Restoring the Land. Restoring Ourselves.
If we are to truly rewild the Earth, we must rewild ourselves and how we see humanity as the image bearer of the Divine; we must bring our sacred stories and our soulscapes back into full and whole relationship with the more-than-human world. Original Post for AllCreation.org
Photo credit: Tom Reese
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
-Muriel Rukeyser
The shocking staccato of a lone M60 unloads into the forest filling the air. A strange-bird-like call answers in response. Tucked amongst the overwhelming English Ivy towers and sharp Himalayan Blackberry walls, strewn mattresses are habitat to both syringes and streetwalkers. The foul odor of feces and rotten food mixes with the residual tang of fornication and fear, layered upon decades of human-dumped garbage and debris. Stolen goods are hidden and found, rerouted through the overgrown invasive underbrush to avoid being spotted. And the bird-like call screeches through the branches and leaves once more. Perched on a muddy knoll with back to the trees and facing the structured, regulated life of the city, sits a lone figure clothed in threadbare layers of mismatched sweaters and socks sending sonorous signals through the air. These are distinct from the now-silent warbles and trills that should be present in this urban forest; these particular shrieks offer an alerting call for those illicitly trading in sex and drugs.
Stay out of these woods, was the explicit message. These woods are scary, bad, and degraded; and we don’t belong there. So fear-filled is this forest that neighboring immigrants and refugees are known to make gestures to ward off the evil eye when they walk on crumbling sidewalks beside the trees’ shadows. So avoided is this forest that neighbors living on opposite sides of the wall-like greenspace maintain veils of social and racial distinction and separation, and go to great lengths to drive around the woods to access neighboring community assets. A fugue-state surrounds this forest; neighbors have chosen to file their fear away into a state of forgetfulness, neglecting this natural world and creating a chasm between the people and a place that could serve to create harmonious, interconnected community.
This is the story of Seattle’s Cheasty Greenspace as it was when my husband and I moved next door to it in 2004. And this was the land that began to call out to me, imploring that I begin to reimagine how this particular place could be restored with a renewed story; how reconciliation with this land held a key to the unity of our community. As I witnessed the hotbed of activity flowing to and through these woods, I wondered how these trees could be experienced without dominant feeling of fear and separateness. For every stolen vehicle that was left in front of my house, for every ton of garbage and waste that was dumped upon the forest floor, for every red-eyed dealer that understood this landscape could cover his traded addiction, I began to be curious if we could imagine something profoundly different for this space.
It was as if the woods began to whisper to me, to call out to me, to summon me to restore an ancient story—one where the dignity of the land and the people were intimately interconnected, where the natural world thrived, and all living things flourished together in harmonious inter-relationship.
This urban wild whispered to me of a wholeness, of a restored ecosystem, that could be achieved through equal parts of forest and human restoration. I began to realize that this particular forestscape was a contributing part to the equation that left so many people wondering about the physical and social health disparity of our community—human and more-than-human alike.
Seattle’s Rainier Valley, racially and economically diverse, and historically underserved, has the highest chronic health and crime rates in the city. This area is also an identified “Open Space Gap Area,” meaning a community with no access to open green spaces within a half mile of residences. The irony of a neighborhood where children’s lives are at risk of vehicular hit-and-runs, and gun-shots fill the air more than bird-song, while a massive 43 acres of forest sits within the very midst of this community is glaringly obvious. The inherent connection between holistic human health and the state of this forest demanded my attention. The state of this forest and its ecological well-being began to offer itself as an accompanying answer to the chronic questions around oppression and poverty in our community. The trees offered insight into the well woven roots of injustice and environmental degradation, and how an interrelated relationship with them could inform a sense of being deeply at home both in our particular neighborhood, and subsequently, on our planet. By rewilding this particular place of Living Earth, we would be essentially rewilding ourselves as well.
