Author: Berryflats

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are 40 billion year old carbon”

  Joni Mitchell

“Gather out of star-dust- Earth-dust – Cloud-dust – Storm-dust – And splinter of hail – One handful of dream-dust –  Not for Sale”

 Langston Hughes

At a conference this summer in northern New Mexico called “Earth Honoring Faith”, I finally grasped the knowledge that I am made of stardust. This conference, the last in a series on Eco-spirituality, theology and ethics had the theme, “The Journey of the Universe”. It was based around a film developed by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker and is available through the Yale University Press (I recommend it highly, by the way). The film and the book by the same name tell the story of the origins of the universe, the origins of the earth and humans, and shows how humans are just one expression of the our miraculous cosmos. In the film, narrator Brian Swimme notes that we really are stardust. Everything, every atom in our bodies and all the elements that make up the cosmos originate in exploding stars. After a bit of separate research on this I decided that he is speaking from a general scientific consensus. Though scientists seem to have known this for many years, a flurry of studies and articles stating exactly that have come out recently. National Geographic Book Talk recently reviewed a book called Living with the Stars, How the Human Body is Connected to the Life Cycles of the Earth, the Planets and the Stars, by husband and wife team Karel and Iris Schrijver (Astrophysicist and Physician respectively) who make this very point. The interviewer asked Iris, “So Joni Mitchell was right?” and Iris answered, “Was she ever”. “All the materials in our bodies originate in the residual stardust from stars and massive explosions in the galaxy.” From what little I understand of this process, it seems that all the elements that make up our earth, our bodies and the bodies of all creatures originate in the explosions in suns, usually from hydrogen being converted to other elements. This material moves out from the stars as they die and sometimes from explosions of stars. The stardust (all these particles) floats out into the universe until attracted to bodies such as planets. It is always falling on Earth, and some of the elements that make up my body may have landed on Earth as recently as the last hundred years.

So I am stardust, and so are you. So is the raven flying high over my home in Colorado. So is the ocean and everything in it. For some reason this knowledge (probably not news to most of you reading this) finally helped me break through to the idea that I am connected to all life and all parts of the Earth, and though it is harder for me to conceive, to all the Cosmos. I truly am one with all things and all creation.

Why is this so significant for me? It finally allows me to let go of the old Western idea that humans are separate and different than other parts of the Earth. God did not create us separately and we are not going somewhere special after death. We are not superior or unique among other life forms and the Earth was not created for us. Rather, we are part of the Earth, part of the eco-system of this planet: interconnected, dependent, intertwined, inseparable. Whoever God is, God is not like us, but if anything, is like the Cosmos. I remember the old joke: God created us in God’s image, and so we returned the favor”. I am not a Biblical scholar, but I do know that the idea of the authors of the book of Genesis that humans are made in the image of God is a lot more complicated than saying that we look like God, or that God has a human like body. Humans are part and particle of the Cosmos. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I am part and particle of God”, and he was right.

With this understanding of the Cosmos and of my self identity I have finally begun to move beyond the dualistic, anthropocentric thought I was raised and educated with.  It’s a relief and a revelation, but now I have to rethink everything.

A few years ago I attended an Eco-spirituality event called Earth Honoring Faith at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. One of the activities was writing and sharing of our Eco-stories as a means of introduction. We were invited to tell our personal stories from the perspective our interaction with the Earth. What were the things that awoke us to our connection to the cosmos and need for action in light of the environmental degradation and the climate crisis? I loved this idea. It was interesting to me to remember the experiences that led me to be committed to Thomas Berry’s “Great Work” of environmental regeneration. I’ve told my life journey from various perspectives in the past. Usually, I think, our stories get told in a way that highlights the jobs or career we have pursued, the places we have lived, our family and friends, our hobbies and such. I’ve also been part of groups that told our spiritual histories, focusing on our spiritual lives, which may or may not involve a church or particular religion. An Eco-story is interesting as it refocuses the view of our personal histories on our relationship to the Earth, our species, other species, the natural order or cosmos and it’s importance in our individual lives.

I share here my eco-story as a means of example, and invite you to consider writing down your own story. I’d love to hear  others’ stories, or perhaps you’ll choose to share it with family and friends, or  simply consider it for your own benefit.

