February 17, 2013 • In the mornings when the light has only just touched the mountainside and the low valley is still in darkness, I whisper one long prayer. The mountains, too, set loose their steamy breath into the rising wilds of day.

There are as many ways to keep a nature journal as there are people who keep them. Some fill their journals with sketches, watercolors and diagrams of the plants and animals they find in the natural world, while others take notes, jotting down lines of descriptive prose or inspired verse to evoke a sense of wonder, curiosity and care about the diversity and beauty around them. Anyone can keep a nature journal: whether you’re traveling in exotic locations or observing the gentle, gradual changes of the seasons in your own backyard. The Sierra Club describes a nature journal as:

a place to grow your thoughts, feelings, ideas, activities, observations, and relationship with the natural world. [...A]n opportunity to interpret your inner thoughts out into the natural world and a space where the natural world can flow into you and leave a permanent mark.

It is this give-and-take relationship with the world around us that makes the task of journaling such sacred work. In many Pagan and Wiccan traditions, the Book of Shadows serves as a record of the practitioner’s personal spiritual journey: a recipe book, reference guide and diary all in one. For the natural polytheist and the earth-centered Pagan, the nature journal can be all this and more. The act of journaling can open us more fully to the world around us, and invite the natural world into those interior spaces within our own souls. A journal can be more than just a record of where we’ve been; it can be the beginning of a whole new journey.

There are two powerful techniques that I especially like to use when journaling out in nature, in order to move me from a place of mundane consciousness into a state of contemplation, attention and receptivity. They are: naming, and questioning.

Naming The World Anew

March 11, 2013 • Night choir frog, Drum-throated frog, Mist-creeper, Reed-root frog, Ripple-maker, Long-legged shadow, Water’s shadow, Dark moon frog, Spring-caller, Rain’s companion, Mud-and-leaf frog…

Names are powerful. So powerful that they can break open our minds to new realities. In many folk traditions, it is said that if you know the name of a spirit, you can gain power over it. But the opposite is also true: if a malevolent spirit or the ghosts of the dead learn your true name, they can make your life hell.

When it comes to our relationship with the natural world, names are a double-edged sword. They can empower us, helping us to organize the mind-boggling diversity of living things into families and phyla, giving us a way to grasp the subtle interconnections and relationships that might otherwise escape our notice. But names can also have a deadening effect. Often when I’ve been out teaching naturalist programs, I’ve seen how desperately people want to know the names of things, as if the name were a lifeline that they can hold onto to keep from being swept away. But once I tell them the name, the conversation ends. They’ve been gripped by the hard-fisted spirit of Expertise. They hold onto the names so tightly, like a treasure, the proof that they have learned something new about the world. But after an hour or two of learning dozens of names, they discover that these names are more like faery gold that has turned back into dead leaves or grains of sand, crumbling and slipping through their fingers, leaving them with nothing.

The joy of names is learning to hold them loosely. Dr. Richard Feynman tells a wonderful story about his father teaching him the difference between knowing the name of something, and truly understanding it. The unassuming brown-throated thrush has a suite of names befitting a king, a different name in every human tongue. The most modest creature can inspire fascination deserving a great and beautiful name, a name that changes with the weather or the mood and tremor of its call. A little boy who was on a low-tide beach walk I was leading crouched down, entranced by a tiny green anemone with pink-tipped fronds drifting delicately on the rocky side of a tidepool. “What is it?” he asked excitedly. “It’s called a pink-tipped green anemone,” I said, and he looked up in vague disappointment at such an obvious, unimaginative name. “But,” I added, “what do you think it should be called?” He thought for a while, sitting back on his heels. “How about a water flower?” he said, “Or, the Pink-Haired Clam Slug? Or….” and he trailed off, turning possibilities over in his mind. Some names are too special to be spoken out loud.

Journal Exercise 1: Naming • Do not rush to pull out your field guide. Sit with your journal and spend some time with the plant or animal in front of you. Watch how it moves, how its leaves spread, how its limbs bend. Listen to its calls and cries, to the sound of wind, water and soil surrounding it. Breathe deeply of its scent. Imagine what it might feel like to be this creature — how would you experience the world around you? Then, begin your journey to find its true name. Write down whatever names come to mind, whichever names seem to fit. There is no wrong name, for every name is an invitation to relationship. With every name you will discover more of the mysteries of the living world around you, as well as the mysteries within yourself.

The Quest of Questioning

April 23, 2013 • Why do the white lilacs bloom before the purple ones? Where is the hummingbird building its nest this year? How many kinds of moss grow on the cement wall by the garage, and why do some grow there but not others? Where is the hawk that has the crows in an uproar?

When we have broken free of the need to learn the proper names of things, we discover that there are so many more questions to ask about the world than just, “What is it?” In the introduction to his book, The Natural History of Puget Sound Country, Arthur Kruckeberg explores the revolutionary importance of ecology as a science that asks the tough questions:

In probing the natural world, what kinds of questions do we ask? Easiest are the “what” and “how” questions. What is it? and How does it work? usually can be given direct answers. The unknown tree or insect gets a name and a place in its family tree to satisfy the What is it? question. Though more demanding of observation and thought, the How does it work? question also has ready answers. The literature of how things function in the world of life is the product of patient experiment and observation by plant and animal biologists. It is only when curiosity persists to the How come? stage that science reveals its tentative and ever-probing qualities. The answers to What for? questions asked of the color of a flower, the hair on an insect’s body, or the slime of a slippery slug, are within the domains of ecology and the study of adaptations.

The scientific study of ecology tries to answer these How come? and What for? questions. But perhaps more important to our spiritual and contemplative lives is learning first how to ask these questions, and to allow them to lead us into deeper, more complex relationship with nature and its many gods. Asking questions can change the way we look at the world around us and our place within it, shifting our attitude from one of self-assuredness and certainty, to curiosity, wonder and mystery. Following the advice of the poet Rilke, we can learn “to have patience with everything unresolved in our hearts.” Remember:

try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.

Journal Exercise 2: Questioning • Sit and breathe, your journal in your lap. Spend ten to fifteen minutes quietly observing the place where you are sitting, its personality, its presence, and the other living beings that share this place with you. Allow the questions to arise naturally. If you find yourself asking, “What is that?” revisit the Naming exercise. Search for the hard-to-ask questions — why, how, how come, what for? Notice the way these questions invite you to look more closely, to breathe more deeply. Notice how questions like “where” and “when” shifts your attention beyond this time and place, broadening your awareness. Most importantly, do not try to answer the questions you ask. Allow them to remain unanswered, at least for now. Later, you might discover the answer to one of these questions while exploring the landscape or reading a book about your local ecosystem. But for now, just for now, allow yourself to dwell in the possibilities and mysteries that your questions open up before you.