Ecotheologian and ethicist Larry Rasmussen powerfully posits that “We are not so much at home on earth, as we are home as earth.” The integrity of the natural world renders our most basic and fundamental task: to live in such ways that ensure a flourishing and regenerative life for all of the created world and for all future generations within it. So how we live in our particular places matters as we are meant to be in deep interrelationship with the whole assembly of creation. And how we live in our particular places very much determines whether ecosystems within a bioregion will thrive. Rewilding becomes the process by which we support and live into healthy and whole ongoing relationships within the natural world; I would venture that rewilding becomes a process of returning to a state of belonging, to a state of home. However, we cannot begin to talk about rewilding the Earth, or our particular places, until we begin to rewild our understanding of God. When we begin to engage this sort of divine wholeness, we begin the critical task of rewilding ourselves as well. I believe that through rewilding our bioregional ecosystems, we begin the transformative work of rewilding the image of God.
Western Trillium within Rattlesnake Ridege (qʷalbc to dx̌aclbac)
We carry wildness within. This inner-landscape (what I would call a soulscape) has historically been accessed by stories and myths, and sacred rites and encounters with Mystery. Western civilization has told stories of human separation from the natural world, built upon traditional interpretations of foundational Judaeo Christian scriptures that places humanity hierarchically at the top of the great chain of being, and essentially, God’s vice-regents on earth. Interpretations of scripture such as this has resulted in humanity seeing the natural world as secondary to ourselves, and reducing it to a resource, its value in its commodification and contribution to a Western way of living. This has also resulted in the mental framework that has allowed humanity to extract, denude, deforest, and destruct Earth and her living systems. And, it has resulted in humanity’s own sense of homelessess.
If we are to truly rewild the Earth, we must rewild ourselves and how we see humanity as the image bearer of the Divine; we must bring our sacred stories and our soulscapes back into full and whole relationship with the more-than-human world. Like the presence of the interlacing petals of the Western Trillium (Trillium ovatum), which only grows in restored and rewilded forestscapes, we must see ourselves within an inter-animating relationship with the whole assembly of creation.
When we too are rewilded, then our work of ecological restoration within our local bioregions becomes the Great Work of integral becoming and belonging as home as earth.
Listening in Place as Practice & Poetry-A Workshop with David Whyte
“The Practice & Poetry of Listening in Place” was the title of the workshop I was invited to facilitate with the poet, writer, and philosopher David Whyte. From this starting place, we drew upon themes of the selva oscura, the dark woods, and how the path is both guide and our truest selves. Participants were given native plants to get to know and with whom to co-create nature mandalas as a practice of listening to, and learning from, the more than human world. It was an extraordinary day!
On Saturday, March 3 I had the opportunity to do a workshop with the cultural luminary, David Whyte through The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology's Alumni Lecture Series. Following are some of the thoughts and themes that came through our sharing, interaction, and play.
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When we listen deeply to the places that create our homescapes, our bioregions, we learn the stories of the land and create an imagination for how to mutually belong within these places. This practice of listening becomes a ritual in that it connects us to the great belonging within the community of creation, and also invites the Spirit to break in afresh, posturing us forward toward possibilities of a flourishing future. These are acts of remembrance and re-membering, practices that remind us of our interrelationship with the more-than-human world and bring us back into membership within this assembly.
The practice of listening in place will ultimately draw forth sorrow and lament, especially when one begins to attune to the silence of the beings (biodiversity) that are no longer there. How do we respond when the natural world no longer functions with resilience, when the bird’s song is still and the forests no longer refresh after the fires?
Where is the habitat of hope when the ice melts, the seas rise, and the forests burn? Can we find it in the silence? Will the still small voice call from within the wilderness, calling us to lean deeper into the silence and there find our true belonging?
Ecotheologian and ethicist Larry Rasmussen says it this way,
“We are not so much at home on earth, as we are home as earth.”
The integrity of the natural world renders our most basic and fundamental task: to live in such ways that ensure a flourishing and regenerative life for all of the created world and for all future generations within it. So how we live in our particular places does matter as we are meant to be in deep relationship with the whole assembly of creation. David Whyte's poetry guided us into an imagination for this relationship, a kind of dialogue with the natural world and the particularity of place that transforms one's soul. He spoke of this growing sense of interrelationship as a journey, a pilgrimage that would ultimately lead one to and through the most fundamental questions of life.