I was fortunate as a child to live in the far eastern suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, at a time when children were allowed a lot of freedom to run. There was a group of boys around my age with whom I explored the fields, streams, lakes, cornfields and woods that stretched to the east of our homes. We fished in Plum Creek, built rafts on a small lake, built tree forts, climbed many trees, chased Farmer Well’s cows, jumping electric fences to escape them, wandered on what seemed endless summer days, were chased by wild dogs, had apple wars (involving the fairly dangerous conflict with crab apples) with the kids at the other end of the neighborhood, played kick the can on long summer evenings, and sledded on local hills in the winter. I had a favorite tree (a large Tulip Tree with perfect handholds), and became a lifelong fisherman after catching bluegills on crayfish tails caught in the same stream. This definitely established my love of the outdoors. I still can’t listen to the Dream Academy’s song, “A Northern Town” and the line, “The morning lasted all day”, without tears coming my eyes. I was a boy scout briefly and learned the knots and camping skills, but my comfort with the outdoors came from wandering in the woods in the Western Reserve east of Cleveland.

My grandmother and mother were gardeners and a far back as I can remember I was drafted to help dig, weed and harvest. Mom especially loved roses and I learned a lot of skills helping her with her rose testing, soil preparation and winter protection. Somewhere around freshman year in High School I asked if I could have portion of the yard for my own garden and I grew potatoes, corn and green beans. This only lasted a couple years, actually but it connected me to the earth and gave me confidence with digging in the dirt.

Then came the years when I focussed on making a way for myself in the human world, with sports, girls, experimentation with drugs and alcohol, college, grad school. I mention this time because I think it actually took me away from the Earth and it was only later, with marriage, gardening and the environmental movement that I continued my eco-story.

In the first year of my marriage with Laura we lived in graduate student housing on the South Side of Chicago surrounded by abandoned lots. In one of those lots we dug a garden. I don’t remember that it did all that well, except for the cucumbers. We had cucumbers coming out our ears and learned to make pickles. After that, there has not been a year without a garden. We are on our ninth garden. In fact, privately we refer to our present home as #9. We gardened in vacant lots, in community gardens, our backyards and a small farm we lived on briefly in Michigan. 

Around this time I began to burn out in my work in the church and decided I needed some hobbies. I remembered fishing. I got a book, the basic equipment and became a fly fisherman. I have mixed feelings about fishing now. I love it, but I hate hurting the fish.
But there is no doubt that standing in the cold water woke up my connection to the Earth. I am a member of Trout Unlimited, and I do believe that hunting and fishing is one way people connect to the Earth and it’s preservation. I agree with the Senegalese environmentalist, Forestry engineer Baba Dioum, who said, “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” We conserve what we love. That is the best defense for sport fishing I know. But I still struggle, and I now practice catch and release and use barbless hooks.

Around this same time I also started the hobby of growing bonsai trees.  It was a natural outgrowth of my love of trees and interest in Asian culture. (I majored in East Asian Studies in college.) I have been working to keep some of my trees alive for 30 years now. I have killed many, but overall, the practice has connected me to the life of these trees and the natural form of trees in nature. One of the basic goals of bonsai art is to recreate the shape of trees in miniature. To do this one must be observant of nature and in tune with the need of trees for water, nutrition, soil and winter dormancy.

Mentioning my study of East Asian Studies reminds me of what I learned from Chinese landscape paintings. From my first exposure in college I have been drawn to these paintings. Containing the basic elements of the natural world: mountains, valleys, water, trees, animals and evidence of human presence, these paintings capture the unity and harmony of nature. I now see this pattern as illustrating a non-dualist world view, but would not have been able to articulate that when I first loved them. But they have been another influence, symbolic of my awakening to eastern, spiritual thought in college.

More recently, on sabbaticals from my pastoral work I did some study of Celtic and Native American Spiritualities. It is important to use the plural form here, for there are many forms of spirituality and religion in both early European and early Native American groups. There is not one brand of  religion among Native American’s, for example, but many different tribal traditions. In both Celtic and other Indigenous traditions the pantheist and panthentheist beliefs resonated with me. Most attribute to all life (animal, vegetable and mineral) souls and connection to the whole. Humans are usually considered equal parts of the natural world with other elements. My personal evolution of thought toward locating the Divine in the natural order (to paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin) has been through the discovery and study of these traditions and my attempts to find in Christianity an Earth honoring faith.

