering and in his wake discussions about the incident took place for the rest of the week.41 Although they emphasize their respect for Native American cultures, rewilders’ expectations of an imminent collapse of civilization mirror certain strains of survivalism, a movement often linked with racism and white supremacy. Although there is no sharp distinction between the two, rewilders’ focus tends to be different. Most rewilders are concerned about social justice and the consequences of colonialism for Native peoples as well as the natural world. And their focus is less on survivalism than living in the wild in particular ways. Through “Living Wild,” Lynx Vilden’s website, students can register for classes like “Buffalo Processing” and “Wild Food Harvest.” Like other primitive skills workshops and gatherings, the focus of Vilden’s programs is “on experiencing the interdependency necessary in community living, and nurturing an appreciation for the Earth as a living organism.” Vilden takes students through an intensive hands-on wilderness living skills training, during which she teaches them to gather or make fire, shelter, clothing, and food “in a conscientious and sustainable manner, as the ancients did.” On her site, Vilden makes the distinction between survivalists and rewilders clear: “We aim to ‘live’ in the wilderness, rather than ‘survive’ it to get back to civilization.”42 Whether mimicking Native Americans or Stone Age Europeans, many rewilders are ambivalent about hunting and killing other animals. In self-described anarchist communities like Wild Roots, Feral Futures, both vegans and roadkill enthusiasts express a sense of intimacy with other creatures, but they disagree on how that intimacy should be expressed and practised. Far away on the gathering site from the Wild Roots, Feral Futures community kitchen using dumpstered and donated food to prepare meals for omnivores as well as vegans, was “Animal Camp.” It took me a while to figure out after seeing some campers wearing animal pelts and then asking around, that Animal Camp was about preparing roadkill for human consumption. Since there were also strict vegans in attendance, Animal Camp activities took place out of sight. Rewilders’ views of other animals vary from “harvesting” beings who are fundamentally different from ourselves to viewing nonhuman animals as persons like us who have intelligences, active minds, and expressive cultures of communication. Lynx Vilden says prayers when killing animals and explains her approach in an interview in the online Moon Magazine: “You know that another animal gave its life for you: you don’t waste any of it. We ate all of the meat and the organs. We used the brains for tanning, the hooves and connective tissue for glue, and the bones for tools and jewelry and even musical instruments. Every part of the animal becomes precious.”43 Tony Nestor, who runs “Ancient Pathways Outdoor Programs in Desert Survival and Bushcraft,” observes that “Our ancestors were not vegetarians and it is nearly impossible to rely solely on wild plants for sustenance beyond a few days.” In a seven-day survival course Nestor taught, he reports that participants equipped only with handmade primitive tools caught, gathered, and ate rabbit, squirrel, skunk, fish, crayfish, and minnows.44 When it comes to deaths, of other animals or their own, rewilders hate waste. Peter Bauer believes our death rituals should be wilder: “When I die, I would like my body buried in the ground, not burnt, not in a coffin, and without any gross fluids injected into it. I don’t want to be in a cemetery. I don’t want a headstone. I want a tree to be planted in my honor . . . If that is not possible, I would like a sky burial. I would like my body to be placed high atop a mountain and eaten by vultures.”45 Even in ultimate matters of life and death, rewilders want to reverse, return, redo, and reject the assumptions of civilized society.

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Activists’ and other rewilders’ feral vision is ultimately an apocalyptic one in which one way of life has to self-destruct (helped along by activists) to make the other one possible; their future must emerge from the ashes of civilization. The internal inferno of rage and the outer inferno of arson are the twin experiences of many activists, but not all radical environmentalists and other rewilders agree on the best strategies for bringing about a primal future.

BURNING RAGE AND BURNING PROPERTY Activists rarely see strategic property destruction as “violence,” though some make an exception for arson, which they believe can too easily get out of control. One ELF communiqué put it this way, “the ELF wholeheartedly condones the use of violence towards inanimate objects to prevent oppression, violence, and most of all to protect freedom.”46 Activists tend to nuance the meaning of property destruction so it is either a kind of non-violence or a special kind of violence, even “anti-violence.” Actions are “antiviolent” when they prevent further violence. Even though he does not engage in property destruction, forest activist Sparrow agrees that “property destruction is not inherently ‘violent’ if no life is taken or physically harmed,” which does not include the harm of losing one’s research or the stress involved with having one’s office burned down: “I’m talking about physical harm . . . it’s hard to feel sorry for the animal torturer or gasguzzling SUV salesman when there are innocent critters and people dying left and right, every day, for profit.”47 But not all activists agree that these ways of thinking about actions involving property destruction keep them from being violent. Nevertheless, radical activists chafe against the terrorist label and criticize its presence in courtrooms and news media coverage of their actions. “We were ‘eco-saboteurs,’ not terrorists,” insists Chelsea Gerlach, one of the Earth Liberation Front cell members responsible for the arson at Vail, Colorado.48 Activists see themselves as the Earth Liberation Front communiqué justifying arson puts it, as having “teeth and claws,” emphasizing their affinity with other animals. Becoming feral and more like other animals can involve either adopting a primitive lifestyle or setting off a firebomb in an empty luxury housing development under construction. Just as activists blur species boundaries by becoming wild, wild animals and trees take on human-like agency in activist culture. Activist art and news reporting as well as primitive skills lore emphasizes the agency of other species, celebrating stories of tricksters manipulating humans, wild animals attacking them, or domesticated animals escaping their lives of captivity.49 In the poem “Swamp Anarchists,” Karen Coulter identifies with animal revenge: “the swamp anarchist tribes/have their own cultural responses— armadillos infiltrate suburbia/ dig up the lawns/ alligators prow the canals/ into posh wealthy manor backtards/ snatching up pets and small children/ for dinner. . . .”50 In one Earth First! Journal illustration, two wolves stand on top of a bulldozer they overturned, howling into the wind.51 On the cover of another Earth First! Journal issue, nonhuman animals sabotage a bulldozer and block a road being constructed through a forested mountain. Two raccoons are rolling away a tire, a bear is taking something apart with tools as a badger holds a flashlight, a hawk flies into the fray with a wrench, while a mountain lion and lynx are working with a blowtorch. Behind them, vehicles on a logging road are going up in flames. While activists find these kinds of images inspiring, outside observers might see them as clear proof that activists are misanthropic, celebrating property destruction and favoring nonhuman animals over humans.

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Activists aggressively defend ruptures of wildness and advocate speeding along the process of rewilding. Earth First! activist Rabbit urges other activists to “take the wild back” and offers some examples: “people taking back the forests with pickaxes and barricades; taking back the billboards with spray paint and kerosene . . . They’re bursting open cages with chants and sledgehammers.” He imagines the delight of wild things at these human rewilding actions: “the rivers yearn for jackhammers and dynamite. Birds soar and sing for the end of industry.”52 By projecting their own delight at rewilding efforts onto birds and rivers, activists envision a shared cross-species desire: to undo human projects that control and civilize the wild. Birds and rivers, then, become like activists, just as activists want to become more like birds and rivers. In these visions of undomestication and animal activism, activists hold out the promise of two possible futures: a rewilded world of reduced human populations living in sustainable ways with other species or a devastated planet of toxic waste and pollution with only slight traces of many species, including our own. In one of these possible futures we might live in interdependent relationships with other species, treating them as beings with equal value and rights. In the other, we wreak havoc on and dominate other species and their habitats, hastening extinction rates and the disappearance of wild places. It is the hope and terror of these two visions that motivate activists and other rewilders to destroy on the one hand and create on the other.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

From Refiner’s Fire to Refinery Fires: Reflections on the Combustive Element of Fire MARION GRAU 1

BURNING BRIGHT Many biblical traditions associate fire with divine presence and its energetic power. A key image is that of the burning bush in Exodus 3, where Moses experiences the God of his fathers calling from the middle of a burning bush that is not being consumed by the fire. In Acts 2, tongues of fire mark the presence of the Holy Spirit exploding the boundaries of ethnicities and language to redefine divine energies into the cross-cultural gathering of believers in that same and yet different divine presence. The fascination with physical and spiritual kinds of fire, consuming yet not consuming, can be said to stand as a symbol for the human preoccupation with seeking, managing and harnessing fire and the energy that results from it. Among the four classic elements, interwoven in their relations, fire seems particularly difficult to grasp literally and define metaphorically. For, fire unlike the three other elements, is not made up of matter at all: rather it is a form of energetic combustion, a chemical reaction. The flames of fire are not solid but hollow, denoting, as they burn a space around which a visible form of energy ignites, a form of presence and absence alike. It is an element sparked by combustion combining air, heat, and some type of fuel. Thus a particularly unstable and polymorphous element, fire is elusive, explosively powerful, and often beyond control. Even air is permanently around us in a seemingly more graspable way, while fire and the heat of its energy seem more punctuated and scarce in our consciousness. Yet, Heraclitus saw it as the element that grounded the four.2 As all things change to fire, and fire exhausted falls back into things, the crops are sold for money spent on food.3 159

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In our daily lives, fire, heat, energy are inescapable and vital in a particular way. Too much fire burns, too little leaves us in the dark and freezing. Humans have cultivated and gathered around fires for warmth and light throughout human history. Making fire was often thought to set humans apart from other animals. Successfully manipulating combustion of forms of “fire” as energy has been the blessing and bane of industrial and post-industrial societies, moving to unsustainable amounts of energy release into the atmosphere. The planet is burning up beyond levels of warmth that any human existence hitherto has witnessed. Fire is a key metaphor for combustive forms of energy. The particular fire we know as combusted and remolded petroleum has become a form of energy that fuels the many fires of our hearths of culture and life. The contemporary world we know with its rapid communication, transportation, and production technologies would not exist without it, and is still radically dependent on it. There is scarcely anything humans touch that is not produced in, with, and through the ancient condensed form of energy and material represented in petroleum. From cold to heat, suns to heartbeats, burning calories and fossil fuels, solar energy, burning bushes to burning the midnight oil, light and fire symbolize the explosive power of energy in its forms, and the combustive wreckage it leaves behind.

ELEMENTAL CHEMISTRY—SACRED ALCHEMY An elements framework can support practices of embodied ecospirituality, and provide conceptual coherence of faith and practice and a narrative that can unite people across different types of spirituality. The conceptual framework of the classical four elements offers one way of moving towards practising such embodied faith. The elements can function in several ways—as heuristic devices, as a sacred geography, a sacred labyrinth of movements and connections, centering, decentering, re-enchanting how we see the world empowering resistant action against planetary destruction. The four elements are deeply rooted in human experience; they are the raw materials that hold potential for new connections to the Sacred.4 These elements touch each of our lives, in different ways. They capture the imagination of children and adults, and religio-cultural expressions across the world.5 While many new chemical ‘elements’ have been discovered, Philip Ball argues, that “there is nothing obvious about the elements,” their number, and their distinctions, which is perhaps the reason, some people would like to stick with earth, air, fire, and water. They are not the elements of chemistry, but they something resonant about how we interact with the world and about the effect that say matter has on us.6 The elements are a useful sacred geography in an increasingly multireligious environment where we have to seek solidarity across religious difference to make a difference in our world, and to work on peaceful coexistence. The following represents a Christian theological approach for cooperation with other religious communities. The elements are a framework that can be found in many other traditions, a shared conceptuality that allows us to move beyond doctrinal differences, gaps in technology and development. They are ancient and deeply embedded in human thinking and sacred texts. We experience deep entanglement with them, as well as delayed consequences that will hit home for generations to come. Much of theology struggles to expand its view beyond an anthropocentrism with blinders, which, as Ellen Armour contends, risks idolatry and

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keeps us “in thrall to modernity,”7 attached to false dichotomies between faith and reason, nature and culture, world and humanity. Elemental thinking helps re-member, and trace the links between the symbolic and material. How do we resist the habitual bifurcation of sacred and secular, material and spiritual, and to look at these exchanges as inseparable, as informing and expressing each other? A constructive theology of the elements seeks to reimagine the elements as theological tropes and retrieve them from the dustbin of history. Using the metaphors of the elements to de-center anthropocentric theology, while witnessing to a compelling vision of a divine economy,8 reveals more fully the sacred and mundane transformations of power and energy in the cosmos. This divine economy can be understood as transformative relations at the cosmic level: what pains, weakens, twists, destroys, denigrates the sacred cosmos and its inhabitants, and what might heal, strengthen, recreate and uplift “all our relations” to creator, redeemer, and sustainer. This cosmic economy is without what neoliberal economists call “externalities,” without an outside that can be neglected or exploited. A spirituality that aims to support actions to resist the destruction of life systems needs to consider divine economics without externalities. Air, water, fire, and earth are designated as externalities or resources in most economic thinking and can not remain so if we want to avoid enormous suffering and extinction. Furthermore, I suggest that approaching ecology and economy through the conceptual framework of the elements, for the purpose of moving beyond an anthropocentric ecotheology, offers the possibility to work with persons from other religious and nonreligious contexts, highlighting humans as woven into the structure of the cosmos, and using a transdisciplinary theological approach (similar to that of ecological economics) to capture better the full scope of the problem, so we can frame the possibilities for the most appropriate responses. This chapter sets out to help shift the framework in which we think these sacro-secular relations so we can think beyond the anthropocentric focus on human agency and impact. This can be done through interreligious and intercultural cooperation, and to pull the elements, as non-animate but deeply life-sustaining substances “organically” as it might seem, into theological thinking and ethical action.9 An elemental theology can take the shape of a Christian sacramental spirituality, a perspective that sees the universe as sacred and God as deeply enmeshed in it, expressed in the various parts of creation. The sacramental approach suggested here is framed as a panentheistic process theology10 that is in conversation with current thinking towards a renewal of animism,11 and particularly the possibility of a Christian animism.12 It strives towards a re-enchantment of the world,13 the exact contours of which would still have to be mapped out, but assumes the entire cosmos as filled with spirit and presence where anything can potentially be a sacrament, a visible sign of an inward grace. Realizing that sacramental matter is elemental, that is, many sacraments involve a ritual that lifts up the sacred power of one of the four classic elements earth, water, fire, and air. By sacred, I mean the full extent of the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the power that can create and destroy. Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff call the connection between ritual in worship and the processes of the cosmos “sacramental permeability,” where “physical matters and actions” can become “vehicles that make transparent the Holy One”14 who is the source of the elements, and here, energy. That is: the hunger of the poor and the celebration of the Eucharist are connected, the baptism with water and the shortage of potable water in the world are connected, and here, the anointing of the messianic person, the transformation of power and honor through the symbolic dispensation of oil, is connected

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to the production and consumption of the energy that petroleum supplies the world with. I suspect most, if not all elements have sacramental features: they baptize, anoint, endow, ground, feed, and so forth.

ENTANGLEMENT AND THE ELEMENTS AS “SENSIBLE TRANSCENDENTALS” Air dies giving birth to fire. Fire dies giving birth to air. Water, thus, is born of dying earth, and earth of water.15 As in Greek pre-socratic philosophy, many other indigenous ways of perceiving the world employ a theory of four elements, four directions, four winds, four temperaments, four covenants between God and humans, and so forth to frame a spatial-energetic sense of being in the world. Among early patristic writers, Irenaeus argues in Against Heresies, that it is therefore that the Christian canon contains four gospels, no more, and no less: four like the points of the compass, four like the chief directions of the wind. The Church, spread all over the world, has in the gospels four pillars and four winds blowing wherever people live.16 Indeed a deeper cosmic truth may be expressed. We are relearning from modern science what our ancestors knew deeply: We cannot continue to exist in denial, of the systemic, economic, religious and personal interconnections without seeing life itself endangered. Our complicity is both material and spiritual, including systemic disengagement, paralysis, and deep feelings of hopelessness. The elements are metaphors for living, relationality, and expanding the boundaries of care. The elements are not anthropomorphic and can rather “dramatically torque traditional Christian theism.”17 An elemental theology, so Ellen Armour argues, “refocuses attention from an indivisible, disembodied-but-agential transcendence to a (more or less) visible, embodied, impersonal transcendence.”18 The elements connect to some of the central Christian rituals, baptism and Eucharist, and are often employed as metaphors for experiences of divinity: a spirit wind, a fire of presence, a mountain of revelation, nourishing water from deep wells in the desert. Water, air, fire, and earth are deeply imagined ways of exploring and comprehending the world within and around us. Oftentimes, the elements are conceived as distinct forces in the world that link all bodies, spiritually, economically, and ecologically, in a way that allows us to imagine a greater integration of our lives with all other lives. The elements are dynamic, not static: the hydrologic cycle, the Gulf stream, the jet stream, the much slower movement of the Earth’s crust, the flashing of light and fire. All these elements speak of the dynamism, the aliveness of our world. Our own bodies are small-scale versions of these cycles, as “the network of waterways resembles the circulatory system of a body.”19 Another way in which we can remind ourselves of our deep, cellular and vascular entanglement with these cycles is that when these cycles are polluted and abused, we are abused. The power of fire and volcanic activity features in the Greek myth of Prometheus stealing fire, viewed here as an ambivalent force both creative and destructive. If we think

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of fire as a very early technology that began to change the Earth, we can see the power of this story for ourselves.20 If “the gift of fire forever severs humankind from the natural world,”21 then we have here at least the perception that fire is distinguished from the other elements by its particularly disruptive qualities. After Prometheus’ theft of fire, a symbol of human civilization and its impact on the Earth, Zeus creates Pandora, “all gifts,”and her sealed box or vase containing Zeus’ gifts, which are a horde of miseries. It is often forgotten that one crucial gift remained in the box: hope. Though hope is not without its own dangers and traps, and can have its own tie into despair, there are practices of hope that behoove people of faith.

FIRE AS ENERGY “Today and for much of the history of life on Earth, nearly all the energy comes from the Sun.”22 In the Rig Veda, the divine self is created by heat. In the beginning was darkness swathed in darkness; All this was unmanifested water. Whatever was, the One, coming into being, Hidden by the Void, Was generated by the power of Heat.23 Humans have domesticated fire, and have for millennia used it to clear brush, arable land, work with metals, render food edible and digestible, and in warfare. It might be argued that the “quest for fire is a quest for power,” from the myths of its origins in various cultures on.24 Humans belong to a group of animals that are “homeothermic,” whose bodies maintain a constant temperature, like a house with central heating and cooling and a thermostat that adjusts the temperature to the conditions.25 The fire of the sun and in the belly of the Earth is the same fire that we have within us. Fossil fuels store life energy from the ancient past, the energy of decaying life forms, a “once-only gift of ancient life-forms to an energy-hungry civilization” that releases again the energy stored within impacting climates worldwide.26 Fire is a metaphor for power and energy. Getting to that energy has taken many forms in human history, and there have been many forms of energy we have desired. The direct impact of drilling for oil, oil production, and transportation (which are often conveniently left out of the calculation) are only a small fraction of what threatens Earth habitat: the longer-range impact of global warming also disproportionately affects the Arctic and its peoples, rendering it a canary in the mine among ecosystems. For contemporary consumer societies oil has the quasi-sacramental quality. It is what makes this system work. That is, we have a cycle of elemental use that is severely out of balance. We need to look closely at the nexus of how theological questions and concerns are interwoven with the very fabric of this weave of life, and develop a vision for faith, thought and practice.27 A theology of sacred elements would pay attention, prayer-like, to what is spiritually, economically, and ecologically at stake in this particular place.

WATER IS LIFE—KILLING THE BLACK SNAKE (#NODAPL)28 In November 2016, I traveled to Oceti Sakowin (Seven Council Fires) camp on Standing Rock reservation. A local Episcopal priest had sent out an invitation on behalf of the tribe for religious leaders to come stand with the tribe against the building of the North Dakota

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Access Pipeline. Like many other native cosmologies, the Sioux perceive a quadrilateral set of forces that compose the forces of the cosmos (symbolized by the medicine wheel): four directions, four elements, four colors, four kinds of human peoples, and so forth. At the camp we learned about the primary nature of the element water and its centrality to life. “Mni wiconi”—Water is life—was the battle cry in camp and in this movement, and it will not go silent no matter what happens with this particular pipeline. The movement continues even as the various camps were disbanded. Visitors were encouraged to take the fight for the preservation of water to the places from which they hail. The vision is compelling, bringing to the fore a spirituality of respect and humility for the cycles of the four elements, uniting the four peoples (black, red, white and yellow), and pulling in people from all four directions. It has become the heart of a pulsing new movement. I spoke with many in camp who mentioned that they had been waiting for this kind of movement, felt a pull, a draw, a need to be there. Many of us had been working on related issues for decades, but it is perhaps this kind of integrated open, deeply spiritual, and religious narrative of the sacred that has been missing. The vision of the movement gathered at Standing Rock is anything but secular; it is deeply religious and spiritual, but also defiant of those two overused categories. There is something about this vision that precedes the categories and is deeply uninterested in whether it confirms any of the trends readers of Pew surveys have been anxiously eyeing. There is something almost monastic to the call that the encampment is neither a festival nor a fun camp. Alcohol and drugs and the ravishes they have brought especially to Native peoples are banned. Rather, the camp is a ceremony, that is a call to bring forth the best in each of us, and to act accordingly. We were encouraged to live our entire lives as ceremony by one of the elders in a mode that reminds of the sacramental life, where all of life and all of creation is a sacrament. And that means moderation in our participation of the dynamics that enable the Black Snake of Hopi prophecy. From what I could gather, the Black Snake is both the pipeline and all efforts to harness and consume energy in ways that are destructive to sustainable lifeways, and thus, designates the entire system of petroleum consumption that threatens life on the planet. Days later I sat writing, looking outside the window of my airport hotel near JFK , watching the band of clogged freeways through Queens. They are the Black Snake, as is my laptop and my tablet, and often the energy powering my every electrical device. We are all addicted together. The elders in camp and the movement speak clearly about that common addiction that fuels the push for the pipeline. None of us is outside of this economy of the Black Snake. But many see the need to exit from it, as soon as possible. What the native leaders in camp provided was guidelines to a spiritual revolution. This spiritual revolution is not just about the one pipeline, but of the ways in which we are invested in and use the energies provided by oil and gas. The Black Snake is not simply the pipeline, or oil, it is the entire system of energy use. And there, both settlers and natives are at the very least complicit in using, if not promoting, petroculture. When doing research on Anglican missions and indigenous peoples in Alaska, I had learned that some of the biggest concerns were the struggles against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Due to the establishment of Native corporations, some Natives were bound into a for profit structure that meant they benefited from oil and gas leases. Only a few tribal communities, specifically the Gwich’in, chose to remain outside of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and refused to the future of their tribe a mess of oil pottage.29 In the #NODAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline Protest) camp, I spoke to a water protector who indicated that the line between those for and against the pipeline goes between

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family and tribal members both among indigenous peoples and settlers, including my informant’s own family. There are no easy solutions. Whether we are for or against, scarcely any of us are exempt from pushing the demand for petroleum products and transportation in the one or other way. Some of us know we need to stop, but few know how to. Solar energy and weather systems bring blessing and curse to all, and even more so under the heightened conditions of global climate change. The spring sun is a welcome visitor after a long northern winter, but if it does come too early, too strong, too hot, it brings heatwaves and drought to many elsewhere. In the Arctic, the shift in cold and heat is particularly significant and transforming, shifting icy landscapes towards melted open shipping routes and loss of habitat for Northern mammals. At the same time, it moves other landscapes towards unbearably hot deserts, too hot already in the spring. More consolidated warmth of fire means mountain tops are melting and the lack of meltwater to feed the creeks and rivers of mountain folk in Latin America and elsewhere forces people to move to the cities. Climate refugees have moved from Syria’s drought-ridden agrarian areas to overcrowded cities. Too much heat in certain regions contributes to incendiary economic and political strife, displaces animals, and disturbs plants. As the temperature of the planet heats up, our cities and societies seem poised to have greater heat also in interpersonal and interethnic relations. Thus, the human tongue is also a fire that “sets on fire the cycle of nature,” leaving only scorched earth, fueled by the fires of hell (James 3:6). Fire, divine, hellish, warming and consuming, godly and singeing tongues manifest the ambivalence inherent in all elements: fire can warm, give light and energy, scorch, and burn to a crisp. Hearts aflame can get incensed about a great many things. Passion can burn both ways. Divine spirits and energy flows cackle forth, air and sound waves expand. Shifts and changes in one element correspond to changes in others in a great network of relations. Humans are generating too much heat for present cycles of ecology and economy to continue, so how will they adjust their ideas of the divine and modes of living to the combustion of fires more intense than at any other time in humanoid history? In what ways does God, the divine, the Spirit, manifest in these times?

OILED UP You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Psalm 23, 5. NRSV While baptism and Eucharist seem to be particularly adaptable for the ritual expression of both material and spiritual elementarity, it seems that most Protestants have a less developed or explicit relation to anointing, unless it comes to the anointing of the sick and dying. The use of olive oil for the anointing in Pentecostal circles comes somewhat closer in terms of the function that interests me here. That is, anointing also has the function of empowering the believer concretely for a ministry or action, as well as the actual function of healing.30 The focus here is primarily on the anointing for power, for an office, as the conferral of power, of social “greasing” of the wheels of a society or group, if you will, but also towards what kinds of anointing with power are sustainably healing. As Christians we believe in and we follow Christ. We use the term “Christ,” but

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how often do we remember it means the Anointed one, the Messiah, Mashiah? The “greased one?” Early commentators remarked on the oddity of the name “Christianos” which they took rather literally to mean the “oily ones.” And about your laughing at me and calling me Christian, you know not what you are saying. First, because that which is anointed is sweet and serviceable, and far from contemptible. For what ship can be serviceable and seaworthy, unless it be first anointed? Or what castle or house is beautiful and serviceable when it has not been anointed? And what man, when he enters into this life or into the gymnasium, is not anointed with oil? And what work has either ornament or beauty unless it be anointed and burnished? Then the air and all that is under heaven is in a certain sort anointed by light and spirit; and are you unwilling to be anointed with the oil of God? Wherefore we are called Christians on this account, because we are anointed with the oil of God.31 Anointed, then, Christians are, and they follow one who was anointed. What might this mean in a time when we draw our power mostly from petroleum, which has become its own sacrament, making things “sweet and serviceable,” “seaworthy” and “beautiful,” making “serviceable” our economies and powering our lives?32

GREASING THE WHEELS The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. Luke 4:18. NRSV Isaiah 61, which is read in part by Jesus in Luke 4:18, continues to speak about the “oil of gladness instead of mourning” (Is 61: 3). Historical texts and practice bear witness to several kinds of anointing: anointing for death, as did the woman who anoints Jesus later on, and anointing for power, for the office of a prophet, or a leader. There is a sacramentality of the Spirit in naming the dead from state violence, just as Jesus’ body was anointed and cared for. Oil in the biblical context may be described as a precious fluid that when applied to the body soothes, honors, and heals on the one hand, and endows, consecrates, and sets apart for sacral leadership on the other. It appears that a certain kind of power, mana, energy, or authority may be conferred through it. Messianic anointing sets apart for leadership and signifies a certain kind of empowerment and trust imparted on the anointed. Messiah is the one marked by divine favor anointed by a prophet to lead the people. Most likely the substance would have been olive oil, a plant-based symbol of empowerment for a future charismatic leader. Yet, being anointed can come with terrible forms of responsibility and agency. African Pentecostals would have it that: [t]he anointed persons of God, it is believed from biblical prophetic precedence, possess special abilities to read people’s destinies and bring communications from the supernatural realm concerning how life should proceed in various circumstances.33

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What kind of anointing does petroleum provide in Africa where petroleum exploitation is famously violent? And what does it grease in the petroleum-dependent North? We may connect anointing with a metaphorical meaning where the spirit of God “sets ablaze” people for a service, a task, a mission. But we have set ablaze the world in a very different way. Did this anointing for power morph into an anointing for death—the death of those who cannot get to higher ground, who can’t reach potable water, of species who cannot adjust to a quickly warming planet? How might we look at these two images? What is the true fruit of the spirit when it comes to anointing? The use of oil at Pentecostal/charismatic meetings has become so widespread that, in Ghana, the substance is now commercially advertised more for its religious than its culinary purposes.34 Moltmann has shown that according to Joachim of Fiore’s trinitarian periodization, all post-Christ history belongs to the “age of the spirit.”35 Yet we are also in the age of petroleum that is setting ablaze the world by turning up the heat. Pentecostals seek to live in the Holy Spirit in a particular way and aim to claim its gifts often in a densely material way, including personal wealth. What if we read the words of a scholar of Pentecostalism as a comment on the anointing of our lives with petroleum? For those who seek the anointing, it is expected that their lives, ministries, and other endeavors will come under the influence of the Spirit in one way or another. The question that we have to answer now is what does anointing and the use of anointing oils mean in practice?36 The Holy Spirit is associated with flames and fire, and if we insisted on holding together image and matter here, what would we see, and how would it critique the quasi-salvific functionality of this “element” of fire/oil/petroleum and its particular “spirit”? Considered sacrosanct in the markets, its anointing power greases our ailing stock portfolios from which more and more are now, however divesting. What does this mean for the idea of God? For the notion of the power of God and our human power? Both water and fire have a long history of being employed as metaphors for the Holy Spirit. And the technology of fracking, using water to get to oil, mingles these two in ways that strive to get the last out of the diminishing subterranean petroleum resources. As our technologies shift, our metaphors for living and acting change. What change in metaphors might we be moving towards today? Which shifts in elemental sacramentality will occur, which other ones might we want to insert? I propose that one of them is an emulsive theology of oil and water responding to this technology of last resort, that extreme unction, threatening to diminish important water resources that cannot be retrieved.

EXTREME UNCTION: DYING TO PETROLEUM, LIVING TO THE COSMOS? If a sacrament is “basically the expression of divine presence through physical objects,”37(or a ritual expression of a meeting between the Divine and human) what kind of sacrament is stone-oil, that is, petroleum?38 Does it function as a fetish of the rituals we build around it? This oil of power, this quasi-spiritual and oh-so material substance connects us in so many ways through petroleum products and allows us to communicate via internet paraphernalia that are produced from other oil derivatives. Truly our lives are unimaginable without it. We are beholden and addicted, we have built our lives around it in ways that

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make us profoundly complicit with the practices used to extract it and continue to fuel the demand. To the extent that it is the lifeblood of our daily lives, it functions as a quasisacrament, a material expression of the grace that saves us from life without this measure of energy. That is, perhaps, the true scope of our idolatry: that we ignore the fact that in many people’s lives oil pollution appears rather as non-compostable excrement soiling their lifespace for the foreseeable future. Do the rituals we observe to maintain its place in our lives resemble more than we would like to think the way in which indigenous African Pentecostals may become dependent on rituals and those who prescribe them,39 rather than the commonwealth that the community of the church invites them to? Have we become too “ensnared by the pattern of rituals that accompanies our societies” anointing with petroleum to perceive a life without its greasing of our wheels? Has our faith not only become gummed up in its dynamics but, in fact, our primary salvific element? Is this non-renewable, toxic, ever harder to obtain quasi-sacrament one of the biggest interlopers in our attempts to serve God and not Mammon? Petroleum, together with other kinds of oils, is of course only one form of the element of fire, of a source of quick energy, and there are tentative explorations of others, far too tentative. It is hardly a secret that the “fossil fuel economy is the most important factor driving the dangerous climate changes”40 we see all around us. Yet, petroleum is merely the current form of energy that propels us in our desires to reach salvation in a rather mundane way: preserve, extend, make easier, etc. our lives in the old search for the perpetuum mobile, an unlimited, cheap source of energy that will ease our lives, extend them, bring “salvation” through technological advancement, travels and perhaps even proffer technological approaches for a kind of “eternal life” gained through technoscientific salvation stories of posthuman futures. Previously needed energy came from other sources: slave labor, low-wage labor, indentured labor, sperm whale blubber, and coal. Our consumption habits empower the increasingly reckless search for what is left of petroleum and its potential fuel alternatives. Much of the search for these fuels does not touch the current infrastructure and means of transportation. Instead we continue to squeak by with a perverted, reductionist, anthropocentric quasi-soteriology that tries to soothe us with technological solutions. What kind of theological wake-up calls and opportunities to grieve can we imagine to shake us out of this complicit complacency?

ANOINTING TOWARDS DIFFERENT ECONOMY: FROM CRUDE TO WATERY And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Luke 7:37–38 While Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza’s In Memory of Her focuses on Mark’s story of the unnamed woman who anoints Jesus, this chapter considers the Lukan version.41 SchüsslerFiorenza’s appears to see this version as problematic since it names the woman a sinner. However, for this chapter, the Lukan version serves as a revelatory device, interpreting her tears as the tears of a collective of Christians, named after an “anointed one” who we would like to serve but must recognize our own betrayal of, even as we are aiming to be

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transformed by that anointed’s presence and example. My reading of the same text occurs with a different angle. In Luke 7:36–50 Jesus, a guest at the house of a Pharisee, encounters a woman who is described as a “sinner,” a person with some financial wealth, bringing an alabaster jar but bathing Jesus’ feet with her tears. The pericope with the encounter contains a parable about debt, debtors and forgiveness of debts. The anointing of feet occurs in extrabiblical texts as a welcome for travelers, but was hardly an everyday occurrence, possibly unparalleled, but “not unthinkable.”42 It only appears in the Lukan and Johannine version of the anointing of Jesus’ feet. In Luke it is a nameless woman sinner, in John, Mary of Bethany (as in the Markan parallel, but without the footwashing).43 Jesus’ messianic kingdom was not for power and privilege, but seemingly for an ironic kingship, anointed for an ironic lifting up and a loss of all.44 Yet, tech-versions of life extension, if not resurrection, is where we seem to have taken it, refusing to suffer and die, slouching towards Bethlehem like zombies. How does this kingship affect our imitatio dei? How do we let go of the anointing with petroleum of our bodies and lives? Bieler and Schottroff propose the Eucharist as an alternative economy, an “economy of grace.”45 What kind of alternative economy might we imagine with the anointing of feet rather than heads, through tears as well as oil? She anoints his feet rather than his head, mixing two elements, water and oil, in a kind of emulsion, perhaps in a gesture we might see as an encouragement in our own time for the need to reject our continued dependence on oil, our tears mixed up with the testimony of our addition to power. What is the reconciliation we owe for the oil we have taken, the one we have in our alabaster jars, or our refinery barrels, as may be the case? This is not a renewable resource. Reducing our dependency on oil whether voluntarily or not, will affect our lives in profound ways, and it will shift our economies and ecologies whether we want it to or not. Indeed, we do effectively worship petroleum, structure our lives around it, and are willing to sacrifice much to it. It is what makes this economy run. Without it, capitalism as we know it would be impossible. What appears as ethnic-religious strife in parts of Africa is in fact a struggle around the control for oil in Sudan, Darfur, Nigeria, and other places.46 It is everywhere in our lives through things such as plastics and technological products, it is the backbone of industrialism and the computer industry. Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” Luke 7:44–47 What is the “great love” we might show in the prospect of the release of our large carbon debt? What alternate sources of power can we imagine, how can we reimagine our use of power? Joachim Jeremias argues that the key to understanding the story lies in “recognizing the difference between giving alms and a work of love.” Thus, acts of love are not restricted to the poor, but include both rich and poor.47 In his reading of this pericope, Robert Holst suggests that a related rabbinical statement might have been “The poor you always have with you; love you do not always have,” stretching again beyond limited concepts of love.48 Is this love big enough for the cosmos, for an “ecologicaleconomic vocation”49 and can the poor also be understood as those disenfranchised by our greed for oil? Expansive love seeks a different kind of anointing.

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Where oil has replaced and infested our alliance to the God who anoints us for a different divine economy, can we leave behind the barrels of crude? What would it mean to let go of the expensive alabaster jar of oil, recognize the enormous earthly price tag it comes with and turn towards the feet of Jesus, with nothing but our tears, welcoming the incarnate presence of the divine, honoring it, understanding our deep indebtedness to creation and what our addiction to oil has caused in our lives and the lives of generations to come. The damage is done, we are personally and structurally tied up and enslaved by this economy, only beginning to realize the structural evil we are caught in.50 It may indeed be only love and the rediscovery of community and commonwealth apart from this sacrament.

SACRAMENTAL FIRE Kann uns eine Erzählung befriedigen, die jeden Bezug zum Feuer verloren hat?51 Can we be satisfied by a narrative that has lost all connection to fire? At the center of the Oceti Sakowin camp was the Sacred Fire. Unlike the cooking fires, no images are to be taken of it, partly, as one of the elders explained, so that we would have to remember what happens around the fire in our hearts, rather than forget it together with the momentary pictures we take. And that it has done. Around it, the elders gather, stories are told, and prayers are offered. Words spoken at that fire made their way deep into many hearts. The Sacred Fire are the fires in camp where the community brings their best prayers and selves, no curses, no dark thoughts, a place that is meant to discipline us into kindness, respect, and love. The energy of that fire had with it something profound, something unique, something unrepeatable. The lack of photos I have from it made the mental images and the memory ever more important, and somehow my nervous system seems to understand that. That Sacred Fire was a central flame that carried our best hopes and prayers, and it holds our memories. Giorgio Agamben recounts a story about the Baal Shem Tov as related by Gerschom Scholem that locates fire at the origin of a vital spiritual memory. The Baal Shem Tov had a habit of going into the forest and lighting a fire, in front of which he would recite powerful and effective prayers. The descendants of the Baal Shem Tov, however, lack the efficacy of his prayers, and improvise as each generation loses grasp of a critical piece of the original ritual. The fire is the first to be forgotten, then the location in the forest, the words of the original prayers, and so forth. Thus the memory of powerful spiritual agency, so Agamben suggests, recedes as later generations retell the important memory. The initial experience recedes, and thus becomes, demythologized, or secularized, no longer vital and energizing: Denn betrachetet man den Verlust des Feuers, des Orts, und der Formel als Fortschritt, und sieht im Ergebnis dieses Fortschritts—der Säkularisierung—die Befreiung der Erzählung von ihren mythischen Ursprüngen und die Schaffung einer—autonom und mündig gewordenen—Literatur in der abgetrennten Sphäre der Kultur, entbehrte das ‘Genugseinjeden’ Sinns.52 For if one considers the loss of fire, location and the formula as progress, and the result of this progress—of secularization—the liberation of narrative from its mythical origins and the creation of a literary tradition that now has become autonomous and mature in this separate sphere of culture—the sense of “enough” is meaningless.

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To remember this original experience at the fire and of the fire remains a challenge. The camps have been disbanded, the pipeline was built even after an injunction was won in the last days of the Obama administration. A new war has been declared on the elements, forces in the government spiked with oil executives and climate change deniers. The Sacred Fire seems to have been extinguished, the movement beaten back. Will the memory of that fire be sustained and sustainable, will this elemental movement be able to assemble a structure that can resist the forces intent to drill for every last single drop of oil? The task ahead is one of rekindling the fire and rekindling the narrative.

ANOINTED WITH OIL Fueled by petroleum, economic growth transsubstantiates ancient decomposed plants and animals into forms of powerful energy without which our current lives are unthinkable. Petroleum is a global sacrament in this oiled up space and time, yet some know it as the “excrement of the devil,”53 having surveyed the damage oil extraction leaves behind, booming and busting its way through soils and waters left polluted. The covert interaction between financial speculation and oil economies contributes to the desensitization and split interests of persons invested and related to stock-market dynamics, where the toll on human and ecological economies does not show up on the balance sheet. If it is the case that we are past the point of return when it comes to rapid, unprecedented climate change, one might wonder what the purpose of theological talk is when it seems that only quick, concerted action, counts. There have been many words over the last decades, a lot of resistance and denialism,54 and all too little tangible change. At the same time, the challenge of rethinking theology to respond to climate change continues. Echoing Catherine Keller, I would like, then, to counter the apocalyptic, heed its urgency while resisting its end-talk, offer hopeless hopes and respond therapeutically and theologically55 with hope wrought from determination and love for the “wounded sacred” cosmos and its inhabitants. As a theologian, I believe that one step towards action is recognition and transformation of patterned thinking; that is, unless we can conceptualize an alternate way of understanding divine action as religious people, and of transforming our ways of living according to that understanding, we have to assume catastrophic climate changes will affect a great majority of living beings. We may feel hopeless or outnumbered and outgunned, but taking action will still make a great difference, and it will help us find communities of resistance and of transformation. I am determined to remain cautiously hopeful, and I see the task of theology—and it is a fearsome task—as lying in helping to imagine what is happening as well as helping to adjust to what will likely be historically unprecedented. Hence, the challenges to discern divine agency are enormous.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Fire, Religion, Nature, and Shona Culture ISABEL MUKONYORA

In his introduction to the Guardians of the Land, Matthew Schoffeleers made the following general remark about a common way of talking about fire in central Africa, where people are anxious to preserve knowledge systems that are now threatened by westernization and climate change. Fire was a means to open up new gardens or re-fertilize old ones. Low-lying grasslands were burnt early in the dry season to provide a fresh grass crop for cattle. Fire was also used in certain systems of hunting and retrieving . . . Fire management was an art which locally has been developed to perfection. It was of course also an agent which, in the hands of the untrained and irresponsible, could cause irreparable damage to a community’s resources.1 In the male dominated societies of the Bantu, in central Africa at least it was the responsibility of lineage cults associated with territorial rule to control bushfires.2 With cattle viewed as a symbol of wealth, land something owned by men, and women regarded as subordinate members of society, Shona men took pride in taking their sons with them on trips to take the cattle grazing through the forest to designated grasslands and places to find drinking water. Michael Bourdillon, an anthropologist known for his studies of Shona people in Zimbabwe, goes further to say that “fire was subject to stringent legislation and severe sanction . . . it was always been the jurisdiction of ‘cults’ to impose limits on burning.”3 In short, African men were motivated by the needs of their prized possession—cattle—to familiarize themselves with the landscape. With land perceived as a possession in which to keep one’s wealth, fire became something to harness in order to make sure there was grass suitable for cattle to graze, places to find water, wild animals, fruit and even places to play games and provide each other with entertainment. There is no question that Shona people whose women members of society who are the focus of this chapter, knew a lot about fire as they did other aspects of the ecosystem. It is common to find Shona God-Talk as drawing attention to elements of nature, including fire portrayed and understood through male imagery. As reflected in the examples of creation myths told by women in Herbert Aschwanden’s anthropological inquiries into the Karanga, concepts of God among the Shona,4 such as Mudzanapwe (Of the Great Pool of Water), Samututu (Great Wind or Breath), Musikavanhu (Maker of Humans), and Mutangakugara (The First to Stay) are all portrayed as male agents of creation sent by God (Mwari) to oversee the process of creation of planetary life on 173

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Earth.5 These masculine agents of creation also acted as representatives of God behind the conclusion that the Supreme Being, Mwari, was an ecological deity. The sexual imagery of men planting their seed in the mother’s womb was used to produce rich metaphors about Mwari as the deity responsible for the planting and spreading of the seeds of life on Mother Earth.6 Michael Bourdillon, another anthropologist with an expert knowledge of Shona religion and culture, draws attention to a further characteristic of Mwari as Chipindikure (One Who Turns Things Upside Down).7 Like Aschwanden, who found Karanga stories used to explain the misfortunes and evil as problems stemming from the Supreme Being suddenly making the decision not to make the world perfect, Bourdillon found the name Chipindikure was used explain the ill-tempered nature of Mwari: Thunder and especially lightning were usually understood to come from the high god. These reveal occasional and unusual power coming from the heavens which is terrifying, unpredictable and inexplicable in terms of the ordinary events of social life.8 Apart from sending lightning to main and kill humans, the high god caused forest fires and sometimes burned down huts. In other words, Mwari was not just a benevolent deity, but rather as complex as nature itself, which is filled with good, bad, inexplicable, and dangerous things like fire.9 As it happens, the Shona past just described was a time when men and women spent the day doing very different things from each other. The language about Mwari was as gendered as the culture in which meaning was given to elements of nature, especially when it comes to fire. Understanding this past and the language used requires focusing on information otherwise brushed aside because of androcentric methods of research. All the scholars cited thus far raise questions about the role of women as members of society in an agrarian past where it was normal to combine the role of mother with farming and cultivating fire in order to cook. As observed by Bourdillon, the primary concern of the cult of God (Mwari) was fertility, rain, and good harvests—activities which automatically raise questions about women and their participation in Shona religion and culture. In short, this chapter will hopefully contribute to the study of an African religion, nature, and culture by paying closer attention to Shona women. In the case study discussed below, women worked as closely with fire as they did with water, dirt and other elements of nature. It is argued that mothers had a comprehensive knowledge of the environment and skills through which to nurture life. Women harnessed fire regularly as part of marriages in which fire was a primary cultural symbol of life, honor to women, and a divine wisdom which corresponds strongly with a female-oriented way of making sense of the nature of Mwari. Shona women, it is suggested, acted as agents of knowledge about religion and an ecology worth examining more closely in this era of climate change.10

WOMEN AS AGENTS OF KNOWLEDGE As outlined above, Shona women not only handled fire continually, they were mindful of deep questions about the meaning of life on Earth as child-bearers, mothers and farmers with a good knowledge of the environment. They were not subject to the stringent legislation and severe sanction of fire associated with lineage cults preoccupied with man dominion of the world. It was part of a woman’s day-to day-life to work with fire.11 Like other African women from the time Europeans started seizing African lands for industrial trade during the nineteenth century, Shona women were responsible for the household

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economies within which fire was used to support life. They knew enough about the dangers of direct fire to use hard rock to absorb some of the heat and create different settings of fire for cooking, drying meat or vegetables for storage, roasting peanuts or maize, providing light, and much needed warmth during the winter months. Fire was thus regulated by rules of combustion which women understood. Fire in the hut was rather like the spark of life or fons et origo of life inside a fertile woman’s womb.12 To address the current questions about religion and ecology effectively, it is a good idea in this case, to take a careful look at what it meant to have women being at the center of Shona culture. What turned women into experts on making fire, and what of the idea of sustaining life, and promoting a sense of community with an ecologically sound work ethic? These questions are particularly pertinent now that Shona culture has changed significantly through a process of urbanization tied to a way of perpetuating male dominance by using guns to reclaim land seized by Europeans during the colonial era as a civil right.13 There is also a great deal to say about women and fire in the Shona arising from the need to change attitudes towards nature. Here are a few examples of how women are agents of knowledge, starting with the use of fire during childbirth. First, women needed to make sure the temperature of the fire was suitable for the midwife to carry out her job. Midwives were skilled in their roles, and knew they had to attend homes to make sure the room used for the delivery was well lit, clean, and safe. Midwives were left alone with mothers giving birth. Keeping a gentle fire burning in order to have the warm water that would clean the mother, infant, and room before anyone else could see the baby was crucial.14 However strongly Shona men viewed their role in procreation, giving birth by the fire commanded a lot of their respect. They assumed they would receive the support of midwives when they gave birth and breastfed, as well as the knowledge of “aunties” who made sure the lives of infants began in the safe environment of huts at the center of which was a fire. Michael Gelfand observed that pregnant women risk being blamed for unsuccessful births because of the fear of witches.15 In the book The African Witch is a picture of naked women dancing around a fire lit under a tree out there in the darkness of the night.16 In Shona language and beliefs about evil, witches befriended poisonous snakes, rode hyenas, craved the tender flesh of children, and dug up graves looking for human flesh. These heinous acts took place during the night so that witches were not lighting fires merely to dance; they needed to light fires to see in the dark without arousing suspicion. Europeans introduced The Witchcraft Suppression Act in Zimbabwe in 1899, making it a crime to accuse anyone of witchcraft just because it was dangerous to have people lighting fires in the middle of the night. Too many innocent women were getting accused of witchcraft, a crime for which offenders were sentenced to death by drowning, or exiled for causes of death which western medicine could explain.17 Otherwise, harnessing fire, like recognizing the movement of the sun across the sky and fetching drinking water, were noticeably central to women’s lives in much more positive ways among the Shona. If they did not wake up to fetch drinking water at sunrise, women lit fires to cook breakfast for the family and plan for long days of work. For example, during the rainy season, it was normal to cook breakfast then carry hoes for weeding and breaking the soil across fields of maize, sorghum, rice, peanuts, sweet potatoes, pumpkins etc. Even more directly related to fire, Shona women went out on special fire-related missions called kutsvaga huni (searching for wood).18 Kutsvaga huni was a time-consuming way of preparing for lighting fires needed to sustain life on Earth. It took the women all day to pick the best quality of indigenous wood to burn in front of

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their husbands and children. Sometimes in-laws and guests watched, praised, and advised young mothers on how to kindle fires while they do their chores as mothers. Thus it was important to be fully prepared for kutsvaga huni so that married women could light good fires in front of their families. To make sure everyone was satisfied, Shona women thus wandered through the forests in groups of three or four mothers who trusted each other. Mutual trust was important for the safety of infants whom it was the responsibility of mothers to breastfeed and protect on long days of fulfilling an arduous and sometimes dangerous task of finding firewood in neighboring forests. Shona women also learned to keep each other informed about the indigenous trees which produced the most suitable wood for burning. As stated in the example of temperature settings of fire during childbirth when the midwife must also concentrate on the mother and infant, knowing what wood to burn was important. The sight of dark smoke rising through the thatched roof could put lives at risk. Not only was it uncomfortable and bad for the lungs to breathe fast-burning wood that gave off black smoke, in-laws viewed it as a sign of poor preparation for marriage among Shona women if they lit fires with too much smoke.19 The wood most suitable for homestead use was the common indigenous msasa tree. This wood was not only the easiest to find, but it burned slowly and lasted longer without putting lives at risk. In short, Shona women developed an understanding of different types of wood as experts on domestic fire.20 As chefs, who needed to control the temperature of the fire for a whole variety of uses, women had, at the center of the round hut built from wooden poles, clay, and tall grass for thatched roofs carefully constructed to let the smoke rise through towards the sky. In Shona language, the term mapfiwa described three stones the size of a football were used for balancing earthenware pots while the fire burned in the middle of the hut. The children born in this room trusted their mothers to build fires that would burn safely.21 The mapfiwa could be used to absorb some of the heat during different types of use, from roasting corn on the cob and peanuts, to drying vegetables, boiling water, slow-boiling food, keeping warm, and lighting the fire for enjoyment. Mapfiwa were like the mother, a symbol of a knowledge system which Shona people lived. Although forbidden when Europeans seized control of Zimbabwe, the Shona custom of kugadza mapfiwa (keeping the fireplace stable) was like the ability to harness fire in general, and so important that it was problematic for families to discuss at funerals. Fathers could put pressure on sisters of their deceased mother to consider taking over the role of wife and mother of their nieces and nephews. Stepping into these roles for the sake of keeping blood relations between in-laws was considered noble in that it would ensure the safe upbringing of children around the same mapfiwa. Shona women thus developed such intimate relations with children around fireplaces, and it was normal for husbands to hope that the direct kin of the deceased mother would wish to promote the integrity of the way of life symbolized by the mapfiwa. Although judged too oppressive to women to keep this custom, it shows that the three stones used to harness fire symbolized giving birth, protecting, and nurturing life in a powerful way. It suited Shona men to point to the stability of mapfiwa as something that goes with the provision of services which meant children should be kept within families in the event of death.22 As observed by Bourdillon, when Shona men and women wished to show respect for one another, they used the clan names of father figures.23 These father figures recognized the importance of women as mothers enough to develop a custom honoring in-laws with a mombe youmai (motherhood cow), which, at the time of her choosing, the mother authorized killing to celebrate their success. When viewed against the background of the

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language describing women as vatorwa (outsiders), harnessing fire to cook mombe youmai in a celebration of life, the status of vatorwa does not sound so sexist. Still, mombe youmai sounds like trade between men who looked upon women as a commodity whose value came from providing the lineage with children belonging to the husband, and farming for which there was no remuneration. In short, the need to uncover ideas about nature from the past is so important in the address critically in this development of religion and ecology in Africa today. It is good to find that women were taken seriously as agents of knowledge about nurturing life on Earth in a world demanding the critical appropriation ideas with which to build a better world. As shown throughout this chapter, fire is key to the Shona way of life described in the past and needed for the future to make sure people understand the need to proceed with caution as cultural changes occur. Life with sacred fire must be preserved for the Shona way to also survive. As farmers who practised the cross fertilization of food crops, Shona women lit fires for yet another reason. They burned the stalks of food crops and weeds left lying around the field after harvest. For instance, Grandma Emma tried to help her grandchildren understand the need to stand back while she lit a fire over her pumpkin, maize, and rice fields after harvest. She said that burning the all dry stalks was a way of letting the soil rest and of keeping the nutrients of the soil at the same time. Around the same time, men lit fires on grasslands to help new grass grow for the cattle to graze the following spring and summer. It was also common for Emma to take one or two grandchildren on casual walks as hunter-gathers as late as the mid–1980s.24 Depending on the season, firewood was not the only reason to spend hours wandering across neighboring forests and hills.25 Emma collected wild cherries, figs, red mushrooms, herbs, including mint leaves, to chase the mosquitoes away, and the occasional grasshopper and fish for supper. These were delicacies which made sitting around the mapfiwa interesting.26 Some of her goods were prepared for eating the same day. Others were placed around the mapfiwa to dry and put in storage.