For me, my practice of of listening to my place has brought me to and through a question and process of acknowledging how my understanding of stewardship was based on superiority. My decades long urban forest restoration work hit a false floor; for me to continue to learn from this land, I had to engage in not just restoration, but personal deconstruction. And so I began the work of learning how my Whiteness granted me the privilege of choice to move to the Rainier Valley, and allowed my access to systems to change land policy. I had to confront the reality that white supremacy allowed me to be a steward of this land. And that even the theological idea of stewardship was one based on hierarchy, dominion, and power. I learned about how the oppression of the earth and the oppression of people are two sides of the same coin—you will not have liberation of one without the liberation of the other. My practice led me into important times of learning from tribal elders, who taught me that the land speaks. They showed me how they listen to the land. I began to realize that my understanding of stewardship had actually caused me to become deaf to the sacred soils of my particular place.
Stewarding this forest would only allow so much access to the spirit of this place. I had to begin the work, the practice of perceiving and participating within my bioregion. Bioregionalism is what environmental activist and poet Gary Snyder calls the “Spirit of Place.” To know the spirit of a place is to realize that you are a part of a part and that the whole is made of parts, each of which is a whole. I began to reconstruct my understanding of Cheasty through a whole perspective, leaning into the wisdom and teaching inherent in the land. It is this process of listening into a place, or perception and participation of a place, that will reveal sacred stories and ultimately encourage a move towards solidarity and a deep sense of belonging within our bioregion. Bioregional awareness teaches us in specific ways.
Our relation to the natural world takes place in a place and it must be grounded in information and experience. Learning about the forest through the lens of sacred and storied ecology has not only taught me about the land, it has taught me how to be human and a member of an ecological community.
The lessons of the forest are those humanity need most right now.
Within this practice of knowing, we can find our habitat of hope. A habitat of hope acknowledges the suffering that Western stewardship has wielded that has resulted in the silencing and extinction of species, and it invites a new way of seeing, a new way of being that is in solidarity with the natural world. It is Aldo Leopold’s think like a mountain. I’ve found it as I’ve begun to think like a forest. It is looking at the landscape through the lenses of foundational power, intersectional engagement, and revelatory awareness so to bring us into a profound sense of home and belonging as the earth.
Through this workshop, David and I attempted to bring these lessons to the participants. We brought in elements from my homescape, lowland urban forest plants that were honorably harvested for workshop attendees to co-create nature mandalas, an activity that encourages a way of meeting and knowing the natural world that invites communion and revelatory understanding. The 13th century Japanese Buddhist priest, write, poet, and philosopher Dōgen once said,
“When you find your place where you are, practice occurs.”
The mandala, which is ancient Sanskrit for “circle,” is a symbolic circular design that portrays balance, symmetry, and wholeness. Mandalas are found in almost every culture, and can serve as a sacred reminder of the path we seek to walk. My nature mandalas, which I co-create monthly, are a continuing practice of learning the land—connecting to the plant and tree life that make up my homescape, learning from them of the medicine and food they offer, leaning into their seasonal stories, remembering our interrelatedness and meant-for-ness. This is a practice of forming what theologian Steven Bouma-Prediger calls an ecological perception of place. That is, a practice to get to know your ecology by becoming familiar over time with as many components of your ecology as you can. In other words, this is a practice of learning to listen and attune to storied and sacred land.
And so this workshop was one that brought us through the terrain of our imagination, a journey that led us to participate with the sacredness that is within the wild world that exists all around us. It was a time of inviting a profound shift in how we understand ourselves in relationship with the environment that values it for its inherent integrity and particular revelatory qualities.
I am deeply grateful to The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology for inviting me into this opportunity to share of my experience and learning, and to David for his willingness to share space with me in this context. May we all be inspired to engage this deep work of practicing listening in place!
Are you curious about co-creating nature mandalas as a spiritual practice? Read more about this way of learning with the land here!