The final chapter of my eco-story is my retirement from the church and my current activities trying to do my part in the environmental, climate movement. Gardening is my main work, studying permaculture and growing food for my family and for donation to local food pantries. Digging in the dirt has been healing for me in body, mind and spirit and has reconnected me to my childhood spent outside and in my mother’s garden.

Looking back on my life through the lens of an eco-story is enlightening to me. Perhaps all humans feel the innate connection to the natural world that I feel, I do not know. Perhaps my story was uniquely an eco-story and that has shaped my dedication to preserving this Earth and seeking a new ( or very old) understanding of God as located in the natural process. It makes sense to me, however, that if humans are part of that order, essential to the harmony of all, as human presence is essential in a Chinese landscape painting, then everyone must experience this deep connection to the Earth, but perhaps in different degrees and certainly with different stories. What is your story?

 

I’ve been obsessing about water on our property lately. After a rain/snow event that broke our potential drought, I ran around like a crazy man saving water, making sure it was diverting it into the swales and filling every possible rain barrel and available bucket. This is part of my attempt to follow permaculture principle number 3 of catching and storing resources, energy and materials. In the case of water this means keeping the water that falls on our land, on our land. Since moving to Colorado in 2001 and learning to garden in a dry climate and especially since I took a permaculture design course, I have spent a great deal of time thinking about water. Actually, living in this climate on the Front Range averaging 17 inches of precipitation a year, I have become kind of obsessed. There are several reasons that this not such a bad thing. For one thing, water is a diminishing resource here in Colorado and climate change may very well make our area drier and hotter. It will definitely make water and temperature less predictable and more dramatic.  A conference on water I attended last week in Denver predicted that though we may not get less water on average around here (no one really knows what climate change will bring the Front Range) the hotter temperatures will affect what water we do get and the plants, animals, insects, people and other organisms that depend on it.

I want to talk about water today and how my understanding and use of it has changed since I started learning about permaculture.  One of the first things one is supposed to do in a design for a property is consider the way water moves through one’s land. (This is part of permaculture principle number 1, observation.) When we first bought our two acres and began to plan the house and garden I tried to observe carefully. Our main source is precipitation, which largely arrives in the winter and spring. It’s important, for example, to plant trees, shrubs and perennials in the fall or spring to take advantage of this and not spend your life watering, which you may do anyway. There is a well on the property, but it is very alkaline and not usable for watering (bummer). We are at the end of a “ditch”, water runoff from foothills, which the neighbors dammed up for a pond many years ago. There is a run-over pipe into the back of our property, so we have a wetland in about 1/5 of our land in the spring and early summer, gradually diminishing as fall arrives. Wildlife use this area, and I have considered putting in a small pump to divert it which may or may not be legal in Colorado water law. I haven’t studied it because I don’t really want to know. If I do decide I need it I will have do decide whether forgiveness or permission is more advisable. We also have an interesting asset which is that our other neighbors have “ditch rights”, which means they own a portion of the water that flows in another ditch from the foothills. These rights are quite old but only recently purchased from another neighbor. The rights entitle them to use the water for watering or even saving in a pond or cistern. They use it for flood irrigation of their back field. The good news for us is that before it flows onto their land it goes through a ditch across about half of our land. We have noticed that as this ditch is uphill from our land, all the area downhill of this ditch receives a great deal more water (we assume flowing underground downhill from the ditch) than the other side of our property. Trees, shrubs and other plants on that side have flourished with this underground flow. Even the swales I have dug on that side of the property benefit from this flow.