SUSTAINABILITY, RELIGION AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Once the dishes were put aside for washing after supper, it was time for the knowledge of women to be tested by family members waiting for bedtime. The fireplace was often quickly transformed into something like a classroom of friends as mothers started to share their experiences of work, their hopes for the children, and talk about the deeper questions on the meaning of life. In short, Shona women negotiated for their place in society by helping their children with lessons about the culture, as well as about environmental ethics through ngano (folk stories).27 Folk stories carried a lot of meaning, and every homestead needed someone to keep the fire going before bedtime. It was rather like watching television today, offering things to engage the mind while knowing there are different members of the family present interested in spending a little time together.28 It was the mothers’ responsibility to turn the hut into a fire lit virtual setting for learning more about the history of the culture, religion, the environment, philosophy, and ethics. As mothers and as people who spent a lot of their time surrounded by planetary life, they became guardians of the rich oral tradition, thus allowing them to use insights from their experiences of reality into lessons on philosophy. Altogether, ngano were like myths, praise poems, prayers, songs, and stories about animals, sources of knowledge useful for turning children into future experts on religion, nature, and culture. In the

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book The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa, Sheilagh Ranger tries to describes the process of learning to cope with life on Earth thus: Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns. Most of this is held unconsciously, which means that our imagination may recognize elements of its, when presented in art, or literature, without consciously understanding what it is that we recognize.29 In short, folklore, myths, legends, jokes, proverbs, riddles, chants, retorts, and songs30 are all oral traditional ways of developing the intellect. Shona people had an elaborate way through which sitting by the fire becomes as special opportunity to think about experiences of reality—a place to do philosophy with everyone present fully engaged. We have here a patriarchal world dependent on women’s ability to communicate ideas behind references to Shona women as the guardians of culture insofar as they had power, influence and fireplaces to express their discontent with acts of oppression.31 Below is one example of a Shona creation myth which turns ideas around fire into symbolic speech about the ecological deity whose presence in the world had a meaning and purpose more plausible to women than God and man’s dominion in the world.32 The medical doctor and Dutch missionary, Herbert Aschwanden, found himself turning to a group of modern women working as nurses for his knowledge of African stories of creation.33 In this particular one, fire was associated with human beings blessed with divine wisdom and human intelligence in communities centered on women as important guardians of Shona culture. Here is an abridged version of a story they would have told with chants, retorts, and songs, depending on the speaker’s gift to relate ideas, as recorded by Aschwanden: Before the world began, God (Mwari) lived in the sky . . . One day, God said to one of his faithful beings, “Mutangakugara, take my walking stick, with it I will lower you into the big water beneath the sky. There the stick will fulfil all your wishes. However, when your life nears the end, I shall send an eagle, who will call you home. You must then leave everything and tell your children to obey the stick.” God opened the sky and gently dropped Mutangakugara in the water that covered the planet. Seeing no life on earth, Mutangakugara complained, “I cannot see the sky any longer. What am I to do?” Then, a huge fire-ball rose above the water, and Mutangakugara was amazed. He shouted, “Ziiko (what is this great mystery?)?” Zivo, meaning “knowledge, the sun”). Following this experience of awe, “the man from the sky” developed a consciousness of the divine. The rest of this story is very interesting because the name of the “big ball of fire,” or zuva, is associated with seeing things and developing ruzivo (knowledge) about life on Earth.34 It was so important to experience the world through the senses, Mutangakugara coined the word mabvazuva (the direction of the sunrise) as a way of drawing attention to the power of the sun, and to its importance as a life-giving force which transformed the life of humans so that they began to see land, trees, grass, plants, and the moon giving light to the night sky, and also began to understand and take part in procreation, and so on. Throughout this story of creation there is mwenje wezivo which turned the ball of fire into a symbol of knowledge.35 By the time this story of creation ends, the first human family “lived happily and in perfect peace with the animals. All creatures were equal, and not one was inferior.”

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Mutangakugara learned that all creatures originate in Mwari’s own nature. However, one day, the eagle came to remind Mutangakugara that it was time for him to return to the sky.36 Like the other creation stories found in Aschwanden’s book, Karanga Mythology, this story about fire as something that lights the sky, gives animals sight, wisdom, and general knowledge about life on Earth ends with points of reflection on what went wrong to cause an ecological crisis. In this case, humans created a social hierarchy in which women became chizuva (the one with small knowledge of the sun) and with men dominating the world. Humans began to quarrel, doubt the existence of God and cause chaos. Envy spread, and humans started fighting and shedding blood. Although the sun continued to rise and set, the ecological deity Mwari “cursed” the land inhabited by humans. “Thorns began to grow. The animals ate each other and also attacked human beings. The rain stopped falling and the land dried up.” This ending to a story of creation was a way of warning about violence and other human causes of suffering and death which are disruptive to planetary life then, and we now associate with climate change.37 Shona myths about Mwari are interesting to look at as a way of closing these discussions on women as agents of knowledge before colonial rule destroyed the culture with industrialization and the modern discourse of morality taught by European missionaries. The latter started using the local name Mwari to describe God as a personal deity who created the world for men to dominate. The historian Jock McCulloch, found that the collision of the Shona and European cultures led to an unfortunate double patriarchy that lacked so much knowledge about African women that Europeans called Shona women amoral, sexual beings who were dangerous to men.38 It must be obvious to European missionaries visiting Zimbabwe today that the western idea of a personal God (Mwari) as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and maker of everything in existence produced a value system that does not promote social justice let alone help anyone follow what it means promote environmental justice.39 As it happens, the most popular names for Mwari were Mbuya (Grandmother), Mai Vedu (Our Mother Earth), and Dzivaguru (Great Pool). After doing fieldwork at Matonjeni, a shrine controlled by the ancestral ruling cult of the Rozvi, the anthropologist Martinus Daneel observed that women had a significant role.40 At this shrine the “Voice” of a woman known as Mbonga Svikiro (wife of God) represented Mwari in ways which the historian with much to say about the Zimbabwe, Terence Ranger concluded that it tells us more about women’s voices than the Shona patriarchy.41 For example, the shrine at Matonjeni was not only looked after by women elders, but it was—and still is—an immediate reminder of the need for rain and the importance of women’s fertility and related values outlined above. Matonjeni is a natural habitat shaped rather like a womb. It is a cave within which lies a pool of water, an image that Aschwanden says corresponds with the fertility of women, with the Earth being like a mother with a womb as the fons et origo of life. There is even a story of creation in which Mwari develops a mutual relationship with Mother Earth as the one formed for producing life on Earth.42 It seems appropriate to end this discussion of fire from the perspective of Shona women by looking at how Grandma Emma expressed the wish to put out the fire to say good night. She would ask one of the children to fill a small gourd with fresh water kept in a special container and then hoisted it on a stand positioned east, facing the door through which the sun would have shone its golden light earlier on in the day. With her left hand raised above the mapfiwa, now full of ashes, Emma carefully poured out water from the gourd in her right hand over the left hand, moving in a circular motion around the

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fireplace until the fire was out and the mapfiwa were warm enough to touch without any discomfort. Everyone went to bed having heard the voices of women on sustainability and social justice just about every evening.43

CHANGING IDEAS ABOUT FIRE Since the main audience of this book are alive at a time when the signs of climate change are obvious, I would like to draw attention to some of the social changes behind the rise of a rather different meaning of fire among the Shona. This is important because the Shona people most likely to read this article experience and think about fire as members of a postcolonial industrialized and westernized world in which there is more knowledge about particular Christianity than the Shona traditional religion and culture outlined above. For many reasons to do with the deliberate marginalization of women since the colonial era, Shona women from rural Zimbabwe would rather not risk their lives by going to fetch firewood in those forests used to shed blood in the name of liberation from colonial oppression. Landmines used during the war of liberation changed the idea of forests from havens of peace in which women could establish bonds during kutsvaga huni44 into places where guerillas could combine religious aspirations for a sense of belonging to a world under the dominion of God, with strong emotions about firing guns and using other explosives as ways of fighting for social justice.45 Most Shona women today view firewood as a commodity one buys from the market. Others just expect their husbands, or traders equipped with special tools for cutting down big trees, to bring the firewood home. Among Grandma Emma’s neighbors during the 1980s were women who shunned walking around the forest with small children, and carrying one’s own firewood home. Why not place an order for the delivery of wood for use throughout the year given that they now lived in a culture where Europeans introduced permanent changes based on western ideas of trade?46 Apart from causing deforestation, the need for women to continue making fire suffered with this brushing-aside of knowledge of the Shona past. Electric fires are now commonly used for cooking and warmth in winter in both cities and many parts of rural Zimbabwe. Rather than trust traditional midwives to deliver babies, women attend maternity wards at nearby hospitals to give birth. In short, once Europeans settled in Southern Rhodesia between 1890 and1935, a new discourse of morality was created to match the social changes imposed upon Shona people. The social significance of fire changed accordingly as western technological goods took over. In farming, machines operated by men, such as tractors—which burn diesel to run,—are now the sign of great family wealth. These machines, used by men to plough the fields while women and children plant the crops, pull weeds, and harvest food crops, have already caused so much soil erosion and made cross-fertilization, a technique once used to keep the soil fertile for longer periods, a thing of the past. Worse, throughout Africa, for many people, the first thing that comes to mind when fire is mentioned are guns and explosives. Europeans used guns and explosives to seize African land and start commercial farming, mining, and manufacturing industries for extracting and processing raw materials collected by digging into the surface of the Earth. Today Zimbabwean mines produce asbestos, coal, chrome, copper, and diamonds, all raw materials which, like men using Western technology to cut down big trees for firewood, explains the destruction of ecosystems around the country.47 Shona men and women, persuaded to fight fire with fire, made the situation worse for Zimbabweans facing climate change long after British rule ended with the declaration of independence and democratic

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elections held among them (and their Ndebele neighbors) in 1980.48 Historically, however, armaments, and their link to fire, has dominated the social history of Zimbabwe. For example, the First Chimurenga (Uprising), which the Shona led with support from their Ndebele neighbors, was defeated as spears were no match for Europeans equipped with guns and explosives (1896–97).49 As Schmidt put it in her recent book, Foreign Intervention in Africa, firing weapons has been the most common way of quarrelling on the continent. Nation states once conquered, then ruled, by the Dutch, French, Portuguese and the British, produced African regimes dependent on the military control of people who believe in fighting for justice and peace.50 The colonial regime that ruled the Shona directly and indirectly from 1890 until the British government declared Zimbabwe an independent nation state in 1979 certainly used violence to underpin its authority.51 As far as Schmidt is concerned, Shona women did not stop harnessing fire once the British South Africa Police seized control of the country now known as Zimbabwe in 1890.52 The women were simply pushed to the margins of the country as all the most fertile land was seized for commercial purposes which involved their husbands and sons as cheap labor. Shona men had to follow commands about how to destroy the environment and associated their work with obedience to God and prosperity.53 The meaning of fire, one might say, changed significantly as harnessing fire required a knowledge of Western technology, recognizing violent patterns of behavior increased tools used to industrialize Shona society for good. Fire took on a twisted form in the human conditions just described. The male guardians of the land learned quickly from European gun-users that the ancestral land they tried to defend with spears could be seized if more modern ways of harnessing fire were deployed. The lineage cults of the ecological deity, Mwari, that were associated with territorial powers of men, did not respond well to the loss of freedom to the effective uses of guns by Europeans. By 1965, the white regime led by Ian Douglas Smith from 1964 to 1979 found itself relying on the Rhodesian Army to maintain power over Africans who had acquired a taste for guns and explosives and/or regarded them as necessary evils. So African men and some women joined a bush war for social justice with European missionaries caught in middle.54 In the background was the Cold War, where Europeans from the East and West competed for a target audience looking for fire power. By the 1960s, all the wonderful stories about Shona woman from the past had gone. Shona men were associated with the fight for independence, and proud of a social history that had female guerillas firing guns. Oral traditions of thought on ecojustice clashed with new ways of thinking about wealth as something one gets by putting the industrialization of society with Mwari as a God of dominion demanding obedience to those with power to control everything.55 In Zimbabwe, the “war on terror” was primarily to do white minority rule, a problem which remained part of the story of South Africa until Nelson Mandela became president in 1990.56 When Zimbabwe was declared independent in 1980, Koreans designed the Heroes’ Acre so that people can visit a monument marking the birth of the nation that united Shona and Ndebele people around the bloody cause for justice. The Korean architects used the idea of fire to remind Zimbabweans of the violence used to promote social justice, and constructed a forty-meter-high tower topped with an “eternal flame.” Lit at independence celebrations held in 1982, the flame embodies the spirit of Zimbabwean independence. To complete the picture, there is black marble statue of three soldiers, one of them, a woman is holding a gun, another holding explosives, while the third soldier is holding a flag to signal the rise of the nation of Zimbabwe.57 Visiting

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tourists can also see other images of Africans risking their lives but ready to confront the highly equipped Rhodesian Army, which was determined to stand for the superiority of the white race and stay in power.58 In addition to the signs of death all over Heroes Acre, including graves, it worth noting the prevalence of Western industrial technologies to support life in an urbanized society keen to continue producing material wealth without stopping to think about preserving the environment. This chapter is a way of saying to anyone who enjoys firing guns that maim and kill fellow human beings to solve differences of opinion, that there are other living creatures suffering in silence as ecosystems are also destroyed by these uses of Western technology in wars on terror. Among the Shona, the war on terror for or against white minority rule in southern Africa lasted from 1960 until 1980, and remained an issue until South Africa was proclaimed free of apartheid in 1990.59 Climate change, and the difficult subject of the close relationship between Christian social teaching about a God who exercises his dominion with the idea of saving souls coming first while life on the planet falls apart, present the Shona with an interesting challenge.

ALTERNATIVE MODERN SHONA GOD-TALK ON LIVING WITH DEATH Masowe Apostles come to mind as Shona-speaking Christians who have established among their churches an oral tradition which echoes the past, in that they sometimes light fires to pray in a sacred wilderness which takes them outdoors when it is dark.60 Johane Masowe (1914–73), the founder of this African oral tradition of Christianity, grew up on a homestead in Gandanzara, where he is now buried in a coffin on top of a rock. As one of the popular founders of African Initiated Churches from the region, Johane Masowe is useful to study because he insisted on sharing his thoughts about God in his mother tongue so that to this day, Masowe Apostles view Shona as a sacred language. One speaks to God from the heart in Shona, and this gives believers spontaneous ways of addressing problems of life which may began with colonialism and now to be studied as the historic roots of climate change.61 In order to draw attention to the acuteness of the oppression of women and the eradication of their divine wisdom, Johane Masowe adopted the feminine title, Mbonga-svikiro (The Wife of God). He also drew attention to the eco-destructive environment in which he felt called to reach Shona-speaking victims of colonial oppression, the sick and poor by holding Shona prayer meetings on the margins of cityscapes throughout Zimbabwe, and used the language of the masowe (wilderness) to communicate his spiritual hunger for the healing power of the ecological deity Mwari.62 What has all this to do with fire having a social significance? To this day, Masowe Apostles pray under the night skies. When the moon and star light is bright, it is common to find people dressed in white robes sitting around fire places built with mapfiwa, albeit outdoors. As if inside a hut, the Masowe Apostles sit around a fire to share experiences of life on Earth, pray, listen to sermons, and have women sing what they call “verses”. The latter are used by Shona women to draw attention to the importance of the atmosphere of prayer for healing, at the center of which is a fire lit in the name of the Holy Spirit. As it was in the Shona past all over again, Masowe Apostles do not suppress women’s knowledge of about God; instead, Shona-speaking women share their thoughts and sing before a God whom all present agree to be a God of love and justice who treats all his children as equals.63 Night-time prayers for healing are not only announced well in advance, but men and women sit while their children sleep around the fire until dawn in

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small forests, meadows, barren fields on the margins of the cityscapes, by the golf course etc., not so much because they hope for miracles. Most Masowe Apostles bring to prayers for healing a deep quest for belonging caused by the introduction of individualistic attitudes to life on Earth.64 When Masowe Apostles pray during the day, it is part of their ritual behavior to dress in white robes for the walk towards chosen sites of prayer, to remove their shoes and sit on the ground, as if in an enlarged hut, with men facing and women and the children facing each other. As if around mapfiwa with a spiritual fire burning to unite believers, Masowe Apostles always sit facing a middle point, with visual contact of each other as men and women. Then, everyone faces east and bows down for zvakazarura (letting God be revealed by nature). This climax of prayer meetings reminds us of Mwari as an ecological deity of the Shona past, because the mabvazuva (direction from which the sun comes) comes from an old way to expressing that there is knowledge of God symbolized by the “great ball in the sky” rising east and setting west. As highlighted in the discussion of the myth of creation where Mutangakugara’s life depend on prayers for light to come from the sky so he could see, understand, and act wisely as the creation of planetary life unfolded before his eyes, the sun can be seen as a symbol of life and the self-revelation of Mwari to those attentive enough to remember that everyone is equal to God and that other living creatures were meant to share with humans a world of peace, harmony, and justice for all living beings.65 In conclusion, divine wisdom is like the knowledge for everybody which Shona women insisted on around the fireplace. One gets this gift of knowledge by becoming eco-sensitive when making decisions about ordinary life on Earth. For those theologians interested in the future of the planet, there are lessons on ways of adapting Christianity to an era of climate change here. The readiness of the Masowe Apostles to imagine a sacred wilderness where the healing ceremonies bring people together outdoors to think about the meaning and purposes of God as an ecological deity is a powerful reminder of the Shona past—at a time when women were agents of an indepth knowledge about fire as something to relate to expressions of love, sharing, peace, and justice on Earth. As stories about the suffering and death of planetary life through human acts of violence, wild fires, sporadic droughts, floods, economic poverty, diseases, and related misfortunes continue to spread, it is well worth trying to get people to remember alternative ways of promoting life on Earth. One hopes that readers find in this chapter on the Shona past and present a few fire-related eco-friendly ideas that might translate into proactive African ways of responding to climate change.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Protective Occupation, Emergent Networks, Rituals of Solidarity: Comparing Alta (Sápmi), Mauna Kea (Hawai‘i), and Standing Rock (North Dakota) SIV ELLEN KRAFT AND GREG JOHNSON

INTRODUCTION: SACRED FIRES AND SMOKE SIGNALS On February 22, 2017, an exodus ceremony was performed at Oceti Sakowin, Standing Rock, after eleven months of continuous efforts to stop the “Black Snake,” the Dakota Access pipeline. Water Protectors gathered to pray and dance, and eventually to set fire to the encampments, thereby, elders were reported to have said, to send smoke up like prayers, ensuring that the structures would “go out in dignity.”1 Our reflections here take a cue from these fires, pointing us to the passion of Indigenous protest movements and challenging us to reflect on what we, as scholars of religion, might have to add to this story. Visiting the Standing Rock camps in September/October 2016, and again in November, we were struck by the importance of religious registers, by the global scales involved, and by echoes of other momentous Indigenous protection movements. More than echoes, we heard voices. Specifically, we had conversations with a group of Sami musicians and with Kia‘i (Protectors) from Mauna Kea who had come to the camp to offer support. In both cases, the clarity of their religious expressions—sometimes localized, other times more global in cadence—caught our ears. Taking such resonances as our point of departure, we explore contrasts, similarities, and connections between three paradigmatic Indigenous occupation movements: first, Sami protests in the 1970s and early 1980s against a planned hydroelectric plant, in Alta, Northern Norway, that resulted in a massive police action, but also in lasting gains for Sami communities; second, the Standing Rock protests of 2016–17; and third, ongoing efforts of Native Hawaiian Protectors to stop construction 185

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of a large telescope on Mauna Kea. In varying degrees, these share the following features: culturally generative encampments; the solidification of wide-ranging international networks; intense police presence; and expressive cultural action, the latter of which is our primary focus. Specifically, we will juxtapose the Alta case, pre-UNDRIP and before social media, with the two contemporary disputes in terms of the circulation and prevalence of tropes and action linking religious and environmental concerns.2 There are significant similarities between these movements, but relative to four decades of change, from the beginning to the present state of the organized Indigenous movement, from an environmental paradigm that focused on local challenges to the global connections of contemporary environmentalism, and relative to radically different media-scapes. We open with accounts of each case in historical order, noting their causes, contexts, and their relevance for the issues we have outlined. As our presentation of the cases unfolds, and as we add context for readers to see the possibilities for comparison at hand, we gesture towards key elements from the cases that link to and contrast with the other cases. Then we shift to an explicitly comparative framework for the remainder of the chapter in order to explore our key themes. Our frames and comparisons are confined insofar as our examples are limited to Northern Hemisphere settler states. We are aware of how different the landscape of protest is elsewhere, particularly in the global south, and especially with regard to state violence. We are also cognizant of how our cases focus on alliances and synergies. Other settings of protest have exacerbated serious divisions between various Indigenous groups and between Indigenous groups and environmentalist organizations, as in the case of Makah whaling.3 Finally, we have focused on settings of intense friction for obvious reasons, but wish also to flag allegiances between Indigenous and environmentalist entities that have emerged and triumphed in less contentious contexts, as in the case of the Whanganui River being awarded legal personhood.4

THE ALTA CASE To become one of the most extensive, bitter and dramatic conflicts in Norwegian history, the Alta case involved a government proposal to dam the Alta river, in Northern Norway, for hydroelectric power. Sami activists and organizations succeeded in stopping an initial proposal, presented in 1968, which would have put the (Sami) village of Mazi under water. A revised plan resulted in nation-wide protests from 1979, including legal complaints and massive demonstrations, before finally being settled by a Supreme Court ruling in favor of the plant in 1982.5 In an example of what Marisol de la Cadena has called “an interest in common that is not the same interest,”6 Alta activists agreed on the need to save the river, but did so from various grounds and for different reasons. The Alta case was from the start at once a Sami case, an environmental case, and a local concern for people in Alta, Norwegians and Sami. It was discussed, and fought over, in regard to Sami rights, Sami reindeer husbandry in the area, the salmon stock in the river, and protection of one of the most untouched and grand areas of wilderness in Europe. Cleavages crossed political party lines, localities, and ethnic boundaries, and allowed for fruitful alliances, as well as contested connections. People in Alta, in particular, remained deeply divided, not only in regard to the issue of damming, but also in regard to the Sami dimension, with segments of the protestors being less than happy with supporting what was also a Sami issue.

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An estimated 20,000 people were involved in the activities and organizations established over the period, including Sami, Norwegians, and sympathizers from outside. Around a quarter of them visited one of two camps established near the construction site: the Detsika camp, reported to have hosted 6,500 participants from twenty different countries, and Stilla, located at what was named Point Zero (Null-punktet) on the road to the construction site. The People’s Action against Development of the Alta-Kautokeino River7 was the backbone of the movement. The Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature8 was a major ally among established organizations. Sami hunger-strikers in front of the Norwegian Parliament is the perhaps most emblematic image from the conflict; Sami activists dressed in their traditional Kofte, in front of lavvos (Sami tents) and through joik (Sami way of singing), banners, flyers, and presence performing their identity and forcing Norwegian politicians to see their demands, dedication and sacrifices. Other iconic images include those from the removal of the Stilla camp in January 1981, with some 600 police officers—one tenth of the Norwegian police force at the time—shipped in from the south to forcibly remove frostbitten activists, chained to each other and to the construction site. The occupation of then prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland’s office by thirteen Sami women, also belongs to the stock of key direct action stories.9 The “river-savers,” to use the name preferred by the activists, depended on the willingness of mainstream media to cover their cause, and on old-style telephones, posters, and word of mouth to organize and mobilize for actions. The Alta case received massive media attention nationally and to some extent internationally, but much of the national coverage was critical, with civil disobedience as one major concern, a sentiment with clear and disturbing echoes at Standing Rock and on Mauna Kea.10 Leading politicians and judges repeatedly referred to civil disobedience as subversive attacks on democracy that failed to accept legal decisions by the Norwegian parliament.11 Minutes from camp meetings regularly note frustrations over media representations, and difficulties in getting their messages through. Activists must at the same time have been inspired by an overall more positive take in newspapers outside of Norway. The Alta museum archives contain numerous article clips from foreign newspapers, most of them sympathetic, along with declarations of support from the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP ), founded in 1974. Activists actively used what was at this point a new identity and resource, repeatedly referring to the Norwegian governmentʹs failure to live up to the UN human rights principles that they supported in international contexts.12 The protests failed in the sense that the hydroelectric plant was built, but they nonetheless triggered a new phase of governmental relations between the Sami and the Norwegian State, and were followed by major shifts, politically, institutionally, and culturally.13 Among these were a Sami Rights Committee and a Sami Culture Committee in 1980, the opening of the Sami Parliament in 1987, a Sami paragraph in the Norwegian constitution in 1988, and the signing of the ILO -convention 169, in 1990. In the words of former activist Nils Utsi, “we lost the battle, but won the peace.”14 Sami culture and rights were no doubt strengthened through the Alta case. The merging of environmentalism, Indigenous rights and Sami issues was and has remained key. As a forerunner of later developments, the Alta case demonstrates the generative potential of encampment based protest-movements; for democratization, consciousnessraising, solidarity- and network-building.15

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STANDING ROCK The Standing Rock protest “is our common cause,” Aili Keskitalo, former president of the Sami Parliament, claimed in an interview in 2016, adding that it “has become symbolic . . . one may rightly say that this is the world’s Alta-case.”16 Standing Rock is arguably the most globally visible Indigenous protest movement ever, and probably the most extensive in terms of international collaboration for a common cause. It is in the US context already the movement of this generation, referred to as a model for protests that have emerged in its wake.17 The case involves a $3.8 billion USD pipeline, planned to transport 20 million gallons of crude oil on a daily basis. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council has claimed that it was not adequately consulted during the permitting process, and that the state and federal approval of the project is therefore invalid. They have argued, moreover, that consequences of a leakage would be catastrophic for drinking water in the area, and that the pipeline construction will damage sacred places and burial sites. On December 4, 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers secured a temporary win by refusing to validate a permit for the drilling under the Missouri River. The Tribal Council, allegedly as a response to this development, on January 20 voted to close the encampments within thirty days.18 Inaugurated as President on that same day, Donald Trump four days later signed an executive order approving the pipeline. The protests started in April 2016,19 with one tipi and a small group of young protesters. By the end of the summer between 5,000 and 7,000 people had joined the camps; by November as many as 10,000 were present. Among these were members of hundreds of different Indigenous groups, most of them from the US , but including representatives from South America, New Zealand, Australia, Scandinavia, Japan, and elsewhere. Numbers and diversity further increases if Indigenous media-scapes are included, in the form of mediated declarations of support, social media participation and sympathy demonstrations, posted through YouTube and other social media platforms, and in massive numbers. The Protectors, as they prefer to be known and a designation we say more about below, worked actively to foster awareness of their struggle, and in ways that quickly translated a local case into an international Indigenous people’s protest event. NODAPL , the shorthand social media name for the movement, has been notable for its coalitions, especially with regard to trans-Indigenous groups, between Indigenous and environmental groups, with international entities such as the United Nations and Amnesty International, and with social justice-oriented movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Like at Alta, multiple issues have been involved, the main ones being tribal sovereignty, environmental protection, and resource exploitation, and also like at Alta, a broad-scale movement has been established, based on encampments near the construction sites, direct actions geared towards the halting of construction work, various committees and organizations, and a diverse range of motivational activities. Peaceful resistance has for all of our cases been a main strategy, and has for all of them been met by massive police force. At Standing Rock, police presence and brutality increased during the fall of 2016, with numerous arrests, and extensive use of batons, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets, in addition to combat dogs on one occasion, examples of forced stripping during arrests, and constant helicopter surveillance. On November 20, police used water cannons in sub-zero temperatures. Sixty-seven Water Protectors were reported injured, among them seven were hospitalized for head injuries.

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The scene then shifted from localized violence to egregious violence to law, process, and democratic principles in general with Trump’s hasty and forced authorization of the pipeline and subsequent evacuation of the camps in the winter of 2017. Offering a counter-voice to images of resignation and defeat circulated in mainstream media, we heard many stories of resolve and inspiration at that time. For example, among the last Protectors on the ground with LaDonna Brave Bull Allard at Sacred Stone, several Hawaiian activists reported to us that in the final days of the camp ceremonies were held during which the ancestors told the Protectors to take the fire of Standing Rock to the world.

MAUNA KEA The occupation camp on Mauna Kea, just like the mountain itself, is currently dormant.20 But it will take only one Facebook post, from the right person at the right time, to make it erupt with flaming intensity once again. In addition to being remarkably connected on social media, Hawaiians are quite attuned to volcanic and seismic rhythms; of hot and cold; of seasonality and its ritual expressions, including war and peace; of voyaging near and far; of connections made and remade. Theirs is a capacious and rich world, and one that has demanded of them life ways equal to the task of making sense of it. Religiously, then and now, it is a place of expressive and generative tension, dialectically so. Diachronically too; look now and perhaps you will see only an empty hale (traditional house structure) at the campsite; look tomorrow and see a world village bustling with Hawaiians from every island, along with Maori, Lakota, and Apache relatives, together with sundry allies. As at Alta and Standing Rock, this scene of shifting intensities and scales is responsive to the demands of the moment and most especially to the proximity of threats, in this case, to the wellbeing of the mauna (mountain) itself. The mauna is held to be sacred by many Hawaiians, in its general aspect but also in specific locations of ritual focus. It is also metonymic of Hawaiian culture writ large and of connections between Hawaiians and the ‘a¯ina (land); scaled up it symbolizes nature itself and through this connection of protection and conduit to global Indigenous identities, sensibilities. Currently, the camp is resting while Protectors fight through a protracted contested case process.21 Should their efforts succeed, the camp will surely be curated in collective memories as a site of a historical mobilization and allegiance formation. However, if the State of Hawai‘i rules against them, a kahea (call) will go out to Protectors and their allies to stand once again. The threat that has mobilized the camp is a proposed telescope project of immense proportions and cost ($1.4 billion USD ).22 The designated site for the project is at the summit of the largest mountain in Polynesia. Hawaiian Protectors insist that they have not been adequately consulted about the project and its impacts to their traditional practices and to the unique and fragile alpine environment of the mauna. In this process, the Protectors have allied with various environmentalist entities (e.g., Sierra Club and a local entity, KAHEA ), both at the level of the occupation and especially at the level of legal struggles. Jointly, their claims are voiced through and against state laws that presume to care for Indigenous futures but fail to see Indigenous or environmental “significance” in the present.23 As at Alta and Standing Rock, the banality of bureaucratized blindness leaves Indigenous Protectors with little recourse other than direct action, even while they have made good faith efforts to work through the apparatuses of their respective states. Such a bind, of consultative proclamations and failed delivery of the same, links our cases, as do modalities of civil disobedience in a cultural key. Civil disobedience at the

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camps has taken place at the edges of the respective states, highlighting their colonial claims to jurisdiction and foregrounding their monopoly on violence and justification thereof. So it is that Protectors position themselves on the high ground of non-violent action, at least most of the time. Just how one stakes out such ground and keeps to it is no easy task, but our three cases demonstrate that the cultural resources for doing so are considerable, as is the discursive space of indigeneity, as we discuss below. Hawaiians on Mauna Kea have met this challenge in highly traditional ways. They have done so precisely by innovating with the kinds of dialectical tension that undergirds so much of their religious history. Rallying cries on the mauna illustrate how this is so. During the mass protest of June 24, 2015, when Hawaiians faced down hundreds of police officers, two slogans were repeatedly intoned, subsequently becoming iconic: “Ku¯kia‘i Mauna” and “Kapu Aloha.”24 The former translates to “stand for the mauna,” but it does do with a particular cadence. Namely, “to stand” is also a formulation to summon the war god, Ku¯, and the power he conveys. In a highly contrastive fashion, “Kapu Aloha” translates to “rule of love,” articulating an ethic of nonviolence. A show of (potential) force and a demonstration of peace are thus simultaneously performed in a way that allows the Protectors to have it both ways, rhetorically to be sure, but also religiously in a way that instantiates rather than betrays tradition. Here, however, the diachronic unfolding of Hawaiian ceremonial frames (Ku ¯ shares the year with the Lono, the god of peace, and annual rituals are organized accordingly) is now, on the frontlines of protest, compressed and managed in the moment and with a tactical edge.25 “We are Mauna Kea” is the slogan that has echoed from the camp to communities grounded elsewhere.26 This language powerfully marks a community, announces a claim of belonging to it, and, most notably, it vocalizes the community’s identification with and sympathy for specific elements of nature and nature as such. Additionally, this discourse travels well. Materialized far from Hawai‘i, for example, it was conspicuously visible on the t-shirts and caps of Hawaiians who supported the protests at Standing Rock, where this profoundly elegant and efficient trope was customized on this new ground to become “We are Standing Rock.” This simple translation—one that shifts place-specific attention but not the central referent, “we”—encapsulates so much about the capacities of global indigeneity in the contemporary moment, including its apparently paradoxical quality whereby the local and the global are mutually reinforcing without compromising the place and power of the other.27 Flowing back to the mauna, solidarity with Protectors at Standing Rock is fundamental to the movement’s articulation of common cause and shared aspirations. Protect, respect, and—when needed—reject and refuse.28 These shared moral tropes animate frontier expressions of eventful indigeneities in the global present on Mauna Kea and Standing Rock, but also and increasingly elsewhere, especially as continuously catalyzed by media allies, such as by the Viceland Network’s RISE series.29 Whether at Oak Flat, Standing Rock, or Mauna Kea, in a growing number of instances, it is clear that even while proximate threats vary, responses to them are remarkably consistent, partly due to communication technologies, but also due to shared presence around one another’s fires. Sometimes the two vectors of social media and socializing bodies intersect on the ground, as when Pua Case, a leader of the Mauna Kea movement, and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, founder of Sacred Stone Camp, met in person at an Idle No More workshop on social media activism. Following that fateful meeting, it was no accident that so many Hawaiians braved the North Dakota winter. They were camped not far from the Sami lavvo.

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PROTECTORS NOT PROTESTERS We are “Protectors not protesters,” Mykay from Hawai‘i told us during our first day at Standing Rock. On one level a “just war”-strategy, as we have described, the language of protection was invoked at Alta, Standing Rock, and Mauna Kea. It implies attacks from outside, in these cases from state government intrusion, and has along with non-violent strategies allowed for moral high ground and politics of shame. Perhaps the most paradigmatic images from these protests are those of peaceful Protectors facing massive, and militarized police force. To give just one example: among the numerous social media images from the Standing Rock protests, a picture posted by the Red Warrior camp on October 22, 2016, shows a woman and a group of police near the construction sites during a direct action. The picture is entitled “woman warrior water protector.” The woman is pictured from behind, facing a group of policemen. We recognize her as a Protector, and as Indigenous, through a long soft skin jacket, with a pinned-on message saying “defend sacred water.” She is holding a sprig of sage in her right hand, and is walking towards a line of fifteen armed policemen in helmets and combat uniforms. A military vehicle is parked behind them, looking strangely out of place in the middle of open prairie. An image of different worlds, this is also a portrayal of different value system; of protectors of nature in stark contrast to sinister purveyors of capitalism and environmental destruction; of spiritual traditions confronting disciplinary and extractive regimes of modernity; of white male invaders of native lands. It tells a story of bravery and strength, through a single woman walking unarmed towards a group of armed men, and it triggers the larger picture of colonial pasts, a past, many of the protesters would agree, that is still here, through continued racism, unjust treatment, violation of rights and destruction of native lands. The language of protection resonates with the organic relations often articulated in Indigenous contexts, with Indigenous people as either one with the land, intimately linked to nature, or its relatives. Challenging hegemonic notions of land ownership, Protectors at Standing Rock and Mauna Kea have insisted on relational concepts, of protecting their relatives, rather than their land, human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate, alive or buried in these grounds. Similar notions are today widespread among Indigenous peoples, and among outsiders who relate to them. In some respects, they echo and draw upon older primitivist traditions, of peoples anchored in space rather than in time, but within revised notions of the nature–culture divide, framed by climate change and threats towards the environment, and with nature, rather than culture, representing order and morality. Numerous YouTube videos from Standing Rock revolve around this theme. Among them, the rapper Prolific, in a YouTube version of the protest song “Black Snakes—#NODAPL ,” recalls a moment of “profound insight” during a trip to the Standing Rock encampments: the Earth is our Mother . . . that was something I knew intellectually. It was some hippy concept I had been exposed to many times—oh man, the Earth is your Mother man, you know. But the Earth is our Mother. She is literally our Mother. And we are absolutely destroying her. She asks for nothing from us, and we are just abusing and wrecking her. And that became so clear to me. And I understand that so much now. Will that change the way you do things? Yes, it will definitely change the way I do things a lot.30

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CAMPS AND CONNECTIONS Camps come with needs and logics. They depend on competences for organizing communities, performing direct actions, living with the environments at stake, and surviving challenges, which for Alta and Standing Rock includes harsh winter conditions, and similar conditions on Mauna Kea at 9,000 feet above sea level. They are spaces of survivance; of active resistance and renunciations of dominance,31 and come with fertile ground for identity and community making. There has been a constant flow of comings and goings at these camps, along with long-term settlements. Campers have shared food and sites, tasks and challenges, hardships and victories. They have obeyed—if grudgingly, and often with friction and frustration—shared protocols at the camps and during direct action. And they have done so in a liminal space, outside of their normal habitus, freed from or bereft of their normal life positions. Paralleling minimalistic and negotiable social structures at the camps are clear-cut and binary lines of conflict; us against them, a good side and a bad one, played out in emotionally intense and charged environments; environments of hope and fear, risk and danger, violence and brutality, boredom and excitement, pride and solidarity. There are opportunities for heroes to be made in these settings (along with villains and enemies); for communitas and community building (along with conflict and strife), and for new friendships, within and cross-cutting Indigenous communities, and between Indigenous peoples and others there to support them. And there are arenas for learning and reviving, for what Clifford has phrased as “becoming Indigenous.”32 The Stilla camp offered a safe and sympathetic setting for Sami traditions to be articulated, including practices that were associated with shame and stigma, and that among parts of the Sami had been lost.33 Mauna Kea allowed for a public reclaiming of partly dormant ritual traditions, facilitated by the coming to age of a new generation of native speakers with strong linguistic and ritual-based competences. For Standing Rock the inter-Indigenous dimension stands out, along with an emphasis on shared indigeneity; “of Indigenous people united,” as a Sami activist phrased it during our visit to the camps. We have in a previous work suggested that indigeneity as a comparative category “may be most effective when understood as a circuit that is switched ‘on’ when ‘the Indigenous’ is no longer only local or exclusive, but reflexive and reflected, in short transacted.”34 Alta offered some opportunities for this circuit to be switched on, but was primarily a contactzone for the geographically dispersed population of Sami, and for alliances with non-Sami activists and organizations. Mauna Kea came with regular opportunities along these lines. At Standing Rock it was more or less constantly on. As possibly the most longstanding site of inter-Indigenous encampment, Standing Rock through aesthetics (for instance through long lines of flags framing the camps) and protocol (e.g., welcoming ceremonies for newcomers), encouraged performances of distinct identities within the broader frames of an Indigenous we. Becoming Indigenous was facilitated through comparisons and translations on the ground, through everyday talks and encounters, through staged performances at the camps and during direct action, and through participation in ceremonies. Constituted as sites of encounter, the camps have also been nodes or centers in broader networks of communication and information flow. And again, as relatively scaled, for this aspect by media-technological developments. Minutes from the Detsika camp, in Alta, refer to challenges in reaching local branches and audiences, and frustration over mainstream media coverage. Protectors at Standing Rock and Mauna Kea have

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communicated through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, through content sites like YouTube and Flickr, through their own newsfeeds and a dedicated group of activist-photographers. They have created, in short, a media-scape of their own making, equipped with “breaking news”-like reporting live from the actions, and professionally styled short films and videos. Supporters have followed them in real time and responded through social media, and have through “liking” pages gained access to a continuous stream of case-related news. And they have created their own events, mobilized locally and uploaded filmed versions to the media-scape of the movement. Overall, protests may still be “tactics of the weak,”35 but they have been considerably strengthened by the spread of social media and independent news-media outlets. Social media have not only dramatically reduced the costs of organizing protests, it has increased the potential for outside support, for politics of shame, for controlling profile and representations, and in our cases for Indigenous collaboration. Standing Rock may be the “world’s Alta-case,” to re-quote Aili Keskitalo, but relative to four decades of development, from near the beginning of the organized Indigenous movement to its present state, and from an environmental paradigm centered on local issues to the present one of global connectedness, one in which it makes sense to think of Mother Earth as one, her rivers as connected, and Indigenous peoples as her protectors. Our cases speak to such developments, from a focus on Sami-ness at Alta, to global indigeneity at Standing Rock, and from the locally scaled problems of salmon and reindeer-herding to top-scale attacks on Mother Earth. Illustrative of these changes, the main slogans at Alta and Standing Rock were, respectively, “Let the river live”36 and “Water is Sacred/water is life.” Both slogans refer to specific rivers that can be seen, felt and literally protected, but the potential for up-scaling varies. “Let the river live” refers literally to a particular river, and symbolically to Sami rights and the Norwegian colonization of Sami areas. “Water is life” refers to water (and rivers) in general, and thus to the foundations of life, to all people, everywhere. The Alta protest was primarily a specific case, framed by Sami symbols and performances, linked primarily to Sami politics. The Standing Rock protest was related to Mother Earth, and to all her rivers. The death of a river is a local issue. The death of water is ultimate and universal. Outsiders may support and express solidarity with regard to place-specific issues; global challenges concern them directly.