Being Rooted: Where Hope Turns Into Knowledge
I believe that much of hope is rooted in an intrinsic understanding that, “We are, where we are.” “I am where I am.” Simple sounding, yes, but this is really quite profound and lays the foundational groundwork for a rewilding vision of re-membering our hope, our selves, back into the deep and wise mysteries that are made evident through the cycles of our precious planet and our cosmic neighborhood. This kind of re-membering requires a connection with and within the natural world; to be exposed to, and experience, the integral ecology of which we are a part.
The deepening darkness of this season demands an answer for how we hope. Where do we find the winged imagination for a perception of lengthening light? For what have you hoped, and where is that placed? Is hope amorphous, without shape and form, or does it take on the color of a local landscape? I believe that much of hope is rooted in an intrinsic understanding that, “We are, where we are.” “I am where I am.” Simple sounding, yes, but this is really quite profound and lays the foundational groundwork for a rewilding vision of re-membering our hope, our selves, back into the deep and wise mysteries that are made evident through the cycles of our precious planet and our cosmic neighborhood. This kind of re-membering requires a connection with and within the natural world; to be exposed to, and experience, the integral ecology of which we are a part.
This is the process of developing an understanding that our particular place helps us know who we are, where we are, and to an extent, why we are. And this particular place-or bioregion- becomes what historian and theologian Thomas Berry called a primary referent. It becomes the lens through which we make decisions on behalf of our community. It provides a critical placement through which all of life is lived, including institutions, establishments, communities and neighborhoods.
Berry identifies this concept of a primary referent through the story of when he was twelve years old his family moved to the edge of town. Down from the new home was a small creek and there across the creek was a meadow. He writes in his essay, “The Meadow Across the Creek":
“It was an early afternoon in May when I first looked down over the scene and saw the meadow. The field was covered with lilies rising above the thick grass. A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something that seems to explain my life at a more profound level than almost any other experience I can remember.
It was not only the lilies. It was the singing of the crickets and the woodlands in the distance and the clouds in an otherwise clear sky. It was not something conscious that happened just then. I went on about my life as any young person might do. Perhaps it was not simply this moment that made such a deep impression upon me. Perhaps it was a sensitivity that was developed throughout my childhood. Yet, as the years pass, this moment returns to me, and whenever I think about my basic life attitude and the whole trend of my mind and the causes that I have given my efforts to, I seem to come back to this moment and the impact it has had on my feeling for what is real and worthwhile in life.”
This early experience, what Berry refers to as a primary referent, became his normative lens. Whatever preserved and enhanced this meadow in its natural, biodiverse cycles was good; what was opposed to this meadow or negated it was not good. His life orientation was that simple and pervasive. It applied in economics and political orientation as well as in education and religion and whatever.
The more a person is invited to be in the presence of, and reflect upon, the infinite number of interrelated activities and relationships occurring in our natural environments, the more mysterious it all becomes; the more meaning a person finds in the early flowering of the Indian Plum, the more awestruck a person might be in simply walking within and through the simple patch of Cheasty Greenspace's urban forest. It is none of the majesty of Mt. Rainier or Mt. Olympus, none of the immensity of the Salish Sea; yet in the Cheasty woods, a greenspace that has been transformed into a greenPLACE, the magnificence of life as celebration and connection is manifested and witnessed.
Space becomes place that has the capacity to be remembered and to evoke attention and care.
And so the slow and laborious work of changing the narrative of this particular stand of trees from one of separation into connection began. There was a deeply held hope that this land could be where children are. The place of children—where the play, where they inhabit, where they are—is one of the most potent indicators of how urban life is conceived and practiced. But there was also deep hope that as a result of coming alongside of these woods in solidarity, the children of our neighborhood would know this urban forest as their primary referent; that the interrelated health and well-being of this place would inform their own wellness and the general health of the city. Communion with the woods would be their own rewilding.
