Eco-Theology Final Thoughts

Emily:

We discussed Andrea Smith’s Rape of the Land, and about the violence done against the earth and its impact on our relationship with the earth, ourselves, and each other. We also talked about what it might look like to create new frameworks for thinking about and having relationship with the earth. What would reconnection look like? Could we draw from Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Chapter 13: Healing from Trauma: Owning Your Self? Van der Kolk suggests that movement, mindfulness practice, and relationship are key aspects to reestablishing connection with our own wounded bodies and minds. Perhaps those same principles could begin to guide our thinking about how we reconnect and reimagine our interaction with the earth.

Kevin:

I was deeply impacted by my time in the Landscape and Life group. As I have journeyed out of belief in the Christian tradition over the last couple years, I have slowly been finding grounding in what seems to be the eternality of Beauty and how it seems to call to something eternal within our souls. This Beauty is found in landscape, a beautiful face, brilliant colors, and especially, through acts of compassion. As stated in our first blog, I believe the most beautiful life we can live is a life of compassion and the reading/discussions from this group have only confirmed in me that this beautiful compassion does not only exist as humans care for humans, but also as humans care for the rest of the Earth and engage in a relationship of encounter, generosity, and reciprocity with all that is.

I believe this is how we are built to exist, yet our planet has suffered so much from humans living contrary to the Beauty in our inner nature. For some mysterious reason, much of humanity has engaged in the exploitation and desecration of mother Earth, which has harmed not only the land, but plants, animals, and our relationship with each other as well. It is my desire to live as a witness to this trauma, to speak against this way of living, and to continue to inspire a beautiful life of compassion in others that leads to the flourishing of all things. May it be so…

Davia:

Reading group this semester has been helpful in the way that its connected implications of the way we go about relating with the earth into the theological world. Often the beliefs about how humans relate to the earth seem to be “givens” to those who believe them so it was refreshing to re-look at how we have gotten where we have gotten beginning with where we get our “right” to commodify our source of life. The question I’m left with is that the implication of our work can be that the earth matters as much spiritually as humans because we are not as separate as has been believed, but how does that change theology when the formative story we follow is about humans? I noticed the mythologies of other more connected cultures often had animals as their heroes and I look forward to finding more ways to verbalize more of the implications of the spiritual weight of earth.

Phil:

Taking care of the Earth is a metaphor for how we take care of each other and our own motivations behind our actions. If we only care about what happens when we die and who will meet us there, we lose sight of the importance of care-taking what is here and now. If we just want to be on some moral high ground, then we will lose something. In the case of the Earth, we could lose everything. Just as the Earth is a metaphor for how we see each other, our compassion for relationship is a metaphor for how we see the Earth. It’s all a big metaphor to say that if we care about each other, in relationship, we will care about the Earth and if we care about the Earth, we can use those same skills to mend relationships with each other. It’s all a big push to give voice to those who don’t have it and show empathy for all of God’s creation.

Christy:

One of the main themes from our discussions centered around how to conceptualize and engage the natural world. This conversation stemmed out of our reading of The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. We recognized that nature often suffered trauma at the hands of humanity, but we realized that as we applied van der Kolk’s findings on trauma to nature we were unknowingly personifying and potentially devaluing this complex entity. It is clear that nature is compromised when it is viewed as a commodity or an object, but many feel that they are extending a kind hand to nature by treating it as if it were a human. Many fail to realize that something of the earth is also lost in this perspective. Although we recognized this, we struggled to imagine another way of engaging with the world. We considered borrowing from Native American wisdom that conceptualized the earth as holding its own unique intelligence and presence. Although we were scintillated by these ideas, they were difficult to hold on to as we continued to discuss nature in the Western context of Christian Eco Theology. We felt continually limited by the perspectives and arguments of our culture. Although we did not reach any overarching conclusions on how to resolve these questions, I believe we were each left with more space in our minds to consider the unique experience of nature and the ways in which it is often overlooked in our modern discourse.