RELIGION AND RITUALS A sense of historical momentum is common to our three cases, along with an existential range; moral obligations and worthy sacrifices for generations to come. Our recent cases echo water savers at Alta in this regard. They talk about wanting to be involved, of doing this for their children and grandchildren. In the words of Jorunn Eikjok, one of the Sami hunger strikers, “I was happy. I remember thinking that this is the most important I will do in life, and that I took part in the changing of history.”37 Mehana Kihoi, one of the intervenors in the Mauna Kea contested case, expressed much the same. At the end of her moving testimony, she turned to her fellow Protectors, saying, “My grandchildren will know all of your names.”38 There was urgency and ultimacy at Alta, but not articulated as religious concerns. Religious registers seem overall to have been lacking, at least from public stages. We have found no drums, shamans, crosses, or other religious symbols among the sources describing camp life, direct actions, and festivals. Nor have we found examples of sacred

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claims or religious symbols among the slogans, banners, programs, buttons, songs or meeting minutes stored in archives, and we have yet to come across stories of such elements, in conversations with people that stayed at the camps and were active in the protests. The river was not talked about as sacred. There were no claims to a spiritual relationship to nature, to holistic approaches and worldviews, or to speak on behalf of the river, and fireplaces and camp protocols were not talked of as “sacred.” The cultural dimension was important to the camps and to direct actions, but focusing on folk music, joik and Sami traditions; not on religion. In sharp contrast to this situation, religious registers have for Standing Rock and Mauna Kea been key, in the form of slogans, ritual performances and authority claims.39 Rhetorically, rituals may on the formal level be particularly suitable for protests, at least in the following two respects: 1. the combination of being restricted on the level of speech and striking on the level of performance, thus matching the discursive and visual preferences of contemporary media-discourses. 2. their ability (like religion in general) to move easily between hyper-specificity (this pipeline, this water) and the universal (all pipelines), or even this pipeline and environmental destruction. Rituals, that is, are immensely if not uniquely suitable for the translation of specific needs, experiences and aspirations into broader, universal frameworks. Since it is the case likely to be most familiar to readers, we focus our analysis here on the Standing Rock protest, which has from the start used religious and ritual language and performances, and has done so as its main front, message, and style. Among the first things that caught our attention at Standing Rock was the consistent, repeated and extensive usage of a select number of religious terms: sacred water, Mother Earth, prayer and ceremonies, expressed through ground rules and action principles, articulated on posters around the camp and in slogans and banners during direct actions; in “official communication” through YouTube posts and other videos, and for ritual performances during actions. Overall, “sacred water,” water is life, Mother Earth, prayer and ceremony have been the key framing terms of this protest, and the single terms most extensively in use. They have been established as emblematic of the protest; its slogans or mantras. These are sacred times, elders have been saying. Life at the camps and actions has as such been referred to as ceremony. So why religion? And why these particular religious terms? A first and partial answer may be that religious language is an integral part of Indigenous gatherings in the United States. People expect references to spirituality and the sacred, and are used to participating in ceremonies and prayer, even in political contexts. Also, there is in the US context a tradition for articulating collective identities in the terms of religion. A second, and more elaborate answer, involves the need for a shared language; one that makes sense across the different peoples gathered and provides room for their cultural and religious differences; for the specific Indigenous knowledge that they bring to the table. This moreover, is a protest, not merely a social gathering. It accordingly needs clear, uniform, and convincing messages; emblematic symbols that people can relate to, on the ground, and out there in the world, and preferably messages that imply urgency and ultimacy, and combine rational arguments with emotional appeals. Religion is particularly useful for this combination of needs and visions; for bridging differences, for the anchoring of authority, and for overall appeal. These particular

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religious terms were already around, as part of an established discourse on pan-Indigenous religion, and accordingly likely to make sense to Protectors and those who relate to them. UNDRIP, for instance, like most UN -documents related to Indigenous people, prefers terms like “spiritual” over religion, and ceremony over ritual, and refers in factual ways to “a spiritual relationship between indigenous people and their lands.”40 Central to these same terms is their combination of semantic openness and ultimate authority. Words like “spiritual” and “sacred” lack specific content and are accordingly open for diverse usage and translations. They combine semantic openness and ultimate authority in ways that do not explicitly reveal or articulate differences and diversity. Such openness was consistently maintained among protesters at Standing Rock. We heard and saw numerous references to “water as sacred,” but heard little elaboration or explanation of what that means. Many prayers and ceremonies, similarly, were kept open in terms of specific content. This includes “water ceremonies” each morning on Cannonball River, in November; with women singing and addressing the water, and other ritual practices at the river, but still vague and malleable in terms of content. Prayer and ceremony, moreover, are recognizable as forms. The native languages used in prayers at Standing Rock and on Mauna Kea are incomprehensible to many among the audiences, but one recognizes the form; that this is prayer, or ceremony, that it is accordingly important and demands deference and respect. Native languages during prayers come with other recognizable markers of indigeneity, such as chants, dances, and traditional clothing, thus ensuring that the words spoken are recognizable as not only prayers, but Indigenous prayers. The sacred is recognizable across and beyond religious borders. The sacred, on a basic level, contributes to a particular framing of that which it refers to. That “water is sacred” means that it is off the table (for negotiations), in this case that the demand to stop “the Black Snake” is non-negotiable. It at the same time marks this concern as urgently important, as deeply rooted in what one is and stands for, as lifted above the level of politics and opinion-making, and as final—in the sense of “we will never give up.”

FIRES STILL BURN There is today a hydroelectric plant in Alta, oil is running through the Black Snake in North Dakota, and the thirty-meter telescope on Mauna Kea, though still pending, is likely to be built. Indigenous peoples often do lose these battles. Most protests remain unknown to the outside world, and political structures in many places rule out civil disobedience as a viable option, a reality that haunts the US context anew. There are nevertheless signs of hope. Clearly the fires of passion still burn hot, forging strong identities and allegiances as Indigenous peoples face collective futures in solidarity. Religious claims and spiritual actions will no doubt be central to future-oriented actions and to the protests that will be their loci. We close, then, with a moving post that came across our social media feeds as we were concluding this chapter: “No Spiritual Surrender” Standing Rock was and remains an Indigenous led movement. But unlike many movements that came before, it shifted the world. Never before, as far as I can recall in my 35 years, have so many from different walks of life stood together. From Alaska to Japan, from First Nations to European settler lineage. From 2 spirit to heterosexual. From the richest celebrities to the most struggling of communities. From asexual to

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transgender. From atheists to clergy. From veterans to those that despise war. Standing Rock impacted the world. The entire world. Today, the pipeline became fully operational. Today, we also stand fully operational. Water Protectors now reach across the entire globe. We have a bond that can never be taken from us, and those of us that were fortunate enough to spend time in North Dakota were able to experience a community this country has not seen in its entire existence. We all came from all walks of life, arriving as strangers. We all left as a family. The fire has spread in all 4 directions, and the stance for human rights and the protection of Mother Earth is firmer than ever. We will always be Water Protectors, and our journey has just began. love you guys, and I can’t wait to see you on the next frontline. Beyond honored to stand beside you. Don’t even think about it, KXL . MNI WICONI // WATER IS LIFE Red Hawk41

PART FOUR

Water

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, and the Compassionate Wisdom of Water1 ELIZABETH McANALLY

Water is precious. Water is life. Water is the liquid thread connecting all living beings on Earth. In the absence of water, life could not exist. When given an ample amount of water that is clean and pure, life flourishes. Yet many of us often take water for granted, forgetting the tremendous importance this common element holds for our own survival and for the continuation of life on this planet. We drink water continually throughout the day to stay hydrated. We bathe in water to cleanse and clean ourselves. Our food depends on water to grow. The materials from which we make our clothes, our shelters, our medicines, our modes of transportation, our cell phones and computers—this all requires water. Yet despite our total dependence upon water, we have forgotten that water is precious; water is life. The dominant modern mindset views water as a mere resource and commodity. This view is part and parcel of the exploitation, pollution, and privatization of water. In an attempt to counter this dominating mindset, I explore an “integral water ethic” as a crucial component in the urgent task of cultivating mutually enhancing relations between humans and our Earth community, what the cultural historian Thomas Berry calls “the Great Work.”2 As opposed to the commoditized construct of water as lifeless matter that must be controlled and manipulated for maximum profit, an integral water ethic recovers the individual and community experience of water as an active agent, a teacher and guide, a vital, intrinsically valuable member of our Earth community. In what follows, I explore an integral water ethic in the context of Mah¯ay¯a na Buddhism. To do this, I look to the traditional Buddhist image of the bodhisattva, a being who vows to attain enlightenment so that he or she can better benefit others and liberate them from suffering. I then consider how the image of the bodhisattva is taught and embodied through the ecological efforts of the seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the Tibetan Buddhist leader. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how an integral water ethic can be cultivated through Buddhist values of compassion (Skt. karun.a¯) and wisdom (Skt. prajña¯), which some teachers call the two wings of the dharma, or the Buddhist spiritual path.3 Like a bird that needs two wings in order to fly, the Mah¯ay¯ana Buddhist path depends on both compassion and wisdom. 199

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Further, I explore how the values associated with the bodhisattva, who aims to live in service to others through a deep cultivation of compassion and wisdom, can contribute to an integral water ethic. The intense suffering caused by the numerous water crises throughout the world—associated with climate change, pollution, water scarcity, waterborne diseases, the lack of access—calls for wise and compassionate responses rather than technocratic “fixes” determined by purely political and economic considerations. By learning to practise compassion, we can learn to open our eyes to what is going on around and within us, to open our ears to the cries of suffering, to open our hearts to others who are in need. By skillfully engaging with the suffering of others in our own experience of suffering, we become both more empathic and more equipped to move through suffering together with all those who suffer. In order to understand the significance of the Mah¯ay¯a na concept of compassion and therefore its applicability to environmental issues, it is important to understand its relationship to wisdom, the other wing of the dharma. In Buddhism, wisdom entails both an intellectual understanding and a profound experiential realization that all things are deeply interdependent, indeed empty (Skt. s´u¯nya) of any “self ” understood as existing all on its own. Individual beings and the worlds that we share in common are completely intertwined, and the primordial nature of the mind is its emptiness (Skt. s´u¯nyata¯) of any inherently existing self separated off from the web of being. The qualities of this primordial nature of mind, unlocked through realization of emptiness, are expressions of the natural compassion at the heart of every sentient being. The Buddhist teaching of the interdependence of all things implies the radical insight that the suffering of others is one’s own suffering (and vice versa). Cultivating the wisdom of emptiness thus encourages Buddhist practitioners to act responsibly, with a mindset to benefit others for all the generations to come. Adding to that, I claim that wisely recognizing that water is a substance that flows throughout the world and provides life-giving sustenance for all sentient beings can facilitate a deep understanding and vivid experience of interdependence, and can help us better comprehend that the way we interact with water affects and reflects all of life. This comprehension empowers compassion, which further inspires the cultivation of wisdom. The two ideas of wisdom and compassion are thus inextricably interrelated in Buddhist thought and spiritual practice, and are significant for an integral water ethic. Below I do not try to articulate a monolithic Buddhist position but instead draw out ways that Mah¯ay¯ana Buddhist texts and an environmentally engaged Buddhist leader can contribute to an integral water ethic.

THE ARCHETYPE OF THE BODHISATTVA AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF WISDOM AND COMPASSION A bodhisattva is someone who is full of love and compassion for all beings, generating awareness of the suffering of others, including humans, animals, plants, rivers, stones, and other beings, and striving for their well-being. The word “bodhisattva” means a “being (SATTVA ) intent on achieving enlightenment (BODHI ).”4 Enlightenment is an awakening to the interdependent and impermanent nature of reality, a realization that the self is empty of independent existence and is instead intimately intertwined with others. The compassionate bodhisattva continually vows to liberate those who are suffering and help them to awaken to the interdependent nature of reality.

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The bodhisattva aims to cultivate bodhicitta, “the intention to reach the complete, perfect enlightenment [. . .] of the buddhas, in order to liberate all sentient beings in the universe from suffering.”5 Bodhicitta has both a relative aspect and an absolute aspect: relative bodhicitta is compassion (Skt. karun.a¯), and absolute bodhicitta is wisdom (Skt. prajña¯).6 According to the Prajña¯pa¯ramita¯ Su¯tras, “A bodhisattva mah¯asattva [great being] is one who strives like this: ‘By all means, I shall awaken to unsurpassable enlightenment and accomplish the welfare of others.’ ”7 Cultivating the combined wisdom and compassion of bodhicitta is the chief practice of the bodhisattva. Various qualities of bodhisattvas are elaborated in Bodhicharya¯vata¯ra (The Way of the Bodhisattva), a revered manual for the practice of bodhisattvas composed in the eighth century by the renowned Indian Buddhist monk Sh¯antideva (685–763). One such quality includes helping others who are in need: May I be a guard for those who are protectorless, A guide for those who journey on the road. For those who wish to go across the water, May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.8 Another quality involves healing all beings from illness: For all those ailing in the world, Until their every sickness has been healed, May I myself become for them The doctor, nurse, the medicine itself.9 Bodhisattva qualities are also described in The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva (Tib. Gyalsé Laglen So Dunma), written in the fourteenth century by the great Tibetan sage Gyalse Ngulchu Thogme (Wyl. rgyal sras lag len so bdun ma, 1297–1371). The vow of the bodhisattva is to liberate all beings from sam . sa¯ra, the world of suffering. Now that I have this great ship, a precious human life, so hard to obtain, I must carry myself and others across the ocean of samsara. To that end, to listen, reflect, and meditate Day and night, without distraction, is the practice of a bodhisattva.10 The goal of Buddhism is the ultimate benefit both of oneself and of others. Advanced bodhisattvas who have already realized profound wisdom and peace for themselves strive to put the happiness of others first. Gyalse Ngulchu Thogme writes from this advanced perspective: All suffering without exception arises from desiring happiness for oneself, While perfect buddhahood is born from the thought of benefiting others. Therefore, to really exchange My own happiness for the suffering of others is the practice of a bodhisattva.11 Bodhisattvas are not merely compassionate ones who liberate all beings from the suffering of sam . sa¯ra; they are also insightful beings who can inspire wisdom in others and apply wisdom to every situation. This simultaneous development of wisdom and compassion is described in the penultimate verse of The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva:

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In short, wherever I am, whatever I do, To be continually mindful and alert, Asking, “What is the state of my mind?” And accomplishing the good of others is the practice of a bodhisattva.12 Thich Nhat Hanh (b. 1926), the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and peace activist, insightfully notes that the water we experience in daily life is itself a bodhisattva. He writes, “Water is a good friend, a bodhisattva, which nourishes the many thousands of species on earth. Its benefits are numberless.”13 By viewing water as a bodhisattva, Nhat Hanh conveys that compassion and wisdom are directly present in this sacred source of life. Water is of great service to all beings, as life is completely dependent upon water for sustenance. If we could learn to see water as a bodhisattva, we would treat it as a very special being. We would do our best to not take it for granted or treat it as a mere resource to be exploited. Instead, we could recognize that water can be our teacher and can help us to wake up from self-centeredness and apathy and become of maximum service to others. One of the aims of the bodhisattva is to help those who are thirsty by providing pure water to drink. As it is written in the Bodhicharya¯vata¯ra: And may the naked now be clothed, And all the hungry eat their fill. And may those parched with thirst receive Pure waters and delicious drink.14 As a bodhisattva, water provides its nourishing flow for the benefit of living beings. Water gives itself freely. Water plays an important role in the mythology of bodhisattvas. As the historian of Buddhism Malcolm David Eckel has observed, the eyes of bodhisattvas are “moist with compassion,” which symbolizes “cognitive sophistication and emotional sensitivity.”15 Indeed, the bodhisattva T¯a r¯a , one of the most important deities in Himalayan Buddhism, was said in one origin myth to be born from the compassionate tears of the bodhisattva Avalokites´vara.16 Thus, the green form of T¯ar¯a, S´y¯amat¯ar¯a (who helps to deliver others from fear and is often depicted with her right leg extended, ready to help those in need) and the white form of T¯a r¯a, Sitat¯a r¯a (who grants long life and is depicted with eyes on her hands, feet, and forehead so that she can see suffering everywhere) have watery tears of compassion as their point of origin and are embodiments of compassionate tears. Water also is connected with Kuan-yin/Kannon, a famous female bodhisattva in East Asian Buddhism, who is often depicted holding a vase containing waters of purification, “seated on a rock gazing out across the water, or standing upon a floating lotus petal.”17 In China, she is a goddess of fishermen, and her shrines are often placed near water.18 Furthermore, “[r]ocks, willows, lotus pools or running water are often indications of her presence,” and in “the prattle and tinkle of streams, her voice is heard.”19 Here we find more evidence that water is considered to be a bodhisattva.

THE SEVENTEENTH KARMAPA, THE BODHISATTVA, AND WATER The compassionate wisdom of the bodhisattva is exemplified in the work of the seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje (1985), the Buddhist leader born in the Lhatok

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region of eastern Tibet. The Karmapa, leader of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, is a promising young leader of environmental conservation who has done much to raise environmental awareness in the hearts and minds of his followers. “Gyalwa Karmapa” means “the Victorious One of Enlightened Activity.”20 The Karmapa is recognized by many Tibetan religious authorities, including the fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, to be the re-incarnation of Dusum Khyenpa (1110–93), who founded the Karma Kagyu lineage and has continuously manifested through reincarnation into the present day.21 In this section, I give a brief description of the Karmapa’s environmental activities and his teachings on water. The Karmapa specifically draws on inspiration from the concept of the bodhisattva in his engaged work of training Buddhist monks and nuns to have ecological consciousness. The Karmapa was born in rural eastern Tibet and was raised to see the natural world as sacred and deserving of love and care. As he recounts in an interview with Yale Environment 360: I was brought up to experience the natural environment as fundamentally sacred and therefore the conservation of it as of tremendous importance. [. . .] And so as a result of that I have a particularly strong—I would say, heartfelt—love for nature, for the natural environment. My views on the need for environmental stewardship do not come from artificial or theoretical knowledge but from early experience.22 In an essay published in Conservation Biology, the Karmapa shares an early childhood experience that has helped to inform and motivate his environmental efforts throughout his life. He explains that during his childhood, there was an intense drought where he lived, and a local spring was drying up. The community asked this four- or five-year-old child to plant a sapling at the source of the spring. As he recalls: I remember leading prayers with the aspiration that this tree would help provide water for all living beings nearby. Although I had no idea that what I was doing was an “environmental” act, or what watershed meant, my love for nature and dedication to protect the environment sprouted from this seed.23 The Karmapa summarizes his vision as follows: “Protect the earth. Live simply. Act with compassion. Our future depends on it.”24 This simple statement, arising from within a Buddhist worldview that values compassion and wisdom, has profound implications for environmental awareness. A flourishing, resilient future for humans and the Earth community can be built by protecting the natural world from destruction, countering greed and living simply with minimal possessions, and acting with the compassionate intention to alleviate the suffering of others.25 Arising from his motivation to protect the earth, the Karmapa helped to organize five different conferences between 2009 and 2013 to educate Buddhist monks and nuns about environmental conservation.26 This conference series, entitled “Khoryug Conference on Environmental Protection for Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and Nunneries in the Himalayas,” has been very influential for spreading environmental awareness throughout Buddhist monastic communities and the local villages surrounding them. During the second Khoryug conference in October 2009, the Karmapa founded the Buddhist environmental network, Rangjung Khoryug Sungkyob Tsokpa (Association for the Protection of the Natural Environment), known simply as “Khoryug.”27 This engaged project is based on Buddhist values of compassion and the wisdom of interdependence. As the Khoryug website states:

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KHORYUG is a network of Buddhist monasteries and centers in the Himalayas working together on environmental protection of the Himalayan region with the aim of practically applying the values of compassion and interdependence towards the Earth and all living beings that dwell here. As Buddhist practitioners, we believe that our actions must flow from our aspiration to benefit all sentient beings and safeguard our mother Earth and that this positive change in our societies must begin with ourselves first. KHORYUG aims to develop a partnership with community based organizations and NGO s wherever there is a member monastery or center so that together with our communities, we can help and protect all life on Earth now and for the future.28 Khoryug functions in close partnership with the non-profit environmental conservation group, World Wildlife Fund (WWF ). Dekila Chungyalpa, the co-organizer and cofacilitator of the Khoryug conferences, is the founder of the WWF ’s Sacred Earth Program that works with religious communities around the world to create faith-based environmental programs on “watershed restoration, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and wildlife protection.”29 Through the Khoryug conferences, Chungyalpa has assisted the Karmapa in training representatives from fifty-five monasteries and convents in a number of environmental projects, including the following: “cleaning water sources, planting trees, separating waste and recycling, composting, installing solar heaters, converting to low-energy bulbs, ending the use of plastic bags and bottles, and much more.”30 At the fifth Khoryug conference in 2013, which focused on the theme of “Conservation of Freshwater Resources in the Himalayas,” the monastic representatives were instructed how to harvest rainwater, recharge groundwater, and protect and restore local sources of water.31 The Karmapa has noted that the effects of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau have been a motivating cause of developing the Khoryug network.32 (I discuss some of the specific details related to water in the Himalayas later in this chapter.) This five-day conference on freshwater conservation was held at the India International Centre in New Delhi on November 8–12, 2013, and included field trips to a wastewater treatment facility and the Yamuna River. At the wastewater treatment facility at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE ) in South Delhi, participants were given demonstrations of the treatment of wastewater, as well as rainwater harvesting. CSE affirmed plans to partner with some of the Khoryug-member monasteries to implement similar wastewater treatment and rainwater harvesting programs in their communities so that the monasteries could conserve more water and become more self-sufficient in their water usage. The second field trip included an excursion to the Yamuna River, a sacred river of northern India that is greatly polluted as it flows through New Delhi. The Karmapa brought the conference participants to this river so that they could witness the pollution of the river first-hand. During this trip to the Yamuna, the Karmapa convened a special event with the conference participants, local residents, and Dr. Manoj Misra, the director of the Yamuna Jiye Abhiyaan organization that is focused on the restoration of the Yamuna River. They gathered together on the banks of a particularly polluted segment of the river to perform a river-blessing ceremony through prayers for the health of the river and those living beings supported by it.33 Performing this blessing for the polluted river and all those who depend upon the river for nourishment is an act that embodies an integral water ethic that cares for water and all beings connected with those waters. By cultivating an aspiration to love and care for the natural world, this change in attitude and perception can lead to a positive change in actions.

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This water blessing was not the first one that the Karmapa has enacted. On December 8, 2010, at the opening celebration of the year-long Karmapa 900 ceremony that honored the birth of Dusum Khyenpa, the founder of the Karma Kagyu lineage, the Karmapa blessed a clean drinking water facility that he donated to the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee. The Karmapa had the idea for the facility in the prior year during the 2009 Kagyu Monlam (Prayer Festival), when he noticed that many people were drinking bottled water and thus were generating a large amount of plastic waste. When he inquired about this, the Karmapa learned that public water facilities were not very numerous in Bodh Gaya, and people did not have adequate access to clean drinking water. This is why he decided to give the water facility, which provides 500 liters of clean drinking per hour, to the temple.34 At this opening celebration, the Karmapa performed prayers of auspiciousness and blessing for the water. This blessing was understood by the Buddhists who were in attendance to have transformed the ordinary tap water into blessed waters, which the Tibetans see as dudtsi (Wyl. bdud rtsi, Skt. am.r ta), sacred nectar of immortality.35 In this instance, the Karmapa not only provided for the physical thirst of those who come to Bodh Gaya for pilgrimage, but also gave them sacred, blessed water that purifies their minds. During the celebration, the Karmapa urged for the protection of water: “We must do everything we can to protect these water sources and to minimize wastes that are polluting this sacred land.”36 The Karmapa has made clear that he has a strong desire to benefit the waters of Tibet and the Himalayas.37 The Tibetan Plateau is the headwaters for many of Asia’s rivers: the Indus, Ganges, Yarlung Tsangpo (which becomes the Brahmaputra downstream), Yangtze River (Chang Jiang), Huang He (Yellow River), Mekong, and Salween.38 Tibet supplies drinking water to many Asian countries, including China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma.39 This region is considered to be the “Water Tower” of Asia and the “Land of Snows.” It is estimated that the Tibetan Plateau contains “the water sources for about 40 percent of world’s population.”40 It is often called the “Roof of the World” due to its high altitude (the average elevation is 4,500 meters). It is also referred to as the “Third Pole,” as this land contains the third largest amount of ice and water in the world after the Arctic and Antarctic. As the Karmapa warns, “If its water sources dry up or become contaminated, there will be fateful consequences for over a billion people. Because glacier melt is increasing as temperatures increase, both floods and water shortages will increase in the near future.”41 The Karmapa goes on to say, “I invite all scholars and practitioners to help protect the Tibetan Plateau, which provides the water for much of mainland Asia. [. . .] As the Third Pole, Tibet is highly vulnerable to climate change and what happens there matters greatly to the rest of mainland Asia.”42 The Karmapa embodies bodhisattva qualities. He is regarded as the emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokites´vara, or Chenrezik in Tibetan.43 Avalokites´vara, a figure appearing throughout Mahayana scriptures, has many names evocative of the saving activity of the bodhisattva. The Sanskrit name Avalokites´vara itself is comprised of avalokita (observing) and is´vara (lord), meaning one who “observes the world and responds to the cries of living beings.”44 The Tibetan Chenrezik follows this meaning: “one who sees with penetrating vision.”45 East Asian versions, such as the Chinese Kuan-yin or Kuan-shih-yin, and the Japanese Kannon or Kanzeon, can be translated as “Regarder of the World’s Cries or Sounds.”46 Other evocative epithets from the Tibetan include “Greatly Compassionate Transformer of Beings” (Tib. Drodul Thukjé Chenpo; Wyl. ‘gro ‘dul thugs rje chen po) and “He Who Dredges the Depths of Samsara” (Tib. Khorwa Dongtruk; Wyl. ‘khor ba don sprugs).47

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The Karmapa teaches that Sh¯antideva, the author of the Bodhicharya¯vata¯ra (The Way of the Bodhisattva), is a model for ecology. In his essay published in Conservation Biology titled “Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness,” the Karmapa writes this powerful statement: “If there were such a role as a Buddhist saint of ecology, I would nominate the great Indian scholar Shantideva.”48 Sh¯antideva, who saw the interdependence of all things, vowed to extinguish the suffering of others and provided a helpful guide for how to do this in his Bodhicharya¯vata¯ra. As the Karmapa explains, The Bodhicharyavatara lays out the path to Buddhahood through the cultivation of compassion and the insight into emptiness in the form of enlightened verses and gives inspiration to all who wish to renounce their own desires and ambitions in order to benefit all living beings. As the 17th Karmapa, I am confident that such Buddha activity can be directly translated into environmental protection. With this vision, we now have over 40 Kagyu monasteries and nunneries across the Himalayas implementing environmental projects to address issues such as forest degradation, water shortages, wildlife trade, climate change, and pollution, with guidance provided by nongovernmental organizations, including the World Wildlife Fund. We know that this is but a small drop in the ocean and the challenges we face are more complex and extensive than we can tackle alone. However, if each one of us were to contribute a single drop of clean water toward protecting the environment, imagine how pure this vast ocean could eventually be.49 As the Karmapa notes, no one person can solve the global environmental crisis. However, by working together, we have the potential to create enormous change, to build a flourishing future for our Earth community. The Karmapa’s use of water imagery here is very helpful. It shows that every drop of water counts. Every clean drop of water contributes to a healthy ocean, while every polluted drop of water has harmful consequences for the ocean. Our actions are like drops of water—they can be pure or polluted. With every act, we have the opportunity to benefit others or harm others. The Karmapa has made numerous comments in which he draws connections between environmentalism and Buddhism. For example, at the end of the fifth Khoryug conference in 2013, the Karmapa said these powerful words: “The conservation of our environment— which is the ground of the existence of billions and billions of beings—must be our primary concern as Mahayana practitioners. Environmental conservation must be the very essence of our spiritual practice.”50 In his Conservation Biology essay, the Karmapa links environmentalism with the two wings of the dharma (compassion for all beings and the understanding that all things are empty of inherent existence but instead interdependently exist). He writes, “The essence of Buddhism lies in the union of compassion and emptiness: the deeply felt dedication to alleviate the suffering of all living beings and the understanding that everything is devoid of self-nature. These two halves of a philosophical whole speak particularly to the goals of the environmental movement.”51 The Karmapa goes on to say that “generating compassion for all living beings and turning that motivation into action is the most ecologically aware thing we can do.”52 The bodhisattva ethic is, at its core, an environmental ethic. Furthermore, the Karmapa says for Buddhists, the protection of the environment should arise from the bodhisattva vow. He opened the fourth Khoryug conference in 2012 with these words:

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We should all try our hardest to protect the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas and preserve these ecosystems. Preserving the biodiversity and the ecosystems of our region should be like the effortless practice of dharma for us. Our basic motivation to protect the environment should come from the pure desire to benefit all sentient beings on earth.53 In his interview with Yale Environment 360, he says that “the environmental emergency that we face is not just a scientific issue, nor is it just a political issue, it is also a moral issue.”54 He elaborates this point in his Conservation Biology essay: We cannot simply address the political and scientific aspects of problems such as climate change, intensive extraction of natural resources, deforestation, and wildlife trade. We must also address the social and cultural aspects of these problems by awakening human values and creating a movement for compassion, so that our very motivation in becoming environmentalists is to benefit other living beings.55 These words illustrate an integral approach to ecology. Here the Karmapa is implying that objectivist perspectives on ecological issues are incomplete until accompanied by psychospiritual and intersubjective responses.

THE ECOSATTVA AND THE AQUASATTVA The term “ecosattva” has been coined to signify bodhisattvas who are engaged with environmental activism. As the Buddhism and ecology scholar Stephanie Kaza notes, “An ‘ecosattva’ is one form of a bodhisattva—someone who cares deeply about all beings and the health of the planet and is willing to take action after action to help all beings thrive.”56 This term was first coined in the 1990s as the name of a group of Zen practitioners at Green Gulch Farm in Sausalito, California, who drew inspiration from the Buddhist principle of compassion in their nonviolent protests of the logging of ancient redwoods in Northern California.57 The idea of the ecosattva is still being utilized today. In September 2015, the Buddhist organization One Earth Sangha launched an online “EcoSattva Training” course to help participants cultivate the “capacity to effectively engage on climate change and other ecological challenges, both thematically and locally, with courage, compassion and wisdom.”58 At the end of the training session, participants are invited to commit to “EcoSattva Vows” to work toward the “health, vitality and ease for all beings, seen and unseen, near and far, born and yet-to-be-born.”59 Participants are encouraged to repeat these vows daily to strengthen their intention to be of service to the world. The suffering caused by local and global water crises calls for compassionate responses. An integral water ethic can draw much inspiration from Buddhist values of wisdom and compassion—the wisdom that all beings in the Earth community exist interdependently and the compassion for all suffering beings that arises from this wisdom. The bodhisattva archetype is a helpful guide for embodying such wisdom and compassion. The Karmapa is a living example of someone who has dedicated his life to this mission. His work raising ecological consciousness among Buddhist monks, nuns, and his many lay followers throughout the world (in specific connection to water issues in the Himalayas) is a helpful example of someone who integrates Buddhism and ecology in a responsible way. Through the example of the bodhisattva and the Karmapa, an integral water ethic finds inspiration for engaging with water with compassionate wisdom.

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As Thich Nhat Hanh says, water is a bodhisattva who nourishes all beings. Recognizing water as a bodhisattva involves recognizing the compassion and wisdom inherent in this sacred element of life. Water can be of great service to all beings if it is allowed to be itself. By recognizing that water is an active participant in communion with all life, people who have lost spiritual contact with water can learn to have a deeper sense of respect and care for this vital member of our Earth community. Cultivating intimacy with water can thus assist in cultivating intimacy with all our relations. The bodhisattva archetype lends inspiration not only to the concept of the ecosattva, but also to a figure I call the “aquasattva.” The aquasattva is a bodhisattva who is deeply concerned for the well-being of water in all its different manifestations (e.g., waterways such as oceans, creeks, and rivers, but also bodies of water in the form of humans, animals, and plants). The aquasattva sees water as a bodhisattva, a wise and compassionate teacher who helps awaken wisdom and compassion within the practitioner. The aquasattva is one who says: water helps me cultivate my love for all beings. By restoring the health of water, by working for water justice for all, by practising an integral water ethic, I am able to help water realize its potential to be of service to all beings. Cultivating compassion for water and experiencing water as an embodiment of compassion are practices through which I can contribute to a flourishing future for our Earth community. I vow to liberate water and all beings from suffering. When I am of service to water, I help water become of service to all beings. My own awakening is the awakening of water. By awakening my potential to become an aquasattva in human form, I help water awaken to its own aquasattva potential. May I, like water, flow freely for the benefit of all beings.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mountains of Memory: Confronting Climate Change in Sacred Mountain Landscapes ELIZABETH ALLISON

INTRODUCTION Glacier-clad mountain landscapes are imbued with powerful material, sacred and symbolic meanings that resist reduction to mundane materiality. Mountain peaks are considered to be sacred because of their extreme height and powerful presence; their identification with the center of the world or axis mundi, around which all human events revolve; their likeness to natural temples, place of worships, or paradisiacal gardens; and their provision of fertility and fecundity.1 High peaks are zones of intensified meaning. In the Himalayas, Andes, and China, some peaks are considered to be deities or abodes of deities. In Himalayan Bhutan, mountains are considered to be abodes of the gods; recreational mountain climbing is forbidden. Mount Jhomolhari (elevation 23,997 feet/ 7,314 meters), home of the goddess Jo-Mo, is considered particularly sacred and worshipped as a living being. The mountain is thought to be the bride of Mount Kanchenjunga, an 8,000-meter peak in eastern Nepal. Throughout the South American Andes, divinities dwell on hills and mountains, and churches and chapels are always built facing the most spiritually important hill.2 In the Meili Snow Mountain Range of Northwest Yunnan, tens of thousands of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrims circumambulate the sacred mountain Kawa Karpo annually, seeking to earn merit for their next incarnation.3 In sacred landscapes like these, value is realized and expressed through ritual. Human bodies, individually and collectively, engage in dynamic interplay of meaning-making with Earth’s body, transforming each in the process, and imbuing the landscape with meaning and memory. The glaciers that drape mountain peaks and extend into valleys are accorded a complex and ambivalent place in the human imagination, appearing as both providers of prosperity and as malevolent beings. In diverse times and places throughout history, glaciers have been considered to be animated beings with particular rules for interaction. The movements and sounds of glaciers can cause them to be perceived as animate forces worthy of respect and veneration by those living nearby.4 During the Little Ice Age, glaciers were seen as marauding forces, streaming down from the mountains to destroy 209

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human villages in their paths in early modern Europe.5 Priests called on God to stop these demonic forces.6 The indigenous people of the west coast of North America, such as Alaska’s Tlingit people and First Nations people of the Yukon, saw glaciers as snake-like beings with specific demands and requirements.7 According to an indigenous observer in 1904, “in one place Alsek River runs under a glacier. People can pass beneath in their canoes, but, if anyone speaks while they are under it, the glacier comes down on them. They say that in those times the glacier was like an animal, and could hear what was said to it.”8 Because of these animate characteristics, glaciers are accorded the affiliative value, becoming personified as deities or animated beings. Mountain-glacier deities pass judgment on inappropriate human behavior, responding with calamities that serve as a moral rebuke. Specific rules of etiquette and morality guide mountain villagers’ relationships with glaciers and mountains, ensuring reciprocity with mountain deities. Rituals that codify and convey traditional ecological knowledge embody complex knowledge about living in mountain environments.9 Prophecies in these traditions hold that future calamities result from inappropriate interactions with mountains and glaciers. Deified mountains and glaciers, and the beliefs and rituals through which local populations relate to them, embody stories that orient communities to their place in the cosmos. Orienting and grounding are fundamental processes of religious ecologies through which people recognize their dependence on the natural world and locate themselves in the cosmic order.10 Orienting themselves in relation to the creative and sustaining forces of the cosmos, mountain peoples place themselves in direct and reciprocal relations with the sources of their sustenance. A sense of place is part of what gives life value and comfort for many people, especially those who locate moral meaning or religious salience in parts of the landscape.11 These relationships with place are re-inscribed and conveyed through stories that honor the awesome powers of life-giving and death-dealing mountain glaciers. In recognizing their dependence on the natural world, mountain villagers honor their connections with surrounding biotic and abiotic processes on which human life depends and assert their membership in the Earthly community of life. Glaciers also tell scientific stories, recording Earth’s ancient history. Ice cores retrieved from mid-latitude and tropical glaciers are crucial in understanding how changing concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere may influence global temperatures.12 Ice cores collected from mountain glaciers around the world provide direct evidence about past climatic fluctuations, including temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation strength, solar variability, and marine biological productivity. Glaciers also record the concentration of particulates such as dust, volcanic debris, and forest fire ash in the atmosphere. This wealth of information about Earth’s history has just begun to be examined over the past three decades. Ice cores reveal how temperature and atmospheric carbon have tracked each other over hundreds of millennia, thus contributing to understandings of what increased carbon concentrations in the atmosphere may mean for climatological and hydrological cycles.13 While the scientific stories of glaciers have been privileged in scholarly discourse, critiques of the epistemological hegemony of Western scientific paradigms and methods suggest that new, more humanistic, approaches are needed for comprehensively understanding the human relationship with ice.14 Anthropologists and scholars of the environmental humanities have begun to explore the ways that changes in the climate, and resulting environmental changes, are affecting human subjectivities and cosmologies.15 As glaciers recede in the warmer temperatures and disrupted hydrologic regimes of a climate-changed planet, their decline represents more than a physical change in the

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landscape: it is also rupture in the cultural fabric and memory of mountain communities. In this “cryo-historical moment” in which “ice has become historical, i.e., that ice is an element of change and thus something that can be considered part of society and of societal concern,”16 glacial decline represents a loss of cultural memory in glaciated landscapes, as well as the loss of scientific stories that may be read through the ice cores collected from glaciers. While these historical records are being destroyed in an age of climate change, both human communities and the planet as a whole are losing archives of our collective past. As holders of collective memory, both religious worldviews and glaciated landscapes orient and ground human communities in the cosmological order. The degradation of mountain landscapes represents a separation from both landscape and memory: a “dis-membering,” resulting from both breaks in ritualized memory and degradation of the physical record stored in ice, of the human community from the larger Earth community. In losing connection with the human and biophysical collective past, humans are dis-membered from the Earth community, in that they are severed from the body of collective memories, and, in forgetting their reciprocal obligations, they are also no longer “members” of the Earth community. Such “dis-membering” can lead to geoamnesia: a forgetting that stems from both the loss of the physical library that is layered ice, and from a misapprehension of the human orientation with respect to the natural world and the cosmic order, and, as such, has significant ramifications for navigating the complexities of climate change.

ALPINE GLACIER DECLINE The decline of tropical and mid-latitude glaciers may be the first of many significant changes to the landscape brought about by climate change. Smaller and thinner than arctic ice sheets, and located at high altitudes that amplify warming, mountain glaciers are more susceptible to degradation in a warmer and dryer climate.17 The climate scientist Barry Baker, who studied the Mingyong glacier in China, has likened such glaciers to a “canary in the coalmine” with respect to the degree of severity of climate alterations.18 Warming temperature, black carbon deposition, and altered precipitation patterns are contributing to the recession of alpine glaciers.19 For example, the extent of Kilimanjaro’s glacier declined 80 percent between 1912 and 2000.20 At the end of the twentieth century, some Andean glaciers were retreating ten times faster than they had been in the 1960s–70s.21 These glaciers, which capture and store winter snows and release water slowly throughout the year, are essential sources of consistent water for farming, energy, and ecological stability in mountain regions.22 Glacial decline can lead to sudden surges in water—as in glacial lake outburst floods, when the moraine dams trapping melt water suddenly release, inundating downstream valleys—followed by reduction in water supplies, as rivers and lakes dwindle. As such events create significant cultural narratives, much “more research is needed to discern how cultural values, narratives, discourse, and perceptions of glaciers and hydrology are changing as glaciers retreat.”23 The animated perspective on glaciers is becoming implicit in twenty-first century scientific accounts of glaciers. As changes in the Earth’s climate and albedo create conditions less favorable for glaciers, glaciers have come to be seen as a type of endangered species.24 Western-trained scientists and journalists portray glaciers as living—and more commonly, dying—creatures that are “surprisingly frail” due to climate change.25 Journalists write that the “glacier’s once smooth surface is ragged and cratered like the skin of a leper,”26 and “Water streams out from the pocked and porous glacier’s face, like

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fluid seeping from a wound.”27 These perception of glaciers as an “endangered species” echo historical and indigenous perceptions of glaciers as animated. If glaciers are a “species”—a term more commonly reserved for varieties of living plant and animal organisms—then people may form relationships with them as they do with other species. In this discursive turn, glaciers have gone from inert agglomerations of rock and ice to beings deserving of protection because of their “endangered” status. Inanimate biophysical components of the environment are now depicted as animated beings, bringing to light a thread of perception that consistently undergirds humanistic and animistic accounts of the natural world. The discursive change engendered by describing glaciers as an endangered species suggests an ontological re-categorization of glaciers among some Western thinkers, moving the ontological understanding of glaciers closer to that of indigenous and premodern societies. The perception of what a glacier is is shifting away from viewing glaciers as inert blocks of ice, snow, and gravel, subject to unbending scientific laws and devoid of agency or sentience. In the rational-scientific paradigm that predominates in Western and developed countries,28 the glacial agglomeration of rock and ice, a biophysical fact, is now threatened by human action and deserving of care. What was once an insentient part of the landscape upon which human life played out is now a subject of the activities of human life, responding with its own changes, caused by but not controlled by human activities. The changing forms of glaciers also change the signs that emerge from the landscape, as the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, following the philosopher Charles Peirce, shows in his discussion of semiosis, and his careful unpacking of the emergence of signs from the natural world. Signs, including icons that reflect the referent, and indices, which point from the referent to something in the future, emerge from form, which is a quality of the nonliving world as well as the living world.29 A sign refers to something absent that exists in future. Form exerts constraints on living beings. As forms change, the relevant constraints on living beings change. The disappearance of glaciers in some locations thus diminishes the signs that may emerge from that landscape, and diminishes the “thinking” in Kohn’s terms, of the landscape. This alteration of signs has occurred in the Indian Himalaya of Garwhal, in Uttarakhand State, where the Gangotri-Gaumukh glacier, which feeds the sacred Ganges River, has retreated more than a mile. Local observers have concluded that the angered Goddess has withdrawn, altering the formation of the glacier such that the glacier’s snout no longer resembles the namesake “cow mouth.”30 The changed form of the glacier transforms it as a sign. The glacier no longer presents its former image: it is no longer an icon of the gaumukh, or cow mouth. The variation of the form leads local people to inquire what has happened to anger the Goddess. Local people posit a number of reasons for her anger, including a rise in pollution throughout the world and along the river banks, tourism to the glacier, and the associated consumption of impure substances like meat and alcohol there, as well an increase in “internal pollution” or corruption of human nature, indicating that people no longer respect the Goddess.31 Indicating that tourists and locals alike are forgetting their reciprocal obligations to the Goddess and their surroundings, these profane activities separate, or dis-member, the local community from the surrounding sacred landscape. The ontological shift that redefines what a glacier is also affects understandings of how glaciers can be known. Scientific glaciology has been the domain of the physical earth sciences, studied by geologists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, and physicists,

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whose analyses investigate the chemical, morphological, physical, and hydrological characteristics of glaciers. However, if glaciers are coming to be known as “endangered species,” that deserve protection and with whom humans can have relationships of care and concern, then the epistemological tools for knowing glaciers must also shift to include subjective human responses to glaciers, echoing the perceptions of indigenous and nonWestern societies. An ethical shift follows from the ontological and epistemological shifts in studying glaciers. As implied by the phrase “endangered species,” glaciers are coming to be defined as a type of phenomena that is under threat and deserving of human care. In this discourse, the ethical imperatives for human interactions with glaciers shift from a situation in which humans have no ethical obligations toward purely material features of the landscape that appear to be permanent and constant through time, to a situation in which human ethical obligations for the amelioration of harm to glaciers arise from the realization of human responsibility for the decline and “endangerment” of glaciers. That is, the recognition of complicity in endangerment leads to the recognition of responsibility for reducing such endangerment. Inspiration and guidance for this relational approach to glacial landscapes can be gleaned from the beliefs and practices of mountain communities that recognize their reciprocal obligations to the sacred landscapes they inhabit.

MOUNTAIN DEITIES, RITUALS, AND MEMORY Rituals for deified mountains and glaciers may honor and praise, or petition and propitiate the deity. In the Himalayas, upstream glaciers are seen to have a menacing and aweinspiring presence, as glacial lake outburst floods can wipe out entire villages and paddy fields. Because of their provision of the source of all fecundity and nourishment, mountain communities often deify the mountain whose glaciers provide the water that irrigates their fields.32 Through their slow summer melt, glaciers provide water for crops, nourish the fodder that feeds livestock, and provide the necessary resource for all livelihood activities. In the northwestern Yunnan Province in China, where four great rivers of Asia—the Chang, Salween, Irawaddy, and Mekong—flow from the Tibetan Plateau within a span of 75 kilometers, Kawa Karpo, also known as Kawagebo or Meili Snow Mountain, is one of eight sacred mountains or neri (Tibetan: gnas ri), the holiest mountains around which Buddhists circumambulate. A gnas ri, or “abode mountain,” is home to a deity that becomes conflated with the mountain itself. Each year, tens of thousands of pilgrims perform the circumambulation, a twelve to fifteen day trek that crosses three 5,000-meter passes.33 The ritual of circumambulation re-inscribes memory and connects mountain communities to their landscapes. Local belief holds that climbing the mountain defiles it. Between 1987 and 2000, mountaineering teams from China, the United States, and Japan planned to climb the mountain, preparing from base camps in the grazing camps on its shoulders.34 However, a 1991 climbing disaster, in which seventeen Chinese and Japanese mountaineers were killed, seemed to epitomize local opposition to recreational climbing. Upon hearing that the final push for the summit would begin in the early hours of the next morning, hundreds of Tibetans from the town of Kawagebo, opposite the peak, and surrounding villages, began to curse and insult the mountain and mountain god for allowing climbers to sully it. By the next morning, radio contact with the climbing team had been lost and it became clear that an avalanche, audible in the herding camps below, had destroyed the

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climbers. Following the disaster, local people apologized to the mountain for insulting it, and also praised it for shaking off the climbers.35 In 2000, The Nature Conservancy (TNC ), scientists, scholars, and Dequin County officials petitioned the State Council in Beijing to ban future mountaineering on Kawa Karpo in 2000; the peak remains unsummitted.36 As the recession of the sacred Mingyong Glacier on the mountain has become apparent, local people have offered several hypotheses for this loss, blaming both themselves and outside visitors. Insufficient devotion among local Buddhists, and increasing material greed and use of electricity, are seen as contributing to the glacier’s decline.37 Outsiders who displayed insufficient reverence to the glacier, such as by laughing and shouting nearby, or dropping litter, may be offending the holy mountain.38 The influx of tourists and the related increased production of smoke and pollution is seen to have a negative effect on the glacier, as well as on people’s life spans.39 In identifying the increasing gap between themselves and their surroundings, villagers are identifying the ways that increasing technology, commercialization, and tourism are dis-membering them from their sacred landscape. Villagers both seek to protect sacred space and to maintain the bountiful provisions of the mountain. In an effort to preserve their harmonious relationship with the sacred landscape and remember their responsibilities, local people do not allow foreign scientists to step out onto the ice of Mingyong Glacier, but instead require scientists to measure glacial recession from afar through repeat photography.40 Though the glacier is in retreat, local people understand that their existence is bound up with continually re-membering. They believe that it is impossible for the glacier to die because their existence is intertwined with that of the glacier.41

Dehydrating Deities So dependent are mountain communities on meltwater from glaciers and snowfall that the dehydration of the landscape is experienced as the departure of the gods. Local people strive to adapt to the changing demands of their sacred landscapes. Like the Buddhists at Kawa Karpo, the Quechua, living near the declining glacier of Mount Ausangate in the Peruvian Andes, see their existence as intertwined with the existence of the glacier. Mount Ausangate is seen as a powerful Apu or god of the landscape. The local Quechua believe that the deterioration of the glacier is associated with the mountain god’s departure and wonder what they have done to cause the wrath of the deity who is limiting water flow.42 The Quechua have adapted their annual pilgrimage of praise and propitiation to accommodate the changing condition of the glacier. At the annual syncretic Catholic pilgrimage, El Señor de Qoyllur Rit’i (Lord of the Snow Star), nearly 70,000 people gather on the flank of Mount Ausangate to honor an appearance of the Christ child.43 Traditionally, ukukus or “bears,” ritual leaders who mediate between the mountain gods and the villagers, would cut large blocks of ice from the glacier, hauling them down the mountain to share the healing holy nectar of the Apu with family, friends and livestock in a ritual that emphasized the connection of people and landscape.44 The changing conditions of the glacier are contributing to dis-membering the villagers from their landscape. Guards are now positioned at the edge of the glacier to prevent the removal of ice.45 Pilgrims are limited to collecting small bottles of meltwater as relics, and have begun to use smaller candles in their rituals in a further effort to preserve the glacier.46 Though cultures and rituals are nothing if not flexible and adaptive, the reversal of the villagers’ relationship with the mountain deities may portend greater social and spiritual

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dislocation that can follow alienation from landscape and culture.47 Beyond the material losses inherent in glacial degradation and dehydration, are the “invisible losses”: degradation of lifeways and culture. At least eight types of “invisible losses” have followed colonialism and industrialization among the First Nations communities in western North America: cultural and lifestyle losses, loss of identity, health losses, loss of selfdetermination and influence, emotional and psychological losses, loss of order in the world, knowledge losses, and indirect economic losses.48

Ritual, Reciprocity, and Memory Reciprocity is an essential aspect of caring for the land, necessary to ensure future nurturance of those who dwell within.49 Reciprocity is a form of regulation or constriction of action: the entire field of possibility is not open; some actions have been foreclosed by obligation. The requirements of reciprocity create a check on human authority, limiting excess and overreach. Boundaries on action create meaning, drawing together more closely the parties with reciprocal obligations. Through rituals, mountain people enact their reciprocal relationships with sacred mountains to maintain the bounty of the mountain and its life-giving waters, while seeking to avoid retribution for missteps from the mountain’s deity. At the center of the Khumbu region of Nepal, near Mount Everest, a peak called Khumbila, or Khumbu Yul Lha, is the home of the ancient protector god, or lha, of that region. Rituals connect the Sherpas of the region to the history of their ancestors. Khumbila is said to have been an ancient deity subdued and converted to Buddhism by Guru Rimpoche, the eighth-century saint who spread Buddhism throughout the Himalaya. Tradition holds that Guru Rimpoche spent some time meditating in a cave nearby, perhaps on the mountain Khumbila itself. At Dumji, a summertime festival that celebrates the Sherpas’ connection to their home and each other, and honors Guru Rimpoche, Khumbila is welcomed on the first day of the festival, explicitly reaffirming the Sherpas’ connection to their home in the area around Khumbila, and their respect of Khumbila as the god of the area.50 The repetition and re-inscription of the Sherpas’ association with and dependence upon Khumbila through the rituals offerings maintains the power of this reciprocal relationship, thereby maintaining the protection of the mountain itself. As a set of practices that serve to bind communities together and restore collective identity, rituals are intimately connected with cultural memory. Texts, traditions, and rituals re-call and re-collect important concepts, processes, and events. Rituals connect the generations across time, allowing children to live, if only momentarily, as their ancestors did. Memories are forged and solidified through the act of re-inhabiting the past: the practices of ritual connect participants across time, reaching back to the ancestors and forward to a prophesied or imagined future.51 Memory is necessary to create a complete narrative about who a person, family, or society is, and how it came to be. In returning to the same ritual locations repeatedly, people return to places “imbued with the presence of ancestors.”52 Through repetition, rituals maintain memory and guard against collective amnesia. Thus, rituals nurture cultural memory, reinvigorating group identity and reciprocal connections with place that extend across time. Rituals not only create connection with the past, they also create the possibilities for future knowledge. New possibilities can be imagined and enacted ritually. Oral traditions connect the historical past to prophesies about the future, conveying morally appropriate

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behavior, often gleaned out of missteps in the past, that guide the way into a harmonious future within human society and in relation to surrounding nonhuman nature. These traditions are often place-based, connecting moral behavior to the land. For example, among the Apache of the American Southwest, “wisdom sits in places:” the moral imagination infuses the local landscape where the terrain reminds people of past events, and tradition persists because the landscape persists.53 In offering moral guidance, the landscape also shapes the possibilities for the future.