And now, before the weather turns, the children know in what seasonal direction it is going because of signs in the forest. They know when a red tailed hawk is about, as they’ve learned the signaling raucous calls of the crows; they then can turn their face upwards in time to witness the soaring, awe-inspiring flight and hear its exhilirating screech. They know the unique sound of the wind in various trees. They get anxious if life gets too busy and they cannot escape into this local hinterland to play and be. They removed blackberry and ivy. And as they began to dig up the invasive roots, they began to plant their own. Hundreds upon hundreds of trees have been planted alongside their sense of belonging. They now have feelings that spur action anticipating how governmental deregulation may impact the seasonal spring that flows through Cheasty’s snowberry meadow. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”
Because they know this place, because they now can identify so thoroughly with it, they know themselves and their web of interrelated relationships more fully. French mystic Simone Weil once said,
“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
They are, where they are. We are, where we are. You are, where you are.
This embedded relationship with a wilderness place is where hope resides. From here is where the imagination springs. An imagination that sees the connection between the health of a place and the health of a person, of a people, of a neighborhood. Here we come to know again the patterns and rhythms of the natural world, foundational ways of being. An remembered vision for how the health of an urban forest participates and forms the health of its surrounding biosphere-its ecology, its biodiversity, of which humanity is a part, cracks the light of hope into these winter-solsticing days.
REFLECTION
What is your meadow experience? Reflect on a place that perhaps is your primary referent. It would be a place that at one time provided a profound sense of awe and wonder, and in some significant way, formed who you are. You became apart of this place as much as it became a part of you.
Taking the Outdoors In
By bringing in something in from the outside world, we are creating reminders of where we are. As a result of big-box home stores going global and all the home decorating catalogs that infiltrate our front doors, our home interiors can begin to reflect a homogeneous look and feel. We could be inside and really be anywhere. Our regional landscapes give us bold reminders of where we live and inform a sense of our identity and spirit. This connection to place is critical in a global, technological driven era. Simple objects from just outside your front door can distinguish your homescape and provide a native anchor to your home.
Its a sick-day today at our house. And a rainy one to boot. Fevers and coughs, snuggles and sighs, and relentless rains are keeping this family inside. For a group who typically goes outside no matter what (we are firm believers in the "there is no such thing as bad weather, only being poorly dressed" theory), these days are hard. Furthermore, the Celtic Christian that I am, I get at my sacred space when I'm out of doors, whether it be in my garden, in our neighborhood greenspace, or trekking a bit beyond to the beaches and burrows of Seattle. Considering this dynamic, I knew I needed to intentionally employ some resources to sooth and ground our souls, in spite of the sickness.
I'm a tactile person, hence the great benefit I personally receive from our forest restoration work, digging deep into my garden and even my seasonal knitting. The feel of a tree, a stone or yarn passing through my fingers quiets my Self and wills my soul to show up and be present to my daily realities in ways that invites me to see the Divine all around me. Synthetics and plastics just don't cut it; they lack the heft and tactile reality that natural elements embody. For example, a plastic "toy" rock simply cannot achieve the appropriate weight and texture of a true stone. Nor do I have the same soul-response to a simulated stick or floral spray.
I need to engage the natural world in real and tangible ways daily; it is how I connect with God, myself and the greater community of things all about me.
It is common-culture in our house to bring the outside in in whatever appropriate and inspiring ways that we can. So while, yes, we have Playmobile Knights fighting battles throughout the house, we also have baskets of chestnuts collected last autumn for counting games and cannonballs, sliced wood blocks, scores of sticks, and easily accessible balls of woolen yarn for spontaneous story string making or finger knitting. Absolutely, the outside comes in for fun and play. But we also create intentional spaces and places that with a mere glance reminds us of the goodness of creation and the One behind it all.
One such example of this planned kind of place is our Nature Table. Our Nature Table is a dynamic display that morphs daily depending on who brings back what from a walk, from school, or from the woods. It tells the stories of our days. This dedicated plate contains memories of adventures, tokens of loved ones and connections to sacred places. I'm delighted when, with fluttering finger strokes, my children recall special memories of our family's time on the beach that are imbued in a shell. Or when they want to be the ones to light the daily candle, for as this place is like our family altar, they understand that by bringing light here, they are inviting divine illumination on our lives . For it is here that we bring natural items to represent prayers and hopes, and reminders of beauty and blessings.