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Take Robert Paxton, for instance, who left this comment on my G+ page:

Some invasives are sufficiently benign that one could address them in this gentle-hearted way. However, out at Circle Sanctuary, we cheerfully work hard to eradicate the buckthorn that has already killed some of our oldest oaks. We spend a lot of effort to beat back the multiflora rose that nothing eats — that repels the native birds — and that creates dense, fiercely prickly hedges. We fight the garlic mustard which chokes out dozens of native understory species, as well as causing butterfly populations to crash. And we fight the reed canary grass which creates monocultures that choke out wetlands.

Every local ecology has its own challenges, some more severe than others. In our case, a century of fire suppression — and some problematic but well-intentioned choices to introduce non-natives by DNR people of generations long past — left us a mess that we need to actively work on if we want the full natural diversity of the land shine.

The Gentle Heart of the City Girl

Robert is absolutely right that every landscape has its own challenges, as well as its own sources of resilience and adaptability. Learning how to work with the unique characteristics of your own local area is absolutely vital in the work to conserve and support thriving natural ecosystems.

I can’t argue with Robert about whether or not the environmental challenges that face Puget Sound Country, and Seattle in particular, are more or less severe than those he faces at the beautiful Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve in Wisconsin. (Though I will readily admit that I’m envious of the opportunity he has to work at such an amazing place!) I do know that Seattle has many of the problems common to cities all over the world — increased air and water pollution, soil erosion, heat islands, urban run-off, suburban sprawl — as well as some challenges unique to this area. Often times, invasive species find a foothold in a new landscape in the wake of disruptive changes that temporarily jeopardize the ability of native species to survive and thrive, and then stick around because they are hardier, more resistant to pollution and more flexible in nutrient-deficient environments. The city of Seattle, like many cities, has a history of environmental devastation and pollution from industry that make it ripe for invasion by non-natives.

Like Robert, I love the land where I live and I’m dedicated to doing everything in my power to live respectfully and to support an ecosystem that is vital and thriving. Do I think that my approach to handling invasives is too “gentle-hearted,” in light of the damage done by the more than 700 invasive species in my area (with Scotch broom and himilayan blackberry being among the fifty most problematic)? Not at all.

There is a great deal of violence and war in the language that Robert uses to describe his relationship with the land where he lives. He must “beat back” and “fight” and “eradicate” dangerous invaders in his efforts to protect old trees, butterflies, birds and other native wildlife. He might even see himself and his fellow conservationists at Circle Sanctuary as eco-warriors, embroiled in a battle of good versus bad, desirable versus objectionable, dangerous and strong versus weak and vulnerable. Yet I suspect that, as with most invasives, these efforts to eradicate the enemy will never be wholly successful. The invasives are here to stay, and the question we need to ask ourselves is how are we going to deal with them now that they’re here? Do we really want to be at war with a part of our landscape for the rest of our lives?

But what if we simply changed the metaphors we use when we talk about our approach to these invasives? What if we intentionally worked at shifting our attitudes away from images of war and hardship, and towards images of harvest and prosperity? I’m not suggesting being any less persistent or thorough in how we do the physical, practical work of land management. But instead of seeing this work as a constant battle that we will probably never win, what if we begin to think of these invasives as allies who present new opportunities? No plant or animal is wholly bad — every species fits into and carves out a niche, serving the larger community in some way. These invasives are, like many of us humans, dislocated settlers who are wreaking havoc in their attempt to survive. As Heather notes in another comment:

In their native environments, these species have natural checks on their growth (animals that eat them, competitors, etc.). By working with these species in the ways that you describe (using them for food or decoration), I think that humans have the ability to become those checks on the species in their new environment.

We can partner with invasive species in order to find a new balance, instead of wasting our time, energy and resources in a hopeless endeavor. Through careful research and creativity, we might just find positive qualities these plants possess that can be put to use by our communities, transforming this endless war into an opportunity for harvest.

The Cost of War

Our society tends to resort to the language of war and violence when trying to describe things that are difficult. People “fight their way up” the corporate ladder for a successful career. They “wage war” on social problems like poverty and crime. Hidden within Robert’s comment is the assumption that the most effective, most important kind of work is unpleasant and violent — work that we cannot do with a “gentle heart.”

Yet the casualties of war and violence are tragedies. We mourn the waste of life, the lost potential. This is true even when the war is metaphorical, and especially when it’s an endless battle that can never really be won. Many environmentalists have been inspired to great heroics and dedicated service by seeing themselves as courageous eco-warriors, fighting the good fight. But such an attitude is ultimately unsustainable — it can lead to feelings of despair and cynicism, when all the energy, time and resources we’ve poured into a good cause seem to come to nothing and we find ourselves, decades later, still locked in combat with the same intractable foes.

War is also the work of the few, rather than the many. As a metaphor, it is by its very nature exclusionary. A small number of soldiers put their lives on the line and make great sacrifices to protect the homeland and keep the rest of the community safe. Not everybody can be a soldier, and not everybody wants to be. For environmentalists who want to inspire and mobilize entire communities into action to protect the environment and live sustainably with our beautiful planet, using the metaphor of warfare can backfire, alienating supporters and undermining their cause. When we think of our environmental work as a war, we encourage the community to sit back and let those few of us shoulder the burden alone, brave eco-soldiers on the front lines doing the hard work so they don’t have to.

The Opportunity and Community of Harvest

As a city-dweller, I know how easy it would be to give in to pessimism, seeing the landscape where I live as too far gone, too scarred by human exploitation. The problem is just too big for a handful of conservationists to tackle on their own, no matter how dedicated they are. Seattle will never again be a pristine wilderness — the invasives, human and nonhuman alike, are here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t new ways of thinking about how we live with our local landscape. Unlike other invasive species, we have the opportunity to change the stories we tell about our place in the world and, by changing our stories, changing the ways we live with and relate to the many other beings that share the world with us. Instead of seeing ourselves at war with invasives, and with ourselves, we can embrace the story of harvest.

The beauty of the harvest is that it promises sustenance and interdependence as the fruits of our labor. The effort we put into the harvest — the blood, sweat and tears — helps to foster connections instead of severing them, sustains and supports life instead of destroying it. We’re used to thinking of harvest as something easy: as easy as going to the grocery store and choosing between oranges and apples, or at most doing some gentle weeding and watering in our backyard gardens. The truth is, harvest is hard, sweaty work that demands a great deal of discipline, teamwork, commitment and courage. Rather than lionizing the sacrifices of the few, reclaiming metaphors of harvest gives us the opportunity to celebrate the efforts of ordinary people doing ordinary things that add up to real, meaningful change. It gives people a chance to be heroic in their everyday lives, as well as reacquaint themselves with the pleasure of hard work and its rewards.