Loss of Water, Loss of Memory The village of Kumik in Zanskar, northern India, encountered an existential crisis when meltwater from its nearby glacier declined. Some of the villagers in Kumik believe that the water problem stems from displeasure by their local god or lha. The lha, or god of the place, is responsible for bringing timely water and rain, and warmth to melt the snow at the right time for crop planting. Villagers believe that the lha is expressing displeasure with them, resulting in an undependable water supply, because they are praying less and have become more focused on material goods. The glacier that supplies water to this village of 200 is declining and retreating, resulting in less water availability for the villagers.54 Villagers have to spend an ever-greater part for their days walking to a more distant source to get water. Crops are failing because ancient irrigation canals no longer reach the water source, which has receded uphill. Building new canals has been impractical because of the ever-changing location of the glacial-fed water supply. In a last-ditch effort to preserve their community, the villagers have decided to move the village down stream, closer to the larger Zanskar River, and closer to the larger town of Padum. Some are happy with this move, as it will put them closer to the conveniences of modern life, while many others are unhappy to leave their ancestral village that they believe is perfect.55 Some wonder whether the lha will travel with them to the new village site, and plan to pray and petition the lha to travel with them. Cut off from their past, villagers wonder how they will survive in their new location. The changing hydrological regime has resulted in changing the village location. As they shift the location of their village, residents are dis-membered from the memories stored in the landscape of their ancient village.

GLACIERS AS EARTH’S MEMORY Glaciers store a record of Earth’s history in their layers of ice, capturing and storing atmospheric bubbles, dust, and organic matter for millennia. Ice cores provide the most detailed information about previous atmospheric and climate conditions. This is increasingly crucial as scientists monitor and model how the changing compotation of the atmosphere is affecting climate. The 2,083-meter Vostok ice core, collected by a Franco-Russian team in Antarctica, showed how carbon dioxide and temperature changed in consonance over the past 160,000 years.56 Ice cores drilled from glaciers provide evidence of previous climatic conditions, through the chemistry and structure of the ice and air bubbles captured within it, as well as information about other conditions, as represented by dust, ash, pollen, sea salts, bits of flora and fauna, and human pollutants frozen in the ice.57 Because of the time lag between the time that snow falls and the time the ice is compressed and sealed capturing the bubbles, bubbles in the ice represent the conditions in the atmosphere hundreds to thousands of years after the snow fell.58 Scientists estimate the age of glaciers and the past composition of Earth’s atmosphere from these cores, some of which are as much as a mile long.

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In recording changes in Earth’s climate over time, the repositories of this information— glaciers—can be likened to Earth’s memory of past conditions. These memories lie, frozen in ice, to inform the present and future. Like human memory, Earth’s memory is accreted over time, with each season’s snowfall capturing and storing that years’ atmospheric, temperature, and biological conditions. Modern technology—ice core drills—has allowed humans to retrieve and “read” these memories for the first time, adding tremendously to our knowledge and understanding of Earth’s history. Memories disappear, too, displaced by newer or more pertinent memories that submerge or wipe out previous memories. As they flow and shift, glaciers may introduce inclusions or slippages, affecting the qualities of the cores—the memories—that may be retrieved. At the same time, the frozen glacier maintains the layers of recorded planetary history analogous to the sedimentary layers of rocks. With the increase of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, forms, including glaciers, are changing. With the advent of abrupt anthropogenic climate change since the Industrial Revolution, this recorded history may be lost more rapidly than under pre-industrial conditions, leading to global geo-amnesia. The United Nations cultural organization UNESCO launched the Ice Memory project, in March 2017, to preserve these invaluable records through a series of expeditions in the Alps and Andes to collect ice cores that would then be stored in Antarctica for future analysis and study.59 The deep irony of the gathering geo-amnesia is that it is caused by the exploitation of another aspect of Earth’s deep memory: fossil fuels, literally fuels made from our ancestors. Fossil fuels are composed of the ancient ancestors of all living beings alive today. Rather than being recognized as precious forebears buried deep in the ground, fossil fuels are burned voraciously to feed technological society. The sites of fossil fuels are not recognized as sacred burial grounds, but rather seen as resources to be tapped. Observers of the biodiversity extinction crisis liken the loss of biological diversity to the loss of countless libraries in which essential information about life on Earth is stored.60 The abiotic features of Earth are likewise repositories of this history, revealing much about the past that is suggestive for humanity’s future.

CONCLUSION Climate change shatters subjective understandings of the human role and place in the world. There is no meaningful material reality that can be measured or analysed separate from the human experience of that reality, which includes the subjective interpretation of that reality. Glaciers are sources of prosperity and abundance, as well as geographical and spiritual orientation. As they decline, communities lose the icons around which they have oriented themselves, economically, geographically, socially, and spirituality. Some mountain communities are reporting symptoms of dissociation and community disruption as the totems around which they have oriented their spiritual life begin to decline.61 Unmoored from the continuity of historical place, through abrupt environmental change, mountain peoples may experience a sense of disorienting “solastalgia.” Akin to nostalgia, the longing for home, solastalgia is a feeling of melancholy homesickness that occurs when one is still “at home” but the home place has changed drastically and irreparably, such that it can no longer provide solace.62 To lose one’s home is profoundly—and literally—disorienting: there is no longer a central set of landmarks around which to orient oneself and one’s life. The concept of solastalgia captures some of the “invisible losses,” to culture, lifeways, identity, selfdetermination, and other nonmaterial value that mountain communities are experiencing with climate change.63

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Climate change-induced glacial decline is both a cultural loss and a scientific loss of connections to the past, as well as a narrowing of possibilities for the future. The decline of alpine glaciers disrupts cultural memory in glaciated landscapes, and destroys the scientific stories that may be read through the ice cores collected from glaciers. In cutting off mountain communities from their ritual connections to ancestors, climate change dis-members them from the body of their lineage and memory. In severing the record of Earth’s history, glacial decline due to anthropogenic climate change dis-members the global human community from the deep time in which we are embedded. The gathering geo-amnesia threatens to severely limit humanity’s creative and imaginative options for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change in the present and future. The cases of local reverence for sacred mountain landscapes presented here highlight the insights, imagination, and adaptability of indigenous knowledge, and offer inspiration for re-membering the connections between people, place, and ritual. These cases also suggest the need to incorporate attention to subjective losses, including deterioration of cultural and religious traditions, into climate change research, and ultimately, adaptation responses.64 Unless humanity can re-member our collective connections to ritual, landscape, and memory, human societies may have grave difficulty developing creative options for responding to climate change in a denuded, dehydrated world.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At the Mercy of Sacred Waters: Sanctification, Fetishization, Permeation, and Responsiveness SIGURD BERGMANN

WATER AS ROOT-FORCE Perceiving nature, life, and the universe as a nexus of essential forces was a commonplace of understanding reality in Antiquity. Borrowing a term that was used for the letters of the alphabet, the constituents of nature were described as ta stoicheia, elements. Empedocles was the first who developed the number of four elements as a constituting the universe, where fire, water, earth, and air shaped the “four root-forces of everything.”1 These elements could be identified directly with the Divine, they could serve as mediators of divine power impacting nature, or even be regarded as permeations of deities or spiritual beings. Ancient Philosophers removed the doctrine of the elements from mythology and established a first ground for our later rational understanding of life. Widely spread stories about the world’s origin, where elements played powerful roles in the cosmogonies, had strongly impacted the imagination in biblical times and, and also influenced the worldview of the Western world in general. For many centuries our understanding of the human body was also predicated on the four elements.2 Among these “nature-letters” (or elemental forms), water was the most moveable and versatile. As the fluid element, it could permeate other essences and interconnect them. In the disaster of the flood, similar to the catastrophe of the world fire, the element of water offered the condition for an inscenation of the drama of fear, despair, hope, and salvation. Water geographies had a significant impact on the modes of social development. The management of mobility and transport over the oceanic waters for example drove changes in global power symmetry. While rivers, lakes, and seascapes once served as arenas for transport and exchange, in the modern era they were turned in into borders whereby one could separate territories from each other. Elements served historically for a long time as media for human self-understanding: herein humans could express feelings and passions, fears and desire.3 The functions of elements and water are manifold in religious belief systems through the ages and throughout the world. While in Egypt the River Nile represented a god of harmony and 219

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fertility, the gods of Mesopotamia were rather evil figures plaguing the country with damaging floods. For medieval Hildegard of Bingen, being is circumscribed in the metaphoric imagination of streaming water, as a constant “being-in-the flow-of ”. While for her fire was the element from which all life emerges, Hildegard constructed a dynamic interplay of all the elements layered into one complex system. In classical Mayan culture, the water gods dwelling in the subterranean sphere of the land were the strongest and most powerful forces impacting the whole ecology and society. Cenotes offer the edge of bodily and spiritual life, and there are many traces of ritual activities, such as the practice of diving into the aquatic system and sacrificing artifacts and humans therein.4 Connections of water and Spirit are central not only in the biblical texts, both Jewish and Christian, but also in other world and local religions. This chapter does not offer a survey of these many modes of entangling water and faith in the history of religion,5 but rather explores four different modes of approaching water in four different contexts and times. My underlying intention hereby is to strive for finding expressions of a deep-water aesth/ ethics. Not only do we need an explicit and politically efficient water ethos, as Dieter Gerten and many others have demanded,6 but according to my view, such a water ethos in an ecologically changing world religion map also needs to anchor in a spiritual “face of the deep,”7 a reconstruction of the dynamis of water that is both its force and potential. In the following we will first approach three paintings by J. M. W. Turner depicting human life at the mercy of the elements: water, weather, wind, and light. In the Romantic tradition of his time, the sea was regarded as a testing place for the emotional self and sea paintings offered excellent conditions for effective aesthetic responsiveness. Water surfaces in Turner’s work can be dramatically wild or calm and safe. Being alive means to live at the mercy of nature, which is visualized in the painter’s water waves that can either draw the humans down to the depths and death, or elevate them into heaven. A second section explores how Eastern late-Antiquity theologian Gregory of Nazianz depicts this “being-at-the-mercy-of ” deeply in his Trinitarian cosmology, where he portends the differentiation of the elements on the one hand and their entanglement (what he describes as community, mutual dependence, agreement, common breathing, and mixis) on the other, as a work of God. With regard to water, the theologian develops his ecological liberation theology of the Spirit, from the event of Christ’s baptism in the Jordan River. This represents not only a revelation of the Trinity, but in his baptism Christ is “sanctifying” all the waters by his “purification.” Coming up from the river, Christ, according to Gregory, “carries up the world.” While water, according to G. Böhme and H. Böhme, served as an element of life in mytho-religious, emotional-moral, or technical cultural contexts, that was sacred in some sense, our contemporary mores have commoditized and fetishized the gift of water. A third section discusses this process in comparison to the fetishization of money and interprets it as a radical challenge to faith in the life-giving Spirit. The lack of a global water ethos and also the mammonistic commodification of diverse global and local water flows appears, from such a view, as a deep religious provocation. How are commoditized waterscapes mirroring the late modern emotional self? And how can they appear as sanctified waters? The fourth and final section offers an open ending to this chapter, which mirrors the element’s fluidity and creativity, especially its ability to permeate matter. A short description of environmental artist George Steinmann’s “Art Without an Object but with Impact” leads the reader to exciting questions not easily answered. In the new construction of the waterworks in Bern, the artist has infused water from medieval sacred springs in

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the Alpine directly into the building’s concrete. What kind of a aesth/ethic transformation is happening here?

WATER IN MOTION WITHIN A RESPONSIVE WORLD While water in mytho-religious times could serve as a life-giving, soil-watering elixir or as an overwhelming, threatening, and disastrous force, it could in later emotional-moral times offer a mirror wherein the human could explore and find herself.8 In the technical context, the elements provide instead an object of management, where the boat offered the central symbol for ruling over the sea and where energy flows could be managed for the sake of society. J. M. W. Turner oscillated in his masterly paintings between all these three modes of approaching water and the sea. His work reveals explicitly the depth and strength of the continuously challenging sea and water that we are dependent on, and it visually stages ingeniously the state of being at the mercy of it. Among Turner’s favorite themes was the sea. His first work exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796 was “Fishermen at Sea.” The focus on light and waves, which Turner developed deeper and deeper in his lifetime, was already convincingly established in this early oil painting. Moonlight was reflected in two ways at two places on the water surface where both water and the clouds distribute the shimmering light. “This painting plays on contrasts of surface and depth just as it plays on the paradox of simultaneous illumination and obscurity,” Sarah Monks

FIGURE 18.1: J. M. W. Turner, Fishermen at Sea, 1796, oil paint on canvas, 91.4 × 122.2 cm.

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states in her insightful analysis of Turner’s seascapes.9 The subtle interplay of surface and depth is here carefully depicted in the motion of the wave that carries the fishermen. As humans they are at the mercy of three elements: water, wind, and light. In the Romantic tradition of his time the sea was regarded as a testing place for the emotional self and sea paintings offered great conditions for effective aesthetic responsiveness. Often Turner depicts sceneries where ships tip towards us, capsizing and sinking. Flotation, and the possibility of a steep descent, enforce the tension of surface and depth in a way that also refers to the metaphorical relation of painter and painting.10 Of special interest in Turner’s maritime paintings are the waves. In their intense motion they are keeping alive the tension of surface and depth. Mobility is here not simply transported from one place to another but is an eternal back-and-forth movement, which again depends on the rhythm of wind and water. Equal to Turner’s intense emphasis on weather alteration as a constant challenge was the focus of the force of motion in the sea and the infinite variability of the water.11 Water surfaces in Turner’s work are either dramatically wild or calm and safe, embedding the sailor and viewer in comfort. Could we regard the waves in Turner’s paintings as a central metaphor for human existence as one of environmental dependence on weather, in the sublime power of winds and waters as illustrated by the interplay of light and darkness, depth and surface? Similar to the “suffering of sea-change” (Monks) and the floating on waves, the storm also carries for Turner the central meaning of natural force standing against culture. Nature implies an unpredictable potential for change, a change which can mean a gift of life becomes a life-threatening force. Being alive means to survive in such existential dynamics of change. In a radical way Turner experienced and expressed this existential dynamic in his “Snowstorm” from 1842. Turner reports himself how he asked the sailors to tie him to the mast of the boat Ariel, setting out from Harwich in a snowstorm, for four hours in order “to observe it” and “to record it”.12 He explicitly completes the painting’s title with details about this experience. In the catalogue text he described himself as the picture’s “author”. One can scarcely come closer to being exposed to the force of weather. Due to his impressive recall, Turner could afterwards express and paint what he saw and felt; on the canvas he shared the feeling of being totally dependent on the awful and wild weather. One is tempted to compare his experience with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s definition of religion as “the feeling of absolute dependence,” and ask if Turner continuously explored in his paintings what it means to be alive and totally dependent on the forces of nature manifested in weather. Eberhard Roters strikingly states that Turner, in this painting, moves the acting God who earlier intervened in nature from without directly into the power of the elements. “The divine omnipotence embodies in weather itself, instead of the anecdotic narration about God’s action upon human fate has stepped the meteorological, wherein nature’s blow becomes comprehensible as the coat of an incomprehensible and unpredictable movement of destiny to which we are helplessly exposed.”13 Nevertheless, one should not overlook the focus on the spiritual and physical significance of technology in this picture.14 Alluding in the full title of the piece15 to Ariel, the demon spirit in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Turner furthermore leads us to the question of how technology and machinery, both in general and of his own painting, is interconnected with the spiritual forces of life. Turner’s famous “Deluge” also depicts the human inability to control and reign over nature. One might herein also identify Turner’s faith in God as the giver of life with a

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FIGURE 18.2: J. M. W. Turner, Snowstorm—steam-boat off a harbour’s mouth making signals in shallow water, and going by the lead, c. 1842, oil on canvas, 91 × 122 cm, Tate Britain, London.

total power to destroy but also to create and recreate it. The storm and flood waves and the being-exposed-to-the-weather is even more emphasized here. Pointedly it illustrates the power of God within nature and weather according to the biblical story: “Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died” (Genesis 7:22, NIV ). One should not regard Turner as just some kind of a religious painter. Nevertheless John Ruskin might be right that only Turner could convey “the mysteries of God.”16 His deepest interest has obviously been the forces of nature as they manifest in weather on land and sea. As we have seen, water, waves, and floods played a central role herein. Ruskin therefore probably hit the nail on the head when he described Turner as the artist who could most “stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature.”17 One might acknowledge Turner furthermore as a pioneer who has started to investigate nature and weather within us. As much as they depict the manifestation of nature on the canvas, his paintings also explore the manifestation of nature within our processes of seeing and feeling. Together with other romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich, Turner also challenged the distance between past and present and between seeing and feeling.18 Nature acts as a force in both Friedrich’s and Turner’s paintings; both depict a spiritual synchronicity; both explore the modern subject within nature.19

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FIGURE 18.3: J. M. W. Turner, The Deluge, 1805, oil paint on canvas, 142.9 × 235.6 cm.

SANCTIFYING COSMIC WATERS While Turner in early modernity intensely investigated the inner power of the elements and to some degree succeeded to move the acting God into these elements, believers in late Antiquity proceeded from belief in the active presence of a Creator God. God’s revelatory acts could be identified in the liber naturae as well as in the liber Bibliae, as Augustine had emphasized. Usually, one proceeded from the belief that this “book” consisted of signs, numbers, or letters, which humans could read and explain. The idea that reality consisted of some kind of “chiffres” has executed a large influence for a long time and can be still regarded as crucial foundation of modern science. For Cappadocian theologian Gregory of Nazianz, who was trained as a rhetor in the tradition of Greek philosophy, the doctrine of the elements represented one of several central elements in the understanding of nature and Creation. Gregory succeeded, in his so-called historical doctrine, to turn belief in God’s ongoing liberating action in the times of the Father, Son, and the Spirit, into a mature doctrine of God’s unified and differentiated Trinity, which was accepted and applied by the ecumenical council that he hosted as a bishop in Constantinople in 381. Cosmology was developed by Gregory in a Trinitarian key, wherein the elements were portrayed in their qualitative difference, as a manifold that was joined together by the active work of God into one common entanglement. Elaborately Gregory circumscribed this mixis as a community, a mutual dependence, as an agreement, and as one common breath. In Gregory’s context we can assume a pantheistic adoration of the natural elements as analogous to the astrological adoration of the sun, moon, and stars. For him, water was permeated by spiritual force. The theologian did not reject such a pagan natural belief but considered it to be a precursor to the Christian idea of creation, in that he interprets the

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veneration of the phenomena of nature as veneration of the work of God. Against paganism and Arianism’s conclusion from analogy, Gregory proposed the theory that God’s work could be recognized in the nature of the world, but that the nature of God’s own being could never be concluded from consideration of the nature of the world. In his work, the ancient doctrine of the elements was incorporated in the Christian theology of Creation. Basil of Caesarea talked about the “harmonious choir” wherein all elements are in unison,20 and Ambrose highlighted the elements’ agreement and harmony, which he imagined as a circuitous process, where they “meet together in a dance measure of concord and association.”21 Gregory continues this tradition and approaches the fluid element in the scheme of a fourfold harmony of springs, seas, rivers and the waters of the air.22 The integration and composition of the elements was theologically important as it revealed the perfect nature of the creation as one common work of God. The elements, including water, were regarded as the realm where the Trinity revealed its dynamic creative economy. Who else could it be, Gregory asks, but God “who mingled these [heaven, earth, and water], and who distributed them? What is it that each has in common with the other [koinonia], and their mutual dependence and agreement?”23 All elements formed, according to Gregory, one community characterized by common growth and a breathing interaction.24 In spite of all their differences the Christians recognized God the Creator as the one who interconnected the elements. For Gregory the natural creation and the community of the elements also had strong eschatological character and significance. The cosmic community was for him related to the cosmic Christ, and the totality of the one creation was interpreted in the metaphor of

FIGURE 18.4: The Baptism of Christ, fourteenth-century fresco, Pomposa Abbey, Codorigo, Italy, photographed at the abbey by Richard Stracke.

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the cosmic Christmas.25 In this same way he identified the acting liberating Creator as directly within the interacting elements of nature, Gregory also related the baptism of Christ in the river Jordan with the cosmic element of water in general. Christ was “sanctifying the waters by His Purification” at his baptism.26 According to the theologian he comes up out of the Jordan waters, and “with Himself He carries up the world.”27 God acts in this Trinitarian cosmology through and with, one might say within, the element of water for the whole of the creation and its forthcoming liberation. Creation is to be set free, also by the Creator within water and the other elements. The elements act in such a cosmology as cooperating forces for the synergy of liberation. The Orthodox liturgy mirrors this belief, praising in hymn that “Christ has appeared in the Jordan to sanctify the waters” (Troparion of the Forefeast of Theophany), and thus “Today the nature of the waters is sanctified” (Troparion at the Blessing of the Waters). Belief in Christ’s baptism as an event of healing water in general is visualized in the Baptism fresco at Pomposa Abbey, where Jesus treads on a dragon in a Jordan infested by serpents and scorpions. The scenery refers to a belief expressed by Cyril of Jerusalem, who says that this was the time when Christ vanquished the “dragon,” which was said to have dwelt in the Jordan, so that Christians in turn could receive power to tread on “serpents and scorpions.”28 Needless to say, Gregory the Trinitarian theologian embeds such thinking about sanctifying all waters in the baptism in his image of the Trinity, where the Spirit continues and fulfills what the Father and Son have begun. Whereas visible and physical purification takes place in the water sanctified by the baptism of the Son, the invisible purification of the inner person takes place in the Spirit. As spiritual purification, the baptismal water follows the waters of the flood, which similarly cleansed the world from sin.29 The physical and spiritual purification of baptism guides the whole person, with all that person’s senses, onto the sanctifying path to God.30 And in the life-giving Spirit it guides the whole of creation in one common history of salvation from the waters of the original creation, over the waters of the flood to the purification of Christ’s baptism to the new heaven and earth. Water becomes as an element, to use Karl Jaspers’ thinking,31 the chiffre where existence becomes transparently visible, and wherein, to continue Gregory’s theology, the Creator reveals his/her work as salvation. The “readability of the world” allows one to become aware of and encounter God’s loving action.32

FETISHIZED AND COMMODITIZED WATER While water, as we have seen, served in earlier times as an element of life in either mythoreligious or emotional-moral contexts, in late modern times it has turned into a commodity within a technologically dominated worldview. The sacredness of water as a divine gift with intrinsic power has lost its lure, and water has turned into a commodity for technical management. Water is regarded as a rather simple resource for humans and serves as an object to be administrated according to economistic principles, to such an extent that it is regarded simply as a dead resource and societies are losing their awareness about the essential need of intact aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Without a fair and sustainable use of freshwater, conflicts between human societies may become ever more insecure, violent, conflict-laden, and painful. A global water ethos is therefore, as Dieter Gerten shows,33 as essential for establishing patterns of creative adaptation to climate and environmental change, as it is to turn the former CO 2-intensive coalmines into flourishing gardens of redemption. The influence of

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religion on water use is, according to Gerten, highly ambivalent. On the one hand, water is indeed often regarded as a sacred element that merits careful use and protection, and religion can help people to cope with natural disasters such as floods. On the other hand, there are many examples in which theoretical religious considerations do not necessarily play a role in practices, and where the influence of religious views and practices may even oppose the (Western) view on how fresh water should be used sustainably. One of the central reasons to leave a deep religious attitude to the gift of water behind and replace it with a commoditized view of the life element can be found in the modern fetishization of money and technology. In this process the source of life in water has been turned into a resource, a mammonistic commodification of diverse global and local water flows. Regarded from the lens of faith such reification appears as a deep religious provocation. Sanctified waters turn into water systems for technical management and commodities to be negotiated and treated as goods for economically regulated exchange. While the divine Creator lets the gift of water rain over all creatures in a just and equal way,34 man and money decide about the just and unjust flow of water. In the context of fetishization, which Karl Marx has analysed strikingly,35 water management necessarily becomes a practice of technical management. For Marx the machine fetishism endowed by the capitalist mode of production comes to symbolize the fundamental separation of human beings from the potentially actualizing nature of labor itself.36 Machines alienate humans from their products. Reification, alienation, and machine fetishism characterize the central function of modern capitalism. Water management develops in this process into a technical skill to be learned along the sacred paths toward machine fetishism. One can scarcely study this development more clearly than in the symbolically (over) loaded construction of the water works in Potsdam, where powerful rulers such as Friedrich Wilhelm IV established a technical masterpiece with the most up-to-date (at that time) powerful steam engine for distributing water to the Sanssouci castle and its gardens and fountains. At the same time, they expressed their intentions culturally and religiously by designing the water work as a richly and artistically decorated mosque, in the style of Moorish late classicism. The safe distribution of water to a growing population and industrialization was the goal on the one hand, while the production of a religious architecture for the sacred art of engineering was the goal on the other. The superior fetish object in the capitalist economy was—for Marx—money, which is nothing other than a particular material commodity that has been elevated into a stand-in for all other possible commodities, serving as the commodity par excellence. Modern monetary systems of exchange presuppose an alienating split—between humans and the rest of the natural world and between subjects and objects—and operate through a commodification of things which are treated as lifeless objects, At the same time money, thought of as having intrinsic value, becomes the object of highest adoration. Water loses in this process its intrinsic quality and turns into a simple lifeless resource. According to Alf Hornborg, modern technological objects basically inanimate things attributed with autonomous productivity or even agency, obscuring their own foundation in asymmetric global relations of exchange.37 For him, modern technology can be regarded as an “index of accumulation,” where saving time and space takes places at the cost of time and space at other places elsewhere in the world.38 Global differences in the prices for labor and resources are part of a globally unjust asymmetry, where trade and economic exchange and the technological transfer of work and material into products to be traded represent a central driving force. So-called economic growth, assisted by technological

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FIGURES 18.5 and 18.6: Dampfmaschinenhaus/Maurische Dampfmoschee (Moorish Steam Mosque), Potsdam, 1841–43.

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development, must therefore in itself be unmasked as a part of unjust resource flows and global power relations. Water turns in such a system necessarily into a commodity within the global power play of resource flows that do not follow longer natural water flows but serve as mere instruments within a global economic system. Financial markets have further succeeded in elevating money to the highest value and rank of fetishized superiority. Money is nowadays not simply an artifact but also represents in itself the commodity par excellence with a remarkable potential to impact on the production of life. It was the invention of money as a tool of abstraction that made it possible to relate humans, lands, waters, works, and things to each other. From the history of economy we can learn how this innovation allowed the asymmetry between poor and rich, which is accelerating at a planet-destroying rate at present. Unjust and unsustainable mismanagement of fresh-water systems appears in this context simply as an applied consequence of global asymmetry in a fetishized, mammonistic global capitalism. Anthropology has for a long time debated the deeper cultural roots of this asymmetry and discussed how traditional animism has been converted into capitalist fetishism of the kind that Marx observed and analysed.39 Following such a historical hypothesis makes it necessary to explore the nature of so called traditional animism and how it could be transformed into practices of fetishizing. And, such a line of reasoning would take us to the question of whether there might appear something like a life-enhancing animism which could overcome the unjust and life colonializing powers of fetishization and transform it into a new entanglement of the artisan and the artifact, the engineer and the machine. Can there emerge life-enhancing technologies beyond machine fetishism? What role might animism play in this? Might even the Christian belief in the Holy Spirit contribute?40 Environmental artist Hermann Prigann takes us into a vision of a time beyond the contemporary fetishizing technocratic management of water in his Waterlevel, where a former water pumping station turns into a landscape artwork. Prigann offers us in this context a healthy provocation in his restoration of an abandoned water work, where the natural flow of the river has become visible and tactile again. The hill thus “carries” the ruin, and the landscape embraces our common past and opens our common future. The artwork offers a clear reminder of the fact that without intact aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and without a fair and sustainable use of freshwater, conflicts between human societies will turn into fatal violence.41 According to Gerten and many other climatologists, the probability and frequency of extreme weather events (droughts, storms, heat waves, etc.) in the context of climate change is projected to increase in most regions. The global sea level is expected to rise significantly, and terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems are likely to undergo fundamental changes. Humans are increasingly altering the landscapes of the Earth in direct ways: deforestation for the purpose of food and timber production, overfishing of marine fish grounds, and the exploitation and/or contamination of non-renewable freshwater resources. The global water crisis represents a major manifestation of current environmental problems, that is, the progressive diminution and degradation of regional freshwater resources in view of an ever-increasing world population. Approaching this global water crisis through a cultural religious lens as a deep spiritual provocation where the belief in money and technology offers a central driving force for the increasing asymmetry of poor and rich, and the ongoing overexploitation of the planet’s limited resilience, one can scarcely continue to look for solutions only within the technocratic paradigm of social engineering but must also strive for a deeper cultural

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FIGURE 18.7: Hermann Prigann, Waterlevel, transformation of a former water-pumping station (near Marl, Germany) into a landscape artwork, 2001.

revolution where the elements of life again are perceived and treated as animated forces of life. Religions have without doubt a crucial role to play, even if they of course play ambiguous roles. In spite of this ambiguity, religious belief systems with regard to water could and should play a more outstanding role in the search for a long-term sustainable water ethos. Gerten rightly demands that religious viewpoints should not be the sole basis for decisions about sustainable development, but should be critically reflected upon and carefully taken into account. Any alternatives to the prevailing technocratic–economic path need, according to him, to be explored, if we are to find our way out of the current predicament.42 In this context religions might be able to provide antidotes to the modern fetishization of technology and money, and they might also provide unproven tools to reinstall awareness of water as an elementary gift of life to vulnerable creatures, and reconstruct critical skills of enacting with a limited source of planetary resource that by no means could or should be overexploited as if it were both unlimited and lifeless.

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WATER RECLAIMING ITS FORCE IN RESONATING SPACE Not only might religion be able to produce antidotes to an unsustainable fetishizing water technocracy, but so might art and environmentally conscious artists. While Prigann in his Waterlevel above made us aware of the contrast of the natural and technical flow of water, and its embedding in the carrying capacity of the earth and landscape, Swiss artist George Steinmann opens our senses for the invisible spiritual as well as physical power of water, directly permeating the material inside of our built environment. In his “Kunst ohne Werk aber mit Wirkung” (Art Without an Object but with Impact) Steinmann has participated from the beginning in the planning and construction of the new waterworks with Bauart Architects Ltd. Bern, called ARA Region Bern. The process for building the new headquarters of Switzerland’s leading wastewater treatment facility, where one plant cleans about 30 million cubic meters of wastewater annually before it is returned to the river Aare, began in July 2008 and ended in December 2012. In the first intervention, the artist transported water from three curative mineral springs of the Engadin valley in Eastern Switzerland (which was well known and used probably as early as Roman times, and certainly famous by the Middle Ages, when its medical impact was noted by Paracelsus). He added this water to all water-based material and elements used for the construction of the building. Although the effect of this step remains immaterial and invisible, the mineral water itself and its energy are in the building as “information,” which penetrates the material and creates what Steinmann calls “a resonating space.”43 In a second intervention the artist furthermore established a “Wasserbeirat” (water advisory board) for an ongoing discussion of the issues of water and water usage such as gender and water, human rights, and water sanitation, and global water initiatives. As a result of these discussions, a water forum has emerged. The close cooperation of the artist with the planners but also with the builders neutralizes the traditionally decorative role of the artist and it also leads to a critical examination of the artist’s role in building environments. The understanding of an artwork in itself is questioned and reconstructed in this project as the character of an object of art totally disappears, while the impact of the artistic intervention moves into central focus. Steinmann restores anew, one could say, the intrinsic quality and power of water as a crucial element of life. One can only speculate about what this quality might be able to do spiritually and physically with the building, with its functions and also its employees and visitors. Nevertheless the question remains open as to whether and how the healing capacity of the water from the Engadine mountain landscapes might unfold also in this built urban environment. The simple fact that one can learn about the building’s infusion with this water, earlier regarded as sanctified water in a similar sense as in Gregory’s times, opens the body and mind of the visitor for the awareness of what fresh water might mean for and do to us. The completion of the material impact of the Engadine water within the building through the reflexive and communicative activities underlines this strong dimension of an environmental aesth/ethics even more. Water can serve as a gift and element of life even if we build it into our material constructions in a modern world. It has to be treated with respect and dignity as an element of resonating space. According to the artist through such projects, connectedness moves into the focus of our awareness in projects like this. Art produces transdiscplinary knowledge for transformation. In this context, it is the invisibility of water that even increases its impact. Although we cannot see its impact, we can imagine and possibly also feel it. Water interacts with our humanity as a living agent in such a place in specific ways, as it impacts both the human

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FIGURE 18.8: Art Without an Object but with Impact, by George Steinmann 2008–12, Intervention A. Work in progress. Adding mineral water to all water-based materials used for the construction of the building.

body and the human soul. It might be regarded as animated in a way that appears totally contrary to the fetishizing mode of commodifying water which was criticized above. Although used and managed in a modern technical building, the element recovers from this commodification and unfolds its original life-giving power. If this is due to inhabiting spiritual forces of life, which medieval believers might have understood, or if it is only its quality as fresh mountain water, remains dependent on the visitor. It does, in fact, not really matter. What matters is the invisible impact of the element of life on the ordinary life of the region’s population. Thanks to the artist’s interventions on the interaction of the inner and the outer, the body and the soul, nature and society, the environment turns into a healing process, where the flow of water again serves as a flow of good life. Different elements are connected to each other and the space starts to resonate. Water reclaims in this resonance its material and spiritual qualities as an element of life. How does our knowledge about art without object impact the urban inhabitant’s emotional, social, and ecological condition? Might Gregory’s theology about the Spirit liberating nature fit herein, or should one rather prefer an animistic lens, or maybe a combination of both? And how might Turner have painted the water today, infused with the sacred, running through the water pipes and sewers of Bern and through the bodies and souls of the modern city’s inhabitants? In retrospect of G. and H. Böhme’s suggestion to identify three historical contexts for imagining the elements—(premodern) mytho-religious, (modern) emotional-moral, and

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(late modern) technological—one might say that Steinmann’s environmental art project in Bern is entangling all three historical dimensions. By infusing water from healing mountain wells into a building’s materiality, we are not directly taken back into a practiced premodern mode of belief, but almost reminded about the indwelling, invisible but spiritually touching power of the element of water. The modern self is in this process confronted with an emotional challenge where water is not simply an unlimited lifeless entity for free, but where one is morally challenged to regard oneself anew as at the mercy of a gift. Modern building and water management is hereby not directly replaced but it is enriched and completed with an element that one cannot simply command. The materiality and architecture of this environment is carried by the water flow of life rather than simply managing it. Built space turns into resonating space where different elements are interconnected and where those who live and act with them are interrelated in a reciprocal communication. Is such a resonating communication able to shape new grounds for an alternative and deep water aesth/ethics from where sustainable images and practices with the life-giving element of water might emerge? If so, Gregory’s experience with the life-giving Spirit, who inhabits the creation and makes a new time to come, is taking place with and within such new grounds. Sanctified and inspirited water can flow again. Water and Spirit are permeating throughout.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Water from a Stone: Dams, Deserts, and the Miracle of Moses in the Modern World CATHERINE L. NEWELL

In Chapter 17 of Exodus, after bringing His people out of Egypt into the desert, one of the first ways the Lord shows His beneficence to the Israelites is to tell Moses to strike a rock. From out of that rock flows enough water to provide for the people, in both a literal and metaphorical sense; the water quells their thirst, their fear, and their instinct to turn back from the wilderness toward civilization. The Lord intends that His people will live through this ordeal and for many generations to come, and the way He shows that intention is to give them water. The flowing water is a symbol of provision, a sign of election, and a promise that even in an unforgiving, wild landscape the God of the Israelites will take care of their most basic needs. In contrast to the wilderness of Sinai, modern Los Angeles is a semi-arid megapolis sitting at the confluence of the San Andreas Fault and the Pacific Ocean. Besides its almost mythological standing as an oasis, complete with date palm trees and pools of shimmering (if chlorinated) water, the city is arguably most famous for being the site of the unbounded imagination and storytelling of the entertainment industry for over a century. But Los Angeles is more than palm trees and the Hollywood sign. Fascinatingly, this city at the edge of a desert, in a climate that yields only fifteen inches of rain a year, is powered by hydroelectricity, which is provided by what was at one time the world’s largest dam. The Hoover Dam, an arch-gravity dam built from concrete that spans Black Canyon at the border of Nevada and Arizona, is nearly 300 miles away from Los Angeles. Completed in 1936, the dam was, and remains, an engineering marvel. The dam curtails the flow of the Colorado, the largest river in the American west.1 The Colorado is the tributary of twentyfive rivers, and winds out of the Rocky Mountains over 1,400 miles from the northern Colorado plain down to the Gulf of California through seven US states and parts of Mexico. It is a river revered for its power, literal and symbolic.2 The Colorado was the river that carved the Grand Canyon, facilitated the growth and expansion of Native civilizations like the Pueblo and the Navajo, and watered the dreams of Manifest Destiny in the nineteenth century.3 Today, the physical space of the Colorado River basin sustains nearly fifteen percent of the US population within its watershed, and the water from the river powers—both in the form of hydroelectricity and as a water source—the lives and industry of southern California, including Los Angeles.4 Although Los Angeles receives 235

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power and water from several sources, the contribution of the Hoover Dam is a useful metaphor for a particular way of thinking about nature as the sum of its resources and potential site for the deployment of a technology that dates back to the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. In Exodus, water is something that the Lord gives, but in our modern world of technology and dominion over nature, water is something we take. Nowhere is that more obvious than the Hoover Dam. The turbulent and temperamental Colorado River is curtailed by a series of dams and reservoirs as it winds its way down the watershed, but arguably the most famous is the dam at the Black Canyon and the reservoir it impounds, Lake Mead.5 While the Colorado River is famous for its rapids and its canyons, it is also known to be “unreliable” in terms of the annual flow of water; rainfall in the desert and snowpack in the mountains create variables that lead to fluctuating totals of water contained in the reservoir. The non-metaphorical power of the Hoover Dam has been tested over the past twenty years, during which time water flowing out to the Gulf of California and the desert-locked Lake Mead has slowly drained away. Due to a long crescendo of drought over the course of two decades, the lake reached an all-time low in 2014, coming within just a few hundred feet of rendering the power-generating turbines useless. “Since 1999, the water level at Lake Mead has plunged 130 feet to a low of 1081 feet above sea level in July 2014,” notes an observer for the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona. “Levels below 1,084 feet have not been recorded since a period of sustained drought in 1956. With low water levels at Lake Mead, Hoover Dam’s electricity output has been significantly curtailed. In July [of 2014], the facility was derated from 2,074 megawatts to 1,592 megawatts.”6 Power production fell again the next year, as did the water level; on July 1, 2016, Lake Mead fell to its lowest level since the dam was completed in the 1930s, to 1,071.61 feet. Quite simply, when there is no water, there is no power. Once the elevation of the lake drops below 900 feet and becomes a “dead pool,” the water cannot flow “downstairs” through the turbines and drive the machines that generate power for tens of millions of people.7 The technology of the Hoover Dam—using water flowing out from a captured source (reservoir) through a mechanism (turbine) to generate energy—is an innovation that is both revelatory and ancient. One marker of early civilizations around the world was the directing of water out of streams and rivers through a series of dammed locks into canals or holding ponds. For example, Roman dams were innovations that were an important component of their extensive network of aqueducts and piped water that are still functional today. Irrigation engineering was the mechanism that enabled the success of civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, and the Americas. But it is the scale of hydroelectric dams built in the last century, and the proportional potential of both technological failure and human hubris that makes modern dams such an interesting symbol. Today, the concept of water flowing in the desert is more than just a metaphor or a miracle. We live in an era in which technology has merged with the impulse to conquer the wilderness and make the desert bloom through the power of hydroelectric dams. Civil engineers and hydrologists have enabled the capturing and management of water to produce energy and agriculture that literally runs and feeds the world; in this sense, dams represent a confluence of technology, policy, culture, and economics.8 From the controversial Glen Canyon Dam (further up the Colorado from the Hoover), to Turkey’s Ataturk Dam (which stops the flow of the Euphrates, one of the rivers that flowed through Eden), to Egypt’s Aswan Dam (which curtails the flow of the legendary Nile River) the power of water flowing through the desert is an example of human technological triumph

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over landscape. But it becomes increasingly clear that dams are also an emblem of hubris: the water that powers some of the world’s largest dams is drying up.9 10 A “bathtub ring” of exposed rock 150 feet high circles Lake Mead, and Lake Kariba in Zambia—whose dam provides 99 percent of the country’s energy through hydroelectricity—is slowly draining away. Likewise, dams present an object lesson in utilitarian thinking. Should a small group of people be displaced and have their home—a village, a farm, a cemetery, a sacred site— deluged so that a larger group of people have power and a reliable water source? In the abstract, the answer is generally an unequivocal “yes, of course,” but equivocations arise when the abstract turns to the specific. The Tarbela Dam in Pakistan, for example, which stops the flow of the holy Indus River, required the resettlement of nearly one hundred thousand people and the submerging of over 130 villages. In 1948, the global news media featured a photo of the chairman of the tribal council of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples) in North Dakota openly weeping as the Secretary of the Interior signed a contract invoking eminent domain for 94 percent of the nations’ farmland to build the Garrison Dam and Reservoir. More recently, the Three Gorges Dam—the world’s largest hydroelectric dam in terms of energy output—in China required the resettlement of over one million people, as well as flooding over 1,000 archeological sites; claims of failure to follow through with the resettlement of several thousand people have continued to filter out of the Yangtze River valley off and on for the past decade. And all this is to say nothing of the environmental impact of dams. Where rivers are stopped estuaries decline, fertile valleys dry up, and whole species—both aquatic and land-based—are destroyed.11 12 13 To return to just the ecological impact of the Hoover Dam, the dam caused the ruin of several species of native fish; the fish of the lower Colorado are adapted to water temperatures in the 70- to 80-degree range, but the Rocky Mountain snowmelt that sinks to the bottom of Lake Mead and spills out of the hydroelectric generators of the dam is in the low 50s, creating a thermal effect unsustainable for fish native to the area. Likewise, the Colorado River delta has never fully recovered from the effect of the stopped flow of the river while Lake Mead filled over eighty years ago in 1937. The ecological diversity of the delta plummeted, as did the productivity of the farmland in the delta, and whole swaths of once arable land is now a salt flat. As salinity of the estuary reversed, habitats of both wildlife and humans were devastated. The Hoover Dam was and remains a triumph of human ingenuity, but is also a useful object lesson in a way of thinking about the environment that is at the root of our ecological crisis. What I wish to explore in this chapter is the technological triumph of dams contrasted with the desire for human control over nature. Here we will contrast the hope for dams to make water flow in the desert—water flowing from hard rock—with the contemporary ecological crises wrought in no small part by the fixation on controlling nature, especially technologies that control the flow of water. We will explore this technology in the context of historian Lynn White’s hypothesis that the union of science and technology is the “functional unity of brain and hand” meant to enable Judeo-Christian dominion over the Earth, which he asserts was what “unleashed” the modern ecological crisis. Dams are an example of the kind of short-term thinking that characterizes this attitude of humanmediated control of the environment, but still retain their symbolic power as emblems of hope, conquest, and progress. The ability to bring water to the wilderness has been a metaphor of God’s covenant for thousands of years and a symbol of technology’s triumph over nature, but increasingly that technological triumph begins to look like misplaced

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faith and environmental calamity. The story of the Israelites’ salvation and protection as they wandered in the desert can also be read as a seed of the attitude White suggests is a decidedly Occidental Judeo-Christian worldview of “dominion over the Earth,” and that this sense of human power and control over nature is not only an illusion, but has created a situation that leads inevitably toward crisis.

