Rising Rooted: How Creation Theology Roots Us in Belonging

California’s fires are flaring and fast. Powerful winds are fanning the fires with force, seeing burning areas twice the size of San Fransisco. Risks of human lives, more than human lives, trees and vegetation, and structures are all at risk as the Kincade Fire alone grows to over 75,000 acres. These fires, and their accompanying rolling electric blackouts, are indiscriminate and they speak with a collective voice: our house—our oikos (Greek for “house”) is on fire.

The Amazon is on Fire. The Congo River Basin, is on Fire. Oceans are warming. In September 2019 the New York Times amongst other news outlets reported the research that the number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past half-century. Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. This is the age of the Anthropocene—the age when Humans activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. This is the age when in many ways, humanity behaves like a voracious fire, rapaciously consuming everything in our path.

How does our faith respond to this crisis? How do our theologies—these are our religious stories we tell ourselves about the nature of God and subsequently ourselves—respond to this ecocide? I’ll tell you what is not helpful—stories that tell us that our home is ultimately in heaven and that we are just passing through this planetary domain. No, we need theologies that are functional in that they tell us the truth of our existence: that we are created from this earth. Let us recall that Adam’s name in Hebrew is adamah, translatable as ground or earth, and that in this creation cosmology he is formed out of humus—a large group of natural organic compounds, found in the soil, formed from the chemical and biological decomposition of plant and animal residues and from the synthetic activity of microorganisms. And we are part of this organic earthen material! We belong to the land, to the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us.

We must shift from a consuming people into a communing people, a people who commune and are personally and sacredly connected to our places and our planet. To lean into this kind of worldview, we need a sound and rooted Creation Theology, an understanding of God that is present in our planet, placed here as a liberating and regenerative rising incarnation force for the sake of all of our—human, more-than-human and our planet’s—future.

I want to go to the book of Job for the wisdom it contains regarding how we are to be in relationship with our places and listen intently to the sacred guidance given by the more-than-human world.

Job 12:7-12 The Message (MSG)

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.

Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.

    Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree

    that God is sovereign, that God holds all things in God’s hand—

Every living soul, yes,

    every breathing creature?

Isn’t this all just common sense,

    as common as the sense of taste?

Do you hear already how a good Creation Theology upsets the Great Chain of Being—this hierarchal social structure that places humanity at the top as the crowning glory? It says that the wild ones—the untamed animals, lands, waters—have been given the gift of speech, that they can be read as sacred script—that they have a subjectivity and personhood that cannot be controlled, coerced, or conquered. They offer an ecological way of living that is interconnected, and interrelational. They hold a mirror to God, reflecting to us how to live in flourishing ecological relationality. We are meant to court this wisdom of the wild, not corner it, capturing it and reducing its life purpose and value to a commodified and objectified thing. For to do that would be to crush the very presence of God.

A Good Creation Theology is a Decolonizing Theology.

For at its core is a liberation for all human and more-than-human life that occurs as a result of getting rid of this hierarchical illusion of separation—that we are separate from one another, from the earth, from the orcas…. for this illusion of separation—this dysfunctional myth— is what has allowed the colonizing hubris to take, to desecrate and oppress.

A good Decolonizing Creation Theology honors, respects, listens to, and affirms the indigenous and native voices and way of living that was generative and symbiotic for millennia. It joins with the Lummi Nation in saying: “What we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves. If any strand of the web is broken, the whole web is affected.”

A Decolonizing Creation Theology centralizes the voices of the voiceless and unheard—specifically the earth and more than human communities—and gives them dignity and sacred value.

“But ask the animals what they think—let them teach you;

 Listen—the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories.

    let the birds tell you what’s going on.”

What do you think Tahlequah also known as J35 in our resident orca whale population was saying as she carried the remains of her baby on her nose through the waters of the Salish Sea for days during her display of grief during the summer of 2018? Do you think she has something to teach us about the damming of our watersheds? Our over-fishing practices? How to make salmon populations thrive?

What do you think the albatross chicks were telling us with their dead bodies on Midway Island in the northern Pacific Ocean, their bellies filled with plastic? We must retune our ears to those who speak in the tongue of the wild—hearing clearly what they are saying through their silent slide into extermination. I invite you to meditate on this and connect to your own answer.

A Decolonizing Creation Theology aligns oppression of the earth with the oppression of bodies and understands that liberation of marginalized people will occur in tandem with liberation of land. C.S. Lewis rightly said that what we call human power over nature has actually become the power exercised by some people over others, using nature as a tool. Ecological injustice leads to social injustice, and vise versa. When we look to the bodies made invisible by systematic oppression, we see a demonstration of what has been done to the planet. We see the interconnection between empirical power and the deforestation and development of the Amazon and the life-threatening impact on indigenous tribes.