So my goal has been to save and utilize as much of these various sources as possible. This, by the way, is in accordance with permaculture principle number 5, that each function of one’s design be supported by multiple elements. That means I try to keep water on our land by as many means as possible. So far I have concentrated on digging swales to catch water as it flows across the land. Swales used in permaculture are ditches dug on contour to slow down the flow. There is fun tool called a bunyip that I used to find the contour of the land. I encourage you to google “bunyip water level”.  I have dug the swales by mounding up dirt on the downhill side of the swale and filled the swales with wood chips. Over time I am told the groundwater begins to collect as a “plume” of water in the ground around the swales. Plants planted on the swale or just below them (on the key line) benefit from the water in the swale and groundwater plume. I have placed the swales on the south side of the house, which is much hotter and drier than the north side, so that the water coming off the roof fills swales during downpours. On other downspouts on the East and North sides I have placed rain barrels to collect water. I also have rain barrels on the greenhouse (a separate structure) and the shed to further maximize my collecting.

All this seems to working except when the rain stops as it did last summer and we are forced back onto city water to irrigate, a sad but necessary step to preserve our gardens. We do keeps buckets in our shower and drain the bathtub out the window via a siphon, but have not set up more organized gray water systems….yet. Low flow toilets and washing machine help a bit. Overall, however, I have to say that our efforts are paying off. The plants below the swales are definitely better supplied with water than those not on swales. The rain barrels save amazing amounts of water…when we have precipitation. I must say that I’m not sure I’m following principle number 6 very well, using the least change for maximum effect. My teacher in the permaculture design course emphasized how we are supposed to minimize effort. So far I’ve found permaculture to be a lot of work. Though I admit that when things are in place (such as a swale) it does save effort.

All this explains a bit of why I spent a portion of the days when it rained and snowed a couple weeks ago outside getting completely soaked, making sure all the rain saving systems were at least partially functioning. This involved quite a bit of unclogging swales and downspouts, filling buckets and hooking up hoses to the water barrels to divert water to the swales when the barrels were full. My wife thinks I’m crazy and mentions obsessive compulsive disorder when I do this, but once one knows how important the water is, it is easy to get a little crazy. So that’s my current struggle with permaculture principle number 3. The final upside is that I am guardedly optimistic now about the future of water use on our 2 acres.

Po-wa-ha (Water, Wind, Breath)

Lately, I have been reading what I can find about Dr. Rina Swentzell, a Pueblo scholar, architect, potter, lecturer and author. I had the privilege of meeting her and hearing her speak at Ghost Ranch in June, 2015 at week long program on “Earth Honoring Faith”. She died in October of that year so I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to be with her. I just ordered her book: Children of Clay: We are Still Here, and look forward to learning about her pottery and perhaps more spiritual philosophy. Dr. Swentzell went to the University of New Mexico, earning a Master of Art in architecture in 1976 and a doctorate in American studies in 1982. At the Earth Honoring Faith Conference I was particularly struck by the Pueblo spiritual belief she articulated which she had translated from Tewa, Po-wa-ha (Water, Wind, Breath). I later found a writing online that you can also find on Youtube where Dr. Swentzell spoke further about Pueblo spirituality and Po-Wa-Ha called “An Understated Sacredness”. I invite you to look up this reference to learn more.

I remember quite clearly Dr. Swentzell talking about the breath of life that flows through all things. She spoke of this essence as being most like the breath that animates us: moving through us and all things, all the earth breathing. As a child in the Santa Clara Pueblo she was taught that this life force is called Po-wa-ha, water, wind, breath. She described it vividly as flowing in all creatures, people, rocks, trees, buildings, animate and inanimate things. She said all things, including ourselves, are temporary residences for Po-wa-ha. This breath of life cycles through all life giving birth and death. Even buildings for Pueblo tradition have birth, life and death, and are symbolically fed cornmeal when they are built. It struck me at the time that it was not unlike the ancient Hebrew idea that life came with the breath. However, with the Hebrew tradition the breath of life emanates from God who is separate and distinct from creation. The Pueblo tradition has no concept of a dualistic God. It seems, from what little I know, that Po-wa-ha is the closest thing Dr. Swentell’s tradition has to God. This breath or essence is present in and unites, all things. Humans are one with trees, animals, rocks, mountains, the sky and the cosmos.