LYNN WHITE AND OUR ECOLOGICAL CRISIS In his famous address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS ) in December 1966, and on the metaphorical heels of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1964, medieval historian Lynn Townsend White, Jr. offered a new way to think about the origins of the twentieth century ecological crisis. His speech, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” was later reprinted in Science and is today considered one of the first and most important articulations about the connection between human-made ecological change and religion. As an historian of technology—specifically the social history of medieval technologies, such as farming equipment and building tools—White’s perspective bears doubly on our discussion here. White begins his essay with the assurance that “all forms of life modify their context,” where even the most seemingly innocent and mundane creature can create an ecological habitat that suits its personal needs. For White, the most “spectacular and benign” example is the tiny coral polyp, which on its own is a very small and unremarkable sea organism. But if a coral polyp attaches itself to a rock in warm, shallow ocean waters, and begins the process of cloning itself and spreading through its environment, eventually we get the Great Barrier Reef: thousands of miles of habitat for coral, fish, animals, and plants in a dedicated ecosystem so large it’s visible from low Earth orbit. By analogy, it’s not unusual—or even unnatural—for humans to move into a new ecological niche and begin shaping it to suit their own needs; “people,” White explains, “have often been a dynamic element in their own environment.”14 The problem arises around questions of scale and speed; White’s observation is that the impact of the human race on their environment began to accelerate in the mid-nineteenth century, with the result that today “the impact of our race upon the environment has so increased in force that it has changed in essence.” The cause of the rapidity in change comes from what White explains was the “marriage between science and technology, a union of the theoretical and the empirical approaches to our natural environment” around the time of the Industrial Revolution. As he writes in his most famous book, Medieval Technology and Social Change, from the “Neolithic Age until about two centuries ago, agriculture was fundamental to most other human concerns.”15 The majority of technological progress was centered on the development of agriculture (White notes that creating bigger and better weapons was likewise a significant technological concern, though not nearly as ubiquitous or important as agricultural technology) and refining the tools that could be used in “subduing” the Earth to grow food. Until the eighteenth century, technology still by and large fulfilled Aristotle’s description, which maintained that technology “in some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates nature.” In other words, sometimes technology functions as an extension of our hand, and sometimes functions to help us control something beyond our hand’s grasp. But after the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the technologies that helped expand our reach into cultivating the Earth,

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helping form a second nature through agricultural development, did more than produce new materials at a rapid pace: it fundamentally changed the planet forever. With this in mind, it is useful to quote White’s thesis in full, so we can unpack it and see its relevance for the discussion of dams as both a vital technology and a worrisome symbol of hubris. In thinking about how we got ourselves into this mess, White asserts that we should: try to clarify our thinking by looking, in some historical depth, at the presuppositions that underlie modern technology and science. Science was traditionally aristocratic, speculative, intellectual in intent; technology was lower-class, empirical, actionoriented. The quite sudden fusion of these two, towards the middle of the 19th century, is surely related to the slightly prior and contemporary democratic revolutions which, by reducing social barriers, tended to assert a functional unity of brain and hand. Our ecologic crisis is the product of an emerging, entirely novel, democratic culture. The issue is whether a democratized world can survive its own implications. Presumably we cannot unless we rethink our axioms.16 White sums up a whole history of science and technology from the medieval world through the modern period and the Enlightenment with this reference to socio-economic divisions. The differences between what is categorized as “science” today versus what we recognize as technology was sharply divided throughout most of Western history in terms of who did which and why. Science was natural philosophy, which meant it was first the work of secular theologians, then the intellectual pastime of (with a few notable exceptions) primarily European men of financial means. Technology, on the other hand, was the purview of the people who worked as craftsmen, as laborers, and as farmers. Computing universal laws of gravitation was something quite apart from building a working air pump; one requires intense abstract thought and a grasp of the theories that govern the movements of the solar system, while the other requires fantastic empirical aptitude in conjunction with nuanced mechanical abilities. As White explains, from a metaphorical perspective science was a function of the brain while technology was the outcome of the hand. And for centuries natural philosophy operated quite separately from technology. “The emergence in widespread practice of the Baconian creed that scientific knowledge means technological power over nature can scarcely be dated before about 1850,” White says. And this remained true until two things happened in close succession: the textile industry brought together chemical knowledge with large-scale, purpose-built machinery for manufacturing, and democratic revolutions throughout the Western world broke through the class divisions that held technology and science apart for so long, until they were finally united in the interest of capitalism. The textile industry was quickly followed by other large-scale manufacturing of goods, and in an oft-told cautionary tale, the pollution of airs and waters that accompanied this scaling up of production globally “unleashed”—in White’s turn of phrase—the modern ecological crisis. White’s thesis has been put to the test more than once in the years since its initial publication, and has alternately been shown to be both accurate17 and exaggerated.18 But either way, for our purposes, a visible test of White’s assertion has been the damage done to rivers and oceans as a consequence of this growth in manufacturing. In 1968, just a few years after White’s article, the ecologist Garrett Hardin lamented “the tragedy of the commons” in a modern sense as the result of the collective overuse of Earth’s resources, which would inevitably lead to the polluting of our fresh water and the collapse of fishing stocks.19 The year following the publication of Hardin’s article in Science, the ecologist’s

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own city became international news when an oil spill blackened the pristine waters of the Santa Barbara Channel. Images of oil-slicked beaches and sea birds half-drowned in sticky filth inspired a new way of thinking about human impact on the environment when—one year to the day after the oil spill—the United States celebrated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The year 1969 was also notable for another environmental mishap, when the Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire for the second time in two decades. The river was infamous for the sludgy waste from several downstream industries that gummed the flow of the river, and when the river’s surface caught fire again few were surprised. After this fresh example of the wages of manufacturing on waterways, public opinion swung toward support for the creation of local and federal agencies charged with monitoring the health of our air and water (most notably, the oil spill and the public response to the Cuyahoga River fire were supposedly the inspiration for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA ]). It was perhaps not until the mid-to-late twentieth century that the perception of water as an unlimited and indefatigable resource began to dwindle. Polluted rivers and diminished supplies tapped at the memories of people not more than one or two generations removed from the calamity of droughts and dustbowls. In the years following White’s proclamation, scholars and scientists alike reread and revised the argument, pointing to problems with, say, White’s reading of Genesis, or the fact that Western attitudes towards nature were shaped by more than just Christianity.20 21 22 23 But, as White’s thesis was reexamined and reevaluated, especially in the context of water, the truth began to sink in: even the most technologically sophisticated systems of dams, locks, canals, and reservoirs could not guarantee an infinite supply of clean, free-flowing water. So perhaps White was correct in asserting that “[m]ore science and more technology are not going to get us out of the present ecologic crisis until we find a new religion, or rethink our old one.” Because the mindset that defines Western attitudes toward nature was nurtured by a particular reading of Judeo-Christian texts as regards our stewardship of the Earth, White believes we as a species cannot survive unless we “rethink our axioms.” This means that we must also examine these texts, so as to try to understand where these concepts first took hold.

BIBLICAL SUBSTANTIATION AND ORDAINED STEWARDSHIP The ecological problem, as regards water, can be traced back to a verse from the Hebrew Bible that precedes the story of Moses by several chapters, and, in fact, is viewed as one of God’s first directives to His people. In Genesis 1, after separating the light from the darkness, the water from the void, and seeding the Earth with every living thing, the Lord creates humans. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness,” God says, “let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every living thing that creeps on the earth.” With this accomplished, the Lord tells His newest creation, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1.26 and 28, emphasis added).24 It is the spirit of this particular verb—rule—that White believes is the cause of so many of our environmental woes. The verb used in verse 28 is “radah” (‫)רָ דָ ה‬, a word that adamantly means the same as its translation: rule, conquer, own. It is used throughout the Hebrew Bible, and in nearly

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every instance, with the notable exception of Genesis 1.28, it is used in the context of a king or supreme leader exerting sovereign power, though not necessarily in an exploitative manner.25 But in the context of Western Christianity, this concept of “ruling” over the Earth was taken to its furthest end. As White explains, in the Christian worldview “God planned all of this,” i.e., the entire Earth, “explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes. And although man’s body is made of clay, he is not simply part of nature; he is made in God’s image.” This distinctive element of European Christianity, says White, “not only established a dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his own proper ends.” As Christianity spread across Europe along Roman roads, it slowly wiped out the pagan animism that preceded it; the belief that each natural object— trees, hills, streams of water—had a guardian spirit that protected and required placating was scrubbed from local memory. “Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects,” writes White. This denuding of nature of its animating spirit opened the door for the Cartesian belief that nature is essentially mechanical, the sum total of laws that can be learned and exploited for the purposes of rule, as per the Lord’s instructions in Genesis. Over time, the letter of God’s directive to rule over every living thing on the Earth lost a reciprocal meaning of wise stewardship according to the Lord’s standards, and became eroded by what White and others (Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Carolyn Merchant . . . the list is long) have characterized as a particular arrogance that asserts the right of humans to exploit the planet for their own purposes. With the advent of science, the investigation of the inner workings of nature lost its theological bent, which until the Enlightenment had been the desire to “think God’s thoughts after Him” by unpacking the content of His creation. Instead, humans viewed the natural world as something that could be mastered, cowed, and intellectually owned, by the power of mankind’s mind. The brain unified with the hand, in White’s formulation, could operate freely to not only interrogate nature but build technologies that expanded human control of the natural world. Small mills built on waterways to aid in grinding wheat into flour could model how to unite knowledge of the chemical content of dyes and fabrics in order to produce whole factories that used the same fresh water to power their industry. And low earthen dams built across streams to siphon water into ponds for cattle or irrigation could be constructed from indestructible materials to trap the water of whole rivers; these larger dams could then fill enormous basins and provide the necessities of modern life—water and electricity—to huge cities built in desert ecologies that were never meant to support enormous human populations. Significantly, this one verse in Genesis is in contrast to two important sets of verses. The first of verses constitutes a story relevant to this exploration of religion and nature, while the second of verses, I believe, belies the arrogance seemingly institutionalized by “rule over them.” We will come to the latter in a moment, but the former requires returning to Moses leading his people out of Egypt and into the wilderness. It is an incident that happens twice: the first time, chronicled in Exodus, in the Wilderness of Sin the newly homeless Israelites lift their voices up to “quarrel” with Moses. “Give us water to drink!” they cry, but Moses can only reply, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the Lord to the test?” They should take the Lord’s care as a given, Moses believes, and not make demands of either their God nor His messenger. Undeterred, the thirsty people “grumbled against Moses,” asking, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?” Moses turns to

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the Lord, plaintively asking his God, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.” But the Lord’s power is greater than the circumstances of His people’s isolation. In full view of the elders, and soon after in the first miracle after the parting the sea through which the Israelites fled Egypt, the Lord tells Moses to “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” Moses obeys, and from out of that rock flows enough water to soothe for the people. The water that pours from the rock quells their thirst, their fear, and their instinct to turn back from the wilderness toward civilization. This is one of the first ways in which the Lord shows His beneficence to the Israelites, but it will not be the last. In fact, the scene repeats itself many years later in the Desert of Zin, in an event chronicled in the book of Numbers. Water has, once again, run out, and the people gather to quarrel with Moses and his brother, Aaron. “If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord!,” they wail. “Why did you bring the Lord’s community into this wilderness, that we and our livestock should die here? Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!” Once again, the Lord speaks to Moses, telling him and Aaron to speak to (not strike) a rock, where they will “bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.” Moses—now aged, newly widowed, and shepherding a second generation of Israelites through the wilderness—does what the Lord asks. But first, Moses chastises his people, saying, “Hear, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” before striking the rock with his staff twice. Water flows, the community and their herds drink, and a crisis appears averted. But Moses’s impatience with his people proves too much for his God, who reprimands him. God tells Aaron and Moses that because they “did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” The Lord’s punishment for Moses striking the rock instead of speaking to it, for not asking for the Lord’s intervention and having to be told to care for His people, and for failing to trust in God’s provision is that Moses will be excluded from finally reaching the promised land. He will die in the wilderness without having lived in the land “flowing with milk and honey” promised to the Israelites when they fled slavery and followed the Lord’s exhortation to walk through the desert toward a new home and back to civilization. These passages have been endlessly scrutinized and interpreted by rabbis, theologians, and historians for hundreds of years, but what is of significance to us here is water—both as a symbolic and a literal resource. In the same way that White underscores Genesis 1.28 as the foundational verse in cultivating a sense of ownership and privilege over nature in general, the two incidents of water flowing from a rock in the Hebrew Bible point toward a way to think about the meaning of water in Western culture. After the Exodus from slavery in Egypt (c. 1225 BCE ?), the Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years. For their sin of worshipping other gods and failing to trust in their Lord in the immediate aftermath of fleeing Egypt, they are condemned to wander in the wilderness (the Hebrew title of the Book of Numbers is “Bamidbar,” which means “In the wilderness”), rather than reach the promised land of Canaan, which, as noted above, flows with “milk and honey.” But, by way of compromise, in the desert God provided water and food, and promised the Israelites that if they remained faithful to

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Him, He would lead future generations to the promised land. In other words, He promised that He would save them from the wilderness and return the people of Israel to paradise once the old generation dies out and is replaced by their children, who have learned to trust in God. The prospect of honing a people loyal to their God in the wilderness is a theme that runs from Adam to Abraham to the sojourn in Sinai.26 Their life in the wilderness thus has two meanings: freedom from slavery and persecution in Egypt, and an opportunity to be tested and draw closer to God. The notion of waterless, wild, desert wilderness is not limited to the wandering Israelites in search of the promised land. The tension between wilderness and civilization is a theme throughout the Hebrew Bible and runs into the Christian New Testament. The Hebrew word for “wilderness”—‫—מִדְ ָבּר‬is mentioned 245 times in the Hebrew Bible. Wilderness is a site of both punishment and purification for God’s people, especially his prophets. Again and again in the Bible, when the Lord wants to punish or test his people, He either sends them out to the waterless wilderness or leads them through the wilderness with water and food. As the Deuteronomist reminds his readers, “He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions” (Deuteronomy 8.7). When a prophet needs to contemplate the Lord’s will or the burden of leadership, they are called into the wilderness by God; not only Moses, but Elijah, Elisha, John the Baptist, and Jesus all retreat to the wilderness to await divinely bestowed clarity. But the wilderness is also a place of punishment. Besides the Israelites, the wilderness is where Adam and Eve are exiled not long after they’ve been given the directive to “rule over” the Earth. And in marked contrast to Eden—a paradise set between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates—the wilderness into which Adam and Eve are cast is cursed because of the lack of water. There are multiple meanings to nature and wilderness in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, which can help us parse the attitude toward making water flow in the desert and the Western focus on overcoming material nature.27 28 On the one hand, as discussed, the wilderness is a place to be tested and to exercise faith in the divine; only by trusting in their Lord and depending completely on him would the Israelites reach Canaan. The wilderness—the empty desert—is a place where one can survive only thorough the direct intervention of God. “I will lay waste the mountain and hills and dry up all their vegetation,” writes Isaiah, speaking for the Lord. “I will turn the rivers into islands and dry up the pools” (42.15). The dark side of the desert is the vulnerability and fear it incites, where a life of effortless ease can be swiftly overturned by a God-given drought. But the idea of wilderness and wild nature also conjures its metaphorical counterpart, which is the ideal of paradise, a concept found almost everywhere in the ancient world that lived on for thousands of years after Canaan and came with the first Pilgrims who set foot in the “New Israel” of North America. In contrast to wilderness, paradise is marked with the usual trappings of civilization—food, community, man’s rational laws rather than the irrationality that characterizes the wild—but is especially notable for the presence of water. From Eden to Las Vegas, the availability of plentiful water is the cornerstone of a paradisiacal oasis in the desert. Wilderness in the Bible is also significant as a sight of freedom from religious persecution. The Israelites are free to worship their Lord in the desert—away from the watchful eye of their Egyptian masters—and everyone from the Puritans to the Mormons have retreated to the wilderness to hone their belief and escape religious-based oppression.29 And, as a confluence of all these things, the waterless wilderness is also an opportunity to purify one’s faith and to bring together trust in God to provide water for

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his people with a freedom to worship according to one’s spiritual conscience. It is this freedom that makes a kind of paradise in the void. To bring us back to White, the point illustrated in the example of Moses striking first one, then another, rock to bring forth water for the Israelites wandering in the desert, searching for their promised paradise, has become an image as solid, and a story as significant, as the Lord telling Adam and Eve to rule over every living thing. And one of those stories is of a people who can conquer nature with the Lord’s benediction, with whose blessing and power can make water flow through a land of scarcity, supplying growing communities and filling bare rocky canyons like a bathtub. This is also where we see the uniting of heart and hand White warned us of: we’ve turned the desert wilderness into a paradise, but we’ve never stopped to ask if we should, or what might happen if we did. We struck a rock to make water flow, but did it without the Lord’s instruction or permission.

WATER IN THE [DISAPPEARING] WILDERNESS In his bestselling book Encounters with the Archdruid, John McPhee devotes the third of three narratives about David Brower—soon-to-be-former president of the Sierra Club, determined preservationist, and heir to the philosophies and wilderness of John Muir—to the story of a meeting of Brower and Floyd Dominy, the Commissioner of Bureau of Reclamation in the United States. The purpose of Reclamation and Dominy’s raison d’être was, at the time of the essay’s composition in 1971, building dams in the waterless West with the provision and benediction of the federal government. Brower’s purpose, as he saw it, was to carry on John Muir’s vision of unperturbed nature, and this vision included preventing dams from being built. It was an article of faith for both men that dams represented something significant: terraforming arid desert and transforming unused wilderness into productive farmland for Dominy, and saving untouched nature from being drowned to serve humankind by Brower. Brower was famously a thorn in Dominy’s side as the man who lead the Sierra Club offense against a series of dams in the West; most notably, Brower and the Sierra Club managed to stop the proposed Echo Park Dam at Dinosaur National Monument that would have trapped the Green River and siphoned off millions of acre feet of water that otherwise feeds the Colorado. What Brower and Dominy represent for us, however, are two important sides of the attitude observed by White, namely a Western arrogance toward the natural world on the one hand and, on the other, a sense that the unquestioned belief that humans ought to tame and overcome wilderness through technologies like dams is dangerously shortsighted. And for the federal government—of whom Dominy was a devoted servant—nothing more clearly represented humans bending the wilderness to our will than dams. “Let’s use our environment,” Dominy proclaimed. “Nature changes the environment every day of our lives—why should we change it? . . . The challenge to man is to do and save what is good but to permit man to progress in civilization.” For Dominy, the real sin was to let land go unused—for cattle to die of thirst, farmers to go bankrupt because of lack of rain, rivers to go unregulated, cities and towns to do without power—rather than use the abilities given us by the good Lord to fire up a backhoe and to stop up streams or dig out small pools.30 But from Brower’s perspective, Dominy’s attitude of “wise use” and stewardship was anathema; for Brower, the building of dams across the Western wilderness could only, inevitably, contribute to the separation between man and nature that spells our eventual

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doom. “I hate all dams,” Brower stated on multiple occasions, “large and small.” When the Bureau of Reclamation teased the idea of a reservoir outside the Grand Canyon, under Brower’s direction the Sierra Club took out full-page ads in multiple newspapers that read, “Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can get nearer the ceiling?” (For this sin, the Sierra Club lost its status as a nonprofit, and therefore tax-exempt, organization.) Brower raged against the building of dams in the desert with the same passion John Muir opposed stopping the Tuolumne River to build a reservoir for San Francisco in Hetch Hetchy Valley, even evoking Muir’s famous diatribe: “These templedestroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”31 Brower’s attitude, meanwhile, recalls the aforementioned other verses in the Hebrew Bible, in which the Lord is seriously considering revoking His invitation to live in and share His creation. The push back against the act of bending wilderness to the will of humankind begins with the God-given rules and regulations White believes created the problem. “The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants,” God warns in Leviticus 25 (verses 23–24). “Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.” In Ezekiel, an entire chapter is devoted to the Lord’s displeasure with the way His people care for His land. “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you did not take care of the flock!” He warns His stewards in chapter 34. “As for you, my flock . . . Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet?” Jeremiah speaks God’s curse and lamentation when he writes, “I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land and you made my inheritance detestable.” Most hauntingly during our ecological crisis, the prophet Isaiah—looking ahead through time to God’s punishment of His faithless people for their treatment of the Earth—prophesizes that in the near future the Earth “dries up and withers, the world languished and withers, the exalted of the earth languish. The earth lies under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, and broken the everlasting covenant.” The covenant that God made with the Israelites in the desert, Isaiah warns, goes both ways: God will provide, but God will also not abide a failure to care for His creation. “Therefore a curse consumes the earth,” the prophet foretells, “and its people must bear their guilt.” The wages of the kind of short-term thinking that views water as a vehicle for reengineering the natural world is, in the mind of Isaiah, a sin for which all humankind will suffer. Rather than rethinking our axioms, as White suggested, it might be more productive to revisit the standard set out by the Lord in the first place. Perhaps, though, all is not lost. As the lifespan of some dams wind down, they are being slowly and carefully removed, and the watersheds they stopped are being restored. In 2014, the ninety-year-old Glines Canyon Dam on the Elwha River in Washington state was removed as part of an attempt to revitalize the salmon population that migrates between the Pacific Ocean and the mountains. Lawsuits around the country are petitioning the federal and state governments to remove dams from western rivers, such as the Snake and Colorado, that provide very little hydroelectric power or only serve a small human population in the hope of revitalizing local ecosystems.32 (San Francisco County’s

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Proposition F, a measure that would allocate $8 million US dollars toward an evaluation of draining and replacing the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite, was soundly defeated in the 2012 election with 76 percent voting against. But the movement to “Restore Hetch Hetchy” has yet to give up on their cause.33) And where dams are not brought down, watersheds and deltas are being restored by redirecting water flows or limiting the number of acre feet stored in reservoirs. Even the Colorado River delta has been somewhat rejuvenated over time by increasing, during years with sufficient rainfall, flood control releases of water that reach and stir awake the delta’s ecosystem. Dams are a fact of life, but the willful participation of domination of the Earth need not be. Global religions are reorienting perspectives on environmental concern, and several Christian organization have responded with calls for a return to stewardship and care for the Earth as a spiritual responsibility.34 The same technology that White felt bred a hubristic and arrogant attitude toward ruling nature can also generate innovation, and innovative solutions to water and power shortages—wind and solar power plants, water conservation programs, drip irrigation systems—will be key to easing the necessity for large-scale dams and reservoirs. Water will continue to flow through the desert, but in the coming century, it’s possible that the flow will be an unimpeded movement toward the sea. Rather than suffering God’s punishment and, like Moses, being shut out of a promised land, we will finally find a way to live so that the “wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing” (Isaiah 35.1).

CHAPTER TWENTY

Conclusion: Thinking with the Elements JAY MCDANIEL

The very idea that we can think and feel and act “elementally” is at the heart of this anthology. To think elementally is not simply to think about earth, air, fire, and water as topics of intellectual inquiry, it is to think with them as palpable presences in life. The elements are within each of us as part of our psychic lives, giving us metaphors to live by, and also beyond us as part of the web of life and the workings of the universe. Elemental thinking is at the intersection of the mythic and the physical. It is thinking in and with the foundations of life on Earth. Of course the anthology is not about elemental thinking alone. It is about elemental thinking and religion. The word “religion” is a Western word and a contested one at that. Not all cultures use the word, and people mean different things by it. For our purposes, let religion have two meanings. Let it be a name for the many cultural traditions in our world which are given the name “religion” by scholars in religious studies: Afro-Caribbean, Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu, Humanist, Indigenous, Jain, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Sikh, Unitarian, and Zoroastrian. But, more deeply, let it be a name for the activity by which people all over the world seek to make meaning of their lives, in community with others, with help from rituals and stories, and as animated by touches of transcendence. The implicit hope of many authors in this anthology is that elemental thinking of constructive kind will become part of religion in both senses. It will be internalized by people who belong to one or more of the cultural traditions named above, and it will be internalized by people who may not have any religious affiliation at all, but who want to make meaning of their lives. This is not a neutral book. It is an invitation to social transformation, with “elemental thinking” as its prompt. Thus the question emerges: What is elemental thinking? As we read the essays we rightly sense that, in addition to lying at the intersection of the mythic and physical, it has six overlapping dimensions: (1) a conversion to the Earth; (2) a coming to our senses; (3) an encounter with numinosity; (4) an invitation to prayer; (5) a consideration of fundamental questions concerning the fate of people, animals, and the Earth in local and global settings; and (6) a trans-cultural journey of the mind and heart that takes us beyond humanism. For some authors one or some combination is most important, but considered as a whole, they form, together, a fresh alternative to religious fundamentalisms and stale secularism. By way of conclusion I offer a brief word about each dimension and consider the possibility that something like “elemental religion” might play an important role in the human future. 247

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Conversion to the Earth Converting to the Earth is a natural corollary to thinking with the elements. Amid the conversion we recognize that we are part of, not apart from, the larger web of life and its geological creativity and that there is something deeply “alive” about the whole of it. The aliveness at issue need not be understood as conscious intention; with regard to the elements it is perhaps best understood in terms of creative energy: the energy of earth, air, fire, and water themselves. Of course many of the world’s cultural traditions encourage this already. They exhort us to think of ourselves not as exceptions to the realities of earth, air, fire, and water, but rather as expressions of it. We, too, carry within our psyches the spirits of the elements, albeit in our own uniquely human ways. But somehow so many people in modern, industrial societies have forgotten this. We have fallen into the trap of thinking that human beings are independent of the rest of life and, worse, that the rest of life is but a commodity for human use. Elemental thinking reclaims our human place in the larger web of a living world and, even as deeply, a living universe. It invites us to take “the environment,” not simply as an issue among issues but as context for all issues, because it is the web of life and the Earth itself.

Coming to our Senses Elemental thinking also reacquaints us with the bodily dimension of life. It is rooted in the body and the senses, and it begins with attention to the elements as they present themselves to embodied life. This can be nourishing or frightening; in any instance it is intense. When we touch fire and are burned, we feel its agency on our fingers. When we breathe, we feel the agency of wind in our lungs. When we walk on the ground, we feel the agency of earth. And when we shower, we feel the agency of water. They have power of their own, independent of our will and intellect, and we receive it. Elemental thinking begins with this kind of receptivity and its effects on our bodies. The state of our bodies may be tangled, entangled, troubled, pleasurable, dominated, or liberated by social conditions. But they are our bodies and elemental thinking brings us home.

Encountering the Numinous The elements are also felt as carriers of the numinous. Rudolph Otto tells us that the numinous can be experienced as fascinating or frightening: as mysterium tremendum et fascinans. And so it is with the elements. The air can present itself as a gentle breeze blowing against our cheeks and as a powerful hurricane that tears our world apart. Water is something that can clean us and drown us. As we experience the elements, we typically realize these two sides of life: these two sides of the numinous. We may or may not see divinity in what we discover. We may or may not call it holy. But it is indeed mysterious and beyond our reductive intellects. The elements are beyond theology and philosophy, not because they are so far away, but because they are both close and mysterious.

An Invitation to Pray The elements are also catalysts for prayer and meditation. I offer a personal example. One of my earliest teachers was a river. I grew up close to the hill country of Texas, and in the summers my parents would drive north, about sixty miles, to a section of the Guadalupe River near the small city of Hunt. I learned to swim in her currents, and one of my first experiences of the deep side of life came in swimming underwater. I would swim two or

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three feet beneath the surface with goggles, seeing the vague contours of my parents standing on banks of her shore in the sunlight and also looking around me at the underwater world of perch and catfish. There was something quiet and beautiful about the underwater world, even as I loved the light world of my parents. This experience was one of my first experiences in meditation or prayer; in the quietness you could really listen. The Guadalupe River helped me understand that there are two worlds: a mysterious world beneath the surface and a light world above the surface—around us and within us. Both worlds are beautiful, and there is no need to say one is better than the other. But I do want to honor the Guadalupe River as a mentor in my life. She helped me appreciate the vibrancy, the aliveness, of deep listening.

Asking the Right Questions The elements raise questions by offering lures for feeling and reflection that are evoked by the elements, given the circumstances of life on Earth. Whitney Bauman and Laura Hobgood identify some of these lures in the introduction, and we do well to remember them here as well. Earth: How do we look at our own embodiments and other bodies, and issues of specific embodiments in an elemental way as ecosystemic and as ecosystems in themselves? Air: How do we understand ideas, philosophies, values, theories and morals as arising up out of the elements and returning to affect the planetary community? Fire: How do passion, desire, anger, and advocacy draw from the evolutionary history of our elemental entanglement and what differences can they make for the future planetary community? Water: How do creativity, but also despair, confusion, sadness, guilt, and other such emotions, help keep us grounded within the planetary community and what is their role in changing actions to be more empathetic with the rest of the planetary community? My hope is that, as you’ve read the essays in this volume, you have asked some or all of these questions, just as I have. Understood mythically and physically, the elements do not give the answers, but they do indeed raise the questions.

Taking a trans-human journey It goes without saying that this anthology will not be read by the earth, air, fire, and water. It is read by human beings who carry within them the images and physicality of these elements. But we humans too often grow weary of our humanism when it lapses into a silo of self-regard. For the Earth’s sake and for our own sake we need to be taken beyond the human into the more than human. Of course we do this all the time when we encounter more than human dimensions of the world: trees, hills, rivers, dogs, stars, and our own bodies. The elements, too, invite this kind of journey. They offer, as it were, a liberation from humanism so that, with a bit of good fortune and some hard work, we might live more humanly on the planet and gently with one another.

THE EMERGING HOPE This book contains many, many ideas that embody and express or are the outcome of, the kind of thinking just described. If I am right about the six dimensions, we must recognize

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that this book also includes a revisiting of what ideas are. The very idea that we can think with the elements contradicts the notion that all ideas held by human beings are solely generated by human beings. They are also generated by forces and palpable presences of the elements themselves. When we think with the water, the water plays a role in our thinking, along with our bodily experiences of water. We think with help from the water. We think waterly. Not only our bodies, but also our knowing, are not human alone. Cognitive linguists tell us that our ideas come from the ground up, with bodily experiences laying the foundation for the metaphors which form our thought: metaphors such as up and down, in and out, and, for that matter, from the ground up. These metaphors make sense only if we recognize their bodily beginnings. But the authors in this anthology invite us to recognize a more radical possibility, namely that our conceptual agency is never, and can never be, exclusively anthropogenic. We are not skin-encased selves isolated from the world by the boundaries of our skin. To the contrary we are element-including selves whose very psyches (consciously and unconsciously) are partly composed of non-human agencies and elements. All knowing is partly embodied by bodies that are not human: earth, air, fire, and water, for example, as palpably present to our localized bodies and present within our psyches. But the heart of this anthology goes far beyond considerations of epistemology. What the anthology has offered us through its many voices is a profoundly prophetic possibility. Many people in the world today find themselves with a two-fold weariness and a shared hope. On the one hand we are weary of religious conservatism as it devolves in dogmatism, stagnation, exclusivism, and hardened dichotomies between “us” and “them.” If religion means hatred or violence or arrogance, they want nothing to do with it. On the other hand, we are equally weary of a stale secularism which denies all things holy and sacred, reduces everything to a commodity with a price tag or a bit of “information,” and is absorbed into the shallowness of consumer culture and its obsessions with appearance, affluence, and achievement. Out of this weariness we seek and are developing a third way: a way that is neither hamstrung by religious authoritarianism nor deadened by stale secularism. From the resources that are available to us—including the spiritual presence of earth, air, fire and water—we hope to bring into existence a more humane and spiritually sensitive way of being religious that is closely tied with ordinary life; that encourages creativity, kindness, and gratitude for beauty; that is enthusiastic about life but not zealous about ideology, and that is good for people, animals, and the Earth. This new religion—for the moment we might call it “elemental religion”—will have its practices and its worldview. Its practices can include living with respect and care for the community of life, with special care for those who are vulnerable, including people and other animals; and finding touches of transcendence, not in human sources alone, but in the elements themselves and in the whole of life: including other animals. Its worldview will build upon the idea that we human beings are small but included in a much larger web of becoming, thus implying that we owe our allegiance and existence to something more than ourselves: namely the larger web which includes the elements and also the living nodes in the web, and the other animals. And its social aspiration will be to build local communities throughout the world that are creative, compassionate, participatory, respectful of diversity, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying, with no one left behind. The followers of this emerging and more elemental religion will not call it elemental religion. They will call it Christianity or Buddhism, Islam or Daoism, Humanism or Judaism, Paganism or Sikhism. Some might call it Biocentrism or Earthism. Generally speaking, they will fall into two groups: those who are also affiliated with other world

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religions and those who are “spiritually interested but not religiously affiliated.” Many who practise this religion are affiliated with one or several of the world’s religions, and they derive their own way of practising it and amplifying with help from traditional practices, texts, images, and sounds. Amid this they hold onto their affiliations with a relaxed grasp, because they sense that, deeper than their more formal religion, there is web of becoming itself. For them, religion will be in service to the web, not the other way around. Others who practise the religion are spiritually interested but not otherwise religiously affiliated, and they think of themselves as spiritual but not formally religious. Just as all the more formal religions are pluralistic, so the religion of the web of life will be pluralistic. So as a reader myself, I leave the book with a hope the people of many different religions, and people without any formal religion, might continue the explorations, finding their way into the elemental hope to which this volume points: a hope for healing and a hope for wholeness. Let The Elements of Religion and Nature be the beginning of a fluid and flexible, almost water-like, alternative to stale secularism and us-versus-them religion: an alternative that has fire and passion, that has found its way into the deeper breathing that animates all life, and that is as physical and earthy as it is spiritual. Then, truly, we will have learned from the elements.

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Introduction 1.

See e.g.: Samuel Snyder, “New Streams of Religion: Fly Fishing as a Lived Religion of Nature,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.4 (December 2007): 896–922; and Bron Taylor, “Surfing into Spirituality and a New, Aquatic Nature Religion,” in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75.4 (December 2007): 923–951. Also, see Laura Hobgood’s chapter in this volume.

2

Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” in Policy Sciences 4(1973): 160.

3

On Human Exceptionalism in Religion, see: Anna Peterson, Being Human: Ethics, Environment and our Place in the World (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2001).

4.

See, e.g.: Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1980).

5.

See, e.g.: Lucas F. Johnston and Whitney A. Bauman, eds., Science and Religion: One Planet, Many Possibilities (New York, NY: Routledge, 2014).

6.

On Newton, see, e.g.: Carolyn Merchant, Autonomous Nature: Problems of Prediction and Control from Ancient Times to the Scientific Revolution (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 125–148.

7.

To a great extent, the work of the nineteenth-century German scientist Ernst Haeckel was about returning thought, forms, ideas and the like to the immanent framework of an evolutionary story of the world. See, e.g.: Ernst Haeckel, Monism as Connecting Religion and Science: A Man of Science (New York, NY: Dossier Press, 1919).

8.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (Chemnitz, Germany: Verlag von Ernst Schmeitzner, 1883–1891).

9.

See, e.g.: Catherine Keller, Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Engagement (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014).

10. Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (Indianapolis, IN : Hackett Publishing, 1992 ed.). 11. Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 2002). 12. See, e.g.: Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1925). 13. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Press, 1987). 14. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 3 vols (New York, NY: Random House, 1978– 1986). 15. Ursula Goodenough and Terrence Deacon, “The Sacred Emergence of Nature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion, edited by Philip Clayton (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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NOTES

16. Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Journey of the Universe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011). 17. Though not all would put all of these different, immanent, ways of thinking under the category of “new materialisms,” and they do have different priorities and assertions (some of which are conflicting), they do all share in this non-reductive, non-dualistic, and nonanthropocentric framework. 18. Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2010). 19. National Institute of Health, “Human Microbiome Project,” https://commonfund.nih.gov/ hmp. Last Accessed August 25, 2017. 20. This type of diffused agency is developed well in: Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2007). On the concept of “actants” see: Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005).

1 Backyard Gardens as Sacred Spaces 1.

Leslie Sponsel, Spiritual Ecology: A Quiet Revolution (ABC -CLIO, 2012).

2.

Sarah McFarland Taylor, Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2007), 204.

3.

Salish Sea Spiritual Ecology Alliance (SSSEA ), “About page,” Available at: https:// spiritualecologyalliance.org/about/ (Last Accessed: 22 April, 2017).

4.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, “Spiritual Ecology: The Solution to Our Climate Change Crisis?” in Huffington Post (December 2, 2010): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/llewellyn-vaughanlee/ spiritual-ecology-climate-change_b_790499.html (Last Accessed: April 12, 2017).

5.

Elonda Clay, “How Does it Feel to be an Environmental Problem? Studying Religion and Ecology in the African Diaspora,” in Inherited Land: The Changing Grounds of Religion and Ecology, edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon and Kevin O’Brien (Eugene, OR : Wipf and Stock, 2011).

6.

The exceptions are Asian and Native American peoples and practices. This exception might relate to how and why these cultures and their practices are appropriated and adapted by religion and ecology scholars in the processes of academic knowledge production for environmental ethics, religious environmentalism, and ecological spirituality.

7.

An accountable absence ask the question “Why?,” which in the contexts of syllabi and teaching can be restated as “Why are resources on Native American, Jewish, Africans, and Asians included on religion and ecology syllabi, while resources on/from diasporic African peoples, indigenous Mexico peoples, and Latina/os often are not?” See Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation. 2 vols. Edited by Gail Jefferson with introductions by Emanuel A. Schegloff (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992) 4.

8.

Van Jones, “Vanity Fair: The Unbearable Whiteness of Green,” in Huffington Post (May 17, 2007): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/van-jones/vanity-fair-the-unbearabl_b_48766.html. (Last Accessed: April 11, 2017).

9.

Bron Taylor has made a similar argument concerning the limits of inclusivity and the World Religions approach to the study of Religion and Ecology.

10. The phrase “old field” referred to former plantation fields that, overgrown with brush and vines and left for ruin, reverted back to forest. African Americans who were now free, when they observed the negligence of the planter class who were unwilling to get their hands dirty

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and refused to work the land that enslaved Africans and their ancestors had made, were concerned about the zone of irresponsibility such a neglect of nature represented. Another example is Georgia Sea Island performer Bessie Jones explanation of the song, “Throw me anywhere, Lord.” “You might as well throw me out in that old field,” refers to the planter class practice of throwing the bodies of dead slaves onto waste ground without a proper funeral. See Bessie Jones, For the Ancestors: Autobiographical Memories (Urbana, IL : University of Illinois Press, 1983), 46–48). 11. Grey Gundaker, “Wild Flowers: African-Atlantic Epistemology and the Politics of Garden and Landscape History.” Lecture. (University of Minnesota, Institute for Advanced Study, 2012). URL : http://umedia.lib.umn.edu/node/891173. (Last Accessed: April 10, 2017). 12. Judith Carney, “Fields of Survival, Foods of Memory,” in Geographies of Race and Food: Fields, Bodies, Markets, edited by Rachel Slocum and Arun Saldanha (Burlington, UK : Ashgate, 2013). 13. Patricia Klindienst, “Freedom: The Gardens of Two Gullah Elders. St. Helena Island, South Carolina,” in The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Cutlure and Sustainability in the Americas (Boston, MA : Beacon, 2006), 54. 14. Judith Carney, “Landscapes and Places of Memory: African Diaspora Research and Geography,” in The African Diaspora and the Disciplines, edited by Tejumola Olaniyan and James Hoke Sweet (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 2010), 105. 15. Klindienst, “The Gardens of Two Gullah Elders,” 54–55. 16. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York, NY: Penguin, 1938); Richard Westmacott, African AmericanAFRICAN AMERICAN Gardens and Yards in the Rural South (Knoxville, TN : University of TN Press, 1992); Grey Gundaker (ed.), Keep your Head to the Sky: Interpreting African American Home Ground (Charlottesville, VA : University of Virginia Press, 1998); Grey Gundaker and Jidth McWillie, No Space Hidden: The Spirit of African American Yard Work (Knoxville, TN : University of TN Press, 2005); Vaughn Sillis, Lowry Pei and Hilton Als, Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens (San Antonio, TX : Trinity University Press, 2010). 17. Judith Carney, “Fields of Survival,” 62. 18. Carney and Rosomoff, The Shadow of Slavery, 660. 19. See note 10 above. 20. Wendall Berry, The Hidden Wound (Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, 2010 ed.), 114. 21. Ibid., 120. 22. Ibid., 112. 23. Berry, 2002. 24. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (New York, NY: Wiley Blackwell, 1991). 25. Jos De Mul, Cyberspace Odyssey: Towards a Virtual Ontology and Anthropology (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 10. 26. Crouch, Flirting With Space, 53. 27. Ibid., 93. 28. “Racial regimes are constructed social systems where race is proposed as a justification for the relations of power,” from Cedric J. Robinson, Forgeries of Memory and Meaning: Blacks and the Regimes of Race in American Theater and Film before World War II (Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press, 2007) xii. 29. Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 163.

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30. Diane Glave, “Women and Gardening,” in Rooted in the Earth: Reclaiming the African American Heritage (Chicago, IL : Lawrence Hill books, 2010), 116. 31. Michel Foucault and Jay Miskowiec, “Of Other Spaces,” In Diacritics 16.1 (1986): 22–27. 32. Chidester and Linenthal, American Sacred Space, 7. 33. Grey Gundaker, “Wild Flowers: African-Atlantic Epistemology of the Politics of Garden and Landscape History,” Lecture online: http://umedia.lib.umn.edu/node/891173, (Minneapolis, MN : University of Minnesota Institute for Advanced Study, 2012). 34. Joyce Pettis, “On Gardening or a Love Supreme,” in Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers, Joanne V. Gabbin, ed. (Jackson, MS : University Press of Mississippi, 2009), 171. 35. Monica White, “Sisters of the Soil: Urban Gardening as Resistance in Detroit,” in Race/ Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts 5.1(2011): 13. 36. Wanda Stewart, “Heal the Land, Heal the Spirit: Wanda Stewart,” (Films For Action, November 27, 2014). Available at: https://vimeo.com/113041446. (Last Accessed: 16 April, 2017). 37. Marilyn White, “Gardens and Woods are Sacred,” in African American Gardening (April 21, 2017). Available at: https://africanamericangardening.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/sacrednature-marilyn-white (Last Accessed: 22 April, 2017). 38. Ibid. 39. Terrance Hayes, “Root,” in Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Camille T. Dungy, ed. (Athens, GA : University of Georgia Press, 2009), 310. 40. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (San Diego, CA : Harcourt Brace, 1983) 241. 41. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes were Watching God (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2000), 224. 42. Klindienst, “Freedom: The Gardens of Two Gullah Elders,” 33–34. 43. Kendra Hamilton, “Southern Living,” in Camille Dungy, Black Nature, 344. 44. Klindienst, “Freedom: The Gardens of Two Gullah Elders,” 47. 45. bell hooks, Belonging: A Culture of Place (New York, NY: Routledge, 2009). 46. Citation. 47. Marilyn White, “Gardens and Woods Are Sacred.” 48. Nikky Finney, “Ambrosia,” in Joanne V. Gabbin, Shaping Memories, 147. 49. Karen Baker-Fletcher, Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creation (Minneapolis, MN : Fortress Press, 1997) 37. 50. Frank X. Walker, “Homeopathic,” in Camille T. Dungy, ed. Black Nature, 309. 51. hooks, Belonging, 35–36. 52. Finney, “Ambrosia,” 142. 53. Klindienst, “Freedom: The Gardens of Two Gullah Elders,” 37. 54. Venice Williams, “Venice Williams: Share a Meal. Share Your Story,” in Creative Mornings (April 22, 2016). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73t0YCKYE 2U (Last Accessed: 18 April, 2017). 55. Sharla Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill, NC : University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 72. 56. Yvonne Patricia Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (Berkeley, CA : University of CA Press, 2003).

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2 In a Body on Wheels in Touch with the Earth 1.

RAGBRAI is the “Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.” The Register is the newspaper for Des Moines, the capitol of Iowa.

2.

For some statistical analysis based on incidents in the United States, see https://aspe.hhs.gov/ system/files/pdf/76816/ib_SportsInjuries.pdf.

3.

See Sanford, Snyder, and Taylor in the works cited above.

4.

Taylor 2007b: 865.

5.

Orsi 1997: 7.

6.

Sanford, p. 876. Sanford is quoting from Robert Orsi, “Lived Religion in America,” in David Hall, Everyday Miracles: Lived Religion in America (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1997) 3–21.

7.

Snyder 2007: 908.

8.

Sanford 2007: 889.

9.

Taylor is quoting Price 1996: 417. Taylor 2007b: 867.

10. In the 2017 Tour de France, the following teams from countries other than Europe and the US participated: Astana Pro Team (Kazakhstan); UAE Team Emirates (United Arab Emirates); Bahrain-Meridia (Bahrain); and Team Dimension Data (South Africa). Team Rwanda Cycling is also growing rapidly now (https://teamafricarising.org/). 11. Albanese 1990: 11. 12. Haraway 1997: 51. 13. Both of these ideas will be addressed at length below. 14. This section heading is from the lyrics of the song “Bicycle Race” by Queen. According to Sutcliffe, author of Queen: The Ultimate Illustrated History of the Crown Kings of Rock, it was inspired when the band was watching the eighteenth stage of the Tour de France in 1978. It was released on October 13, 1978. 15. Though the website for RAGBRAI indicates that it is limited to 8,500 cyclists, reports indicate that as many as 36,000 cyclists participated on some days of the ride. See ragbrai. com (Last Accessed: November 25, 2017). 16. There is extensive research on Burning Man, including https://journal.burningman.org, Gilmore, Theater in a Crowded Fire (University of California Press, 2010), Chen, Enabling Creative Chaos (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and many more. 17. Munson 2015. 18. You can see a list of many of these here: http://www.bikingbis.com/across-state-bicycletours/. Even that website acknowledges that the rides all started with RAGBRAI . 19. Many people are familiar with the Tour de France and the yellow jersey, indicator of the leader of the race; for the Giro d’Italia, the leader is designated with a pink jersey. 20. For more information go to http://www.notredamedescyclistes.net/index.html. 21. “Marie, we entrust to you this chapel; we entrust to you amateur and professional cyclists; from the entire world and all times.” 22. Much of this information is taken from Alberto Contador’s blog, though it has been crosschecked with a variety of other sources as well. Contador is, as of the writing of this article in 2017, the best known professional cyclist from Spain. https://acnbblog2012.wordpress. com/2012/08/24/the-virgin-of-dorleta-the-patron-saint-of-cyclists/ (Last Accessed: 14 July 2017). 23. See Walker and Lane. Ghostbikes.org tried to keep track of all of the sites globally, but has been unable to keep up since 2014. It is difficult to find information on exactly how many

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ghost bikes are installed, but there are ghost bikes in almost every state in the US and in a number of countries worldwide. 24. This is information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. https:// crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812382 25. Quotation from an exhibit in a Flanders church. See https://www.theguardian.com/travel/ gallery/2016/apr/28/cycling-is-religion-exhibiton-flanders-belgium-wielermuseum 26. For images and more information see https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2016/ apr/28/cycling-is-religion-exhibiton-flanders-belgium-wielermuseum (Last Accessed: 17 July 2017). 27. See http://www.koersisreligie.be/en/home/. 28. See website listed in note 19. Also see the homepage for the exhibit here http://www. koersisreligie.be/en/home/. Last Accessed: 17 July 2017. 29. Vivanco: 32.

3 Pressure, Gestures: Sacral Work 1.

See Smith, Conjuring Culture, 4–5.

2.

See Rivera, Poetics, p.155.

3.

See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sacrum (Last Accessed: 3 November 2017).

4.

See Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva.

5.

See Lippard, The Lure of the Local.

6.

See Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places.

7.

See Berkes and Folke, Linking Social and Ecological Systems.

8.

See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worship (Last Accessed: 3 May 2017).

9.

See tree communication, http://e360.yale.edu/features/exploring_how_and_why_trees_talk_ to_each_other (Last Accessed: 25 February 2017).

10. See Iovino and Opperman, Material Ecocriticism, 2–4, relevant chapters. 11. See Irigaray, Between East and West. 12. These are the most basic descriptive phases of Adaptive Resilience Life Systems. To learn more, see Gunderson and Holling. 13. Snyder, “The Porous World” in A Place in Space, 194–95. 14. Lily Oster, an graduate student in the advanced Graduate Division of Religion of Emory’s Laney Graduate School, introduced me to this term. 15. See Benys, Biomimicry. 16. See De Waal, The Age of Empathy. 17. Get the reference from Dianne . . . still in progress!!! 18. Thanks to David Aftandilian for his story of a Sandhill crane who would not leave her mate killed by a car. 19. “Stabat Mater”, thirteen-century Roman Catholic hymn to Mary, mother of Jesus portraying her suffering during his crucifixion. 20. David Harvey, quoted in Coole and Frost, New Materialisms, 25. 21. See Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous. 22. Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, 12. 23. Oliver, Winter Hours, 81.