Harvest also reminds us that life is cyclical: a part of this year’s yield will be sown as seeds to grow next year’s crop. In approaching conservation work, it’s essential to understand how our actions today affect the reality we will live with tomorrow, or next year, or in the next century. War, on the other hand, has a beginning, a middle and, hopefully, an end. When we are at war with the invasives in our landscapes, our primary focus is on killing as many of them as we can; we rarely ask ourselves the question of what happens to the casualties of that war after our task is done, or how the landscape will adapt and recover in their absence. Reframing our conservation work as harvest instead of warfare can help to keep us grounded in the cycles of nature that we’re a part of, and it can spark creative ways of recycling and integrating invasives that respect the balance of the native ecology. In a healthy ecosystem, nothing goes to waste, and everything serves some purpose. Rather than worrying about whether or not we are being too “soft on invasives,” treating them as enemy combatants or ecological criminals, we can embrace a more effective solution by focusing on rehabilitation and restoration.

Different stories will inspire different people. Some people might come to a blackberry ice cream social not because they care deeply about protecting the environment from the invasive himalayan blackberry, but because they like ice cream and hanging out with friends. For some, cooking and crafting is their way of fostering a relationship with the natural world, while others might be inspired by the greater call to serve the community on a global scale through conservation. If our efforts are effective and the stories we tell are inspiring, does it really matter whether we approach the work with the courageous heart of a fighter, or the gentle heart of a farmer?

Still, my friend’s comment gave me pause. Surely, Beltane isn’t just a holiday for horny lovers. As part of the ever-spiraling dance of the seasons, there are a lot of blessings that this time of year brings that can be enjoyed by those of us who are chaste, single, or otherwise just not that interested in turning everything into a metaphor for girl-parts and boy-parts.

So in the spirit of the season, here are seven things to love about a sex-free Beltane!

1. Tragedy

Maybe you’re not having sex today because you’re single, and maybe you’re actually kind of pissed about it. Never fear! While happily committed couples are making googly eyes at each other, you can indulge in another tradition strongly associated with this time of year: the ultimate tragedy of desire. Call me morbid, but I’ve always found the relationship between sex and death to be rather fascinating. From the tragic love triangles of Celtic mythology that often led to the heroes’ deaths to the spawning salmon traveling thousands of miles only to die after mating, there’s a reason Beltane is opposite Samhain on the Wheel of the Year. Take some time to revel in the dark, gothic truth of it all.

2. Sunlight

To look on the bright side (pun most definitely intended!), there’s the sun. Having celebrated the balance of light and dark only six weeks ago on the vernal equinox, the hours of daylight are now rapidly overtaking the night. You might find yourself waking up in the mornings with more energy, or suddenly realizing that it’s already past dinner and the sun’s still up. Lots of us can suffer from a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) during the dark doldrums of winter. Take advantage of the lengthening days to get up a little earlier than usual and treat yourself to an invigorating morning cuppa, or enjoy a relaxing walk in the park after work and watch the sun set.

3. Risk

With its emphasis on the agricultural cycle as a defining metaphor, the Wheel of the Year can feel somewhat out of sync for those of us living urban, industrialized lifestyles. But even in the heart of the city, now’s the time when plants start to push their way through the cracks in the sidewalk, whether we want them to or not. If autumn is a time of fruition and harvest, spring is the season for life on the edge. Take some inspiration from those bold dandelions and stubborn thistles: take a risk, put yourself out there, push yourself to try new things, ask yourself what dreams you’ve been harboring that it’s time you brought out into the light. You never know what might happen. (If things don’t work out, next year you can always try Item #1: Tragedy.)

4. Sensation

Flowers aren’t just for winning your sweetheart’s affection or getting into the pants of the girl next door. (Okay, let’s be honest, even plants know that they make flowers mostly for sexy-time reasons. But work with me here.) Everywhere I go these days, it seems like some new color has burst forth into the world, or some sweet new scent lingers on the breeze. After the drab browns, grays and washed-out greens of the late winter and early spring, the first days of May bring forth a rainbow riot of colors and textures. Sit back and enjoy it as the landscape takes a tumble into Oz. Or join in: make some art, take some photographs, put on your best and most colorful clothes, cook some delicious-smelling food. Don’t do it for anybody else. Just delight in the pleasure of your own senses.

5. Youth

Now’s a great time of year to lighten up and learn how to be a kid again. No, seriously. Spring is a time of youthfulness, playfulness, adventure and anticipation. Remember what it was like back when you were young: gazing out the classroom window at the blossoming trees, and realizing that you only have a few more weeks of school left and then you were free! You had so much to look forward to, you could almost taste it: summer camps, s’mores, fireflies, fireworks, picnics, hours spent lazily reading or climbing trees or swimming with friends. Back when we were kids, we were so anxious to grow up and become adults, somehow imagining that life would be easier and the world would make a little more sense. Now that we’ve made it to adulthood, it’s probably nothing like we thought it would be. But one of the great things about being a grown-up is that we can learn how to be good parents to our own inner child (even if our real childhood was actually kind of shitty). So stop trying to be so goddamned serious and trendy and edgy and jaded all the time, and have a little fun. Let your inner 6-year-old out to play. The world won’t come to a screeching halt if you stop being so responsible for a little while. You know this, because you’re a grown-up now and one thing grown-ups know is that the world doesn’t revolve around them. Right?

6. Holograms

Lots of folks see Beltane as a time for planting seeds, either literally or metaphorically. Take a second to think about what a seed actually is. Inside that tiny, unprepossessing shell are the spiraling DNA blueprints that can grow anything from a delicate daisy to a towering oak. Even if you don’t connect powerfully to the symbols and traditions of your ancestor’s agricultural past, you can still geek out a bit when thinking about how a seed is kind of like a hologram. All that information and potential stored within one tiny acorn, including the information necessary for the once and future oak tree to produce more acorns, which will in turn grow into more oaks that will produce more acorns… and so on and so on. It’s acorns all the way down! If you’re an eco-freak and sci-fi nerd like me, spend some time meditating on the seeds of potential in your life and the universes upon universes they contain. You might discover that, just like the T.A.R.D.I.S., you’re bigger on the inside.