“Put your ear to the earth—learn the basics.” Earth teaches us that a Decolonizing Creation Theology is a move toward solidarity with the subjectivity of the natural world. Hear this: humans have been limited in how they understand “personhood” (this is the quality of subjectivity of a being, often tied to liberty and equality) to the degree that we have given personhood only to human beings and to corporations…I’m sorry, but what?!? Corporations are attributed subjectivity, liberty, equality, but a vast population of humans are not let along the self-regulating body of Earth?!? Thank all that is good in the universe that this is changing with the development of Earth Law, a global movements to give personhood back to the planet.

In early July, Bangladesh became the first country to grant all of its rivers the same legal status as humans. From now on, its rivers will be treated as living entities in a court of law. The landmark ruling by the Bangladeshi Supreme Court is meant to protect the world's largest delta from further degradation from pollution, illegal dredging and human intrusion. The Ganges has also been granted this status as well as An Indian court has recognised Himalayan glaciers, lakes and forests as "legal persons.” There are various court cases and decisions happening like the globally.

The idea of environmental personhood turns that paradigm on its head by recognizing that nature has rights and that those rights should be enforced by a court of law. It's a philosophical idea, with indigenous communities leading the charge. This is the worldview shift that Jewish philosopher Martin Buber talks about in his theories of an I/Thou relationship. This is the seeing the other as a sacred Thou, a holy person in all their inherent dignity. And you know, you cannot steward a person…you can only steward an object. That has an inherent power-over position. When we move towards a solidarity posture with Creation we stand up for the land, we stand besides the watersheds, we speak for the Orcas, we see ourselves no longer as separate but AS the wild and wonder-filled body of the more than human Other. Do you see this critical move?

“We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we've lost our connection to ourselves.”

—Andy Goldsworthy

A decolonizing Creation Theology recovers an indigenous worldview within the Hebrew and New Testament scripture that sees land as central, nature as revelatory, and creation as sacred—the Body of God. The world as God’s body is a way of re-mythologizing our sacred stories and elevating them to a planetary and cosmic scale. While it invites the whole cosmos to participate in the divine unfolding and meaning of life, it also gives deep value to the very essence of creation. It allows for a planetary scope down to the particular particle. This model allows for the Sacred to be seen, sourced, and sacramentally present in and through the world and leads us into a knowing that “that we as worldly, wild, creaturely bodily beings are in God’s presence.” The world becomes not only a source of the sacred, but a place that must be profoundly cared for in response to our interanimating connection.

We need God to inhabit this place, for such a creation-centered religious interpretation leads to a deep sense of the sacramentality of all things. We will grow into the kind of people we are meant to be insomuch as we are rooted, connected, re-membered within the whole assembly of creation.

A good creation theology is also common sense theology that understands affirms the science of ecology, opening us up to think about what is a good climate theology—especially poignant this season as we witnessed the first ever global climate strikes this past September 2019. Therefore, I would also suggest that a good Creation Theology is a sound climate theology, one that speaks through the elements demanding attention and action.

You ride on the wings of the wind,

You make the winds your messengers.

Psalm 104:3-4

The Sacred is revealed through the elements. As much as Holy Mystery is revealed through wind, so too is this Sacred Presence revealed through Fire. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes that “the world is charged with the grandeur of God, it will flame out like shining from shook foil.” Where have we seen this in scripture? Remember Moses and the Burning bush in Exodus chapter 3? Could this not be the moment when God is saying to us with each forest a’flame: take off your shoes for this is holy ground? Could this not be the moment of transformation when we awaken to our deepest calling? A call to bear witness to the holiness of creation?

Could climate warming be the very fire that is calling us to take off our shoes—our colonizing ego, our Western mind, our capitalist consumption—and recognize and reconnect to the world as holy ground? I ask you to put your imagination to this uptopic task for the sake of a flourishing future for all living beings.

A Good Creation Theology is a Climate Theology.

Climate Theology is a justice-for-all theology. If our faith communities are not talking about, and putting action towards, the Amazon fires and the reality of catastrophic climate warming, then we must come to terms that our faith is complicit with climate change in that it orients around a colonizing worldview, one that is based on the violence caused by an illusion of separation and that abundance is for the few and rich.

The ancient symbol of God as Trinity discloses truths about the essential interconnectedness of both the fragile ecology of the human soul and of the planet we inhabit. The interrelatedness that ecologists find in the biosphere on Earth and the interrelatedness that science discovers at all levels from quantum physics to cosmology are all sustained at every moment by a God who is Persons-in-communion. Humanity along cannot bear the image of the Divine. We can only do so in our own interrelatedness with Other—the more than human world, other-than-us humans, and the cosmic presence of the Sacred.