NOTES

259

24. See Irigaray, Between East and West. 25. See De Waal, The Age of Empathy. 26. Merriam Webster Dictionary, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/imagination (Last Accessed: 17 February 2017). 27. See Rivera, “Thinking Bodies” in Decolonizing Epistemologies. 28. Levertoff, “St Peter and the Angel”, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/st-peter-and-angel (Last Accessed: 27 February 2017). 29. See Snyder Reinhabitation in A Place in Space, 183–191. 30. See M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (Austin, TX : University of Texas Press, 2010)—from Howell Belser’s dissertation, Only the Gods are Real, 5. 31. See Denise Levertov, Evening Train (New York: New Directions, 1992). 32. Christian desert contemplatives held this notion that when evil and destruction were most vexed, they come as reason, as the good. 33. See Oster, “Decolonizing the Sacred” in Sacred Matters, http://sacredmattersmagazine.com/ decolonizing-the-sacred/ 34. See Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, 171.

4 Blood in the Soil 1.

Joe Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013) 3.

2.

Kimberly Ruffin, Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010) 2.

3.

Ruffin, Black on Earth, 25.

4.

Ruffin, Black on Earth, 26.

5.

Feagin, The White Racial Frame, 9.

6.

Richard White, “Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?: Work and Nature.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996) 171.

7.

White, “Are You an Environmentalist,” 171.

8.

White, “Are You an Environmentalist,” 173.

9.

See “The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge” by Wendell Berry and “The End of Nature” by Bill McKibben.

10. White, “Are You an Environmentalist,” 175 11. Feagin, The White Racial Frame, 13 12. The most troubling aspect of these false narratives is that they overlook how Native Americans were indeed living and working on the land before the arrival of the “first white men.” 13. Charles Wohlforth, “Conservation and Eugenics,” Orion Magazine, July/August 2010, https://orionmagazine.org/article/conservation-and-eugenics/ 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Lisa Ko, “Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States,” January 29, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/unwanted-sterilization-and-eugenicsprograms-in-the-united-states/

260

NOTES

17. “The Biography of John Muir,” The Sierra Club, accessed April 2016, http://vault.sierraclub. org/john_muir_exhibit/life/muir_biography.aspx 18. Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014) 29. 19. Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces, 25 20. Dorceta Taylor, “The State of Diversity in Environmental Organizations: Mainstream NGO ’s, Foundations & Government Agencies.” Green 2.0, July 2016, http://www. diversegreen.org/the-challenge/. It is important to note that Taylor was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the same school and program that produced the aforementioned Gifford Pinchot. 21. Taylor, “Diversity in Environmental Organizations.” 22. Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2005) 148. 23. Lynette Tanner, ed., Chained to the Land: Voices from the Cotton and Cane Plantations (Winston-Salem, NC : John F. Blair Publisher, 2014) 5–6. 24. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976) 30. 25. “The Southern “Black Codes” of 1865–66,” The Constitutional Rights Foundation, accessed May 2016, http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board–50th-anniversary/southern-black-codes. html 26. James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013). 27. Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces, 60. 28. Susan Shumaker, “Untold Stories from Americas National Parks,” https://www.pbs. org/nationalparks/media/pdfs/tnp-abi-untold-stories-pt–01-segregation.pdf (Last Accessed: November 2016). 29. Ibid. 30. Tanya Golash-Boza, Aljazeera America, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/7/hereswhy-americas-national-parks-are-so-white.html (Last Accessed: December 2016). 31. My wife and I visited Yellowstone for five days and I began counting the number of black people I saw during the first day because I noticed people staring at me. In five days I counted fewer than twenty, and to be sure, I could not possibly count all the black people in the park! However, I believe that the reaction generated by my presence provided anecdotal evidence of the power of the white environmentalist frame. 32. Dwight Hopkins, Being Human: Race, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005) 4. 33. J. Kameron Carter, “Humanity in African American Theology,” in Oxford Handbook of African American Theology, edited by Katie G. Cannon and Anthony B. Pinn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 176. 34. Ibid. 35. Hopkins, Being Human, 161. 36. Ellen F. Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 43. A healthy religious imagination is essential for enabling people to see the world both as it is and as it could be. Davis writes: “Imagination is the means whereby writers with diverse gifts may enable their communities literally to re-member, to work toward their own wholeness, a goal that can be achieved only by claiming membership . . . in the wholeness of the Holiness of the Creation” (16). Walter Brueggemann argues for a liturgical and poetic interpretation of Genesis 1 in Genesis, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982).

NOTES

261

37. Emilie Townes, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death, African American Health Issues and a Womanist Ethic of Care (Eugene, OR : Wipf and Stock, 2006) 25. 38. Townes, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death, 23. 39. Townes, Breaking the Fine Rain of Death, 24. 40. Karen Baker-Fletcher, Sisters of Dust, Sisters of Spirit: Womanist Wordings on God and Creation (Minneapolis, MN : Fortress Press, 1998), 18. 41. Ibid. 42. Jessica Harris, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011) 71. 43. M. Shawn Copland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011) 94. 44. Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom, 95. 45. Hopkins, Being Human, 5. 46. Luke 4: 14–21 47. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (New York: NYU Press, 2012) 48. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge Press, 2015) 125. 49. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 129.

5 To Eat or Be Eaten? 1.

This essay is based on a longer, more fully annotated version that was published in the form of two articles entitled “What do we do when we eat? An inconclusive inquiry” and “What do we do when we eat? A theological inquiry” in the South African journal Scriptura (see Conradie 2016a, 2016b).

2.

See Pinker (2009: 188).

3.

See especially Jonas (1966: 102–104).

4.

The term “food contestation” is derived from a Mellon-funded project, entitled “Food Contestation: Humanities and the Food System.” This project is situated within the context of the Centre of Excellence in Food Security located at the University of the Western Cape. The project has two components, namely on “The gendered politics of food systems” and on “The symbolic construction of food consumption in the context of food insecurity.”

5.

See Pollan (2006: 189).

6.

See Pollan (2013: 53).

7.

Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (2009:4).

8.

See Pollan (2013: 51).

9.

See Pollan (2013: 17).

10. See Pollan (2006: 320). 11. See Kass (1994: 131). 12. See Kass (1994: 135). 13. Visser (1991:8–9). 14. See Versfeld (1983:75), paraphrasing the vegetarian rationale. 15. See Wilkinson (1975: 5–6).

262

NOTES

16. See Webb (2001: 217). 17. See Pollan (2006: 321). 18. See Versfeld (1983: 52). 19. See Grumett and Muers (2010: 107). 20. See Pollan (2006: 11). 21. See Versfeld (1983: 24). 22. Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition (2009: 30). 23. See Visser (1991: 36). 24. See Lichtenberg (1998). 25. For a discussion, see Conradie (2009). 26. See Méndez-Montoya (2012: 86), drawing on insights from Alexander Schmemann. 27. See Rolston (1994: 213–214). 28. See Wilkinson (1975: 20). 29. This is a paraphrase of a quotation from Alexander Schmemann in Wilkinson (1975: 6). 30. McFague (2013: 186). 31. See Ruether (1975: 211). 32. See Ruether (1983: 258). 33. Quoted in Wilkinson (1975: 1). The reference is to Brecht’s Whole Earth Epilog (Baltimore: Penguin Press, 1974), 375. 34. See Wirzba (2011: 11). 35. The volume edited by Polkinghorne (2001) set the tone for others to follow. 36. See Ellis and Murphy (1996). 37. See Grumett and Muers (2010: 137). 38. See Méndez-Montoya (2012: 154). 39. Versfeld (1983: 150). 40. Versfeld (1983: 33). 41. See Ayres (2013: 54). 42. Capon (1967: 117). 43. Capon (1970: 83–84). 44. See Versfeld (1983: 153). 45. Versfeld (1983: 11). 46. Wilkinson (1975: 23). 47. For more detail, see Conradie (2015a, 2016b). 48. See Kass (1994: 3). 49. See Méndez-Montoya (2012: 94). 50. See Méndez-Montoya (2012: 65). 51. Wilkinson (1975: 15). 52. See the remarkable essay by Val Plumwood (2011). 53. The poem may, for example, be found at http://www.bartleby.com/142/159.html (Last Accessed: 2 June 2016). 54. See Capon (1978: 154). 55. For a discussion, see Conradie (2015b).

NOTES

263

6 The Personhood of Air 1.

Samsul Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forest Conservation,” in Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology 19.2 (2015): 144–160; Samsul Maarif, “Being Muslim in Animistic Ways,” in Al-Jāmi‘ah: Journal of Islamic Studies 52.1 (2014): 149–174.

2.

P. J. Burns, “Custom, that is before all law,” in The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indigenism, edited by J. S. Davidson and D. Henly (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007); P. J. Burns, The Leiden Legacy: Concepts of Law in Indonesia (Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press, 2007); P. J. Burns, “The Myth of Adat,” in Journal of Legal Pluralism 28 (1989): 1–127; J. S. Davidson and D. Henley, eds., The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics.

3.

T. M. Li, “Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia’s Forrest Zone,” in Modern Asian Studies 35.3 (2001): 645–676; T. M. Li, “Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 42.1 (2000): 149–179.

4.

I. Parlina, “Jokowi Grants Forrest Rights to Indigenous Peoples,” in The Jakarta Post (December 31, 2016).

5.

E. S. Huaman, “Tuki Ayllpanchik (Our Beautiful Land): Indigenous Ecology and Farming in the Peruvian Highlands,” in Cultural Studies of Science Education 11.4 (2016): 1135–1153; H. Qin, “Karim-Aly S. Kassam: Biocultural Diversity and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Human Ecology in the Arctic,” in Human Ecology 39.2 (2011): 233–234; M. Capurso, “Surviving Stereotypes: Indigenous Ecology, Environmental Crisis, and Science Education in California,” Teacher Education Quarterly 37.4 (2010): 71–86; D. Rose, “An Indigenous Philosophical Ecology: Situating the Human,” in The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16.3 (2005): 294–305; J. A. Grim, Indigenous Traditions and Ecology: The Interbeing of Cosmology and Community (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2001); G. Cajete, A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living (Sante Fe, NM : Clear Lights, 1999); G. Cajete, Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education (Durango, CO : Kivaki Press, 1994); D. V. Carruthers, “Indigenous Ecology and the Politics of Linkange in Mexican Social Movements,” in Third World Quarterly 17.5 (1996): 1007–1028.

6.

T. M. Li, “Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot,” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 42.1 (2000): 149–179.

7.

D. McGregor, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Sustainable Development: Towards Coexistence,” in In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalization, edited by M. Blaser, H. A. Feit, and G. McRae (New York, NY: Zed Books, 2004), 72–91.

8.

A. K. Ahmad, Komunitas Ammatoa di Kajang Bulukumba: Studi tentang Kepercayaan dan Pelestarian Lingkungan (M.A. Thesis, Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, 1989); D. A. D. Tawang, Peranan Hukum Adat dalam Pengelolaan Lingkungan Hidup: Studi Kasus pada Masyarakat Kajang, Kabupaten Dati II Bulukumba, Sulawesi Selatan (Jakarta, Indonesia: Fakultas Hukum Universitas Trisakti, 1996); K. Salle, Kebijakan Lingkungan Menurut Pasang: Sebuah Kajian Hukum Lingkungan Adat pada Masyarakat Ammatoa Kecamatan Kajang Kabupaten Daerah Tingkat II Bulukumba (Ph.D. diss., Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, 1999); A. Fitriani, Eksisensi Tanah Hak Ulayat Masyarakat Hukum Adat Kajang dan Pengelolaannya di Kabupaten Bulukumba, Sulawesi Selatan (M.A. Thesis., Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, 2003); E. Sinohadji, Kearifan Masyarakat adat Kajang dalam Pengelolaan Hutan: Studi Kasus Desa Tanatoa Kajang Kabupaten Bulukumba Sulawesi Selatan (M.A. Thesis, Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, 2004); A. S. Syam, Sistem Nilai dan Norma dalam Pengelolaan Hutan Adat pada Komunitas Adat Ammatoa di Desa Tana Toa Kecamatan Kajang, Kabupaten Bulukumba (B.A. Thesis, Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, 2005); A. S.

264

NOTES

P. Parawansah, Penguasaan dan Pemanfaatan Hak Ulayat oleh Masyarakat Adat Kajang (B.A. Thesis, Universitas Hasanuddin, Makassar, 2006); A. D. Tyson, “Still striving for Modesty: Land, Spirits and Rubber Production in Kajang, Indonesia,” in Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 10.3 (2009): 200–215; T. Gibson, “Islam and the Spirit Cults in New Order Indonesia: Global Flows vs. Local Knowledge,” in Indonesia (2000): 41–70; Samsul Maarif, Dimensions of Religious Practice: The Ammatoans of Sulawesi, Indonesia (Ph.D. Dissertation, Tempe, AZ : Arizona State University, 2012); and Samsul Maarif, “Being a Muslim in Animistic Ways.” 9.

Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forrest Conservation.”

10. Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forrest Conservation,”; P. Nadasdy, “The Gift in the Animal: The Ontology of Hunting and Human-Animal Sociality,” in American Ethnologist 34.1 (2007): 25–43; C. Fowler, The Archeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach (London: Routledge 2004); K. Morrison, “The Cosmos as Intersubjectie: Native American Other-Than-Human-Persons,” in Indigenous Religions: A Companion, edited by G Harvey (New York, NY: Cassell, 2000): 23–36; N. Bird-David, “Animism Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology,” in Current Anthropology 40.S1(1999): S67–S91. 11. Personal Interview, October 21, 2009, Tanatoa, Kajang, Bulukumba. 12. Personal Interview, October 21, 2009, Tanatoa, Kajang, Bulukumba. 13. Morrison, “The Cosmos as Intersubjective.” 14. S. Maarif, “Being a Muslim in Animistic Ways;” S. Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forrest Conservation;” M. J. Rossano, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved (Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press, 2010); J. F. Haught, God and the New Atheism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2008); and A. Greeley, The Religious Imagination (New York, NY: Sadler, 1981). 15. S. Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion and Forrest Conservation;” and S. Maarif, “Being a Muslim in Animistic Ways.” 16. L. Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993), 57. 17. S. Maarif, “Dimensions of Religious Practice;” and S. Katu, Pasang ri Kajang: Kajian tentang Akomodasi Islam dengan Budaya Lokal di Sulawesi (Makkassar, Indonesia: IAIN Aluddin Makassar, 2000). 18. S. Maarif, “Dimensions of Religious Practice,” 342; K. M. Usop, Pasang ri Kajang: Kajian Sistem Nilai di “Benteng Hitam” Amma Toa (Ujung Pandang: Pusat Latihan Penelitian IlmuIlmu Sosial UNHAS , 1978), 45; S. Katu, Pasang ri Kajang, 77; and C. MacKenzie, “Origins of Resistance,” 96. 19. S. Maarif, “Dimensions of Religious Practice,” 342; K. M. Usop, Pasang ri Kajang: Kajian Sistem Nilai di “Benteng Hitam” Amma Toa (Ujung Pandang: Pusat Latihan Penelitian IlmuIlmu Sosial UNHAS , 1978), 45; S. Katu, Pasang ri Kajang, 78; and C. MacKenzie, “Origins of Resistance,” 127. 20. S. Maarif, “Being a Muslim in Animistic Ways;” and S. Maarif, “Ammatoan Indigenous Religion.” 21. Personal Interview (Tanatoa, Kajang, Bulukumba, September 5, 2009). 22. S. Maarif, “Dimensions of Religious Practice,” 365. 23. Ibid., 180. 24. A. I. Hallowell, “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View,” 168. 25. S. Maarif, “Being a Muslim in Animistic Ways,” 152.

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7 Changing Atmospheres of Religion and Nature 1.

For a helpful overview, see Whitney A. Bauman, Richard R. Bohanon II , and Kevin O’Brien, “Religion: What Is It, Who Gets to Decide, and Why Does It Matter?” in Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2011), 13–26.

2.

The idea of “motivated action” is not solely found in research, but also potentially in the scholarly activities of the classroom. Such engagement is a core part of civic engagement. See Forrest Clingerman and Reid Locklin (eds.), Teaching Civic Engagement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), especially the Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2.

3.

Mary Evelyn Tucker, “Religion and Ecology: Survey of the Field,” in Roger Gottlieb (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Ecology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 400.

4.

Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, http://w2.vatican.va/content/ francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (Last Accessed: 30 June 2017).

5.

See John Chryssavgis (ed.), Cosmic Grace, Humble Prayer: Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholemew (Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 2003).

6.

HH Dalai Lama, Ethics for a New Millenium (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 1999).

7.

H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 1985), 16ff.

8.

For example, see Jame Schaefer, Theological Foundations for Environmental Ethics (Washington, DC : Georgetown University Press, 2009); Ernst Conradie (ed.), Creation and Salvation, Volume 1: A Mosaic of Selected Classic Christian Theologies (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2012).

9.

Evan Berry, Devoted to Nature: The Religious Roots of American Environmentalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).

10. While White was not the first to make this point, his essay provides a turning point for environmental studies, as well as the field of religion and ecology. See Bron Taylor, “The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part One),” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture 10 (2016): 77ff. 11. Lynn White, Jr, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155, no. 3767 (1967): 1203–07. 12. Elspeth Whitney, “Lynn White Jr.’s ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’ After 50 Years,” History Compass 13 (2015): 400. 13. Emilio Chuvieco, Mario Burgui and Isabel Galleo-Álvarez, “Impacts of Religious Beliefs on Environmental Indicators: Is Christianity More Aggressive than Other Religions?” Worldviews 20 (2016): 251–71. 14. Lisa Sideris, “Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene Age,” in R. Rozzi et al. (eds.), Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013). 15. Taylor, “The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (Part One),” 268–305. 16. Ibid., 295. 17. Of course, there are obvious limits to my critique, particularly in light of works that use social scientific approaches, and which are not theoretical or normative in outlook. My response to this limitation is twofold. First, this points to the need for conversation and debate between the normative and descriptive sides of this interdisciplinary field. Second, my suggestions below might provide a metaphoric framework for this discussion.

266

NOTES

18. Raymond F. Person, Jr., Deuteronomy and Environmental Amnesia (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014), 6ff. 19. Mark Wallace, Finding God in the Singing River (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2005); Anne Marie Dalton and Henry C. Simmons, Ecotheology and the Practice of Hope (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2011); Bron Taylor, Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2009). 20. Forrest Clingerman, Brian Treanor, Martin Drenthen, and David Utsler (eds.), Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014). 21. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Spatial Justice: Body, :Lawscape, Atmosphere (New York: Routledge, 2015), 6. 22. Tim Ingold, “The Atmosphere,” Chaiasmi International 14 (2012): 75. 23. Ibid., 78–9. 24. Gernot Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Subject Matter of Architecture,” in Philip Ursprung (ed.), Herzog and de Meuron: Natural History (Baden: Lars Müller Publishing, 2002), 398–406. 25. Gernot Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics,” Thesis Eleven 36 (1993): 122. 26. Hermann Schmitz, “Atmospheric Spaces,” Ambiances (2016), http://ambiances.revues. org/711 (Last Accessed: September 30, 2016), p. 5. 27. Ibid., 3. 28. Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Spatial Justice: Body, :Lawscape, Atmosphere (New York: Routledge, 2015), 122. 29. Ibid., 124. 30. Ibid., 126. For more information about affect theory, in general, see: Donavan Schaffer, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution and Power (Durham, NC : Duke University Press), 2015. 31. Gernot Böhme, “Atmosphere as the Fundamental Concept of a New Aesthetics,” Thesis Eleven 36 (1993): 114. 32. Pauline von Bonsdorff, “Atmosphere: In the Phoric of Urban Metaphors,” in The City as Cultural Metaphor, edited by Arto Haapala, (Kirppaino Oy, Jyväskylä, 1998), 127. 33. Ibid., 139. 34. Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, “Climate Change as the Work of Mourning,” Ethics and the Environment 17 (2012): 137–64. 35. Marc Augé, Non-Places: An Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity (New York: Verso, 1995).

8 Eco-Dao 1.

As the widely used root-metaphor of all classical East Asian religions including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, “dao” is an inclusive and polysemous term. For example, Herbert Fingarette defined: “[D]ao is a Way, a path, a road, and by common metaphorical extension it becomes in ancient China the right Way of life, the Way of governing, the ideal Way of human existence, the Way of the Cosmos, the generative-normative Way (Pattern, path, course) of existence as such” (Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 19).

2.

See Heup Young Kim, A Theology of Dao (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017); especially, “God as the Dao: Toward a Theology of Dao (Theodao)”, 14–33.

NOTES

267

3.

In the series foreword of Religions of the World and Ecology, Mary Everlyn Tucker and John A. Grim stated: “The East Asian traditions of Confucianism and Taoism remain, in certain ways, some of the most life-affirming in the spectrum of world religions” (‘Series Foreword’, in Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well Being of Earth and Humans, eds. Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2000), xxvi).

4.

Michael C. Kalton, “Asian Religious Tradition and Natural Science: Potentials, Present and Future,” unpublished paper, the CTNS Korea Religion & Science Workshop, Seoul, January 18–22, 2002.

5.

See Heup Young Kim, “Eco-Dao: Life, Ecology, and Theodao,” in A Theology of Dao, 204– 22; also, idem, “Theodao: Integrating Ecological Consciousness in Daoism, Confucianism, and Christian Theology,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Ecology, ed. John Hart (Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017), 104–114.

6.

Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry, The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era: A Celebration of the Unfolding of Cosmos (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 2–3; also 66–68. In formulation of Christo-dao, I had used the cosmogonic nature of dao (see Kim, A Theology of Dao, 40–43).

7.

Romanizations of the Great Ultimate (太極): T’aegŭk (Korean); Tài jí (Pinyin), T’ai-chi (Wade-Giles).

8.

Tu Wei-ming, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989), 107.

9.

Wing-tsit Chan, trans., A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1963), 98.

10. See Jung Young Lee, The Trinity in Asian Perspective (Nashville, TN : Abingdon Press, 1996), 18. 11. Cheng Chung-ying, “The Trinity of Cosmology, Ecology, and Ethics in the Confucian Personhood.” in Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans, edited by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1998), 213–15. The recent encyclical on ecology seems to be in agreement with this critical analysis on the “exclusive humanism” prevailed in the West and East Asian “inclusive humanism”. See “Laudato Si’ of the Holy Father Francis on Care for Our Common Home” (24 May, 2015): 115, 141; http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/ papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html (Last Accessed: 30 April, 2017). 12. This key Confucian/Daoist notion is presented in the Book of Changes, one of the Five Confucian Classics. See Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes, trans., The I Ching or Book of Changes, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1967). 13. Cheng, ‘The Trinity’, 216. 14. Chan, A Source Book, 463. 15. Cheng, ‘The Trinity’, 219. 16. Daodejing: 42. Chan, A Source Book, 160–61. Romanizations of material force, vital energy, or meta-cosmic energy (氣): ki (Korean); qì (Pinyin); ch’i (Wade-Giles). 17. Lee, The Trinity, 30. 18. Cheng, ‘The Trinity’, 291. 19. Swimme and Berry, The Universe Story, 71. For the cosmogenetic principle, see ibid., 70–79. 20. Chan, A Source Book, 497. This Neo-Confucian view of cosmic family resembles with the hymn of St. Francis cited in the Laudato Si’: 87. “Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom you give

268

NOTES

us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour; and bears a likeness of you, Most High. Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful. Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through whom you give sustenance to your creatures. Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Water, who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste. Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you light the night, and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.” 21. Chan Wing-tsit, trans., Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 272. Also, see Heup Young Kim, Wang Yang-ming and Karl Barth: A Confucian-Christian Dialogue (Lamham, MD : University Press of America, 1996), 42–46. 22. Cf., a cosmic “Trinitarian key” addressed in the Laudato Si’: 239. 23. Cheng, “The Trinity,” 225. 24. Ki (in Chinese, qì [ch’i]) is a term very similar to pneuma and translated variously such as material force, ether, energy, vital force, vital power, psychophysical energy, or spirit. Etymologically, however, it means breath, wind, and air, similar to ruach (in Hebrew) and pneuma (in Greek). The Great Ultimate views that it consists of two forms of movement, the yin (negative or female) and the yang (positive or male) that form a unity of complementary opposites. In this chapter, I use this term with its Korean/Chinese romanizations (ki/qi), but sometimes translate as metacosmic energy. 25. Mary Evelyn Tucker, “The Philosophy as an Ecological Cosmology,” in Confucianism and Ecology, Tucker and Berthrong (eds.), 187–207. 26. Translation from Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works Of Chuang Tzu (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1968), 58. 27. See Heup Young Kim, “Techno-Dao: Transhumanism Debates (Cyborg, Sage, and Saint),” in A Theology of Dao, 238–59; also idem, “Cyborg, Sage, and Saint: Transhumanism as Seen from an East Asian Theological Setting,” in Religion and Transhumanism: the Unknown Future of Human Enhancement, Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen (eds.) (Santa Barbara, CA : Praeger, 2015), 97–114. Transhumanism in this chapter mainly refers to this kind of technocratic movement towards a cybernetic post-human, distinguished from posthumanism which has a varity of meanings. 28. Swimme and Berry said: “This future will be worked out in the tension between those committed to the Technozoic, a future of increased exploitation of Earth as resource, all for the benefit of human, and those committed to the Ecozoic, a new mode of human-Earth relations, one where the well-being of the entire Earth community is the primary concern” (The Universe Story, 15). In fact, this cannot be said as “a new mode,” but rather a return to “the old, original mode of human–Earth relations”, of course with far advanced knowledge of science. 29. Elizabeth A. Johson, “Losing and Finding Creation in the Christian Tradition,” in Christianity and Ecology, Hessel and Ruether (eds.), 3–21. Also see Kim, ‘Theodao,’ 105–07. 30. Watson, The Complete Works, 300. 31. Cf. Wilhelm, The I Ching, 297. 32. Lo Ch’in-shun, Knowledge Painfully Acquired, trans. Irene Bloom (New York: Columbia Press, 1987), 161–62. 33. See Kim, A Theology of Dao, 40–43. 34. Ibid., 18–23, 138–44. 35. A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (La Salle, IL : Open Court, 1989), 223.

NOTES

269

36. See Kim Yong-bock, “Theology and the Social Biography of Minjung,” CTC Bulletin 5:3–6:1 (1984–85), 66–78. 37. Cf. Laudato Si’: 112, 121. 38. See Heup Young Kim, “Response to Peter K. H. Lee,” in Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Wellbeing of Earth and Humans, Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary R. Ruether (eds.) (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2000), 357–61. 39. Michael C. Kalton, trans., To Become a Sage: The Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning by Yi T’oegye (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 120–25. 40. Chan Wing-tsit, trans., Instructions for Practical Living and Other Neo-Confucian Writings by Wang Yang-ming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963), 272. 41. Laudato Si’: 143. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 144. Cf., Heup Young Kim, “Owning Up to Our Own Metaphors: A Christian Journey in the Confucian Stronghold,” in A Theology of Dao, 3–13. 44. Laudato Si’: 68. Cf. ibid. 70, 240. 45. Ibid., 68. 46. Ibid., 93. 47. Ibid., 98. 48. Ibid., 216. 49. Ibid., 115. 50. Ibid., 159. 51. Brent Waters, “Flesh Made Data: The Posthuman Project in Light of the Incarnation,” in Religion and Transhumanism, Mercer and Trothen (eds.), 297–301. 52. Laudato Si’: 141. 53. Ibid., 11. 54. Ibid., 215–17. 55. Ibid., 239, 240. 56. Cheng, ‘The Trinity’, 224–25. 57. Laudato Si’: 235. 58. Daodejing: 16. Chan, A Source Book, 147.

9 Remembering the Air 1.

Tim Ingold, “Earth, Sky, Wind, and Weather,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 2007: 19–38.

2.

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-HumanWorld (New York: Vintage, 1997), 227.

3.

Ibid., 226.

4.

The book of Genesis, of course, also suggests the human as a creature of dust, enlivened by the breath (ruach, also meaning spirit and wind) of the Creator.

5.

Ibid.

6.

Ibid., 237.

7.

Ibid.

8.

Ibid.

270

9.

NOTES

Ibid., 252.

10. An important and intriguing piece of Abram’s argument, which I will not pursue here, is that the emergence of written language played a decisive role in this shift in consciousness. 11. Ibid., 253. 12. Ibid., 122–123. 13. Ibid., 253. 14. David Suzuki, “The Beauty of Wind Farms,” New Scientist, April 13, 2005, 1. https://www. newscientist.com/article/mg18624956-400-the-beauty-of-wind-farms/ 15. Justin Good, “The Aesthetics of Wind Energy,” Human Ecology Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2006, 81. Wind energy, it should be noted, is a form of solar energy because wind results from the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, as well as the irregularity of the earth’s surface and its rotation. Energy in the wind turns the blades around a rotor connected to a main shaft, which in turn spins a generator to make the electricity. When connected to a grid, wind farms can generate electricity for widespread distribution. 16. Ibid. 17. John Bingham, “Wind Farms Are a ‘Blot’ on God’s Creation, Says Bishop,” The Telegraph, Sept 25, 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10332173/Wind-farms-are-a-bloton-Gods-creation-says-bishop.html 18. Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008), 149. 19. It is somewhat questionable whether the perception of wind turbines as ugly can truly be said to reflect an ecological sensibility as I define that sensibility later in this essay. 20. Paul Gipe, “The Wind Industry’s Experience with Aesthetic Criticism.” Leonardo, Volume 26 (June), 1993, 243–248, 244. 21. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory (Seattle, WA : University of Washington Press, rev. ed., 1997). 22. “Pheasant Country Inn,” https://www.bedandbreakfast.com/in-fowler-pheasant-country-innpage.html 23. Gipe, Wind Industry’s Experience, 244. 24. Good, “Aesthetics,” 79. 25. Ibid., 84. I am not convinced that Good’s invocation of rationality here is the right way to frame reactions; hence, my preference for terms like sensibility and satisfaction. 26. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962), 41. 27. Ibid., 189. 28. Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 2013. 29. Brian Bienkowski, “Toxic Coal Ash Hits Poor and Minority Communities Hardest,” Scientific American, January 14, 2016. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/toxic-coal-ash-hitspoor-and-minority-communities-hardest/ 30. Timothy Morton, The Ecological Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 33. My emphasis. 31. Ibid., 9. 32. Ibid., 4. 33. Good, “Aesthetics,” 87. 34. This distinction between hellish and heavenly energy sources was originally made, so far as I can tell, by energy buff Rochelle Lefkowitz and subsequently popularized in Thomas

NOTES

271

Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How it Can Renew America (New York: Picador, 2009). 35. Ulf Bossel, “Fuels from Heaven, Fuels from Hell,” EV World, November 26, 2007. http:// evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1360. Geothermal energy, often considered the forgotten renewable, may be considered an exception to the heavenly/hellish binary. 36. Gipe, “Wind Industry’s Experience,” 247. 37. Ibid., 246. 38. Good, “Aesthetics,” 87. 39. Ibid. 40. Morton, Ecological Thought, 9 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., 10 43. Ibid., 9. 44. Winona LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (Haymarket Press, 2016), 239 45. Ibid., 243. 46. Wind Projects on Native American Lands. Open Energy Information. http://en.openei.org/ wiki/Wind_Projects_on_Native_American_Lands 47. Abby Goodnough, “For Cape Cod Wind Farm, New Hurdle is Spiritual,” New York Times, January 4, 2010. www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/science/earth/05wind.html 48. Interestingly, these cases may turn out to pit different ideas of the sacred against one another. If wind itself is seen as a sacred spirit in native traditions, then capturing this power on windrich tribal lands seems appropriate and certainly preferable to below-ground sources that worsen environmental injustices as LaDuke’s arguments suggest. Yet utilizing wind turbines could conceivably interfere with other tribal values or rituals—whether those of the same tribe or another occupying the same region. Note too Bishop Wharton’s previously cited objection to wind farms on land associated with local saints. I will not attempt to resolve these complex dilemmas—all of which, I suppose, might be seen as further evidence of the complexity of the ecological thought. I will simply note here that designating nature or some aspect thereof as “sacred” rarely, in and of itself, resolves ethical controversies or guarantees responsible behavior. That said, objections to wind energy on the grounds that it disrupts sacred lifeways and sites ought to be given more weight than complaints against the perceived “ugliness” of turbines. 49. LaDuke, 250. 50. Ibid. 51. McKibben, 150. 52. Good, “Aesthetics,” 86. 53. Quoted in LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred, 241. 54. LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred, 240. 55. LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred, 242.

10 Con-spiring Together 1.

Peter Wohlleben describes it thus: “How does a tree breathe anyway? You can see part of its lungs. These are the needles or the leaves. They have narrow slits on their undersides that look a bit like tiny mouths. The tree uses these openings to exhale oxygen and breathe in

272

NOTES

carbon dioxide.” The Hidden Life of Trees (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2015), 224. Of course, different plants breathe differently, for instance, algae is a major producer of oxygen in the atmosphere. 2.

Ibid, 224. Wohlleben claims that during the summer (he is talking about deciduous trees in the northern hemisphere), “trees release about 29 tons of oxygen into the air per square mile of forest. A person breathes in nearly 2 pounds of oxygen a day, so that’s the daily requirement for about ten thousand people. Every walk in the forest is like taking a shower in oxygen.” He goes on to explain that this is only true during the day, as trees don’t photosynthesize at night. See his book for much more of an explanation of how trees breathe and eat at night, and during the winter when there are no leaves. Additionally, leaves are not required for absorbing carbon and producing oxygen, as the example of algae illustrates.

3.

A NASA video shows that during the winter, when deciduous trees lose their leaves, the absorption rate of carbon dioxide drops significantly, and when they start leafing out in spring, the air is “cleaned up” (so to speak). This process switches from hemisphere to hemisphere, and is how the planet itself “breathes.” Robert Krulwich, “The Earth has Lungs. Watch Them Breathe,” http://Phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/09/the-earthhas-lungs-watch-them-breathe

4.

A draft version of this chapter was presented in October, 2016 at the “Religion, Ecology and Our Planetary Future” at the Center for World Religions at Harvard. After it was in final form, I came across this very relevant “Prayer Service because the Earth Really Matters And We Hear the Trees Pray” led by Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, well-known for formulating an eco-kashrut, or the concept of Jewish eco-kosher, and a wide variety of earthcentered actions and liturgies. This service was written for a retreat of Ruach HaAretz (“Spirit of the Earth”) held at the Stony Point Retreat Center, July 9–16, 2017. The service opens with “Baruch ata Yahhh, Eloheinu Ruach ha’olam . . . [Blessed are You, Yahhh our God, Breath of Life—] and builds on breathing prayer meditation based on saying the name of God so that it is the sound of breathing . . . yhhhh-inhale, whhhh-exhale. https://theshalomcenter.org/ prayer-service-because-earth-really-matters (Last Accessed: 30 July, 2017).

5.

Estimates are that there are 3.1 trillion trees, 422 trees/person, although that is dropping as population rises, and deforestation continues. A mature oak tree is estimated to have between 200,000 to 500,000 leaves, so our campus has millions of leaves (research discussed in Krulwich, ibid.)

6.

Ted Hiebert, “Air: the Most Sacred Thing,” in Exploring Ecological Hermeneutic, edited by Norman Habel and Peter J. Trudinger (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 11.

7.

For instance, David Seidenberg, in his masterful volume on Kabbalah and Ecology, (Cambridge University Press, 2016) discusses the long and varied Jewish interpretation of ru-ach. This discussion also includes the interpretation of nephesh.

8.

Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: a theology of becoming (New York: Routledge, 2003), 234.

9.

Hiebert, “Air,” 11.

10. For another instance, see Qur’an 15:28–29: And remember when thy Lord said unto the angels: I am creating a mortal out of potter’s clay of black mud altered. So, when I have made him and have breathed into him of My spirit . . . See also chs 38, 55 of the Qur’an for other accounts of the creation of Adam. 11. Ibid, 13. 12. See Matthew Riley for more on White’s eco-theological work, “A Spiritual Democracy of All God’s Creatures: Ecotheology and the Animals of Lynn White, Jr.” in Divinanimality: Animal Theology, Creaturely Theology, ed. Stephen Moore. (New York: Fordham University

NOTES

273

Press, 2014), 241–260. Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco, CA : Sierra Club Books, 1988). 13. Jay McDaniel, Living from the Center: Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism (St. Louis, MO : Chalice Press, 2010), 45. 14. Ross Gay, “A Small Needful Fact,” Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database, 2015. http://www.splitthisrock.org/poetry-database/poem/a-small-needful-fact (Last Accessed: 8 August, 2017). Reprinted with permission. 15. The Black Lives Matter movement affirms all black lives: “the lives of black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black undocumented folk, folks with records, women and all black lives along the gender spectrum.” “About #Black Lives Matter,”http://blacklivesmatter.com/ (Last Accessed: 31 July, 2017). 16. Melanie Harris, “Ecowomanism and Ecological Reparations,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion Religion and Ecology, edited by John Hart (Chichester: Wiley and Sons, 2017), 195. 17. White feminists have also recognized this connection between the denigration of those people deemed lesser than white men on many axes of gender, race, class, sexuality and disability, by calling them animals in some fashion. See Carol Adams, The Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). 18. Harris, 196. 19. Ibid. 20. Dorceta Taylor, The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege and Environmental Protection (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2016). 21. United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice, Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty (New York: United Church of Christ, 2007). 22. In 2015, 475 people in NJ died from guns, but over 3,000 died from chronic lower respiratory ailments that include asthma. “Complete Health Indicator Report of Deaths due to Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases,” New Jersey State Public Health Assessment Data, https://www26.state.nj.us/doh-shad/indicator/complete_profile/CLRDD eath.html (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). Admittedly, NJ has the sixth lowest rate in the country of gun deaths. “Firearm Mortality by State,” Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Last Accessed: July 21, 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/ firearm.htm 23. The Reverend William Barber has called attention to hog farming in North Carolina as an example of environmental injustice. See William Barber III and Marc Yaggi, “A Different Kind of Discrimination,” Charlotte Observer, May 13, 2015, http://www. charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article20859924.html (Last Accessed: 22 July, 2017). Also see Carrie Hribar, Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (Bowling Green, OH : National Association of Local Boards of Health, 2010), 5–7. This report details the forms of pollution associated with CAFO s, including substantial greenhouse gas emissions (18 percent GHG worldwide), and reviews the studies that link higher rates of asthma, bronchitis and other respiratory illnesses to CAFO s. It also reviews how lax EPA standards provide loopholes for the reporting of such emissions as ammonia. 24. See Matthew Immergut and Laurel Kearns, “When Nature is Rats and Roaches: Religious Eco-Justice Activism in Newark, NJ .” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 6 (2012): 176–195. 25. Zoe Schlanger “Choking to Death.” Newsweek, March 30, 2016, http://www.newsweek. com/2016/04/08/michigan-air-pollution-poison-southwest-detroit-441914.html (Last Accessed: 22 July 2017).

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NOTES

26. Ibid., Carmeuse Lime, the cement manufacturing plant, emits sulfur dioxide, “ultrafine particulate matter called PM 2.5, nitrogen oxides, hydrochloric acid, mercury and lead.” 27. Ibid. 28. Paul Mohai, ByoungSuk Kweon, Sangyun Lee, and Kerry Ard, “Air Pollution around Schools Is Linked To Poorer Student Health And Academic Performance.” Health Affairs 30, 5 (2011): 852862. 29. Eunice Y. Lee, et al., “Traffic-Related Air Pollution and Telomere Length in Children and Adolescents Living in Fresno, CA : A Pilot Study.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine 59,5 (2017): 446–452. 30. Schlanger, in “Choking to Death,” reports that: “In addition to scarring genetic material for generations to come, pollution exposure changes how a baby develops in the womb. Some pollution molecules, like the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in diesel exhaust, are known to cause cancer, perhaps especially when a person was exposed as a fetus. Others affect the heart; still others are neurotoxins. Air pollution also impairs immune development in utero, making it harder for those exposed to fight infection.” 31. Caitlin Kerfin, “Q&A: Shrewsbury Evangelical Leads Climate Care,” York Daily Record, July 21, 2015, http://www.ydr.com/story/weather/2015/07/21/q-shrewsbury-evangelicalleads-climate-care/72103186/ (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). 32. Ben Geman, “Evangelical group holds firm on ‘pro-life’ link to EPA rule.” The Hill, February 10, 2012, http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/209831-evangelical-group-holdsfirm-on-pro-life-link-to-epa-rule (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). Geman quotes Alexei Laushkin of EEN “We believe protecting the unborn from mercury poisoning is a consistent pro-life position. An issue that impacts the unborn—that’s where we resonate as a pro-life organization.” 33. Joshua Bennett, Jesus Riding Shotgun (New York City: Penmanship Books, 2009). This is an excerpt of a longer poem. 34. Allison Crimmins et al, “USGCRP, 2016: The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment.” Washington, DC : U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.7930/J0R49NQX 35. Candis Callison, How Climate Change Comes to Matter: The Communal Life of Facts (Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2013). It is interesting to note that asking people to estimate the degree of scientific consensus before telling them the figure, can result in a greater impact of the implications of the 97–99 percent consensus on human-induced global warming. 36. Matthew Nisbet and Newman, T. P., “Framing, the Media, and Environmental Communication,” in The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication, edited by H. Anders & R. Cox (London: Routledge, 2015). See also Nisbet’s classic take on framing science in “Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement.” Environment, March–April 2009. 37. George Monbiot, “The Denial Industry,” The Guardian, September 19, 2006, https://www. theguardian.com/environment/2006/sep/19/ethicalliving.g2 (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). 38. Teresa A. Myers et al., “A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change.” Climatic Change (2012) 113:1105–1112. In a later assessment, Nisbet reports that this may not be as effective as originally thought, further mentioning research that indicates that emphasizing local impact may be a successful strategy with conservative voters. Matthew Nisbet, “Will the Health Dangers of Climate Change Get People to Care? The Science Says: Maybe.” Climate Shift, last modified May 4, 2016, http://climateshiftproject.org/2016/05/04/ will-the-health-dangers-of-climate-change-get-people-to-care-the-science-says-maybe/ (Last Accessed: 31 July, 2017).

NOTES

275

39. Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Connie Roser-Renouf, Seth Rosenthal, and Matthew Cutler, Climate Change in the American Mind: November, 2016, Yale University and George Mason University, New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, 2017. This is the latest in a series of annual profiles that break the US public into six segments ranging from “alarmed”—those who are the most concerned about the issue and most motivated to action—to those “dismissive” of the science about climate change. In between these two ends of the spectrum, are four groups of people described as “concerned,” “cautious,” “disengaged,” and “doubtful.” They have tracked this trend for several years. 40. Ibid. 41. Samuel Tolbert, Jr., Jessie Bottoms, Seth Lartey, Ronald Cunningham, Carroll Baltimore, and Leonard Lovett, http://www.blackchurchclimate.org/black-church-climate-statement.html (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). 42. Oliver Milman, “‘World Can’t afford to Silence Us’: Black Church Leaders Address Climate Change.” The Guardian, July 24, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/ jul/24/african-methodist-episcopal-church-climate-change-letter (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). 43. Daniel Cox, Juhem Navarro-Rivera, J., and Robert P. Jones. Believers, Sympathizers and Sceptics: Why Americans are Conflicted about Climate Change, Environmental Policy, and Science (Washington, DC : Public Religion Research Institute, American Academy of Religion, 2014), https://www.prri.org/research/believers-sympathizers-skeptics-americans-conflictedclimate-change-environmental-policy-science/ (Last Accessed: 21 July, 2017). See also http:// climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/climate-change-latino-mind-may-2017/ (Last Accessed: 11 October, 2017). 44. Laurel Kearns “Climate Change” in Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology, 2nd. ed., edited by Whitney Bauman, Richard Bohannon, and Kevin O’Brien (New York: Routledge, 2017), 137–157. 45. Angela Manno, “Epiphany.” For the complete poem, see http://www.quakerearthcare.org/ article/epiphany (Last Accessed: 8 October, 2017). 46. Kari Norgaard, Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2011). 47. This ratcheting-up of emotion is particularly evident on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where people don’t have to physically interact with those they berate, and insulting and name-calling are ways to shut down serious constructive conversation. 48. George Marshall, “Communicating with Religious Communities on Climate Change: Research Overview and Emergent Narratives.” Journal of Interreligious Studies, 19 (2016): 1–10. 49. Bron Taylor, Gretel Van Wieren, and B. Zaleha, “The Greening of Religion Hypothesis (part two): Assessing the Data from Lynn White, Jr, to Pope Francis.” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 10 (3, 2016): 306–378. 50. “Islamic Declaration on Global Climate Change.” International Islamic Climate Change Symposium, last modified August 18, 2015, Last Accessed: September 10, 2016. http:// islamicclimatedeclaration.org/islamic-declaration-on-global-climate-change/ 51. “Indigenous Elders and Medicine Peoples Council Statement United Nations Convention on Climate Change COP21 Paris, France.” http://spiret.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/FormalStatement_ IndigenousEldersandMedicinePeoples_COP21.pdf (Last Accessed: 10 September, 2016). 52. “Bhumi Devi Ki Jai! A Hindu Declaration on Climate Change.” Hindu Declaration on Climate Change, 2015, http://www.hinduclimatedeclaration2015.org/english (Last Accessed: 10 September, 2016). 53. Ibid.

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54. David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth.” The New York Magazine, July 9, 2107, http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans. html (Last Accessed: 9 July, 2017). 55. Joanna Macy, Coming to Life. 56. Jerath Ravinder et al., “Physiology of long pranayamic breathing: Neural respiratory elements may provide a mechanism that explains how slow deep breathing shifts the autonomic nervous system.” Medical Hypotheses, Volume 67, 3, 2006: 566–571, or Gina Paul, Barb Elam, and Steven J. Verhulst, “A Longitudinal Study of Students’ Perceptions of Using Deep Breathing Meditation to Reduce Testing Stresses.” Teaching and Learning in Medicine 19 (3, 2007): 287–292. 57. Wohlleben, Hidden Life, 223. There are many books out now that discuss communication and cooperation between trees, including connections through fungal networks, hence there is much to be learned from our breathmates. See also Eduardo Kohn’s How Forests Think (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2013) and Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2012). 58. Alice Walker, The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 167. 59. Waskow, ibid. See also Waskow, “The Breath of Life and Prayer,” http://www.jewishlights. com (Last Accessed: 8 August, 2017).

11 Recovering/Uncovering Animality 1.

F. De Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016).

2.

K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1966), 125. The claim has, of course, been read in many different ways—see, for example, J. Burnett (1943), Greek Philosophy: Thales to Plato (London: Macmillan), 114–16. re. how Plato and others took this astonishing claim.

3.

A. Leopold (1949), “The Land Ethic,” published as the final essay in Leopold’s now classic A Sand County Almanac.

4.

R. Coppinger and L. Coppinger, What is a Dog? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 23–31.

5.

Virginia Morrell, “From Wolf to Dog,” Scientific American, 313 (1, 2015 [July]), 60–67, at 64. Morrell also mentions the co-domestication theme at 65.

6.

L. Lagoni, S. Hetts, and C. Butler, The Human-Animal Bond and Grief (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1994), 3.

7.

P. Waldau, “Second Wave Animal Law and The Arrival of Animal Studies,” Animal Law and Welfare – International Perspectives, edited by D. Cao and S. White (New York: Springer, 2016), 11–43, at 30.

8.

H. Ritvo, “The Emergence of Modern Pet-Keeping,” Animals and People Sharing the World, edited by A. Rowan (Hanover, New Hampshire: 1998), 13–31. As the editor says at p. 13, Ritvo “argues that pet-keeping in its modern form is, like animal protection societies, a Victorian invention, the motives for which were rather mixed.” Ritvo focuses on pet-keeping as a symbolic way to control, shape behavior, and condemn the lower classes for keeping pets. She states that it was “considered a suitable prerogative only for those who exercised similar control over their fellow human beings.”

9.

See, for example, a report on the roles of dogs in 60 societies—P. Gray. and S. Young, “Human– Pet Dynamics in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Anthrozoos 24.1: 17–30 (March 2011).