7. Love

I’m not talking about sex here, I’m talking about love. Love gets a bad rap these days. In an age of cynicism and sarcasm, lots of people have come to see love as a sign of weakness, naiveté, simple-mindedness, even laziness — all white-light and law-of-attraction — an unwillingness to acknowledge the dark and difficult parts of life. But love is not merely the romantic attraction or sexual tension between two pretty people on the television. It’s so much more than that. Love is passionate and risky, unflinching and courageous. Love not only lifts us up into the heavens, but drags us down into the underworld in pursuit of our deepest fulfillment. It’s dangerous, not because it is indolent and banal, but because it has a beauty that burns away our self-possession and self-delusion. Love rages within the heart of reality. So whether you have a sex-free Beltane, a naked neighborhood orgy, or anything in between: embody love. It’s the reason for every season.

UPDATE: My dear friend, Cat Chapin-Bishop shared her thoughts over on my Facebook page:

As someone with a strong spiritual identification with deer, I find Beltane pretty much of a bust, actually–always have. Deer rut in the fall. They give birth in May. And birth is work!

Which reminds me…

8. Work! — Throughout the world, May 1st is celebrated as International Workers’ Day, commemorating the Haymarket Massacre in 1886, when during a workers’ strike in Chicago, police attempting to disperse the crowd fired at civilians and killed four people. In many countries today, May 1st has become a focal point for protests in support of workers’ rights and other social and economic justice issues. So however you celebrate Beltane, remember to take a moment to honor the spirit and sacrifice of all those who have worked so hard to make the world a better, more just place for everyone.

When I first moved to Seattle, I was enchanted by this lovely plant. Modestly nondescript during the first few wintery, rainy months I’d spent in the city, this evergreen shrub suddenly revealed itself with the warming spring weather, a fresh reminder of bright summery days to come. It seemed to be everywhere.

In fact, that was exactly the problem. This plant — Cytisus scoparius, commonly known as Scotch broom — was originally a native of western and central Europe, first introduced to the pacific coast of North America in the mid-1800s as a garden ornamental. But despite its delicate appearance, Scotch broom is a survivor, embodying the same hardy, pioneering spirit as those early settlers who brought it to the sunny coasts of California. Able to establish itself in disturbed and nutrient-deficient soils, it often outcompetes other native plants of the Pacific Northwest, spreading quickly to dominate the landscape. A single plant can live for 20 years, its growth limited only by low temperature or drought, each year producing more than 12,000 seeds which can lie dormant in the soil for up to 30 years before germinating. Give Scotch broom an inch, and soon you’ll have miles of its dense stands invading the landscape, elbowing out natives like snowberry, currants and woods rose, smothering the seedlings of red alder and douglas fir, preventing reforestation and greatly reducing biodiversity.

Scotch broom is a quintessential example of what’s known in ecology as an invasive species: a non-native plant or animal that has invaded a bioregion, dominating the landscape and harming the balance and biodiversity of the local ecosystem. Many invasive species were first introduced by humans. Some, like Scotch broom, were cultivated for their aesthetic beauty or for utilitarian purposes (fast-growing and hardy, Scotch broom was also used to prevent erosion and stabilize banks and sand dunes along newly built roadways and in other areas). Others were brought along as domesticated animals, livestock or pets (such as the bullfrog and burmese python in the United States). Sometimes, as happened with the starling in North America and the rabbit in Australia, European immigrants intentionally introduced non-native animals into the wild, hoping to bring a “touch of home” along with them to the lands that they colonized and conquered without any thought to the potential impact on the local ecology. Still other species are introduced by accident, as stowaways, pests and parasites that quickly spread when not kept in check by their natural predators.

Given how harmful an invasive species can be, it’s tempting to see them as wholly bad, the “enemy” of a healthy ecosystem that needs to be eradicated. Yet our attempts to purge an ecosystem of invasives can end up causing new problems. Chemical pesticides and herbicides may lead to increased pollution that affects natives as well as non-natives. Attempts to control invasive populations of plants through weeding or clear-cutting can disrupt the soil and surrounding landscape in ways that only exacerbate the damage and encourage the invasive growth, while the hunting of invasive animals may play havoc with stable populations, potentially provoking further dispersal of the invasive species, spreading disease or increasing the likelihood of dangerous encounters with people in human-inhabited areas.

Like many things in the natural world, our relationship with invasives is complex and ever-evolving. Throughout the long history of our planet, species have migrated from place to place, shaping the ecosystems they encounter and being shaped by them in turn. The processes of nature tend towards a dynamic balance, with everything from weather to predator-prey relationships working to keep resources cycling through the ecosystem. We humans tend to assume that the way a landscape looked when we first encountered it is “the way it’s supposed to be,” and we’re quick to judge changes as either good or bad according to our own time-scale, often simply because we lack the knowledge or experience to take a longer view.

When we stop to acknowledge the complexity and ambiguity of our relationship with non-native species, we’re much less likely to throw ourselves into foolhardy schemes, hell-bent on their complete eradication. Instead of seeing ourselves as landlords with the authority to decide which species should live and which should die, we can change our attitude to one of attentive partnership with an active, vital natural world whose very strength lies in its diversity and creativity in overcoming imbalances and restoring health and harmony. Once we begin to see ourselves as part of nature and participants in natural processes, we realize that we can be part of the solution, helping to correct the imbalances that we originally introduced.

The truth is, invasive species can potentially be great allies, if we take the time to learn how to befriend them. Developing a personal, spiritual relationship with a problematic species can open our eyes to the nuances of living in better relationship with it. When we can appreciate the intrinsic value of a plant or animal and see its many positive qualities — its beauty, flexibility, tenacity or quick growth, for instance — we open ourselves up to new ways of transforming those qualities from challenges or problems, into opportunities. For example, some conservationists have already started to point out the benefits of using abundant, hardy invasive species as potential low-carbon, local food sources, an approach that could keep populations in check while also addressing the problems of industrialized factory farming. In places like the Niger Delta, where the water hyacinth threatens to choke off rivers and jeopardize the livelihoods of local subsistence communities, projects are underway to transform this stubborn invasive into a cash crop that artisans can harvest sustainably and weave into biodegradable household items, restoring the floundering riparian ecosystem while lifting families out of poverty.

The same is true even for the graceful, tenacious Scotch broom and other invasives in my own local landscape. Efforts to restore the natural, native ecosystems in Seattle city parks include not only native tree-planting events for school kids, seniors and weekend volunteers, but seasonal activities where invasives are weeded out by hand and turned into useful resources for the entire community to enjoy. In the winter, invasive evergreens like broom, ivy and holly are harvested and turned into biodegradable wreaths and other holiday decorations to last through the drab rainy weeks. And as summer approaches, the city parks host ice cream socials, where folks from the local community gather to pick invasive himalayan blackberries fresh from the bush and turn them into delicious, homemade ice cream to share with friends and family. Such events not only help to keep these non-native populations in check in the local parks, but they provide opportunities for people to gather together and celebrate the seasons in a direct, hands-on way.

