Home Waters

On our final day, we spent the morning listening to a wonderful explication of Buddhist thought and its relevance to our environmental worldview and behavior from Tom. His emphasis was on the importance of “taking time to notice,” learning to live with less ego and selfish desire, and avoiding excess. He offered a critique from Wendell Berry of American rugged individualism and emphasized instead the value of a more interdependent and less selfish conception of existence. Western culture, he argued, has been too obsessed with the self, an obsession that he sees related to Christianity’s championing of the idea of individual salvation. We discussed some questions that are rather difficult to answer. Someone asked, for example, how we should define excess, and Tom’s response was that it begins when we benefit at the expense of the environment or of someone else. It seems that the Mormon answer would be something along the lines of using more than we need for our basic necessities. That, anyway, is how I read D&C 104. [Read more…] about Ecospirituality Workshop (Day #4)

We spent the morning sitting outside in the sunshine, sharing our nature writing with one another. As I said, I didn’t have any particular expectations about this exercise, at least in terms of the quality of thought and expression we would hear, only because I knew this was not a writing workshop and there was no expectation that participants had or wanted any experience with writing. What stunned me was how heart-felt and honest and brave the writing was. We had discussed over the past two days how personal pain and grief can heighten the vulnerability we experience when contemplating natural landscapes. We all learned what we always know in theory but rarely remember in practice: that everyone carries wounds and that sorrow and loss are so central to what it means to be human that we can scarcely begin to cultivate deeper environmental awareness and appreciation before the pain emerges. We had several participants who had lost spouses or siblings or who carried scars from past battles, and the simple task of confronting the landscape before them only caused these sorrows to come to the fore. What was impressive was how boldly and thoughtfully they met them. One participant observed how pain and beauty seemed to come together, that they could not be compartmentalized. Many remarkable phrases and images stuck out to me: the “goose bumps” on the surface of the lake as the afternoon winds picked up and the unexpected gracefulness of cows dipping into the lake water, the image of a woman “floating on a sea of grass” while engaged in thought, and an unexpected voyager ant that had joined the kayaker on the lake, similarly dislodged from family and responsibility. It was an honor to witness these participants many of whom were giving nascent expression to long held feelings of belonging, of yearning, of sorrow, and of joy. [Read more…] about Ecospirituality Workshop (Day #3)

We began the second day discussing the art of nature writing. Tom had asked the day before, “Who do you think you are?” I asked: “Where do you think you are?” I suggested that nature writing is a kind of reconnaissance, an exercise in inhabitation, or as Annie Dillard puts it, an exploration of the neighborhood. Of course other art forms work to this end as well, but nature writing is a terrific way to literally ground your thinking and build some specific content into your growing affections for a place. It makes love of place less of a theoretical or vague idea and more of a committed relationship. And this is no mere exploration of a few streets or hiking trails. It has cosmological significance. So I brought in my favorite quote from the novelist, Marilynne Robinson, from an interview I did with her 8 years ago. She said: [Read more…] about Ecospirituality Workshop (Day #2)

Enjoy this podcast with friends Dan Wotherspoon, Craig Galli, and Rachel Whipple, and yours truly.

http://mormonmatters.org/2012/07/25/113-mormonism-and-environmentalism/

In a classic speech, Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, recently addressed the graduating class at Stanford University and reminded them about the “conspiracy of love” that has enabled them to be at this particular point in their lives. What he wanted to convey was simply that every person’s opportunities and fortunate circumstances do not emerge in a vacuum and, much less, do not exist merely as a result of an individual earning or deserving them. Instead, he insisted that these circumstances—whether it be shelter, good health, schooling, employment, supportive relationships, peace and safety—result from the labor of love of many others. These people are usually parents, grandparents, and teachers, but they are also the civic-minded among us: community leaders and those who labor on behalf of the health and vitality of institutions. He offered his own family experience as an example, describing how his parents and grandparents grew up in a segregated America and yet managed to arrive at a point where Booker could have a shot at getting into Stanford at the age of 18. [Read more…] about Born on Third Base