NOTES

277

10. Two fine examples are J. Bradshaw, Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet (New York: Basic Books, 2011); and J. Bradshaw, Cat Sense: How the New Feline Science Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet (New York: Basic Books, 2013). 11. B. Hare and V. Woods, The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter Than You Think (New York: Dutton, 2013), x. 12. Ibid., xi. 13. Originally, “euthanasia” is from Greek roots meaning “good” (eu) “death” (thanatos), with “good” measured in terms of the individual whose life is being taken. Convenience euthanasia is done solely for the convenience of the owner. The difference in these two senses is captured in the following comment by Craig Brestrup in Disposable Animals: Ending the Tragedy of Throwaway Pets (Leander, TX : Camino Bay Books, 1997, at 35): True euthanasia is “taking the life of one for whom no reasonable alternative exists in as painless and compassionate a fashion as possible and for the good and in the interests of the one whose life it is.” Brestrup, on the same page, uses the altogether harsher term “killing” when shelters take the life of millions of healthy and adoptable companion animals that the shelters deem unadoptable due to a curable illness or a correctable behavioral problem, or simply because they (the shelters) need to make room for new entrants. 14. M. Olmert, Made for Each Other: The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond (Cambridge MA : Da Capo Press, 2009). 15. Ibid., ix. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., x. 18. J. Mason, “Animals: From Souls and the Sacred in Prehistoric Times to Symbols and Slaves in Antiquity,” A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, edited by Linda Kalof (New York: Berg), 16–45, at 21. (Mason cites Kenneth Clark and Paul Shepard in support of this claim). 19. P. Waldau, Animal Studies: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 132. 20. Philo, De Praemiis et Poenis (with both Greek and English text), The Loeb Classical Library Series, No. 341, trans. F. H. Colson (London: Heinemann, Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1968), 85. 21. Other animals’ spirituality, and even at times divinity, is a common theme in ancient materials—an early scholarly review is I. Paulson, “The Animal Guardian: A Critical and Synthetic Review,” History of Religions, 3/2 (1964): 202–19; a more recent example can be found in K. Patton, “ ‘He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs’: Recovering Animal Theology in the Abrahamic Traditions,” The Harvard Theological Review, 93 (4, 2000 [Oct]): 401–34. 22. M. Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 10–11. 23. Metaphysics 1.980a22 in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Bollingen Series. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1984. 24. Waldau 2013, 8. 25. Ibid. 26. J. Rachels, Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 86. 27. See P. Waldau, “Animals as Legal Subjects,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

278

NOTES

28. M. Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (New York: St. Martin’s, 2002), x. 29. Isaac Bashevis Singer used the sacred Holocaust image to illuminate his view of the human/ nonhuman animal connection, stating that “in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis” and that “for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.” Cited in M. Gold, Animal Rights: Extending the Circle of Compassion (Oxford: Jon Carpenter, 1995), 25–26, at Footnote 9, which indicates that the first cite is from “Enemies, A Love Story,” and at Footnote 10, which indicates that the second cite is from “The Letter Writer” in The Séance and Other Stories. Charles Patterson in 2002 published Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust, New York: Lantern Books. Criticism of this comparison abounds—see, for example, the Wikipedia entry on Charles Patterson (Last Accessed: 11 July, 2017). 30. L. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (New York: Free Press, 2012). 31. G. Simpson, This View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1964), 106–07. 32. Explained in more detail at Waldau 2013, 76. 33. J. Ratey, R. Manning, R. and D. Perlmutter, Go Wild: Free Your Body and Mind from the Afflictions of Civilization (New York: Little, Brown and Co, 2014). 34. A particularly detailed explanation of each human’s “inner fish,” “inner reptile” and “inner monkey” appears in N. Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008). A documentary entitled “Your Inner Fish” (T. Cook et al, 2014, Tangled Bank Studies, Windfall Films) features three episodes— “Your Inner Fish;” “Your Inner Reptile;” and “Your Inner Monkey.” 35. Ratey et al. (2014), at 6 and also at 113. 36. R. Nelson, Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1982), Chapter 12, “Principles of Koyukon World View”, 225: “Each animal knows way more than you do. We always heard that from the old people when they told us never to bother anything unless we really needed it.” 37. See, for example, Ratey et al. (2014), Chapter 2, “What Ails Us: Not Disease but Afflictions.” 38. L. Buell, “American Literature and the American Environment: There Never Was an ‘Is’ without a ‘Where’,” The Harvard Sampler: Liberal Education for the Twenty-First Century, edited by J. Shepard, S. Kosslyn and E. Hammonds (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2011), 32–56. 39. Two insightful modern studies of, respectively, children and adults suggest a similar conclusion—R. Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005); and R. Louv, The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, NC : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2011). 40. One source for this quote, which appears to have been used as well by A. J. Muste (1885–1967), is M. Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War 1942–1949 (New York, Garland, 1972). 41. Viktor E. Frankl (1992), Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, 4th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press), 115. 42. For more on unlearning, see Waldau 2013 throughout, but particularly 73–74. 43. T. Berry, “Loneliness and Presence,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by P. Waldau and K. Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 5–10, at 5. 44. T. Berry, quoted in Waldau and Patton 2006, vii.

NOTES

279

45. The Dialogues of Plato, 2 vols., trans. B. Jowett, New York: Random House, 1937, at Volume 2, 290. 46. This form of argument, with variations, can be found in other classical Greek writers—see, for example, Fragments 15 and 16 of Xenophon (regarding horses, oxen, and lions conceiving of divine bodies in terms of, respectively, horses, oxen and lions) cited in K. Freeman, 1966, 22. 47. Critical thinking is described at length throughout Waldau 2013, but see especially the final section of Chapter 2. 48. S. R. L. Clark, The Moral Status of Animals (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 25–26. 49. Ibid., 7. 50. T. Ingold, “From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of Human–Animal Relations,” in Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives, edited by A. Manning and J. Serpell (London: Routledge), 1–22. 51. D. Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010). 52. Helvetius’ comments are made at the beginning of his A Treatise on Man; His Intellectual Faculties and His Education (published posthumously in 1777), at 5–6 (the beginning of Section I, Chapter III ), and then again at 49–50. The phrase used in the text relies on Bertrand Russell’s summary of Helvetius’ views, which are included in his witty but caricature-prone History of Western Philosophy—the relevant passage is cited in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell: 1903–1959, edited by R. Egner and L. Denonn (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), at 294.

12 Feral Becoming and Environmentalism’s Primal Future 1.

“Ecoterrorism in Vail: Arson Suspect Turns Herself In,” The Denver Post, November 29, 2012, http://www.denverpost.com/2012/11/29/ecoterrorism-in-vail-arson-suspect-turnsherself-in/

2.

Nicole Frey, “Group With No Members Torched Vail,” Vail Daily, January 6, 2006, http:// www.vaildaily.com/news/group-with-no-members-torched-vail/

3.

Robert S. Boynton, “Powder Burn,” Outside, January 1999, https://www.outsideonline. com/1908621/powder-burn

4.

Http://web.colby.edu/social-movements/media-of-movement/

5.

There are similar movements in Europe, but my focus is on the twenty-first-century American context with its antecedents in nineteenth-century activism and communitarian movements and its more recent roots in the back to the land movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

6.

Paul Joosee discusses the origin and application of the eco-terrorist label in “Elves, Environmentalism, and “Eco-terror”: Leaderless Resistance and Media Coverage of the Earth Liberation Front,” Crime Media Culture 8.1 (2012): 75–93.

7.

Henry Schuster, “Domestic Terror: Who’s Most Dangerous? Eco-terrorists Are Now Above Ultra-Right Extremists On the FBI Charts,” Cable Network News, August 24, 2005, http:// www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/schuster.column/ (Last Accessed: 29 July, 2015).

8.

Will Potter, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011).

9.

“Hypocrisy Is Our Greatest Luxury,” Satya, March 2004: 22–23. Malcolm X uses this phrase in 1964 in a speech at the founding rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity: http:// www.blackpast.org/1964-malcolm-x-s-speech-founding-rally-organization-afro-americanunity

10. Sarah M. Pike, For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical Eco-Activism (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2017).

280

NOTES

11. For further analysis of the role of grief and mourning in radical activism, see Sarah M. Pike, “Mourning Nature: The Work of Grief in Radical Environmentalism,” in the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 10.4 (2016): 419–41. 12. If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, directed by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman (Marshall Curry Productions, 2011). 13. Http://web.colby.edu/social-movements/media-of-movement/. See the documentary, “If A Tree Falls” for more information on ELF through the experience of activist Daniel McGowan. 14. Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland: PM Press, 2016). 15. This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork among radical environmentalists conducted from 2006–2015 at seven different sites in the United States. A fuller account of my research among radical activists can be found in For the Wild: Ritual and Commitment in Radical EcoActivism (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017). 16. Interview with author, October 1, 2014. 17. Anonymous zine, reclaim, rewild: a vision for going feral & actualizing our wildest dreams, n.d., 21. 18. Ibid., 6. 19. Dave Foreman, “What is Rewilding?” (http://rewilding.org/rewildit/what-is-rewilding/) and George Monbiot, “A Manifesto for Rewilding the World” (http://www.monbiot. com/2013/05/27/a-manifesto-for-rewilding-the-world/). 20. Anonymous zine, feral, a journal towards wildness, n.d., n.p. 21. N.d, n.p., published in San Francisco, CA . 22. Earth First! Journal, Beltane 2007: 29. 23. In this way, radical activism in the early twentieth century overlaps with the broader primitive skills movement as well as both green anarchist apocalyptic views. Thomas J. Elpel, “Primitive Living Skills,” Earth First! Journal, Eostar 2006: 8. For an important example of green anarchism, see Kevin Tucker, For Wildness and Anarchy (Salem, MO : Black and Green Press, 2010) and anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan’s Future Primitive and Other Essays (New York: Autonomedia, 1994). 24. Email message to author, September 16, 2006. 25. Peter Michael Bauer discusses the primitive skills movement and rewilding in “Primitive Skills v. Rewilding,” http://www.petermichaelbauer.com/primitive-skills-vs-rewilding/. The Sustainable Living Project also provides a short description of the primitive skills movement: https://sites.google.com/site/sustainablelivingproject/primitive-skills 26. Here I am thinking of Jane Bennett’s perspective on matter’s “vibrancy,” seen most clearly in the kind of fetishism around tools and tool use in primitive skills communities. See Bennett’s discussion of the power of things in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010). 27. Http://feralfutures.blogspot.com 28. “Conserving Wild Nature in Virginia,” in Earth First! Journal, Lughnasad 1999: 11. 29. Field notes, October 2014. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Http://buckeyegathering.net/home/vision/ 33. Http://www.lynxvilden.com 34. Field notes, October 2014.

NOTES

281

35. Luca Foglia, “A Natural Order,” Aperture 200, Fall 2010, http://lucasfoglia.com/2010/09/ aperture-issue-200-fall-2010/ 36. In George Weurthner, Eileen Crist, and Tom Butler, eds., Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth (Washington, DC : Island Press, 2014), 183–87. 37. http://www.wildroots.org 38. Ibid. 39. See “On Stolen Land: Decolonizing the ‘Primitive Skills’ Movement,” https://onstolenland. wordpress.com/2013/03/19/summary-and-response-to-decolonizing-restorative-justice-bydenise-c-breton/ 40. Http://buckeyegathering.net/native-scholarships/ 41. Sabitaj Mahal, “Fishbowl at Wild Roots, Feral Futures: Thoughts on Race, Identity and Solidarity,” Earth First! Journal, Brigid 2013: 18. 42. Http://www.lynxvilden.com 43. “Lynx Vilden—The Call of the Wild,” http://moonmagazine.org/lynx-vilden-the-call-of-thewild-2013-09-01/3/ 44. “A Primer for Living Off the Land,” http://www.apathways.com/living-off-the-land/ 45. Http://www.petermichaelbauer.com/thoughts-on-death/ 46. Rosebraugh, Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: Speaking for the Earth Liberation Front (New York: Lantern Books, 2004), 184. 47. “Earth First! of Humboldt County: Tools of the Trade,” Satya, March 2004: 39. 48. Jeff Barnard, “Fugitive in String of Eco-Terrorist Fires Surrenders,” Seattle Times, November 29, 2012, http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/fugitive-in-string-of-eco-terrorism-firessurrenders/ 49. Satya, December 2006: 36. 50. Earth First! Journal, Beltane 2011: 26. 51. Earth First! Journal, Beltane 2011: 49. 52. Earth First! Journal, Beltane 2014: 1.

13 From Refiner’s Fire to Refinery Fires 1.

For previous work on related topics, see Marion Grau, “Elements of Renewal: Fourfold Wisdom,” Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2010, 687–706.

2.

David Macauley, Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas (Albany: SUNY, 2010), 36.

3.

Fragment 22. Heraclitus, Fragments, Brooks Haxton (New York: Penguin Classics, 2001), 15.

4.

Serene Jones and Paul Lakeland, Constructive Theology: A Contemporary Approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 51f. The term “sensible transcendental” is Luce Irigaray’s.

5.

The variety of materials engaging the elements would suggest that there are many ways in which the human imagination can engage both spiritually, socially and economically with these sensible transcendentals. Children’s books, books about indigenous wisdom in four ways, directions, elements, pagan and Wiccan literatures, ancient and medieval alchemical texts, transitioning into modern chemical discourses, art work, images, and so forth.

6.

Philip Ball, The Elements: A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 20.

282

NOTES

7.

Ellen Armour, “Toward An Elemental Theology: A Constructive Theology,” in Theology That Matters: Ecology, Economy, and God, edited by Darby Kathleen Ray (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 48.

8.

And here I am indebted to the work of Douglas Meeks, Sallie McFague, John Cobb, and Darby Ray.

9.

I have further developed this in Grau, “Elements of Renewal: Fourfold Wisdom”. See also Macauley, Elemental Philosophy, David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 1997), and Armour, “Elemental Theology”.

10. Keller via Whitehead, see Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (New York/London: Routledge, 2003). 11. Cf. Anselm Franke’s and Graham Harvey’s work on animism. 12. Such as proposed by Mark Wallace in Mark I. Wallace, Green Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013). This would be in resistance to the reductionist materialisms that have allowed for some of the more crude despoliation of the cosmos. 13. Cf. David Abram and others, also a way to reintegrate indigenous spiritualities that have been dismissed as mythic and magical in their different conception of reality, but are in fact resident in many local premodern cultures. See David Abram, The Spell of The Sensuous (New York: Random House, 1996). 14. Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff, The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread and Resurrection (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 5. 15. Fragment 25. Heraclitus, Fragments, 17. 16. Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 3.11.8. 17. Armour, “Elemental Theology,” 52, 53. 18. Armour, “Elemental Theology,” 54. 19. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 88. 20. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 163. 21. Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Vintage, 2006), 281. 22. Robert Kandel, Water from Heaven: The Story of Water From the Big Bang To the Rise of Civilization and Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 44. 23. Quoted in Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 156–57. 24. Stephen J. Pyne, “Consumed by Either Fire or Fire: A Prolegomenon to Anthropogenic Fire,” in Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment, Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, and Leo Marx (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 80. 25. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 158. 26. Suzuki, The Sacred Balance, 174. 27. If we fail to look at problems like this by eliminating the false separations between economy, ecology, indigenous sovereignty and sustainability, colonial expansion of church and capitalism, we fail to grasp to address them adequately and fully, and we will fall short in crafting hopeful alternatives. I use the work of economists, ecologists, energy specialists, historians, and journalists who have all written extensively on the issues of oil, ecology, indigenous peoples, and Arctic Place. 28. An earlier version of this account was published online at http://religiondispatches.org/ decolonizing-thanksgiving-at-standing-rock-a-black-friday-report/

NOTES

283

29. See Marion Grau, “Caribou and Carbon Colonialism: Toward A Theology of Arctic Place,” in Eco-Spirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth, edited by Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 435. 30. “In Africa, Pentecostal religion is popular because it takes indigenous worldviews of mystical causalities seriously, democratizes access to the sacred, and purveys an interventionist piety that helps ordinary people to cope with the fears and insecurities of life. Anointing prayer services, examined as part of this work, thus rank among the most popular religious programs advertised by African Pentecostal movements. The underlying worldviews help to extend the appeal of Pentecostal spirituality in a context where religion is expected to serve very practical ends through conquests of evil and restorations of health and wholeness.” J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “ ‘Unction to Function’: Reinventing the Oil of Influence in African Pentecostalism,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13.2 (2005): 232. 31. Theophilus of Antioch (Apologia ad Autolycum, Book I, Chapter 12). I thank Matthew Rindge for this reference. 32. For an exploration of oil as sacrament in distinction to caribou meat as the sustaining substance for Alaskan Gwich’in resisting drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, see Grau, “Caribou and Carbon”. 33. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unction to Function,” 235. 34. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unction to Function,” 238. 35. Jürgen Moltmann, Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser/ Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995), 163ff. 36. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unction to Function,” 238. 37. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unction to Function,” 251. 38. Olive leaves were at times thought to be a symbol of well-being, hence also of reconciliation and peace. See Daniel Hillel, The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 292, fn. 15. 39. Asamoah-Gyadu, “Unction to Function,” 254. 40. Wallace, Green Christianity, 22f. 41. Elisabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983/1994), vliii. 42. J. F. Coakley, “The Anointing at Bethany and the Priority of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 107, no. No. 2 (June 1988): 248. 43. Coakley, “Anointing at Bethany,” 246. 44. See Joel Marcus, “Crucifixion as Parodic Exaltation,” JBL 125, no. 1 (2006): 73–87. 45. Bieler and Schottroff, The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread and Resurrection, 91–92. 46. Terri Lynn Karl, loc. cit. 47. Robert Holst, “The One Anointing of Jesus: Another Application of the Form-Critical Method,” JBL 95, no. 3 (September 1976): 445. 48. Holst, “One Anointing,” 445. 49. Chapter 8 in Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2013). 50. Moe-Lobeda, Resisting. 51. “Can a story that has lost all reference to fire satisfy us?” My translation. Giorgio Agamben, Die Erzählung und das Feuer (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2014), 8. 52. For if you consider the loss of fire, location and the formula of the prayers as progress, and if one sees in the result of such progress—of secularization—the liberation of the narrative

284

NOTES

from its mythical origins and the creation of an—autonomous and matured—literature in the distinct sphere of culture, there is no longer any meaning to a sense of “Enough.” (My translation.) Agamben, Die Erzählung und das Feuer, 8. 53. Several decades ago, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, a Venezuelan minister and co-founder of Opec, used this phrase to describe petroleum. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/ davidblair/100186562/oil-the-devils-excrement-has-ruined-nigeria-other-african-countriesmust-hope-none-is-found-in-their-waters/ 54. See, for example, Naomi Klein’s account of the strong and well-funded resistance in political and economically powerful circles that has engaged in blocking advances, funded denialism, and now have captured key positions in the US administration, that amount to more than just inaction. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Against Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), especially Chapters 2 through 5. 55. Cf. Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now And Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon, 1996).

14 Fire, Religion, Nature, and Shona Culture 1.

Guardians of the Land: Essays on Central African Territorial Cults, edited by M. Schoffeleers and T. O. Ranger (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1978), 5.

2.

Ibid., Chapter 1.

3.

M. F. C. Bourdillon, “Cults of Dzivaguru and Karuva amongst the North-Eastern Shona Peoples,” in Guardians of the Land: Essays on Central African Territorial Cults, edited by M. Schoffeleers and T. O. Ranger (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1978), 235–55. The focus on fertility, rain, and good harvest all raise questions about the role of women among the Shona because their day-to-day lives are affected by these concerns, just like their ability to harness fire.

4.

The Karanga, like the Zezuru, Kore Kore, Ndau, Manica, are five out of eight or nine distinct groups of Bantu-speaking people living in Zimbabwe today. Studying one dialect of the same Bantu language and marriage customs and folklore tell us a lot about Shona people.

5.

H. Aschwanden, Karanga Mythology: An Analysis of the Consciousness of the Karanga in Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1989), 1–48.

6.

Ibid., 26–30.

7.

M. Bourdillon, The Shona People: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1987), 277.

8.

Ibid., 277. See also Aschwanden, 1989, 30.

9.

Bourdillon, 1987, 277.

10. Ignoring issues raised about fire and women, Schoffeleers and Bourdillon focus on claims of authority and activities of men acting as “owners” of the land, family, and rulers in society. There is no mention of women harnessing fire. 11. Schoffeleers, 1978, 3. 12. Aschwanden, 1989, 26–31. Even the names of Mwari in the masculine are concerned with fertility. The main difference is that women are the focus, especially when it comes to making sure humans flourish as living creatures among others. 13. D. Lan, Guns & Rain: Guerillas & Spirit Medium in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985), 25. 14. Observations made on one of my visits to Chigombe, the Shona village near the boarding school at which my mother lived as a school teacher during most of my early childhood. 15. M. Gelfand, “The Mother and Child,” Native Affairs Department Journal (NADA ), (XI ) 1969: 76–80.

NOTES

285

16. Ibid., 1967. The African Witch (Edinburgh: 1967), 32–37. This book has depictions of varoyi. The image in the book with women dancing around the fire is striking because the women look happy to be evil. 17. G. Chavhunduka, Traditional Healers and the Shona Patient (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1978), 101, Appendix II , “The Witchcraft Suppression Act.” 18. Kutsvaga huni was a good opportunity to make friends with other women in communities which viewed women as outsiders to the lineages of their husbands—exogamy. See E. Schmidt, Peasants, Traders, and Wives: Shona Women in the History of Zimbabwe, 1897– 1939 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1992), 16. 19. During my childhood I paid regular visits to my now deceased grandmother, Emma. She lived approximately half an hour from the Catholic boarding school at which I spent most of my youth. Emma said, “If you see dark smoke, turn away because you are likely to run into someone with bad intentions, like a witch and get poisoned.” A good fire produced smoke which looked more like white clouds and didn’t cause people to cough. 20. Schoffeleers, 1978, 3. 21. I have a big scar covering the top of my foot and leg, suggesting an accident in which something very hot fell on me as a toddler. My own mother was going through a divorce which separated her from her children for a whole year until the courts decided to breach the traditional norm by granting her custody. So yes, fire is very dangerous. 22. Most Shona people will opt for the electric stove. Kugadza mapfiwa is now viewed as an outdated marriage custom. 23. M. Bourdillon, The Shona People: An Ethnography of the Contemporary Shona (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1987), 21–22. 24. I spent enough time with Grandma Emma during my youth to know that fire was also a symbol of a woman’s knowledge and power in the community. 25. D. Lan, Guns & Rain: Guerillas & Spirit Medium in Zimbabwe (London: James Currey, 1985), passim. 26. Emma often pulled up weeds early in the morning, stopped for lunch back in the hut, then disappeared into a neighboring forest at the end of which was a nice place to sit and fish for trout, especially during summer. 27. F. Posselt, “Mashona Folklore,” Journal for the Native Affairs Department (NADA /5), 1927: 35–39. I also observed Grandma Emma, a traditional Shona woman who resisted modernity, and challenged people like my western-educated mother to give her good reasons for abandoning the philosophy and environmental ethics of Shona tradition. 28. Ibid. 29. Northrop Frye cited by S. Ranger, The Word of Wisdom and the Creation of Animals in Africa (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2007), 15. 30. C. M. Sims and M. Stephens, Living Folklore: An Introduction to the Study of People and Their Traditions (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2nd ed., 2011), 8–11. 31. Schmidt, 1992, 19–28. 32. The Standard Shona Dictionary is based on a study of different dialects of Shona, including the Karanga. 33. H. Aschwanden, Karanga Mythology: An Analysis of the Consciousness of the Karanga in Zimbabwe (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1989). This book is based on interviewing nurses, i.e. modern women working at a mission hospital whose way of thinking about the Shona past was already transformed, at least when it comes to medicine.

286

NOTES

34. Ibid.,16–18. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., 18. 37. Ibid. 38. J. McCulloch, Black Peril: White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000), 122–66. 39. M. F. C. Bourdillon, Where are the Ancestors? Changing Culture in Zimbabwe (Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1993), passim. 40. M. Daneel, God of the Matopo Hills (The Hague: Mouton & Co. 1970), 22–35; Aschwanden, 1989, 26–31. 41. T. O. Ranger, “The Meaning of Mwari,” Rhodesian History, 5 (1974), 5–17. 42. Aschwanden, 1989, 26–31. 43. During the summer holidays, when boarding schools were closed, I would sleep next to Grandma Emma. I spent a lot of time wondering if witches existed. Stories about their appetite for tender human flesh, not to mention their ability to get through locked doors and control poisonous snakes, preyed on the mind. 44. There is a description of kutsvaga huni under the discussion of women as agents of knowledge about fire above. 45. Lan, 1985, passim. 46. W. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption, and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996). 47. J. McCulloch, J, Asbestos Blues: Labor, Capital, Physical & The State in South Africa (London: James Currey, 2002). Although more attention is paid to human suffering than ecological destruction, this book highlights the danger the health risks of mining raw materials with or without fire. 48. T. O. Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896–97: A Study of African Resistance (London: Heinemann, 1967). 49. Ibid. 50. E. Schmidt, Foreign Intervention in Africa: From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See the chapter on Southern Africa, 103– 141. 51. Ibid. Zimbabwe was called “Southern Rhodesia” from 1890 to 1960. It was then known as “Rhodesia” until 1979, when the British decided to give the country official independence from white-minority rule. Since 1980, the country uses the name “Zimbabwe.” 52. Schmidt, 1992, passim. 53. Ibid., 122–78. 54. I. Linden, The Catholic Church and the Struggle for Zimbabwe (London: Longman Group, 1979). See also J. McLaughlin, On the Frontline: Catholic Missions in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare: Baobab Books, 1996). 55. Schmidt, 2013, 103–41. The Interim Prime Minister of Zimbabwe at independence was Bishop Abel Muzorewa of the Methodist Church. The first president, Bishop Canaan Banana, was also Methodist. The concept of God called upon for deliverance from violence and oppression was more the Christian God of dominion, who was also known to take sides with the poor, than the ecological deity of Mwari. 56. Ibid. 57. My own observations made on a tourist visit to Heroes Acre, Spring 1999.

NOTES

287

58. Heroes Acre is situated on forest hill on the outskirts of the city of Harare. Graves of war heroes are on display as proof of a use of fire to fight a territorial war uniting all the Shona and Ndebele people to create one nation of Zimbabwe. 59. Schmidt, 2013, 103–41. 60. https://onbeing.org/programs/isabel-mukonyora-sacred-wilderness-an-african-story/ 61. I. Mukonyora, “Four Ways into an African sacred wilderness: a study of Johane Masowe’s Teaching,” Religion, 45.2 (2015): 209–20. 62. Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus all come to mind as biblical figures who inspired Johane Masowe to develop an oral tradition of Christianity where different images combine to create a new meaning of nature as a source of symbolic speech about God for victims of oppression from Bantu backgrounds like that of the Shona. 63. Fieldwork and research conducted in Harare between 1996 and the year 2000. See I. Mukonyora I in “Religion Politics and Gender in Zimbabwe,” Displacing the State: Religion and Conflict in Neoliberal Africa, edited by J. H. Smith, and R. I. J. Hackett (Notre Dame, IL : University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 136–59. 64. I. Mukonyora, Wandering a Gendered Wilderness (New York: Peter Lang Publishing House, 2017), passim. 65. Aschwanden, 1989, passim.

15 Protective Occupation, Emergent Networks, Rituals of Solidarity 1.

See: http://meahcci.info/altakraft-n.htm

2.

UNDRIP is the acronym for United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, 2007. See: http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS_en.pdf. With regard to religious claims in this context, see Michael McNally, “Religion as Peoplehood: Native American Religious Traditions and the Discourse of Indigenous Rights” in Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 52–79; Siv Ellen Kraft, “U.N.-Discourses on Indigenous Religion” in Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 80–91.

3.

Robert Sullivan, A Whale Hunt (New York and London: Touchstone Books, 2000).

4.

On the river and legal personhood, see, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ mar/16/new-zealand-river-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-being

5.

John T. Solbakk, Álttà-Guovdageaineanu stuimmi birra. Dráma odda áiggis. Drama i Nyere tid. Kampen om Alta-Kautokeinoelva (Karasjok: CálliidLágádus – Forfatternes Forlag, 2010).

6.

Lecture at UiT. The Arctic University of Norway, August 17, 2016, “The possibilities of translation in politics: gathering around an interest in common that is not the same interest.” See also Marisol de la Cadena, Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice Across Andean Worlds (Durham, NC , and London: Duke University Press, 2015).

7.

Kraft’s translation from Norwegian: “Folkeaksjonen mot utbygging av Alta-Keutokeino vassdraget.”

8.

Kraft’s translation from Norwegian: “Norges Naturvernforbund.”

9.

Solbakk, John T. Álttà-Guovdageaineanu stuimmi birra. Dráma odda áiggis. Drama i Nyere tid. Kampen om Alta-Kautokeinoelva (Karasjok: CálliidLágádus – Forfatternes Forlag, 2010).

10. Bjørn Bjerkli and Per Selle, “Samisk offentlighet og makt,” in Samer, makt og demokrati. Sametinget og den nye samiske offentligheten. Makt og demokratiutredningen 1998–2003, edited by Bjørn Bjerkli and Per Selle (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 2003), 15–47.

288

NOTES

Georg Parmann, Kampen om Alta – en trussel mot vårt demokrati? (Oslo: Dreyers forlag, 1980). 11. Parmann, Kampen om Alta, 186. 12. See for instance minutes from public meeting at the Detsika camp, August 27, 1979, Detsika camp, signed Inger Johanne Wiese and Kristin Amundsen, Arkivskaper folkeaksjonen mot utbygging av Alta-Kautokeino vassdraget. 13. Bjerkli and Selle, “Samisk offentlighet og makt,” 21; Henry Minde, “The Alta Case: From the Local to the Global and Back Again,” in Discourses and Silences: Indigenous Peoples, Risks and Resistance, edited by Garth Cant, Anake Goodall, and Justine Inns (Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 2005), 13–34; Henry Minde, “The Destination and the Journey: Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations from the 1960s through 1985,” in Indigenous Peoples. Self-determination, Knowledge, Indigeneity, edited by Henry Minde et al. (Delft: Eburon Academic Publisher: 2008), 49–86. 14. Kraft’s translation from Norwegian: “Vi tapte kampen, men vant freden”, “Historien bak arkivbildene”, NRK Sápmi 3.11.2010, https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/historiene-fra-altaaksjonen–1.7365926 15. Colin Samson and Carlos Gigoux, Indigenous Peoples and Colonialism: Global Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), 134. 16. Kraft’s translation from Norwegian: Dette er vår fellessak. Det er blitt en symbolsak, man kan med rette si at dette er verdens Alta-sak, NRK Sápmi, “Demonstrasjon mot oljerør: – Vi står sammen med våre brødre og søstre” (Demonstration against oil pipeline: – We stand united with our brothers and sisters), 7.11.2016. 17. To give an example, the Nagaland-based newspaper The Morung Express, on January 12th featured the article “Learning from Standing Rock & each other.” Linked to an ongoing conflict in Manipur, India, journalist Aheli Moitra urges protesters to learn from Standing Rock. 18. Jenni Monet, “Standing Rock Tribal Council Approves Evacuation Order for All Camps,” Indian Country Media Network, January 2, 2017 at: https://indiancountrymedianetwork. com/news/environment/standing-rock-tribal-council-approves-evacuation-order-camps/ 19. On the initial phase of the movement, see Saul Elbein, “The Youth Group that Launched a Movement at Standing Rock,” The New York Times Magazine, January. 31, 2017. 20. For a timeline of the dispute and related documents and videos, see inter alia, http: //oiwi.tv/ maunakea/. For a scholarly account, see Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, “Protectors of the Future, Not Protestors of the Past: Indigenous Pacific Activism on Mauna a Wākea,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 116.1 (2017): 184–194. 21. All hearing-related documents are located at: http://dlnr.hawaii.gov/mk/documents-library/ 22. For an in-depth discussion of the conflict and religious action therein, see Greg Johnson, “Materialising and Performing Hawaiian Religion(s) on Mauna Kea”, in Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 156–175. 23. “Significance” or absence thereof is the pivotal term in Hawai‘i State Law with regard to evaluations of traditional and customary usage in land use contexts. See Hawai‘i Revised Statutes 343–2. 24. On the theme of kapu aloha, see the excellent video, Kapu Aloha 101: http://oiwi.tv/ maunakea/kapu-aloha–101/ 25. For a discussion relating traditional Hawaiian deities to present circumstances, see Lilikalā Kame‘eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires: Pehea Lā E Pono Ai? (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 1992).

NOTES

289

26. Clearly, this kind of discourse (“We are”) echoes a long tradition of sympathetic identification and solidarity-making, including in the contexts of Charlie Hebdo and 911, but also as seen, with the pronoun shifted, in the rhetoric of John F. Kennedy in Berlin. Whether deliberately drawing on this rhetorical tradition, the “We are” trope makes sense to audiences outside of Hawai‘i while announcing a generalized invitation to join an indigenous cause. 27. For a sustained analysis of the dialectical quality of local-global forms of indigeneity, see Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft, “Introduction” in Handbook of Indigenous Religion(s), edited by Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1–24. 28. On refusal and indigeneity, see Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, NC , and London: Duke University Press, 2014). 29. See: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/rise 30. YouTube, uploaded September 21, 2016. Emphasis marks an interviewer’s question. 31. For a discussion of survivance, see Gerald Vizenor, Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance (Lincoln, NE , and London: University of Nebraska Press: 1994). On related themes, see Jace Weaver, Craig S. Womack and Robert Warrior, American Indian Literary Nationalism (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press: 2006). 32. James Clifford, Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 2013). 33. See, e.g., Magnar Mikkelsen, Elva skal leve (The River shall live), (Oslo: Cappelens forlag A.S: 1980), 97, 99. 34. Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft, “Introduction”, 11. 35. Ann Hironaka, Greening the Globe: World Society and Environmental Change (New York: Cambridge University Press: 2014), 14. 36. In Norwegian: La elva leve, in Sami: ellos jokka. 37. Kraft’s translation from Norwegian: Jeg var lykkelig. Jeg husker at jeg tenkte at dette er det viktigste jeg gjør i livet og at jeg var med på å endre historien der vi satt, NRK Sámi Radio. “Historiene bak arkivbildene” (Stories behind the archive images), November 3, 2010. https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/historiene-fra-alta-aksjonen–1.7365926 38. A video recording of Kihoi’s testimony can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=b25PBf7PgfU 39. See also Greg Johnson and Siv Ellen Kraft, “Field Notes: Standing on the Sacred: Ceremony, Discourse, and Resistance in the Fight against the Black Snake.” The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature & Culture, 11.1 (2017): 131–147. 40. Kraft, “U.N.-Discourses on Indigenous Religion,” 80–91. 41. Posted on the website of No Spiritual Surrender on June 2, 2017, signed Redhawk.

16 Buddhism, Bodhisattvas, and the Compassionate Wisdom of Water 1.

This chapter is largely based on a chapter in my doctoral dissertation. Elizabeth McAnally, “Contributions to an Integral Water Ethic: Cultivating Love and Compassion for Water ” (Ph.D. diss., California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, 2017). Within this chapter, “Tib.” indicates the phonetic Tibetan transcription, and “Wyl.” indicates the Wylie transliteration of the Tibetan.

2.

Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Random House, 1999).

3.

The term dharma has many meanings. For the definition of dharma as the path, see Butön Rinchen Drup, Butön’s History of Buddhism in India and Its Spread to Tibet: A

290

NOTES

Treasury of Priceless Scripture, trans. Lisa Stein and Ngawang Zangpo (Boston: Snow Lion, 2013), 18. 4.

Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 134.

5.

Ibid., 130.

6.

For more about relative bodhicitta and absolute bodhicitta, see Dilgo Khyentse, The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva, trans. Padmakara Translation Group (Boston: Shambala, 2007), 106–74.

7.

Karl Brunnhölzl, Gone Beyond: The Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, The Ornament of Clear Realization, and Its Commentaries in the Tibetan Kagyü Tradition, vol. 1, trans. Karl Brunnhölzl (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2010), 237.

8.

Shāntideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva: A Translation of the Bodhicharyāvatāra, revised edn, trans. Padmakara Translation Group (Boston: Shambhala, 2006), 49 (chapter 3, verse 18).

9.

Ibid., 48 (chapter 3, verse 8).

10. Dilgo Khyentse, Heart of Compassion, 27–28 (verse 1). 11. Ibid., 30 (verse 11). 12. Ibid., 36 (verse 36). 13. Thich Nhat Hanh, “Look Deep and Smile: Thoughts and Experiences of a Vietnamese Monk: Talks and Writings of Thich Nhat Hanh,” edited by Martine Batchelor, in Buddhism and Ecology, edited by Martine Batchelor and Kerry Brown (New York: Cassell Publishers Limited, 1992), 105–06. 14. Shāntideva, Way of the Bodhisattva, 166 (chapter 10, verse 19). 15. Malcolm David Eckel, “Hsüan-tsang’s Encounter with the Buddha: A Cloud of Philosophy,” in Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination, edited by Kimberley Christine Patton and John Stratton Hawley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 112. 16. Martin Willson, In Praise of Tara: Songs to the Saviouress (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1986), 123. 17. John Blofeld, Bodhisattva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc, 1978), 18. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 66. 20. Michele Martin, Music in the Sky: The Life, Art & Teachings of the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 11. 21. Buswell Jr. and Lopez Jr., Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 421–22. 22. Roger Cohn, “For Buddhist Leader, Religion and the Environment Are One,” Yale Environment 360, April 16, 2015, http://e360.yale.edu/feature/for_buddhist_leader_ religion_and_the_environment_are_one/2866/ (Last Accessed: 15 December 2016). 23. H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Walking the Path of Environmental Buddhism through Compassion and Emptiness,” Conservation Biology 25, no. 6 (2011): 1094. doi:10.1111/j.1523–1739.2011.01765.x 24. Khoryug, “Activity,” http://www.khoryug.com/karmapa-goals/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 25. Stephanie Kaza, ed., Hooked!: Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume (Boston: Shambhala, 2005). 26. These conferences were held in Sarnath (March 21–25, 2009), the Gyuto Monastery in Dharamsala (October 3–5, 2009), Bylakuppe, Mysore (November 14–16, 2010), Norbulingka

NOTES

291

Institute in Dharamsala (June 5–9, 2012), and the India International Centre in New Delhi (November 8–12, 2013). 27. Khoryug (Wyl. khor yug) is the word generally used for “environment” in the Tibetan language. It can also mean “surrounding area,” “circumference,” “horizon,” and the outermost limit of the world in traditional Buddhist cosmology. The Tibetan & Himalayan Library, S.v. khor yug, http://www.thlib.org/reference/dictionaries/tibetan-dictionary/translate.php (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 28. Khoryug, “Vision,” http://www.khoryug.com/vision/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 29. World Wildlife Fund, “Sacred Earth: Faiths for Conservation,” http://www.worldwildlife.org/ initiatives/sacred-earth-faiths-for-conservation (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016); World Wildlife Fund, “Tibetan Monasteries at Work for the Environment,” https://www.worldwildlife. org/stories/tibetan-monasteries-at-work-for-the-environment (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 30. Lhundup Damchoe and Jo Gibson, “17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, launches a new website on environmental protection,” Kagyu Monlam Chenmo, December 22, 2009, http:// www.kagyumonlam.org/English/News/Report/Report_20091222_1.html (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016); Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale, “Pope Francis and the Environment: Yale Examines Historic Climate Encyclical,” transcript from the Panel on the Papal Encyclical held at Yale University, April 8, 2015, http://fore.yale.edu/files/Papal_Panel_ Transcript.pdf (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 31. Anjana Pasricha, “Buddhist Monks in the Himalayas Learn Fresh Water Conservation,” VOA News, November 8, 2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/buddhist-monks-in-thehimalayas-learn-fresh-water-conservation/1786449.html (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 32. Cohn, “Buddhist Leader.” 33. Kagyu Office, “Khoryug Conference: Gyalwang Karmapa Blesses the Yamuna River,” November 11, 2013, http://kagyuoffice.org/khoryug-conference-gyalwang-karmapa-blessesthe-yamuna-river/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 34. Kagyu Office, “Gyalwang Karmapa Offers Clean Water to the People of Bodh Gaya as a Gift of Gratitude,” December 8, 2010, http://kagyuoffice.org/gyalwang-karmapa-offers-cleanwater-to-the-people-of-bodh-gaya-as-a-gift-of-gratitude/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 35. Kagyu Office, “Karmapa Offers Clean Water;” Buswell Jr. and Lopez Jr., Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, 37. 36. Kagyu Office, “Karmapa Offers Clean Water.” Italics in the original. 37. Khoryug, “Activity.” 38. United Nations, Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security in Asia and the Pacific (Bangkok: United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2009), 70. 39. Keith Schneider and C. T. Pope, “China, Tibet, and the Strategic Power of Water,” Circle of Blue, May 8, 2008, http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2008/world/china-tibet-and-thestrategic-power-of-water/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 40. Xiang Huanga et al., “Water quality in the Tibetan Plateau: Major ions and trace elements in the headwaters of four major Asian rivers,” Science of the Total Environment 407, no. 24 (December 1, 2009): 6242–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.09.001 41. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Walking the Path,” 1095. 42. Ibid., 1096. 43. Martin, Music in the Sky, 11. 44. Richard H. Robinson and Willard L. Johnson, The Buddhist Religion: A Historical Introduction, 4th ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997), 108. 45. I thank Aaron Weiss for his translation of Chenrezik. Personal communication, December 11, 2016.

292

NOTES

46. Taigen Dan Leighton, Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and their Modern Expression, rev. ed. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003), 184. 47. Dilgo Khyentse, Heart of Compassion, 50, 239 n33. 48. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Walking the Path,” 1095. 49. Ibid., 1097. 50. Kagyu Office, “ ‘Environmental Conservation Must Be the Essence of Our Spiritual Practice’: Gyalwang Karmapa,” November 12, 2014, http://kagyuoffice.org/environmentalconservation-must-be-the-essence-of-our-spiritual-practice-gyalwang-karmapa/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 51. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Walking the Path,” 1094. 52. Ibid., 1095. 53. The Tibet Post International, “World Environment Day & 4th Environmental Conference,” June 7, 2012, http://www.thetibetpost.com/en/features/environment-and-health/2593-worldenvironment-day-a–4th-environmental-conference (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 54. Cohn, “For Buddhist Leader.” 55. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, “Walking the Path,” 1096. 56. Stephanie Kaza, Mindfully Green: A Personal and Spiritual Guide to Whole Earth Thinking (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2008), 13. 57. Stephanie Kaza, “To Save All Beings: Buddhist Environmental Activism,” in Engaged Buddhism in the West, edited by Christopher S. Queen (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 159, 170, 172. 58. One Earth Sangha, “EcoSattva Training,” http://www.oneearthsangha.org/programs/ ecosattva-training/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016). 59. One Earth Sangha, “EcoSattva Vows,” http://www.oneearthsangha.org/programs/ecosattvatraining/vows/ (Last Accessed: 15 December, 2016).

17 Mountains of Memory 1.

Ed Bernbaum, “Sacred Mountains: Themes and Teachings,” Mountain Research and Development 26 (2006): 304–09.

2.

Victoria Castro and Carlos Aldunate, “Sacred Mountains in the Highlands of the SouthCentral Andes,” Mountain Research and Development, 23 (2003): 73–79.

3.

Orville Schell, “China’s Magic Melting Mountain,” Conde Nast Traveler (Conde Nast, 2010). Available online: http://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2010–01–14/china-s-magicmelting-mountain (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017).

4.

Mark Carey, “The History of Ice: How Glaciers Became an Endangered Species,” Environmental History 12 (2007): 497–527; Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen?: Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination (Seattle, WA : University of Washington Press, 2005).

5.

Carey, “The History of Ice”; Eric Wilson, The Spiritual History of Ice: Romanticism, Science, and the Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

6.

Brian M. Fagan, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850 (New York: Basic Books, 2000).

7.

Julie Cruikshank, “Glaciers and Climate Change: Perspectives from Oral Tradition,” Arctic 54 (2001): 377–93.

8.

Cruikshank, “Glaciers and Climate Change”, 377.

NOTES

9.

293

cf. Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (New York: Routledge, 2011): 147; Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology (New York: Routledge, 2008).

10. John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Ecology and Religion (Washington, DC : Island Press, 2014). 11. W. Neil Adger, Jon Barnett, F. S. Chapin, and Heidi Ellemor, “This Must Be the Place: Underrepresentation of Identity and Meaning in Climate Change Decision-Making,” Global Environmental Politics 11 (2011): 1–25; S. Mazumdar and S. Mazumdar, “Religion and Place Attachment: A Study of Sacred Places,” Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24 (2004): 385–97; Robert L. Thayer, LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice, (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2003). 12. Mark Bowen, Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest Mountains (New York: Henry Holt, 2005). 13. Lonnie G. Thompson, “Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options,” Behavior Analyst, 33 (2010): 153–70; Lonnie G. Thompson, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, H. Brecher, M. Davis, et al, “Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103 (2006): 10536–543; Lonnie G. Thompson, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, M. E. Davis, K. A. Henderson, et al., “Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records: Evidence of Holocene Climate Change in Tropical Africa,” Science 298 (2002): 589–93. 14. Elizabeth Allison, “The spiritual significance of glaciers in an age of climate change,” WIREs Climate Change 6 (2015): 493–508; Mark Carey, M. Jackson, Alessandro Antonello, and Jaclyn Rushing, “Glaciers, Gender, and Science: A Feminist Glaciology Framework for Global Environmental Change Research,” Progress in Human Geography, 40 (2016): 770– 93; Sverker Sörlin, “Cryo-History: Narratives of Ice and the Emerging Arctic Humanities,” in The New Arctic, edited by Birgitta Evengård, Joan Nymand Larsen, and Øyvind Paasche (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016): 327–39. 15. For example, see: Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove (eds.), Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016); Susan A. Crate, “Gone the bull of winter?: Grappling with the cultural implications of and anthropology’s role(s) in global climate change,” Current Anthropology 49.4 (2008): 569– 95; Susan A. Crate and Mark Nuttall (eds.), Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions (Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press, 2009); Michael R. Dove, The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Historical Reader (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2014); John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Riley E. Dunlap and R. J. Brulle, Climate Change and Society: Sociological Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Kari M. Norgaard, Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life (Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2011); Ben S. Orlove, E. Wiegandt, and B. H. Luckman (eds.), Darkening Peaks: Glacier Retreat, Science, and Society (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2008); Robin Globus Veldman, Andrew Szasz, and Randolph Haluza-DeLay (eds.), How the World’s Religions Are Responding to Climate Change: Social Scientific Investigations (New York: Routledge, 2014). 16. Sörlin, “Cryo-History ”, 327. 17. Douglas I. Benn and Lewis A. Owen, “Himalayan Glacial Sedimentary Environments: A Framework for Reconstructing and Dating the Former Extent of Glaciers in High Mountains,” Quaternary International 97–98 (2002): 3–25; J. G. Cogley, “Present and Future States of Himalaya and Karakoram Glaciers,” Annals of Glaciology, 52 (2011): 69–73; Antoine Rabatel, Bernard Francou, Alvaro Soruco, J. Gomez, et al., “Current state of glaciers in the tropical Andes: a multi-century perspective on glacier evolution

294

NOTES

and climate change,” The Cryosphere, 7 (2013): 81–102; Lonnie G. Thompson, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, M. E. Davis, and H. H. Brecher, “Tropical Glaciers, Recorders and Indicators of Climate Change, Are Disappearing Globally,” Annals of Glaciology 52 (2011): 23–34. 18. Megan Fetzer Sheehan, “Mingyong Glacier Receding in Northwest Yunnan,” The Nature Conservancy (n.d). Available online: http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/regions/ asiaandthepacific/china/explore/mingyong-glacier-receding-in-northwest-yunnan.xml (Last Accessed: 10 April, 2015). 19. Bowen, Thin Ice; Jonathan Mingle, Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015); Antoine Rabatel et al., “Current State of Glaciers in the Tropical Andes: A Multi-century Perspective on Glacier Evolution and Climate Change”; Thompson, “Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options”; Thompson et al, “Tropical Glaciers, Recorders and Indicators of Climate Change, Are Disappearing Globally ”. 20. Thompson et al., “Kilimanjaro Ice Core Records.” 21. Thompson et al., “Abrupt Tropical Climate Change: Past and Present.” 22. R. S. Bradley, M. Vuille, H. F. Diaz, and W. Vergara, 2006. “Climate Change: Threats to Water Supplies in the Tropical Andes,” Science 312 (2006): 1755–56. 23. Mark Carey, Olivia C. Molden, Mattias Borg Rasmussen, M. Jackson et al., “Impacts of Glacier Recession and Declining Meltwater on Mountain Societies,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 107 (2017): 354. 24. Carey, “The History of Ice”, 498. 25. Carey, “The History of Ice”, 514. 26. Brook Larmer, “The Big Melt,” National Geographic Magazine (April 2010). Available online: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/04/tibetan-plateau/larmer-text (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 27. Carolyn Kormann and Krystian Bielatowicz, “Last Days of the Glacier,” Virginia Quarterly Review 85 (2009): 32. Available online: http://www.vqronline.org/vqr-portfolio/last-daysglacier (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 28. Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990 [1980]). 29. Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2015). 30. Georgina Drew, “A Retreating Goddess? Conflicting Perceptions of Ecological Change near the Gangotri-Gaumukh Glacier,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 6 (2012): 353. 31. Drew, “A Retreating Goddess?”, 353–54. 32. Hildegard Diemberger, “The Horseman in Red: On Sacred Mountains of La stod (Southern Tibet),” in Tibetan Mountain Deities, Their Cults and Representations: Papers presented at a Panel of the 7th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Graz 1995, edited by Anne-Marie Blondeau (Wien: Verlag der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1998), 43–56. 33. Chris Coggins and Emily T. Yeh, “Introduction: Producing Shangrilas,” in Mapping Shangrila, edited by Emily T. Yeh, Chris Coggins, and Ralph Litzinger (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014). 34. Ralph Litzinger, “The Mobilization of ‘Nature’: Perspectives from Northwest Yunnan,” The China Quarterly 178 (2004), 496.