For modern Pagans seeking to live an embodied spirituality grounded in the sacred land, invasives are powerful allies in coming to terms with our own ambivalent role in the ecosystems we inhabit, and the possibilities and choices that lie before us. Too often our modern society encourages us to see nature as fragile and untouchable, and humans as the worst intruders of all. Befriending invasives can teach us valuable lessons about how to be respectful, loving citizens of the planet that we call home.

Photo Credits:
Henry Huey, “Seattle – Scotch Broom” (CC) (source)
Chris Tarnawski, “Scotch Broom in Full Bloom” (CC) (source)
Patrick M, “View to Hood River” (CC) (source)

This post is part of the Pagan Blog Project. Why not join in?

And speaking of sea otters (which happen to be a keystone species out here in the Pacific Northwest), two new articles of mine were also published this weekend, both of them exploring the role of keystones as guides and companions in earth-centered spiritual practice.

Over on The Witches’ Voice, you can check out my article, “Keystones of the Sacred Land,” where I introduce the ecological concept of ‘keystone species’ and how we can welcome the plants and animals of our local landscape to be companions and active participants in our spiritual lives. Here’s a taste:

A circle has no beginning and no end; it symbolizes wholeness and infinite interconnection. Within the circle, the four directions of north, south, east and west provide us with guidance and direction, like the points of a compass. It’s not that these directions are any better or more important than, say, southeast or north-northwest. But by “squaring the circle” in this way, we establish points of contact that make it easier for us to find our own place in the circle. The four directions are gateways where we can enter into relationship with the whole and begin the spiraling dance.

In this same way, keystone species can act as guides and guardians in our exploration of the local landscape. The ecosystem where you live is a vast and mind-bogglingly diverse place. (Even your own body, with its plethora of microbes, is more diverse than a rainforest!) Trying to cultivate a relationship with the land can be overwhelming and intimidating if we don’t have a place to start. That’s where keystone species can help. In many ways, they already act as guardians of the ecosystem, nurturing its health and vitality by ensuring that all its many beings remain in balance. If we want to learn how to live in harmony with the land, and to make sure that our spiritual work is part of the health and harmony of our more-than-human community, keystone species have some really important lessons to teach us.

You can read the whole thing here. Judging from the emails I’ve been receiving over the past couple days, this article is inspiring a lot of people to take a new look at how they work with the plants and animals of their local landscapes, and I’m really excited by the response so far! Thanks to all of you who have written to let me know how much you enjoyed the article!

If the idea of working with the keystones sounds intriguing to you, then you should definitely check out my latest Wild Earth column in Aontacht Magazine, “Seeking the Sacred Keystones: Entering the Wild.” (You can download the entire issue for free on the Aontacht website.) In this column, I share some tips for finding the keystone species of your own local bioregion and how the work of seeking out and meeting keystones can itself be a practice of mindfulness, interconnection and mystery:

Keystone species act as guardians of diverse and complex landscapes, nurturing the health and vitality of all by ensuring that the many beings who share these places remain in dynamic balance with the cycles of life, death, decomposition and regeneration. Because of their special role, we can work with keystones as guides and messengers from the natural world who bring valuable insights to transform our lives and ground our practice in the living, sacred land. Yet nature is teeming with complexity, and every landscape is different. How do we seek out and meet these powerful allies in the places where we live?

The first and most important thing to understand is that ‘keystone’ is not just a simple label that we can stick onto a particular plant or animal. The ‘keystone-ness’ of a species is not an intrinsic quality, but an aspect of its relationship with the larger ecological community in which it lives. In other words, a species might be a keystone in one place, but not in another. Discovering which plants and animals are keystones in our local landscape requires discernment. We need a more subtle understanding of how all of the living beings in our area form a single, yet complex community.

This article is the second in a series that I’ll be publishing through Aontacht Magazine over the next several issues, so stay tuned for more in-depth exploration of keystone species and their place in our spiritual practice in the months ahead.

Meet the Keystones In-Person…

If you’re lucky enough to live in Seattle, you’ll have an opportunity to meet some keystone species of the Pacific Northwest firsthand! During the month of April, Jeff and I will be leading three guided naturalist programs through the Seattle City Parks, where we’ll introduce you to the diverse wonders of the beaches of Puget Sound and some of the keystone species that make these thriving ecosystems possible. I’ll have more information about these programs as the time gets closer, so check back soon!

Photo Credit: “Sea otter preening…” Mike Baird (source)

Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what it feels like. Being a blended family is hard. And not just because my husband’s ex-wife (the Ew) is kind of a terrible person. Even if she were the kindest, most reasonable and responsible person in the world (and let me reiterate again that she really isn’t), being a blended family would be hard. There are all kinds of assumptions about what family looks like in this culture — mom, dad, 2.8 kids, dog, white picket fence. It hurts to be so far from that stereotype that you’re almost unrecognizable.

This morning, I got an email from one of the directors of the Seattle Volunteer Naturalist program asking if Jeff and I would be able to teach for a couple hours during a weekend in early March. Jeff’s kids will be visiting for two weeks and we’ll be making airport runs for the next three weekends, juggling our schedules, with Jeff taking half-days during the week and both of us trying to work from home while the kids are here — so we had to say no to the teaching gig. It was amazingly hard to write that email.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been. It’s not like people aren’t always very understanding about just how weird our lives are. But living across the country from your kids is like always living cut in half. The wound stays pretty raw. It’s hard not to feel like you always have to justify yourself.

It was hard not to write a novel-length email reply explaining that these weeks with the kids are some of the only times we get to see them, and trying to communicate just how much guilt we feel if we put any obligations ahead of spending time with them while they’re here. And at the same time, hearing that little voice in your head accusing you of being a “Disneyland Dad” (or in my case, a Disneyland Stepmom, which is probably way worse) — spoiling the kids and treating their visits like a vacation, instead of being able to live an ordinary, day-to-day life with them. It’s hard not to worry that by putting your own life on hold whenever they come to visit, you’re teaching them to be selfish and giving them unreasonable expectations of what parenthood is like instead of setting a good example for them of what it looks like to balance parenthood with the important work of self-care and seeking a fulfilling life that doesn’t have to be lived vicariously through your children. And all the while, you’re also carrying around the guilt of knowing that when they’re not around, you have far more freedom and flexibility than “normal” parents do, even if you never stop thinking about them for one second and you’re always in a delicate process of negotiation between guilt and love. You know that plenty of people might see the twice-weekly Skype calls and child support payments as the bare minimum you should be doing, people who don’t know how the Ew actively tried to push your husband out of the kids’ lives and reduce him to the role of an endless ATM. (Or how to this day she refuses to recognize your marriage or your role in the kids’ lives as a stepmother.)