I would call this way of thinking about God and the cosmos as panentheistic*. I have not done exhaustive research by any means, but in every case when I have investigated the beliefs of an indigenous or primal culture, whether it be from Europe, Africa, Asia or America, I have found similar concepts of a God who creates and is present in all things. There are surely exceptions, but I haven’t learned of them. The concept of the Tao in Chinese tradition was my first exposure to this idea back when I was an East Asian Studies major in college. The Tao, the mother of all things, the pattern and process of the universe was for many years my go to concept as I tried to conceive who and what God is like. It seems to fit with process theology which considers God to be present in all, creating all and yet still somehow beyond life (truly panentheistic).  As I have learned more about indigenous spiritualities I am comforted to find similar concepts of God. I have to say that it rings true to me that there is some essence, some process, a spirit or breath or presence, that is in all things and unites all things. As I dig in the dirt in my garden, hike through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains or seek permaculture solutions on my land I increasingly feel connected to all things.

When I try to conceive of God, when praying, for example, or explaining my faith to someone (like now) or sitting in church and trying to make sense out of the rituals and prayers, I find this inclusive, mysterious, breath of life strangely comforting. I don’t have to work to understand or imagine what kind of being God is, or if I should pray to Jesus or to a mother/father/creator, the Holy Spirit or someone else. I can seek a sense of unity with all things, and with this all encompassing essence of life and let the questions be for awhile. It’s really what contemplatives have been doing for a long time: letting go of self and seeking oneness with all. I would call it non-dual thinking, not separating myself from everything else, but my investigations of non-dualism have left me with the knowledge that I’m in way over my head trying to explain dualism and non-dualism. That will need to wait for another post.

I’ll conclude by sharing the mantra I have been using when I practice walking meditation these days. It’s one that I revised from one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books:

I have arrived – I am home – in the here – and in the now – I am solid – I am free – I am one with all that is.

* Panentheism – Everything in God. This is a belief system wherein the divine interpenetrates everything in the Cosmos, but also transcends the Cosmos. Pantheism holds that everything is  God: God is synonymous with the cosmos. Meister Eckhart used the analogy of a drop of water (the Cosmos) in the ocean (God). The drop is ocean, has the qualities of ocean, and ocean permeates it. But the ocean is not a drop, and can never depend upon a drop.

Today, Feb. 2, 2017 is Imbolc; also known as groundhog day, St. Brigid’s Day and Candlemas. It is a cross-quarter day, observed in the Celtic calendar and by others. Cross quarter days are half-way between the solstices and the equinoxes. Samhain on Oct. 31st, Beltane on May 1st and Lammas on Aug. 1st (the wheel of the year). Imbolc is the day that traditionally we start to move from winter to spring. The earth is stirring and new life is coming. Imbolc comes from the word for sheep’s milk because this is the time of quickening when the ewes start to lactate. The plants are stirring, even if we can’t see it, and seeds sprouting. It’s a fertility festival, for sure, when we celebrate the fertility of the earth, animals and people. Supposedly, St. Brigid made a cross out of river thrushes to explain Christianity to someone and so one symbol today is St. Brigid’s cross. Brigid was originally a pre-Christian goddess in the Celtic world and was “converted” or appropriated for a Christian saint later on. In her goddess identity she was the goddess of poetry, creativity, midwifery and healing. Other symbols for Imbolc are candles and bonfires celebrating the return of light. It’s a hopeful day, like the groundhog never seeing his shadow and starting to wake up for spring. It’s pretty cold and icy here in Boulder today, so it’s nice to think about spring stirring.

I have found that observing these days based on the earth, like Imbolc, is a way to keep in touch with the process of God and earth. It’s interesting to feel connected to our ancestors who lived in tune with the seasons and earth by necessity. It’s also amazing to see how growing food and living closer to the earth puts me naturally in touch with these celebrations. The Christian church claimed and changed these celebrations in order to move away from the pagan traditions, but they kept them under different names perhaps because the people were still dependent upon the earth and it’s seasons.