We also have bowlfuls of green stones from Iona, Scotland around the house on tables, next to couches, on bookshelves. They are kind of like rabbits here, I guess. These favorite rocks have been rolled, tossed, counted, used for doll's food, blasted at by Lego ships, the whole gamut of play. But they are also fingered when we are having hard conversations, or laying sick on the sofa, or reading books. To some degree, they have become like prayer beads for our family, as fingering them seems to help keep in prayerful mindfulness the stories and events of our lives. Every member of our family has a favorite stone and we also make a practice of giving away Iona stones to friends who are having birthdays or need something especially special and hopeful.
But, today. Today, a wearied mom-of-two-sick-kids, I needed something. I needed to figure out how to get my "gift of grace." An important aspect of Celtic Christianity is the refusal to separate the gift of nature from the gift of grace, for both are seen as of and from God. Celtic scholar, and former warden of the Iona Abbey, John Philip Newell, unpacks this theological perspective further by offering, "The mysteries of creation and redemption are one. They are not in opposition to each other. Holding them together allows for a celebration of the essential goodness of life as a gift from God...." (The Book of Creation, p13). We were not going to be putting on the rain gear to discover God's goodness today outside...I had to find some fresh displays inside to buttress my rain-soaked-fever-weary spirit.
While rifling through some of the children's books, I found some forgotten-about pressed gingko leaves. These lovely fan-like, yellow leaves offered themselves up to become a garland for the piano in our front room. By gently tying regular knots around each stem, and guesstimating equal spacing, we created a simple and natural bunting that is not only unique and attractive, but also a reminder of this neighborhood we call home, for ginko trees line the avenue to which our small road connects.
By bringing in something in from the outside world, we are creating reminders of where we are. As a result of big-box home stores going global and all the home decorating catalogs that infiltrate our front doors, our home interiors can begin to reflect a homogeneous look and feel. We could be inside and really be anywhere. Our regional landscapes give us bold reminders of where we live and inform a sense of our identity and spirit. This connection to place is critical in a global, technological driven era. Simple objects from just outside your front door can distinguish your homescape and provide a native anchor to your home.
Our children recently learned how to make the Ojo de Dios (Eye of God) in Sunday School. This weaving craft is surprisingly simple and meditative. The repetitious pattern of bringing the yarn over and under the sticks is calming and centering. Today, of course, no popsicle sticks could be found anywhere in our house, so I went out to our covered front porch where I keep a decorative stash of cut branches from my parents' Red twig dogwoods out at their place in Snohomish. I cut larger than normal segments, and my son nestled into the arm of the couch to ensue a time of creating with sticks and wool yarn. Over, under, turn. Over, under, turn. Over, under, turn. His cough actually slowed down. He relaxed into the rhythm of co-creating with elements from the natural world. He commented on how different it was to do this project with real twigs compared to prefabricated popsicle sticks. It required more focus and dexterity. But the end result is beautiful and is already hanging over the interior of our front door, a visual reminder of God’s watchful presence in our lives.
My sense is that most of us live with items from special landscapes throughout our homes. While outside, we are naturally drawn to look and touch. While our feet carry and tarry us, we scan and search for a treasure to remind us of this time of feeling connected to the Source of it All. Reflect upon occasions when you have walked along beaches and looked for drift wood or shells, or hiked through the mountains and come across interesting rocks or sticks. These experiences tend to be imbued with a sense of calm and wonder. Sure, you can buy up tons of cast resin shells, coral and such from West Elm and Pottery Barn, and they will look wonderful on your shelves. But there is something priceless about the seek and find of a natural object that comes into our home to serve as a reminder of an interconnectedness to the Creator and the created world all around us.
Indeed, I found what I needed today. My gift of grace came by way of reminders and representations of the blessings that have come by way of surrounding landscapes, and being held and known by my children's hands.
Please share how you intentionally create spaces in your home to collect and display found, natural items. Is this a practice you regularly engage? How do these objects/spaces make you feel?