Or maybe at the family Christmas party, your uncle makes a well-intentioned joke comparing stepmotherhood to his wife babysitting the neighbor’s kids part-time, and you’re so shocked that you can’t even reply. You’re hurt, but you’re also ashamed of being hurt, because you know he didn’t mean anything by it. You’re embarrassed that you’re walking around with this wound that is always so raw that even the smallest slight stings, and you know that it’s unreasonable to expect everyone to know what it’s like. After all, you didn’t know what it was like to live in a blended family; you had no idea how hard it was to be a stepmom until you stepped into that role. And now you go through life in a strange kind of limbo: child-free by choice, but with all of the financial responsibilities and emotional commitments of a parent (except without any input into their daily well-being, and the secret worry that you’ve abandoned them); viewed by society as not really a mother because they’re not your kids, and not really an adult because a “real woman” understands motherhood, and yet painfully aware that your choice not to have kids of your own was deeply influenced by your love and sense of obligation to your husband’s kids.

You can even understand how some of your divorced friends who had to share custody with obnoxious ex-husbands might be more sympathetic with the kids’ mom and her insecurities, especially when the kids talk about how excited and eager they are to come visit you while she tells herself how she’s the one putting in the hard work every day to do all the “real” parenting. If the Ew weren’t rather awful in other ways that have nothing to do with being a divorced parent, you might even feel some sympathy for her.

As it is, you just have to get used to walking around wounded.

But it’s also totally worth it. The kids will be here this coming weekend, and I’m so excited. There are so many things out here in Seattle that Jeff and I want to share with them: our favorite places to hike, our cool and totally nerdy friends — hell, even the weather (which this week so far has been somewhat mild, somewhat sunny, full of beautiful skies and the beginnings of daffodil blossoms). I’m looking forward to hanging out with them, laughing with them, and marveling at how they’re growing up to be utterly amazing people.

Being a stepmom is like having to learn how to be bravely and joyfully wounded. How to be fiercely protective and graceful in your impotence all at the same time. It’s having to be honest about your wounds, to learn how to teach by example what it’s like to bear them courageously and lovingly — while at the same time fighting like hell to make sure the kids don’t grow up with any deep wounds of their own, if you can possibly spare them. It’s also learning to accept that they might grow up with wounds anyway, and they might think you’re full of shit no matter what explanations you give them for the choices you made… if you’re lucky enough to get them to listen at all. It’s knowing that they might even be right, and you’re making all the wrong choices. But you suck it up and have a little trust and try to practice some preemptive self-forgiveness.

And then you make sure all the extra towels and spare sheets are washed and the apartment is clean and ready, and you and your husband go out and have a nice dinner date, just the two of you, and you tell each other how in love you are, and how deeply you believe that you are both doing your best and that it’s all worth it. Because it totally is.

Suddenly, from the east — the sound of wings. A woodpecker swoops in across our sacred space to join us, hitching himself to the decaying snag only a few feet from where we sit in silent meditation. Collectively, we catch our breaths, though we can’t suppress our widening grins. The little red-capped priest of the mountain has arrived. He taps out his homily in syncopated rhythms, and the whole hollow drum of the dead tree responds. Without a word, our rite has begun.

The writer Anne Lamott says there are three essential prayers: Help me!, Thank you! and Wow!

Ritual theorists from Durkheim to Turner to Rappaport to Bell have suggested all sorts of ways to classify ritual activity. One common approach distinguishes instrumental rituals from expressive rituals — that is, rituals that are meant to accomplish something, versus rituals that are meant to communicate something. Durkheim proposed another dual classification: negative rituals (which separate the human realm from the supernatural through taboos and similar restrictions), and positive rituals (which bring humans into contact or communion with the sacred). Other theorists have sought more comprehensive and complex ways of categorizing ritual activity. Bell proposed six basic genres: rites of passage; calendrical and commemorative rites; rites of exchange and communion; rites of affliction; rites of feasting, fasting and festivals; and political rites.

We can divide these genres even further if we like. For instance, rites of passage include birth and naming rituals, coming-of-age rites, marriage ceremonies and funerary rites, among others. Each of these rites of passage, where a person moves from one stage of the life-cycle to the next, acknowledges a tension between the biological and social, the natural and the cultural. Lincoln saw these tensions expressed in a pattern of transformation (enclosure, metamorphosis and emergence), while van Gennep characterized it as a kind of journey (separation, liminality and reincorporation). Each of these could be seen as aspects of Campbell’s seventeen stages of the hero’s journey as reflected in many mythological narratives all over the world; in fact, each of Campbell’s stages could themselves be enacted as rituals, either personal or social. The many ways that scholars have categorized and organized the messy multitude of ritual forms and activities in human society are almost endless.

But even with all of this complexity, I think I like Lamott’s three simple, essential prayers the best. Help me! Thank you! and Wow! And of the three, my absolute favorite is Wow!

Ritual as Celebration

My spirituality is much more celebratory than it is propitiatory. Maybe that’s because I’ve never been very good at asking for help, even when I need it. Once in college, a worn sandal and a bit of loose carpet conspired to send me sprawling down a flight of stairs — on my way down, as bones crunched and flesh bruised and time seemed to slow and stretch into eternity, it didn’t occur to me to cry out. All I could think was, So this is what falling down a flight of stairs is like… Wow!*

The world is an incredible place, even in its disaster and indifference. But all the more when we realize this seeming indifference is a veil that can at times be suddenly twitched aside to reveal a reality that is intimately interconnected. With the sudden sound of wings in the east, we are reminded that all things participate in the winding, intertwining melodies of existence, an ecology of the sacred.

This is the primary purpose of ritual in my life. I do not shy away from words like “worship” or “devotion” to describe what I do, because I believe that the world and all its beings — the gods, the beloved dead, the spirits of the land, and other people, human and non-human alike — are deeply worthy of love and respect. In ritual, I take a moment to affirm this love through attention and movement, poetry in the realm of acts, that I might be fully present to the world around me and those who share it with me. For me, ritual is a kind of creative self-giving.