You see, I had been thinking about life stirring lately because it’s time to plant seeds in my greenhouse. It’s early for tomatoes, but I put in a bunch of snow peas, greens, bok choy, and some cucumbers which I hope will grow in the greenhouse all summer,  gourds that require a longer growing season than this altitude provides and more spinach. I have this passive solar greenhouse that has a solar battery of earth tubes four feet down. We circulate air through these with radon fans to warm the place in the winter and cool it in summer. I also get some heat in winter from lots of water jugs painted dark colors and some phase change material on the walls. It’s been a cold winter, so it’s been a battle and I even added a heat bulb to the light fixture (which arguably did little to help) on the coldest nights. But the fig and lemon trees are alive, and the greens are doing fine. Having the greenhouse has been an important part of my wife and I trying to grow more of what we eat, which normally is pretty hard in the winter around here. It’s still hard and I am slowly learning what and when to plant in the greenhouse.

In the contemporary world we have mostly forgotten the earth based cycles of the year, though I can tell from the internet that many people are rediscovering them. I think the wheel of the year is a useful tool in relearning our connection to the earth. I am convinced that human thriving and regeneration of the earth depends upon us remembering this connection. Every ancient culture knew about these cycles and observed them. You can pick the tradition that speaks to you. It happens that my ancestors were from Northern Europe and the British Isles and I find I relate to the Celtic traditions and celebrations. In this season of Imbolc, which lasts until the Spring Equinox on March 21st, I will be trying to help my gardens and my psyche to wake up from the dark time of year and welcome new ideas and new life. I may have a bonfire tonight just for fun.

   

The last couple years I have been reading everything I can by and about Thomas Berry, the Christian theologian or “geologian”, as he called himself, who contributed a great deal to the study of eco-spirituality and the environmental movement. I came across a short biography of Berry written by his student, Mary Evelyn Tucker, on the website “Center for Humans & Nature”. In it she mentioned that in addition to Berry’s interest in indigenous spirituality, he also was influenced by Asian traditions and philosophies, particularly Confucianism. She noted that Berry thought that Confucianism had much to teach the contemporary environmental movement. As an East-Asian Studies major in undergraduate, I had studied Confucianism, but had taken a greater interest in Taoism, so I was curious to see what had captivated Berry about Confucianism. I found my college text on Confucianism by H.G. Creel, Confucianism and the Chinese Way and dug back into it.

         Confucianism taught that nature and human are interconnected. Confucius inherited this idea of the intimate relationship of nature and humans from older Chinese culture, and held to that tradition as well as to the elaborate rituals and etiquette that were aimed at harmonizing and revitalizing the universe and human society. Confucius taught that it was critical that human beings be in harmony with nature and to establish benevolent government that protected this harmony. He considered nature (which included earth, humans, animals and plants) to be basically good and had an optimistic view of the possibility of improving people, government and, by implication, nature. One does this through education and self cultivation. This idea of basic goodness reminds me of the original goodness of nature as found in indigenous (primal) religions and in Native American and Celtic Spirituality. Confucius was unencumbered by Western dualism. For Confucius, humans were not separate from nature or the cosmos.

Confucius saw the universe to be an interconnected triad of heaven, earth and human. Heaven for Confucius was not what we conceive of as God, but what he referred to as the Way of heaven. This Way was the manner in which the cosmos functioned. To be in harmony with heaven, or the Way, was for humans to follow truth and to find their original nature. The earth, nature, plants and animals were considered by Confucius to be in harmony with heaven, but humans had some work to day to get into harmony. This concept of the Way is much like Taoism, in which the Way is translated as Tao: the way things work, the inherent system or process of the cosmos, nature and humans.

Earth and human, the other two parts of the triad are to be kept in harmony with heaven. Humans can bring themselves to be more in harmony with heaven through living a moral life. This included practicing the correct ceremonies (li), the correct etiquette and adopting proper beliefs and behavior. It must be noted that for Confucius the main concern was human society and good government. The person was to cultivate themselves to be better servants of other people. However, Berry and others have noted that in Confucius’ time, it was assumed that the moral person was also serving nature.

Part of the “Way” for Confucius was Ch’i, the material force of the universe. The ceaseless movement of Ch’i in nature gives birth to new life. This Chi is sometimes pictured in Chinese landscapes as the mist descending from the mountains. Humans are supposed to model this ceaseless vitality of the cosmic process in our behavior and the organization of our society. Through Chi, everything is connected. The five elements are metal, wood, water, fire and earth. Each element corresponds to a season, a color and a direction. For example, fire corresponds to south, summer and the color red. Rituals, etiquette and human behavior and natural systems all revolve around these interconnections. The moral person’s job is to keep all of this in harmony. Therefore, cultivation of the individual’s life and the cultivation of the land in agriculture are interconnected and equally important. Humans are considered co-creators with heaven in re-ordering human society and human’s relationship with nature. Contemporary process theology in some ways shares this philosophy of interconnection.