NOTES

295

35. Litzinger, “The Mobilization of ‘Nature’,” 497. 36. Litzinger, “The Mobilization of ‘Nature’,” 499. 37. Coggins and Yeh, “Introduction: Producing Shangrilas,” 6; Louisa Lim, “Glacier’s Melting Threatens Chinese Village’s Future,” National Public Radio (2007). Available online http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17271273 (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 38. Coggins and Yeh, “Introduction: Producing Shangrilas,” 6; Lim, “Glacier’s Melting Threatens Chinese Village’s Future”; Robert K. Moseley, “Historical Landscape Change in Northwestern Yunnan, China,” Mountain Research and Development 26 (2006): 214–19; Anja Byg and Jan Salick, “Local Perspectives on a Global Phenomenon: Climate Change in Eastern Tibetan Villages,” Global Environmental Change, 19 (2009): 156–66. 39. Coggins and Yeh, “Introduction: Producing Shangrilas,” 5; Lim, “Glacier’s Melting Threatens Chinese Village’s Future.” 40. Coggins and Yeh, “Introduction: Producing Shangrilas.” 41. Barry B. Baker and Robert K. Moseley, “Advancing Treeline and Retreating Glaciers: Implications for Conservation in Yunnan, P.R. China,” Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 39 (2007): 200–09; Schell, “China’s Magic Melting Mountain”; Sheehan, “Mingyong Glacier Receding in Northwest Yunnan.”. 42. Inge Bolin, “The Glaciers of the Andes are Melting: Indigenous and Anthropological Knowledge Merge in Restoring Water Resources,” in Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, edited by Susan Alexandra Crate and Mark Nuttall (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2009), 228–39; Constanza Ceruti, “Realm of the Ice-Cloaked Mountain Gods: High in the Andes Hope is Melting Away,” Explorers Journal 85: 3 (2007): 36–37; Kormann and Bielatowicz, “Last Days of the Glacier”; Michael J. Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cusco (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987). 43. Bolin, “The Glaciers of the Andes are Melting”; Kormann and Bielatowicz, “Last Days of the Glacier.” 44. Bolin, “The Glaciers of the Andes are Melting”; Ceruti, “Realm of the Ice-Cloaked Mountain Gods”; Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes. 45. Kormann and Bielatowicz, “Last Days of the Glacier.” 46. Bolin, “The Glaciers of the Andes are Melting”; Kormann and Bielatowicz, “Last Days of the Glacier ”; Antonio Regalado, “The Ukukus Wonder Why a Sacred Glacier Melts in Peru’s Andes,” Wall Street Journal (June 17, 2005). Available online: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ SB 111896313493862032 (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 47. Eduardo Duran, Healing the Soul Wound: Counseling with American Indians and Other Native Peoples (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006); Elisabeth Middleton, “A Political Ecology of Healing,” Journal of Political Ecology 17 (2010): 1–28. 48. Nancy J. Turner, Robin Gregory, Cheryl Brooks, Lee Failing, and Terre Satterfield, “From Invisibility to Transparency: Identifying the Implications,” Ecology and Society 13 (2008). Available online http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art7/ (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 49. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment. 50. Elizabeth Allison, “Religious Protected Sacred Sites of Khumbu”, in Sacred Sites of Khumbu Region, edited by Ang Rita Sherpa (Kathmandu, Nepal: The Mountain Institute, 2007). Available online: http://condesan.org/mtnforum/sites/default/files/publication/files/6309.pdf (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 51. Victor W. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1969). 52. Ingold, The Perception of the Environment, 148.

296

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53. Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque, NM : University of New Mexico Press, 2007). 54. Jonathan Mingle, “When the Glacier Left,” Boston Globe (November 29, 2009) p.C. Available online: http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/29/when_ the_glacier_left/ (Last Accessed: 10 July, 2017). 55. Mingle, Fire and Ice. 56. Bowen, Thin Ice. 57. Bowen, Thin Ice, 160. 58. Bowen, Thin Ice, 12. 59. http://en.unesco.org/events/international-launch-ice-memory-project 60. Stephen R. Kellert, The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society (Washington, DC .: Island Press, 1996); Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2015). 61. Larmer, “The Big Melt”; Mingle, Fire and Ice. 62. Glenn Albrecht, “ ‘Solastalgia’: A New Concept in Health and Identity,” PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature (2005): 41–55; Glenn Albrecht, G. M. Sartore, L. Connor, N. Higginbotham et al, “ ‘Solastalgia: The Distress Caused By Environmental Change,” Australasian Psychiatry 15 (2007): S95–8. 63. Turner et al., “From Invisibility to Transparency.” 64. Allison, “The Spiritual Significance of Glaciers.”

18 At the Mercy of Sacred Waters 1.

Sigurd Bergman, “Gregory of Nazianzen’s Theological Interpretation of the Philosophy of Nature in the Doctrine of the Four Elements,” in Studia Patristica, Vol. XXVII, edited by EA Livingston (Leuven: Peeters, 1993), 4.

2.

G. Böhme and H. Böhme, Feuer, Wasser, Erde, Luft: Eine Kulturgeschichte der Elemente (Munich: Beck, 2004), 19–20.

3.

Ibid., 21.

4.

Sigurd Bergman, “Cities on the Stream of God’s: Wandering in Mayan Sacred Geobraphy,” in Religion, Space and the Envrionment, edited by Sigurd Bergmann (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2014), 99–136.

5.

For a more detailed exploration of the global water crisis’ challenge to theology and ethics, see Peppard.

6.

D. Gerten, “Adapting to Climatic and Hydrologic Change: Variegated Functions of Religion,” in Religion and Dangerous Environmental Change: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on the Ethics of Climate and Sustainability (Berlin: Lit, 2010), 39–56.

7.

Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

8.

Following Böhme & Böhme (2004: 297), one can differentiate between three culturalhistorical modes of acknowledging the force of the natural elements: the mytho-religious; the emotional-moral; and the technical. These cannot, however, be related to specific historical periods and should not be misinterpreted as some kind of evolution from the one to the other. As this chapter states, the technical, and to a large degree technocratic, dominance of our own time rather triggers and provokes an alternative ecologic vision of the significance of the elements’ power that can be fertilized and accelerated by different religious and emotional approaches.

NOTES

9.

297

S. Monks, “ ‘Suffer a Sea-Change’: Turner, Painting, Drowning,” Tate Papers, Issue 14 (October 1, 2010), 3: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/suffer-seachange-turner-painting-drowning (Last Accessed: 28 January 2015).

10. Ibid., 4. 11. L. Hermann, “Waves,” in The Oxford Companion to JMW Turner, edited by E. Joll, M. Butlin, and L. Hermann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 373f. 12. In Turner’s own words, according to Reynolds (1969: 190). In the catalogue for the Academy’s exhibition in 1842, Turner wrote: “Snowstorm—steam-boat off a harbour’s mouth making signals in shallow water, and going by the lead. The author was in this storm on the night the Ariel left Harwich.” 13. Roters (1995: 64f.): “Die göttliche Allmacht verkörpert sich im Wetter selbst, an die Stelle der anekdotischen Schilderung vom Einwirken Gottes auf das Menschenschicksal ist die meteorologische getreten, in der das Wehen der Natur als der Mantel einer unbegreiflichen und unvorhersehbaren Schicksalsbewegung faßbar wird, der wir hilflos ausgeliefert sind.” 14. For a deeper exploration of this dimension, see my chapter on Turner in a forthcoming publication on weather and religion. 15. See note 12. 16. Ruskin, Modern Painters Volume 3, 301: “With him, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not the chief source of that impression; it is little more than a visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of nobler ideas—as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the reading of the mysteries of God.” Cf. Wheeler (1995: 173). 17. According to Piper (2000: 321). 18. S. Monks, “Suffer a Sea-Change,” 3. 19. For an insightful comparison of C. D. Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner, see Roters (1995: 61– 65). 20. Basil, Hexaemeron, Homily IV, trans. Blomfield Jackson, in From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 8, edited by P.. Schaff and H. Wace (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1895). 21. Ambrose, Hexaemeron, in The Fathers of the Church, A New Translation, Vol. 42, edited by R. J. Deferrari et al., III .8. Online Access: https://archive.org/stream/ fathersofthechur027571mbp/fathersofthechur027571mbp_djvu.txt (Last Accessed: 29 November, 2016). 22. Gregory of Nazianz, Orations, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. VII, Oration 28.28. 23. Ibid., Oration 28.16. 24. Sigurd Bergmann, Creation Set Free: The Spirit as Liberator of Nature (Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 2005), 85. 25. Gregory of Nazianz, Orations, Oration 38.17. 26. Ibid., Oration 38.16. 27. Ibid., Oration 39.16. 28. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lectures, Lecture III . On Baptism,” in Nicene and PostNicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Volume VII, edited by P. Schaff and H. Wace (Grand Rapids, MI : Eerdmans, 1983), 14–18. 29. Gregory of Nazians, Orations, Oration 40.7. 30. Ibid., Oration 40.38–40.

298

NOTES

31. K. Jaspers, Der Philosophische Glaube Angesichts Der Offenbarung (München: Piper, 1962), 225. 32. H. Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981). 33. D. Gerten, “Adapting to Climatic and Hydrologic Change.” 34. Matt. 5:45: “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (NIV ) Cf. Job 5:10: “He provides rain for the earth; he sends water on the countryside.” (NIV ), Psalm 65:9: “You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it.” (NIV ) 35. Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1 (New York [1867], 1976). 36. A. E. Wendling, Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 60. 37. A. Hornborg, “Technology as Fetish: Marx, Latour, and the Cultural Foundations of Capitalism, in Theory Culture Society3 y (June 10, 2013): 3. Online at: http://tcs.sagepub. com/content/early/2013/06/09/0263276413488960 (Last Accessed: 29 November, 2016.) A. E. Wendling, Karl Marx on Technology and Alienation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 60. 38. Ibid., 4. 39. S. Bergmann, “Fetishism Revisited: in the Animistic Lens of Eco-pneumatology,” in Journal of Reformed Theology 6 (2012): 195–215. 40. S. Bergman, “Life-giving Breath: Ecological Pneumatology in the Context of Fetishization,” in Ecumenical Review 65.1 (2013): 114–28. 41. See e.g. Delli Priscoli and Wolf (2009). 42. Gerten, “Adapting to Climatic and Hydrologic Change.” 43. G. Steinmann, “Art Without an Object but with Impact,” in S. Bergmann and F. Clingerman (eds.), Arts, Religion and the Environment: Exploring Nature’s Texture (Leiden, Brill, 2017).

19 Water from a Stone 1.

Henry Petroski, “Hoover Dam,” American Scientist 81.6 (1993).

2.

Michael Duchemin, “Water, Power, and Tourism: Hoover Dam and the Making of the New West (Essay),” California History 86.4 (2009).

3.

Norris Hundley, Water and the West: The Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West, ed. Compact Colorado River Commission, Colorado River. Second edition. ed., Colorado River Compact and the Politics of Water in the American West (Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, 2009).

4.

Wade Davis, “River Notes: A Natural and Human History of the Colorado,” (2013).

5.

H. C. Ross and S. E. Wolfe, “Life after Death: Evidence of the Hoover Dam as a Hero Project That Defends against Mortality Reminders,” Water History 8.1 (2016).

6.

Mary Ann Capehart, “Drought Diminishes Hydropower Capacity in Western US ,” Arizona Water Resource, no. Winter (2015).

7.

James Lawrence Powell, Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming, and the Future of Water in the West (2010).

8.

William L. Graf, “Geomorphology and American Dams: The Scientific, Social, and Economic Context,” Geomorphology 71.1–2 (2005).

NOTES

9.

299

David Sedlak, Water 4.0 the Past, Present, and Future of the World’s Most Vital Resource (New Haven, CT /London: Yale University Press, 2014).

10. Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Rev. and updated ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1993). 11. “The World’s Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources,” The world’s water: the biennial report on freshwater resources (1999). 12. Sedlak, 2014. 13. Ryder W. Miller and Peter Gleick, “The World’s Water: The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources 2002–2003,” Electronic Green Journal, no. 18 (2003). 14. Lynn White, The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis ([Washington?]: American Association of Science, 1967). 15. Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962). 16. White, 1967. 17. Douglas Lee Eckberg and T. Jean Blocker, “Varieties of Religious Involvement and Environmental Concerns: Testing the Lynn White Thesis,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 28.4 (1989). 18. Paul A. Djupe and Patrick Kieran Hunt, “Beyond the Lynn White Thesis: Congregational Effects on Environmental Concern,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48.4 (2009): 670–86. 19. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162.3859 (1968). 20. W. Jenkins, “After Lynn White: Religious Ethics and Environmental Problems,” Journal of Religious Ethics 37.2 (2009). 21. Djupe and Hunt, 2009. 22. Ronald Simkins, “The Bible and Anthropocentrism: Putting Humans in Their Place,” Dialectical Anthropology 38.4 (2014). 23. P. Harrison, “Subduing the Earth: Genesis-I, Early Modern Science, and the Exploitation of Nature,” in J. Relig. (1999). 24. New American Standard Bible, Loose-leaf reference ed. (Chicago, Ill.?: Moody, 1995). 25. Jason P. Roberts, “ ‘Fill and Subdue’? Imaging God in New Social and Ecological Contexts,” Zygon® 50.1 (2015). 26. Robert Alter, “Reading Genesis,” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 47.4 (1998). 27. Mark Bredin, “God the Carer: Revelation and the Environment,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 38.2 (2008). 28. Paul Maltby, “Fundamentalist Dominion, Postmodern Ecology,” Ethics and the Environment 13.2 (2008). 29. Mark Stoll, Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. (Albuquerque, NM : University of New Mexico Press, 1997). 30. John A. McPhee, Encounters with the Archdruid (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971). 31. John Muir, The Yosemite (New York: The Century Co., 1912). 32. “Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics,” https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco_ Hetch_Hetchy_Reservoir_Initiative,_Proposition_F_(November_2012); Robert W. Righter, The Battle over Hetch Hetchy: America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism, America’s Most Controversial Dam and the Birth of Modern Environmentalism (Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

300

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33. “Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics,” https://ballotpedia.org/San_Francisco_ Hetch_Hetchy_Reservoir_Initiative,_Proposition_F_(November_2012); 34. W. T. Harvey Mark, “Battle for Dinosaur: Echo Park Dam and the Birth of the Modern Wilderness Movement,” Montana: The Magazine of Western History 45.1 (1995).

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INDEX

Page numbers in bold refer to figures. Abram, David, 109 activists and activism, 6–7 camps, 192–3 Indigenous protest movements, 185–96 Protectors, 191, 193, 196 radical, 147–57 religious registers, 193–5 rituals, 193–5 adaptive bodies, 37 adat ecology, 82, 82–4, 88 aesthetics, 110–2 African American Protestant Christianity, 13 African Americans authenticity, 45 black embodiment, 51–4 dehumanization, 57 ecological heritage, 11, 14–15 food ethic, 21, 22–3 gardens and gardening, 6, 11, 14–15, 18–23 memorial gardening, 20 post-slavery experience, 53–4, 255–6 n.10 sacred spaces, 18–23 stereotypes, 47–8, 50 theological anthropology, 54–60 women, 6, 11 African Methodist Episcopal (AME ), 124 Agamben, Giorgio, 170 agency, 5 agrarian myth, 22 air, 159 desacralization, 110 forgetting, 109–10 as God’s breath, 117–19 indigenous perspective, 81–8 personhood, 84–6, 88 power, 88 qualities of, 109 significance, 109–10

air pollution, 6, 86, 117, 120–5, 128 Albanese, Catherine, 27 Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara, 81 Allison, Elizabeth, 7 allotment gardens, 14 Alsobrook, Robert, 147 Alta hydroelectric plant, 185, 186, 186–7, 192, 193, 193–4, 195 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 238 Ammatoans, the, 6, 81–8 adat ecology, 82, 82–4, 88 air as person, 84–6, 88 Pasang ri Kajang (oral tradition), 84, 85, 87 personhood, 83–4 rituals, 86, 87, 88 Anaximenes, 110 animal protection, 143, 144 animal rights, 68, 70, 142, 143 animality, 133–46 and biology, 140–1 Olmert’s analysis, 135–8, 140 recognition of, 142–4 recovery of, 144, 146 return to, 133–4 Weber’s analysis, 141 animals, 7, 133–46 companion, 134–7 domesticated, 134–5, 138 food, 138 legal protections, 134–5 realm of, 134–5 rewilders’ views of, 155 anointing, 165–7, 168–9 Anthony, Susan B., 34 anthropocentrism, 160–1 apartheid, 182 331

332

aquasattva, 208 Aristotle, 138, 238 Armour, Ellen, 160–1, 162 Art Without Object but with Impact (Steinmann), 220–1, 232, 233 Aschwanden, Herbert, 173–4, 179 asthma, 121–2 Aswan Dam, 236 Ataturk Dam, 236 atmospheres, 92–6, 97–8 Augé, Marc, 97 Ausangate, Mount, 214 authoritarianism, 250 Baal Shem Tov, the, 170 Baker, Barry, 211 Baker-Fletcher, Karen, 22, 57 Ball, Philip, 160 baptism, 165 Baptism of Christ, The, 225 Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition, 71 Bauer, Peter, 154, 155 Bauman, Walter, 249 Benjamin, Walter, 95 Bennett, Joshua, 120–1, 122–3 Bergmann, Sigurd, 7 Berry, Evan, 91 Berry, Thomas, 100, 119, 143, 199 Berry, Wendell, 15, 48–9 bicycling, 6, 257–8 n.23, 257 n.15 cost, 26, 34 dangers, 30 environmental impact, 34 exhilaration of, 27 experience of, 28–30 and freedom, 34 material, 27 as religion, 25–34 shrines, 30–3, 31, 32 and social justice, 34 as sport, 25, 30, 33, 257 n.10, 257 n.14, 257 n.19 vehicle-involved deaths, 33 women and, 34 Bieler, Andrea, 161, 169 Binswanger, Ludwig, 95 biology, 140–1 birds, species loss, 6

INDEX

black codes, 53, 59 black embodiment, 51–4 Black Lives Matter movement, 120, 188, 273 n.15 Bodhicharyavatara, 206 bodhisattva, the, 199–200, 200–2, 208 bodies, 5–6, 248 adaptive, 37 adat ecology, 84–5 consumption of, 6 diversity of, 4 engagement, 42 gestures, 38–42 sacral dynamics, 42 sacral work, 6, 35–43 body/spirit dualism, 5 Böhme, Gernot, 95, 96, 220, 233–4 Böhme, H., 220, 233–4 Bonsdorff, Pauline von, 96 Boone, Daniel, 48–9 Borzo, Greg, 29–30 Boswell, James, 67 Bourdieu, Pierre, 72 Bourdillon, Michael, 173, 174, 176 brain/mind dualism, 5 breathing and breath, 36, 37, 38, 84, 93, 117–29, 248 and air pollution, 120–5 deep, 128 environmental justice, 120–5 importance of, 117 in religious traditions, 6 significance of, 103 spirituality of, 103–4 symbolism, 117 trees, 272–3 n.1–3, 273 n.5 Brecht, Berthold, 73 Brower, David, 244–5 Brueggemann, Walter, 56–7 Bruno, Giordano, 3–4 Buckeye Gathering of Ancestral Arts and Technology, 152, 154 Buddhism, 2 the bodhisattva, 199–200, 200–2 compassion, 200, 200–2, 206, 207 goal of, 201 and water, 7, 199–208 Burgui, Mario, 91

INDEX

Cadena, Marisol de la, 186 cannibalism, 64 capitalism, 227 Capitalocene, the, 149 Capon, Robert Farrar, 75, 78 carbon debt, 169 carbon dioxide, 217 Carney, Judith, 14, 15 Carson, Rachel, 112, 238 Carter, Christopher, 5–6 Carter, J. Kameron, 55 Cartesian dualism, 2 Chaney, Charlene, 21 Charlie Hebdo, 289 n.26 Cheng Chung-ying, 100 Chireau, Yvonne, 23 Christ, baptism of, 225, 226 Christianity, 1, 165–6 African American Protestant, 13 anthropocentric turn, 102–3 dualism, 106–7 and eating, 65–6 and environmentalism, 46, 54–6 greening of, 90–1 and kenosis, 74 material, 27 principle of reversal, 104 racism, 54–6 root-metaphor, 99 the Trinity, 101–2, 106, 107, 225, 226 Chungyalpa, Dekila, 204 Chuvieco, Emilio,, 91 Clay, Elonda, 6 Clay, Vorie “Moma”, 12 Clean Air Act standards, 125 climate change, 6, 7, 61, 96, 109–10, 113, 115–16, 117, 171, 180–1, 182, 200, 209–18, 226–7, 230, 274 n.35 denial, 126 climate communication studies, 123 Clingerman, Forrest, 6 cognitive linguists, 250 collective memory, 7, 211, 215 colonialism, 15, 174–5, 179, 180–1 Colorado River, 7, 235–7, 246 communication, 40 companion animals, 134–7 compassion, 200, 200–2, 206, 207

333

Cone, James, 53 conflict, lines of, 192 Confucianism, 100 Conradie, Ernst, 6 consciousnessraising, 187 conservation, 49–50 Conservation Biology, 203, 206, 207 conspicuous consumption, 71, 71–2 contemplative space, 19 convenience euthanasia, 135 cooking, 67, 76 cooperation, 73–4 Copeland, Shawn, 58 cosmic community, the, 225–6 cosmology, 5 Coulter, Karen, 156 Creation narratives, 56–7, 240–1 creative energy, 248 critical race theory, 60 Crouch, David, 16 culinary arts, 71 cultural ecology, 105–6 cultural memory, 11, 211 Cuyahoga River, 240 cyborgs, 26, 27, 27–8 Daise, Otis, 19, 20–1 Dakota Access pipeline, 7, 185 Dali Lama, 90, 203 Dalton, Anne Mary, 94 dams, 235–46, 245–6 Daneel, Martinus, 179 Daoism, 6, 99–108, 266 n.1 ecological theology, 102 enlightenment, 102 Great Ultimate, the, 100–2, 103, 107, 268 n.24 ki/qi, 102–3, 103–4, 105, 107, 268 n.24 ontocosmology, 100–2 as root-metaphor, 99–100 sociocosmic narrative, 104–5 spirituality of breathing, 103–4 Davis, Ellen, 56–7, 260 n.36 De Mul, Jos, 16 de Waal, Frans, 143–4 death, and eating, 66 Deleuze, Gilles, 4 Deluge (Turner), 222–3, 224

334

democratization, 187 desacralization, 110 Detroit, 121 direct action, 6–7 dis-membering, 211 diversity, environmental organizations, 50–1 divine economy, 161 divine wisdom, 183 domesticated animals, 134–5, 138 domination, theological mentalities of, 3 Dominy, Floyd, 244–5 dualism, 2, 5, 48, 70, 106–7 dualistic rationalism, 100 Earth conversion to, 248 human rule over, 240–1 Earth Bible Commentary, 93–4 Earth First! Journal, 156 Earth Liberation Front, 6, 147–8, 156 eating, 6, 63–78 act of, 63 ascetic approach, 69–70, 77 conspicuous consumption, 71, 71–2 and death, 66 ethical concerns, 69 food as fuel, 66–7 hedonistic consumption, 70–1, 77 and human supremacy, 67–9 the hungry, 65 as intimacy, 77 joy of, 75–6 and kenosis, 73–4 meat, 63–4, 65, 68 pleasure of, 70–1, 77 processes of, 64 as recycling, 72–3 role of, 77 role of predation, 65 significance of, 64–5 theological interpretation, 78 violence of, 63–4, 66–7, 69, 69–70, 74, 77 and (white) male supremacy, 67–9 Eckel, Malcolm David, 202 ecological burden-and-beauty-paradox, 46–7 ecological burdens, 55, 56, 56–60 ecological civilization, 90 ecological crisis, 238–40, 244–6

INDEX

ecological theology, 99, 102, 104 economic growth, 171 ecosattva, 207 eco-terrorists, 148 ecotheologies, 90 education, 142, 145 Eiffel Tower, the, 111 Eikjok, Jorunn, 193 elemental forms, 219 elemental framework, 1–2, 5–7, 160–3, 247–51 elemental metaphors, 1–2 elemental religion, 7, 247, 250–1 elemental thinking, 247–51 elements, natural, cultural-historical modes of, 296 n.8 embodied reality, 4 emergent theorists, 5 empathy, 40 Empedocles, 219 emptiness, wisdom of, 200 encounter, sites of, 192–3 energy sources, 113–14 engagement, 42 enlightenment, 102 Enlightenment, the, 48, 239 environment, dominion over, 237–8, 238–40 environmental burdens, 61 environmental groups, extremist, 6, 147–57 environmental injustice, 114 environmental justice, 6, 34, 120–2, 120–5 environmental organizations, diversity, 50–1 environmental othering, 46–7 Environmental Protection Agency (US ), 240 Toxics Release Inventory Program, 121 environmentalism and black embodiment, 51–4 and Christianity, 46, 54–6 definition, 46 diversity, 50–1 ideological narratives, 46 racist dimensions of, 5–6, 45–61 radical, 147–57 religious, 92 theological anthropology, 54–60 whiteness, 45–6, 46–7, 47–51, 54, 59–60, 260 n.31 ethics, 39, 138, 145 Eucharist, 165

INDEX

eugenics movement, 49–50 euthanasia, 147, 277 n.13 Evangelical Climate Initiative, 124 Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN ), 122 evolution, 3, 140 exceptionalism, human, 138–40, 144, 145–6 Exodus, 159, 235, 236, 241–3 experience, 38–42 factory farming, 139 Falling Leaves Earthskills Rendezvous, 151–2 family, 20–1 Fanon, Frantz, 52 Feagin, Joe, 47, 59 Federal Writers’ Project, 52 Feral Futures, 155 Fett, Sharla M., 23 financial markets, 230 Finney, Nikky, 21, 22 fire, 7, 159–71 cultural and religious roles, 6–7, 173–83 elemental framework, 160–3 as energy, 163 nature of, 159–60 power of, 162–3 sacramental, 7, 159, 170–1 the Shona and, 173–83 and women, 174, 174–7 firewood, 180 Fishermen at Sea (Turner), 221–2, 221 folk stories, 177–9 food, as fuel, 66–7 food animals, 138 food chain, the, 67–9, 72–3 food contestation, 65, 67, 261 n.4 food ethic, 21, 22–3 food insecurity, 77 Foreman, Dave, 149 fossil fuel economy, 168 Foucault, Michel, 4, 17 Francis, Pope, 90 Laudato Si’, 105–8, 127, 267–8 n.20, 267 n.11 Frankl, Viktor, 143 freedom, 22, 34, 243–4 Friedrich, Caspar David, 223 Friedrich Wilhelm IV, 227

335

Gallego-Álvarez, Isabel, 91 Gangotri-Gaumukh glacier, 212 gardens and gardening, 5–6 African American tradition, 6, 11, 14–15, 18–23 allotment, 14 as contemplative space, 19 healing aspects, 18–19 as heterotopias, 17, 19–20 meanings among African Americans, 18–23 memorial, 20 as sacred spaces, 11–24 women, 6, 11 Garrison Dam, 237 Gay, Ross, 120 Gelfand, Michael, 175 Genesis, 7, 56–7, 118, 119, 223, 240–1, 242 geology, 3 Gerlach, Chelsea, 156 German Romantics, 4 Gerten, Dieter, 220, 226–7, 230 gestures, 38–42 ghost bikes, 33, 257–8 n.23 Gipe, Paul, 113 glaciers, 7, 209–18 climate change record, 216–17 decline, 210–11, 211–13, 218 deities, 210, 212, 213–15 and memory, 215–17 scientific paradigm, 212 scientific stories, 210 Glen Canyon Dam, 236 globalization, 97 Gnosticism, 70 God, 58, 59, 92–3, 240 activity, 21 beneficence, 242 communication with, 21 covenant with, 245 food as love of, 75 as giver of life, 222–3 and nature, 3–4 power of, 242 revelatory acts, 224 veneration of, 225 gods, place of, 3 Good, Justin, 110–11 Gore, Al, 47

336

INDEX

Grant, Madison, 49 Grau, Marion, 7 Graves, Dianne, 17 Great Ultimate, the, 100–2, 103, 107, 268 n.24 Green 2.0, 50–1 Green Buddhism, 1 greenhouse gases, 123, 127, 217, 273 n.23 greening traditions, 13 Gregory of Nazianz, 220, 224–6, 233 Guattari, Félix, 4 Gundaker, Grey, 18 Gutierréz, Gustavo, 65

human exceptionalism, 138–40 Olmert’s analysis, 135–8, 140 overcoming, 142–4 human-centeredness, 135 humanism, 100, 107 humanity, place of, 3 human/nature dualism, 48 humans, right to rule over nature, 240–1 Humboldt, Alexander von, 4 hungry, the, 65 Hurricane Sandy, 61 Hurston, Zora Neale, 20 hydroelectric power, 235–7, 246

Haeckel, Ernst, 4, 253 n.7 Hamilton, Kendra, 20 Haraway, Donna, 26, 27, 27–8 Hardin, Garrett, 239–40 Harris, Melanie, 120 Hayes, Terrance, 19 healing, and gardens, 18–19 hedonistic consumption, 70–1, 77 Heraclitus, 159 herbal medicines, 23 Heroes’ Acre, Harare, 7, 181–2, 287 n.58 Hescox, Mitch, 122 heterotopias, 17, 19–20 Hiebert, Ted, 118–19 hierarchy, 2–3, 76 Hildegard of Bingen, 220 Hindu Declaration on Climate Change, 127 Hinduism, 1, 2 history, 3 Hobgood, Laura, 6, 249 holiness, 35 Holst, Robert, 169 Holy Spirit, the, 167 hooks, bell, 21, 22 Hoover Dam, 235–7 hope, 249–51 Hopkins, Dwight, 55, 59 Hornborg, Alf, 227 human exceptionalism, 2, 138–40, 144, 145–6 human flourishing, 97–8, 142 human rights, 187 human self-understanding, 7, 219 human-animal dichotomy, 7, 133–46 and biology, 140–1

Ice Memory project, UNESCO, 217 immanence, (re)turn to, 2–4 inclusive humanism, 100 Indigenous Elders and Medicine Peoples, 127 Indigenous protest movements, 185–96 Indonesia Ammatoan community, 6, 81–8 Constitutional Court Decision No.35/PUU -X/2012, 82 Industrial Revolution, the, 3–4, 34, 217, 238–9 Ingold, Tim, 95 injustices, bodied, 36–7 interconnectedness, 106 interdependence, 150–1 International Islamic Declaration, 127 Irenaeus, 162 Irigaray, Luce, 38 irrigation, 236 Jaspers, Karl, 226 Jeremias, Joachim, 169 Jhomolhari, Mount, 209 Joachim of Fiore, 167 John XXIII , Pope, 30, 32 Johnson, Andrew, 53 Johnson, Greg, 7 Jonas, Hans, 64 Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 26 justice, 39, 72 Kanchenjunga, Mount, 209 Kass, Leon, 68 Kawa Karpo, 209, 213–14

INDEX

Kaza, Stephanie, 207 Kearns, Laurel, 6 Keller, Catherine, 118, 171 kenosis, 73–4 Keskitali, Aili, 188 Keskitalo, Aili, 193 Khoryug Conference on Environmental Protection for Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and Nunneries in the Himalayas, 203–5, 206–7 Khumbila, 215 Kihoi, Mehana, 193 Kilimanjaro, 211 Kim, Heup Young, 6 ki/qi, 102–3, 103–4, 105, 107, 268 n.24 Klindienst, Patricia, 14 knowledge systems, preservation of, 173 Koch, William I., 114–15 Kohn, Eduardo, 212 Kraft, Siv Ellen, 7 La Puente, California, 12 LaDuke, Winona, 114, 115–16 Lake Mead, 236, 237 land, as freedom, 22 land commitments, 20–1 Landstreicher, Wolfi, 149 language, shared, 194 Laozi, 101, 102, 104 Laudato Si’, 105–8, 127, 267–8 n.20, 267 n.11 Laushkin, Alexei, 274 n.32 Leopold, Aldo, 134 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 67 Lewis, John, 148 life bodily dimension of, 248 goodness of, 75 linguistic evolution, 5 Little Ice Age, the, 209–10 lived religion, 26–7 logos, 99 Los Angeles, 7, 235–7 Luke, 168–9 lynching, 53 Maarif, Samsul, 6 McAnally, Elizabeth, 7

337

McCulloch, Jock, 179 McDaniel, Jay, 7, 119 McDannell, Colleen, 27 McFague, Sallie, 127 McGowan, Daniel, 148 McKibben, Bill, 48–9, 115 McPhee, John, 244 Macy, Joanna, 127–8 Madonna del Ghisallo, Shrine of the, 25, 30, 31 Mahayana Buddhism compassion, 200, 200–2 water ethic, 7, 199–208 Makah whaling, 186 Manichean dualism, 70 Manning, Richard, 141–2, 144 Manno, Angela, 125–6 Marx, Karl, 227, 230 Masowe, Johane, 182–3, 287 n.62 Masowe Apostles, the, 7, 182–3 material relics, 27 materialisms, new, 4–8, 254 n.17 matter/ideas dualism, 5 Mauna Kea telescope, 186, 189–90, 191, 192, 193, 195 meaning, uncovering, 93–4 memorial gardening, 20 memory collective, 7, 211, 215 cultural, 11, 211 Earth’s, 216–17 glaciers and, 215–17 loss of, 216, 218 and ritual, 215–16 metacosmic energy, 102–3 Middleton, Ralph, 22 Mingyong Glacier, 214 minjung, 104–5 Mohai, Paul, 121 Moltmann, Jürgen, 167 Monbiot, George, 149 Monks, Sarah, 221–2 Moore, Jason W., 149 Morton, Tim, 112–13, 114 Moses, 235, 241–3, 244 motivated action, 265 n.2 mountain deities, 213–15, 215 mountain landscapes, sacred, 209–18

338

mourning, 96 Muir, John, 49, 50, 244, 245 Mukonyara, Isabel, 6–7 Munson, Kyle, 29 Nadeau, Kari, 122 Nantucket, 114–15 Nash, Roderick, 153 National Conservation Commission, 49 National Parks, segregation, 53–4, 260 n.31 Native Americans, 55, 163–5, 188–9 traditions, 154–5 Native Hawaiian Protectors, 185–6 nature communication with, 21 connection to, 55–6 definition, 1, 46 engagement with, 92–6 and God, 3–4 human rule over, 240–1 humanizing, 65 importance of, 89 ordained stewardship, 240–4 and religion, 89–98 nature religions, 27 Nelson, Richard, 141–2 Nestor, Tony, 155 network-building, 187, 188, 192 new materialisms, 4–8, 254 n.17 Newell, Catherine, 7 Nhat Hanh, Thich, 202, 208 Nicolas of Cusa, 3–4 Nietzsche, Frederick, 3, 74 Nile, River, 219–20 Nisbet, Matthew, 123 nonhuman realm, the, 134–5 non-humans, personhoods, 83 nonviolence, 190 Norgaard, Kari Marie, 126 North Dakota Access Pipeline, 163–5, 188–9, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195 Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature, 187 Notre Dame des Cyclistes, 30 numinous, the, 248 Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Gyalwang Karmapa, 199, 202–7, 207

INDEX

oil, 163, 165–70, 171, 240 Olmert, Meg, 135–8, 140 Omi, Michael, 60 One Earth Sangha, 207 ontocosmology, 100–2 openness, 195 Orsi, Robert, 26 othering, 46–7 Otto, Rudolph, 92, 93, 248 outdoor experiences, as religion, 26–8 oxygen, 6, 121–2 Paganism, 1 pain, 105 Patterson, Bobbi, 6 Paul, St, 59 People’s Action against Development of the Alta-Kautokeino River, 187 perichoresis, 103 Person, Raymond, 94 pet-keeping, 147, 166, 276 n.8 petroleum industry, 7, 160, 163–5, 167, 170, 171 Pettis, Joyce, 18 Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Andreas, 95, 95–6 Philo of Alexandria, 137 Pike, Sarah, 6 pilgrimage, 214 pilgrimages, 35, 36 Pinchot, Gifford, 49–50 Pinker, Steven, 63 plantations, 17, 255–6 n.10 plants medicinal, 23 sacredness of, 21 Plato, 145 pleasure, of eating, 70–1, 77 police, 191 Pollan, Michael, 67 pollution, 6, 171, 273 n.23, 274 n.30, 274 n.32 air, 6, 86, 117, 120–5, 128 water, 200, 240 Portland, Oregon, 154 Potsdam, 227 Potter, Will, 148 power production, democratizing, 115

INDEX

Prajñaparamita Sutras, 201 prayer, 40–1, 75, 195, 248–9 pressure, 36, 37, 38 Price, Joseph, 27 Prigann, Hermann, Waterlevel, 230, 231, 232 primal future, 150, 150–1 primitive skills movement, 150–2, 155 process philosophy, 4 Prometheus, 162–3 Protagoras, 133 Protectors, 191, 193, 196 Public Religious Research Institute, 124–5 Queen, 257 n.14 Qur’an, 119, 127 racial formation, 60 racism, 6, 13, 15, 23, 128 Christian theology, 54–6 and environmentalism, 5–6, 45–61 freedom from, 19 RAGBRAI , 25, 29–30, 34, 257 n.15 Ranger, Sheilagh, 178 Ratey, John, 141–2, 144 realism, 144 reciprocity, 215 recycling, eating as, 72–3 redemption, 91 reflection, 249 Reformation, the, 102 relational responsibilities, 82 religion bicycling as, 25–34 definition, 1, 26, 92–3, 222, 247 ecological phase, 90 elemental, 7 engagement with nature, 92–6 greening of, 90–2 importance of, 89 and nature, 89–98 outdoor experiences as, 26–8 as unique, 90 religious authoritarianism, 250 religious ecologies, 210 religious imagination, 260 n.36 religious values, 92–6 resilience, 41 resurrection, 78

339

rewilding, 149–50, 151–2, 157 communities, 152–4, 155 tensions, 154–6 Reynolds, Mary, 52 rituals, 36, 86, 87, 88, 97–8, 161–2, 165, 168, 193–5, 215–16 Rolston, Holmes, 72 Roosevelt, Theodore, 49 Rosomoff, Richard, 15 Ruffin, Kimberly, 46–7, 47 Ruskin, John, 223 sacral dynamics, 42 sacral work, 6, 35–43 gestures, 38–42 sacramental fires, 7, 159, 170–1 sacramental spirituality, 161 sacred landscapes, 209–18 sacred spaces gardens as, 11–24 meanings among African Americans, 18–23 spatial practices, 16–17 sacred trees, 20 Sami, the, 185, 186–7 Sami Culture Committee, 187 Sami Rights Committee, 187 Sanford, Whitney, 26–7, 27 Santmire, H. Paul, 90–1 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 222 Schmidt, E., 181 Schmitz, Hermann, 95 Schoffeleers, Matthew, 173 Schottroff, Luise, 161, 169 Schüssler-Fiorenza, Elisabeth, 168–9 scientific narratives, reliance on, 91 scientific revolution, the, 3 Scully, Matthew, 139 sea levels, 230 secularism, 250 segregation, 45, 53–4 self-actualization, 143, 144–5 self-emptying, 73–4 self-evaluation, 134 self-knowledge, 114 self-recognition, 143–4 self-sacrifice, 74 self-understanding, 142 Shantideva, 201, 206

340

shared language, 194 Shenandoah National Park, 53–4 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 53 Shona, the, 6–7, 173–83 Christians, 182–3 creation myth, 178–9 father figures, 176–7 and fire, 173–83 First Chimurenga (Uprising), the, 181 meaning of fire, 180–2 women agents of knowledge, 174–7, 177–9 Shotte, Briek, 33 Sideris, Lisa, 6, 91 Sierra Club, 50, 244–5 Simmons, Henry, 94 Sinai, 7, 235, 241–3 slaves and slavery, 5–6, 14–15, 17, 19, 23, 45, 51–3, 55, 58, 256 n.10 Smith, Ian Douglas, 181 Snowstorm (Turner), 222, 223 Snyder, Samuel, 27 social biography, 104–5 social identity, 72 social justice, 26, 34, 106, 120, 180 social networking sites, 193, 275 n.47 societal norms, 4 sociocosmic narrative, 104–5 solastalgia, 217 solidarity-making, 289 n.26 South Africa, 182 spacing, 16–17 spatial turn, 94 species loss, 6, 72 species-level actualization, 143 Spinoza, Baruch, 4 spiritual crisis, 13 spiritual ecology, 11, 13–14, 23 spiritual healing, 18–19 spiritual purification, 226 spirituality, 160, 161 squatters, 12 stale secularism, 250 Standing Rock, the, see North Dakota Access Pipeline Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council, 188 Steinmann, George, Art Without Object but with Impact, 220–1, 232, 233

INDEX

stewardship, 15, 244–5 ordained, 240–4 Stewart, Wanda, 18–19 structural power, 36 suicide attempters, 42–3 Suzuki, David, 110–11 Swain, Sean, 150 Swim, Brian, 100 sympathetic identification, 289 n.26 Tarbela Dam, 237 Taylor, Bron, 26, 27, 91–2, 94 Taylor, Sarah McFarland, 13 Taylor, Steven, 152 technology, 237–8, 238–40 theological anthropology, environmentalism, 54–60 Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva, The, 201–2 Thoreau, Henry, 4, 49 Three Gorges Dam, 237 Thurman, Howard, 52 Tibetan Plateau, 205, 207, 213 Tommy K., 32–3, 32 Tour de Flanders, 33 Tour de France, 30, 257 n.10, 257 n.14, 257 n.19 Townes, Emilie, 57 Toxics Release Inventory Program, Environmental Protection Agency, 121 transcendence, 2–3, 162 trans-human journey, 249 transhumanism, 102–3, 268 n.24 transpiration, 6 trees, 6, 22, 37, 85, 87, 96, 148, 156, 176, 180, 249, 272–3 n.1–3, 273 n.5, 276 n.57 breathing, 117, 118, 119, 123, 127, 128, 272–3 n.1–3, 273 n.5 planting, 20 sacred, 20 Trinity, the, 101–2, 106, 107, 225, 226 Trump, Donald, 128, 188, 189 Tucker, Mary Evelyn, 90, 102 Turner, J. M. W., 220, 233 seascapes, 221–3, 221, 223, 224 UNESCO, Ice Memory project, 217 United Church of Christ, 121

INDEX

University of Arizona, Water Resources Research Center, 236 Utsi, Nils, 187 Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn, 13 Veblen, Theodore, 71 vegetarianism, 69 Versfeld, Marthinus, 75, 75–6, 78 Vilden, Lynx, 152, 155 violence activists, 156–7 of eating, 63–4, 66–7, 69, 69–70, 74, 77 Virgin of Dorleta, 30, 32 virtue, 72 Visser, Margaret, 68–9 Waldau, Paul, 7 Walker, Alice, 19–20, 128 Walker, Frank X., 22 walking, 28 Wallace, Mark, 94 Wang Yang-ming, 101, 105 war on terror, 181 Waskow, Arthur, 117–18, 128 water, 7, 163–5, 167, 195, 219–34 aesth/ethic transformation, 220–1 benefits of clean, 206 as a bodhisattva, 202, 208 and Buddhism, 7, 199–208 in the built environment, 232–4, 233 commodification of, 220, 226–7, 228–9, 230–1, 231 crises, 200, 207, 230–1 depictions of, 220, 221–3, 221, 223, 224 ecological crisis, 244–6 ecological problem, 240 ethics, 220 fetishization, 220, 227, 228–9, 230–1, 231 geographies, 219 Gregory of Nazianz and, 220, 224–6, 233 impacts, 232–3 importance of, 199 invisibility of, 232–3 loss of, 216 motion of, 219, 220, 221–3, 221, 223, 224 Ogyen Trinley Dorje and, 202–7 ordained stewardship, 240–4

341

pollution, 200, 240 sacred, 220 sacredness, 226–7 spiritual purification, 226 spiritual qualities, 233 water ethic, 7, 199–208 water ethos, 226–7, 231 water management, 234 Water Protectors, 191, 193, 196 Waterlevel (Prigann), 230, 231, 232 Weber, Andreas, 141 Whanganui River, 186 Wharton, Martin, 111 White, Lynn, 54, 55, 91–2, 119, 237, 238–40, 240–1, 242, 244, 246, 265 n.10 White, Marilyn, 19, 21 White, Richard, 48 white supremacy, 46 Whitehead, Alfred North, 4 whiteness, 13, 45–6, 46–7, 47–51, 54, 59–60, 260 n.31 Whitman, Walt, 78 Wild Roots, Feral Futures, 151, 153, 154–5 wilderness ecological crisis, 244–6 meanings of, 243–4 Wildroots Homestead, 152–4, 155 Wilkinson, Loren, 76 Williams, Venice, 22–3 Willox, Ashlee Cunsolo, 96 Wilson, Alleen, 12, 23 Winant, Howard, 60 wind energy, 6, 109–16, 270 n.15, 272 n.48 aesthetics, 110–12, 270 n.19 controversies, 114–15 and spirit, 114–16 supporters, 113 visibility, 109, 113–4 wisdom, 37, 200, 200–2, 207 Witchcraft Suppression Act, Zimbabwe, 175 Wohlleben, Peter, 128, 272–3 n.1, 273 n.2 wolves, 137 women African American, 6, 11 as agents of knowledge, 174–7, 177–9 and bicycling, 34

342

and fire, 174, 174–7 gardening, 6, 11 Shona, 6–7, 173–83 Works Progress Administration, 52 World Council of Indigenous Peoples, 187 World Wildlife Fund, 204 worldviews, 89–92, 93, 94 Wrangham, Richard, 67 Wulf, Christina, 151

INDEX

Yale Environment 360, 203, 207 Yong-bock, Kim, 104 Yosemite National Park, 54 Yunnan Province, China, 213 Zhang Zai, 101 Zhou Dunyi, 100–2 Zhuangzi, 102 Zimbabwe, 7, 173, 175, 176, 180–1

343

344

345

346

347

348