Recently, I was researching the idea of cultus, which is usually used to mean a particular form of devotion or worship dedicated to a deity (or, in Roman Catholicism, a saint — as in, for example, “the cultus of St. Anne”). The word cultus comes from the Latin, and is usually translated to mean simply worship or reverence, but it can also evoke a sense of care and nurturing. It’s related to words like “culture” and “cultivation.” Cultus is the past participle of the verb colere, a word that means “to till (the soil),” but also has the additional meanings “to dwell” and “to move around.” Tracing back even further, this Latin verb comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kwel- — “to roll, to move around, to turn about” — which has given rise to an amazing variety of interrelated words, such as colony, collar, cycle, pole, polished, and even chakra, as well as the words for wheel in Old English, Old Norse and Old Russian.

Unearthing this rich linguistic history reminds me of the old Welsh proverb, “A man can’t plow a field by turning it over in his mind.” Ritual is not simply an attitude or intention, just as love is not simply a feeling. At its most basic, ritual is something that you do. A man can’t plow a field just by thinking about it, he must go out to the field and get to work. Yet if he is fully present to the work and acts with mindfulness and loving attention — that is, if he brings his whole self along — then even as he turns over the rich soil beneath his plow, he turns it over in his mind and heart as well. The act of tilling the soil becomes an act of tilling the soul.

This is an essential aspect of celebratory ritual. When we light a candle in our ritual space, we ignite a flame within ourselves. When we pour water or burn incense as offerings, we offer ourselves as well, to soak into the earth or rise in gentle wisps of smoke towards the sky. Imagining these things is not enough — the work demands that we engage not only with our minds and hearts, but with our bodies. This is the original meaning of celebration: a gathering, a time of coming together. We’ve come to think of celebration as an occasion for happiness and enjoyment, because this sense of wholeness that we find in company with ourselves and with others is deeply nourishing and joyful for us. But celebratory spirituality also means being fully present to sorrow and suffering, and giving our whole selves as much to hard work and discipline as to pleasure and delight. Celebratory ritual is about our willingness to be fully present to the world and its gods.

But there is another reason why ritual as an embodied activity is so important. It takes us beyond ourselves and puts us in touch with the world around us in a powerful way. Or rather, it reminds us that we are always in touch with and participating in that world; it restores us to a full awareness of that interconnection. When we approach ritual with loving intention, making ourselves fully present and available to our gods and the wider universe, we open ourselves up to possibility. Celebratory ritual is an invitation. Spirit arrives on noisy wings out of nowhere. (Or, sometimes, it doesn’t, and we find ourselves instead plunged into the unexpected hush of mystery.)

This isn’t just a metaphor. Anyone who has been practicing natural polytheism or any form of earth-centered spirituality for very long knows what it’s like to have a perfectly planned ritual disrupted by a rainstorm, or an altar fire suddenly flare or snuff out entirely with a turn of the wind. But they probably also know the wonder of those moments when the clouds unexpectedly part to show a glimpse of sunny sky, or a wild animal suddenly arrives in the midst of the ceremony space to grace the community with her presence. These are the moments when we whisper, Wow! — an awe-struck prayer.

When we are fully present to the rituals we do, these unexpected events shape us. I think it’s no coincidence that cultus, worship, is the past participle of colere, to cultivate. We not only nurture our sacred relationships through ritual, but we are nurtured by them as well. In ritual, we move, and we are moved. We turn the soil to prepare the soul for sowing, and we ourselves are turned and transformed. We connect, and we are connected. We open, and we are opened. We are present with our whole being, and so our whole being is drawn into presence.

This post is part of the Pagan Blog Project. Why not join in?

Stay tuned next week for “Douglas and Douglas: The Tall and the Small”….

Percy really wants to get in your pants.

If you speak of the pleasure you derive from those ordinary natural things that abound in everyday life — the simple symmetry of a flower, the entrancing movement of sunlight reflected on rippling water, the spinning fall of a leaf, the arch of your cat’s back as he stretches on the windowsill — some people will tell you that you are sentimental and maybe a bit naive. They will tell you that such views of nature are pastoral, idyllic. They will tell you that your views of nature assume too easy a familiarity and that you do not appreciate the harsh reality of the natural world, red in tooth and claw. They will say that it is only thanks to the mastery of modern science and technology that you are afforded the luxury of enjoying what is really only a tame, neutered landscape.

If you instead talk about your fascination with wilderness — the immensities of storm and stone that rule the mountain ranges, the tangled undergrowth that has reclaimed the ruins of human ingenuity of ages past, the harsh sands of a desert that unrolls for miles beneath a relentless sun, the vast oceanic vistas that overwhelm you with awe — these same people will likely tell you that you are fetishizing nature as something exotic. They will tell you that such views are superstitious, unscientific, maybe even a bit gothic. They might even tell you that it is the usual mark of the colonialist and the conqueror to eroticize the Other as something “pure” and inviolate, to project onto that yet-unknown a chance to find the wholeness that still eludes him and so to justify his colonialism or his escapism.

Do not date these kinds of people. They are terrible in bed.

No, but seriously. There’s been some talk in the online Pagan community recently about whether or not “nature reverence” is or should be an essential aspect of Paganism. I’m not all that interested in that discussion, but I am interested in clarifying what nature reverence means to me as an essential part of my spiritual life.

I’m a nature-lover. A treehugger. A dirt-worshipper.

Hi, I’m Ali, and I’m a biophiliac.

Many of the criticisms of nature reverence (and the accusations of romanticism and sentimentality that go along with them) have some basis in reality. The love of nature is complex, and it can be deeply problematic.

On the other hand, that’s love.

I start to get suspicious when someone insists there’s just no good way to love something.

The Nature of Love

“All animals feel wonder.” – Charles Darwin

The term “biophilia” was popularized in the mid-1980s by Edward O. Wilson, an American biologist and naturalist, who defined it as “the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organisms.”^[1]

More broadly speaking, biophilia is the love of life and of living systems, an instinctive attraction to the natural world and all that is vital and alive within it. Some evolutionary biologists and psychologists have come to think of biophilia as a fundamental aspect of human psychology, a predisposition to be drawn towards natural landscapes and lifeforms that is etched into the human psyche by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Like other animals, the theory goes, the human animal has a natural predilection for the kinds of wild, outdoor spaces where our species’ ancient ancestors once roamed, and this affinity for the natural world transcends the ever-changing specifics of culture. Our love of the natural world is something we all have in common.

But what is love? The scientific theory of biophilia is interesting as far as it goes. Biologists talk about biophilia in terms of affinity, attraction and affiliation, but for most of us, love goes beyond what those words suggest. It’s a truth that even teenagers can grasp, as Marty reminds us in Dan in Real Life: “Love isn’t a feeling. It’s an ability.” Love is something that we do.