Berry taught that Confucianism was an “anthropocosmic” philosophy as opposed to an anthropocentric philosophy. Instead of having humans as the center of creation around which the universe revolves, Confucian thought sees humans as “an integral part of the ‘chain of being’ encompassing heaven, earth and the myriad things”(Evelyn Tucker). Humans, for Confucius, are considered to be interconnected, (interpenetrating, united) with all of the cosmic order.

   

        This philosophy has much to teach contemporary environmentalists. Confucianism can help us develop our new eco-spirituality or eco-centric theology that undergirds our environmental action. As I move away from the anthropocentric and dualistic traditions I grew up with in traditional, Christian theology, Confucianism’s non-dualism and wholistic view of the cosmos is very helpful. I agree with Berry that it has much in common with indigenous spiritualities around the world. What I find to be unique in Confucianism is the moral responsibility of humans to cultivate and educate ourselves to be instruments for re-harmonizing and revitalizing human society and individuals with heaven and earth.

To restate this idea, dualist theism found in western religious traditions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam is anthropocentric. A basic principle of eco-centric theology is the move from understanding God and humans as separate from the rest of the cosmos – temporarily part of nature – to seeing God and humans as part of nature: interconnected. Confucianism is closely related to primal religions and spirituality that were almost universally non-dualistic. If we consider humans and God are utterly separate from the cosmos, then it is possible to view nature as serving humans and expendable. Views such as dominion over nature and it’s exploitation are intrinsic to dualism. However, if humans and God are considered part of the process of the cosmos, then to inflict damage on nature is to damage God and ourselves. Confucian philosophy is consistent with non-dual thought in which human life and our conception of God is interwoven with the cosmos. Following from this is an entirely different understanding of theology, ethics and human identity. Our ethics cease to be concerned primarily with human well-being, but must be adapted to include all of nature. Non-dualism changes everything, from how we think about God’s identity, to how we view humans, other animals and all of nature and the cosmos. I was surprised to discover in Confucius an ally in eco-spirituality.

“What we are more less lacking at this moment is a new definition of holiness” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“To cherish what remains of the Earth and foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” – Wendell Berry

I am a retired pastor of the United Church of Christ living in Boulder, Colorado. I would describe my faith as contemplative, universalist and non-dualistic. I seek God in all things and in all spiritual paths. I have decided the best use of my life now is to serve the environmental movement. The late, Thomas Berry, the eco-theologian who called himself a “geologian” because he thought that the mystery we call God is actually the process of the earth, wrote that the environmental movement is “The Great Work” of our time. I agree and feel convicted that I should seek to contribute to this great work. I think one way for me to contribute is to write about my personal journey to find an earth based spirituality, and to explore how to bring earth honoring faith into my Christian tradition and my interest in permaculture, local food and regenerative living.

In this blog I will seek to explore ways of living, gardening and growing food, understanding faith as earth-honoring and doing theology that are regenerative. Honestly, part of my purpose is that I hope through researching and writing I can further my own thinking on these topics. For 30 years I wrote sermons and articles in relation to my work as a pastor. It is the way I learned and grew in my understanding. Through this blog I hope to continue to grow in my understanding of what is true through reading, practicing permaculture, contemplating, listening and writing about the experience. I invite you to read my reflections as I go. I hope there will be some thoughts worth reading.

I have been thinking about his blog for 3 years or so, but the election of Donald Trump convinced me I shouldn’t put it off any longer. The climate action movement is one of most important works of our time and now is not the time to sit on my hands or feel inadequate, it is a time to rise to the occasion and contribute what I can. I hope to contribute to the spiritual underpinning of this movement through sharing my journey of Earth-based spirituality, permaculture and environmentally responsible living. I don’t pretend to have achieved these goals, but am on a journey, seeking to live  a more regenerative life.

Pete Terpenning, January 19, 2017