Black writer and activist Alice Walker, most notably known for her best selling book, The Color Purple, and her impact on womanist theology, understood that the Earth will assuredly undo us if we don’t learn to care for it, revere it, even worship it. Walker warns: “While the Earth is poisoned, everything it supports is poisoned. While the Earth is enslaved, none of us is free….While it is ‘treated like dirt,’ so are we.” We will be image bearers of God insomuch as we are in communion with the Earth and subsequently with one another. When we are persons-in-communion we will live into our essential interrelatedness, spurring us towards climate activism and creation solidarity. A justice-for-all climate theology attunes and demands our attention to a collective response to global deforestation, the EPA’s rollback of clean water protections, the frenetic drive to continue to mine for finite energy sources. And this only scratches the surface, am I right?

“What is good for the world will be good for us.”—Wendell Berry

Climate theology would affirm that is good which conserves and promotes all living creatures (human and more-than-human alike), especially the most vulnerable; that which is bad is everything that prejudices, oppresses, and destroys living creatures. A good climate theology demands a hard gaze at how our collective and personal human actions are complicit with the reality of climate crisis, and challenges us to make lifestyle choices NOW that will honor the future of the sacred earth, the more-than-human world, and provide hope for a flourishing future for ALL life on Earth.

Climate theology then is an earthy spirituality that reunifies the sciences with religion and spirituality affirming the spiritual potential of matter, fundamentally changing how we experience the material and living worlds. This is a theology that speaks with birdsong and whale tears; that speaks with winds and fire; that speaks with twining roots would have us LISTEN to the wisdom within these voices and in response, fall in love with this beautiful home, our oikos, our Earth.

A climate theology would be about the political and civic work of renewing commitments and reconnected communion in such a profound way that we will participate in the heart of the world, by directing our living and sacred earth towards life instead of death.

Hear how German poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke is in conversation with Job, and how this poetic offering affirms a creation theology that is decolonizing in nature and climate responsive, and therein lies our hope:

How surely gravity’s law,


strong as an ocean current,


takes hold of even the smallest thing


and pulls it toward the heart of the world. 

Each thing

—
each stone, blossom, child—


is held in place.


Only we, in our arrogance,


push out beyond what we each belong to


for some empty freedom.


If we surrendered 
to earth’s intelligence


we could rise up rooted, like trees. 

This orientation lifts up a new kind of people, remembering that we are meant to embrace creation in a posture of solidarity, cultivating an ethical responsibility toward “the least of these” on our planet. Let us remember a sense of wonder, kinship and belonging to the world. This remembrance of a vital, sacred connection WITH creation is for our sakes and the sake of the wide and wild earth in whose being we are profoundly and beautifully entangled.

Cultivate the Wisdom Within the Wild: Biomimicry as a Spiritual Practice

Boehman, Jessica. Bedtime Stories. 2013.

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” -Joseph Campbell

We are approaching the threshold of Winter, and these days that come before that elemental edge are known as Advent, a sacred time of the year when rituals attune ourselves to the growing darkness and when hope is kindled by the coming of light.

But before the light is the darkness—a darkness that is the deep color of sunless earth. All life is being drawn into the depths of soil, a migration of descent that is both a lull and a longing. Life is slowing down, quieting, and entering caves and underground caverns wherein sleepy darkness will be the only thing that will satiate this elemental pull.

And yet isn’t it ironic that the farther the Western mind moves from celebrating this season and the upcoming solstice for its earthen guidance and wisdom, the brighter the holiday lights become; the louder the market cries for over-consumption; the more frenetic the pace and demand of over-worked holiday cheer? This is a way that is contrary to the descent the more-than-human world engages as they wait for the light.

Every Advent I see new methods, books, and calendars that aim to connect ourselves to the meaning of this season. These seem to exist at the margins, hardly able to compete with the trumpeting chaos of holiday calendars and over-played carols. And while I admittedly do attempt to engage these new titles or traditions as a way to center and slow down the pace, I find that rarely do the intentions last as there is little grounding and rooting into the reality of what my body longs to do—this longing to go inwards and follow the others with fur and four-feet, to find the kind and nourishing dark within my inner-self.

Truly, the light that breaks with promise on the heels of the Winter Solstice only has power because of the darkness through which we have just come. But how can we truly know the Light if we’ve been kept from going into the Dark?

This Advent I want to do something different, or more aptly, something deeper. I want to look to what Nature is doing, how the wild is behaving, how Earth is quieting and model something of a spiritual practice of it. Instead of buying another book to guide my Advent season, I want those with rhizomes and heartwood, those whose voices rise to moon-howl, those who curl confidently within their fur to counsel my quest for holy days that leave me with a renewed sense of faith, hope, and love. I want Nature to be my scout this season towards an ancient nativity, showing me how to rest like roots; when to withdraw like wolves; and when need for warmth demands a festive fire with family and friends.

These days before the brink of Winter will be ones where I lean into and look deeper into the principles of biomimicry, an idea that by imitating models, systems and elements of nature we might discover ways to solve complex human problems. Frankly, there is no way anyone can engage the news and social media and not see the human and ecological grief and suffering that is happening all over this world. And I believe that Albert Einstein was absolutely correct when he said:

We can't solve problems by using the same thinking we used to create them.

Our anthropocentric attempts to solve our human-engineered problems need to be reoriented—rewilded to the rest of the whole from which biotic life is bound. If the Winter Dark is the time when the natural world renews itself for the regenerative life-burst of Spring, how do we expect to do the same if our Winter looks no different than the frenetic force that pressures the Western world to be lit year round?

We know we are intimately connected to earth-systems. Our bodies get sick when our planet is sick. Our ability to flourish is fastened to the potential for all life to thrive. We have awoken to this reality in the eleventh hour of climate chaos. Janine M. Benyus, author of the profound and popular book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997) says this, “We are awake now, and the question is how do we stay awake to the living world?” I would say, it will take practice—disciplined regular and repeated rhythms or patterns of behavior that bring about this awoken state of perception. Following are the nine basic principles of biomimicry that come from Janine M. Benyus’ work:

Nature runs on sunlight

Nature uses only the energy it needs

Nature fits form to function

Nature recycles everything

Nature rewards cooperation

Nature banks on diversity

Nature demands local expertise

Nature curbs excesses from within

Nature taps the power of limits

How different are these than the common consumptive energy of this season? And how different would the holidays be if we engaged them from a spiritual practice of biomimicry? My sense is that we would be incredibly awake to the sacred and wild world in ways that would transform how we experience these threshold days of this season. We would come to find that we have enough. We are enough. And from this place, we will be able to open up and sink deep into this beautiful dark and rooted place.

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Advent Practice

Instead of spiritual practices that that lead us away from the dark, demanding a journey towards the light as if it wasn’t already within us, let’s re-engage rituals that place us here, that designate the dark earth as holy ground, sacred soil within which we rediscover the life that has always been within and with-out all things. Over the course of Advent, engage each of the nine elements as an invitation into a personal and spiritual practice.

• Take 2-3 days to reflect and respond to each principle and imagine ways in which you can bring that principle into practice. Begin by simply reframing each principle with the personal pronoun, “I.” For example, “I run on sunlight.” “I use only the energy I need,” etc.

• How does this statement feel to you? Is it true? Does it invite a response of longing or desire for a different way of being? How does this challenge you in this season? It becomes very interesting to think of these principles through the lens of holiday gift-giving, and even holiday activities and festivities; these foundational aspects of the natural world don’t work within a world of capitalistic consumerism, over-consumption, and narrow religious views.

• Let’s take this reframing into our inner-world, our soulscape. Are you able to restate the basic principles of biomimicry as a spiritual or soulful practice? Does your spiritual tradition or practice reward cooperation? Does it demand local expertise? If yes, how? If not, how are you being invited to a biomimetic lens of your faith?

• What rituals can be created to honor the sacred rhythms within the principles of biomimicry? Perhaps you bring in a cup full of dark humus earth into your home and create an Advent altar with it, pairing it with a candle. Do you already have an Advent wreath for your family table? Place the cup of earth at the center! This creates an earthen awareness for darkness and connects to the question: “What do I need to stay grounded through this season?” In our family we gradually begin turning off electric lamps or lights in our house and replace them with candlelight so that our eyes can begin to re-sensitize to the dark; by the time we are at the Winter Solstice we have only candle light within our home and boy can you feel the dark! This is a dark that is hard to come by in the city as light shines year round in the night from street lights, cars, businesses, exterior house and condo lights, etc. I also like this move towards the candle light as I find that we move more slowly in the house when only candles are lit. This honors what our bodies want to do naturally in this season, instead of the push to rush towards the coming light.

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“Seeds grow in the dark—so do we.
Let’s stop making such a virtue out of the light.
Let's turn toward what’s in the shadows and breathe it in,
breathe it here, meeting it face-to-face until we realize
with more than mind that what we are seeing
is none other than us in endarkened disguise.
Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. 
Let’s not be blinded by light
Let’s unwrap the night 
Building a faith too deep to be spoken 
A recognition too central to be broken 
Until even the darkest of days can light our way.” 
― Robert Augustus Masters

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