Maybe that sounds a bit sappy, so as the pop song goes: Let’s get meta-physical. In her book Radical Optimism, Dr. Beatrice Bruteau explores a theological approach to love as a sacred mystery. For Bruteau, love is a relationship defined by a freely-willed act of creative self-giving. It is freely-willed because it is not compulsory, it cannot be earned or deserved; in this sense, love is an act of grace (or what I’ve seen some modern Hellenists refer to as, kharis).

Love is also an act of self-giving. As Bruteau explains:

In general, [love] seems to mean to give what one considers oneself to be, as distinguished from what one has, to give what cannot be separated from oneself: in order to give it, you yourself have to go along and be present. [bold added]

In this way, love is a bit like knowledge. We can give our knowledge away to others without losing it ourselves; and in fact, sometimes in the act of giving it away (for instance, through teaching), we discover that we gain even more. Yet unlike knowledge, love is not something we have, it’s something we do, a way of being — the dancer dancing the dance. Love requires us to be fully present to the one we love, to bring our entire being into relationship with the beloved. And so, Bruteau observes:

Since we cannot “detach,” or separate, what we give when we love, we must give the whole of ourselves. This makes us aware that we are a whole, a unity. That’s why love is so integrating and why it, above everything, makes us “holy” (whole).

This is why love is a creative act. In loving, I experience myself as the lover, the one who loves the beloved — in a sense, because I bring my whole self along in the act of loving, I have to “get myself together” and experience myself as a whole person. We are used to thinking of love as the act of being (or the longing to be) united with another. But love is also an act of individuation, of discovering our own wholeness and completeness. We experience our uniqueness and subjectivity as individuals, as well as the uniqueness and separateness of the beloved whose own individuality and subjectivity we recognize in our act of loving. After all, if we completely subsume the identity of the beloved into our own, there would be no beloved to love; and if we lose ourselves completely in the identity of the beloved, there would be no one to do the loving.

Therein lies the paradox of love: it both unites, and differentiates. Bruteau puts it succinctly this way:

Usually we have one principle to establish difference or distinction, and another principle to establish unity or sameness. But love has this unique property that it necessarily differentiates, because it consists of giving yourself to another, and by the very same act unites what it differentiates, because the intention of love is to unite thoroughly with the beloved. Neither unity nor differentiation, neither sameness nor difference, neither the one nor the many has priority; and neither is reduced to the other. [bold added]

The Breath of Being

“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…” ― David Abram

Bruteau, who is a Catholic theologian, sees the paradoxical nature of love as an essential aspect to understanding the Mystery of the Trinity, the doctrine that the Christian God is both one (the monotheistic, omniscient, omnipresent creator) and many (the three persons of the trinity: father, son and holy spirit). She goes on to explore how a god whose nature is love is, by necessity, a god of both unity and multiplicity, and why the number three is particularly significant as a number of holy communion and sacred community.^[2]

But we do not need to suppose a transcendent monotheistic deity in order to benefit from Bruteau’s examination of love. In many ways, the mystery teaching of the Trinity can give us some important insights into our relationship with nature. Our relationship with nature gives rise to a paradox, in the same way that love creates a paradox. And that paradox — a relationship that both unites and differentiates — closely parallels the on-going struggle we have with the question of whether we are a part of nature, or separate from it. When we think of nature as our beloved, we discover that the answer is in fact: both.

On the one hand, there is no doubt that we are a part of nature, we arise from nature and nothing that we do is really “unnatural.” Everything about us — from our physical appearance, to our mental abilities, to our relationship with the surrounding environment — arises from the long process of evolution that has sculpted us as physical beings embodied in the material world, in relationship with our surroundings and the other beings who share them with us. We might make cities, but we construct them from resources found in the world around us, building them with our own physical bodies or with tools that we have also created from our environment. Even before the city is built, when it exists only as an idea in the mind of some engineers and architects, that idea takes shape within the physical brain and is inspired by the structures and forms that we see around us in nature. A city, as a human-built habitat, is no more “unnatural” than a beehive or a prairie dog tunnel. As Lupa writes in her post, “We Do Not Return to Nature. We Are Already There.“:

If we remember we are nature, that we cannot separate ourselves from nature, then we come to realize that our cities and other habitations are part of ecosystems — dramatically changed ecosystems, but there nonetheless.

On a more metaphysical or mystical level, we can see this understanding of nature reflected in Taoism, for instance, which sees the Tao (“the Way”) not only as a guide to follow but also as simply the Way Things Are. Taoists believe that, to a certain extent, you can’t not follow the Tao (which gives rise to the Taoist concept of wei-wu-wei, or the action of nonaction). When we talk of “human nature” or the “nature of things,” we’re saying that nature just means the reality of what is.^[3]

But on the other hand, we have an intuitive sense that “nature” is not the man-made structures and mechanisms of civilization. This intuition has persisted for thousands of years and may reach as far back as our prehistoric ancestors. Although the concept of “nature” has changed and evolved over time and has manifested differently in different cultures, it seems that humans have long thought of themselves as separate from the rest of nature in one way or another. This intuition of our separateness is confirmed by the fact that current research into human psychology and neuroscience shows that being exposed to what we normally think of as “the natural world” (as opposed to what is “human-made”) actually does improve our sense of well-being, as well as boosting our concentration and creativity while helping to reduce stress. This research supports Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis, that human beings evolved within certain natural environments and so have an affinity for those environments and the other living beings in them. In other words, we human beings have managed to create environments for ourselves that are not “natural,” insofar as they go against our own natures.

We might try to get around this apparent contradiction by using the word “wilderness” to describe these environments that are mostly characterized by the absence of human activity and yet are so beneficial to human health both physically and psychologically (and also, I would say, spiritually). Calling this “wilderness” instead of “nature” might help us to emphasize that cultivated or “civilized” human-made spaces are still part of the natural world, but this terminology has problems of its own. First, research suggests that even the presence of domesticated pets and houseplants can have similar beneficial effects — few of us would think of these plants and animals as “wild,” but most of us would still think of them as “nature,” even when domesticated (for example, when home decorators talk about having houseplants as a way of “bringing nature indoors”). In addition, to think of non-human-made spaces and landscapes as “wilderness” can suggest that they lack the order and structure of human-made spaces and are instead more chaotic or irrational, while at the same time implying that human-made spaces are not generally chaotic or disorderly. But then, wilderness landscapes have an order all their own, and human-made spaces can be quite chaotic.

Again, from a philosophical perspective, we see this difficulty repeated. As self-aware animals, we are able to think reflexively about ourselves and the world around us, and to organize the world into categories. If we can conceive of “the nature of things” as simply the reality of the way things are, then we can also imagine how reality might have been different. In other words, the moment we understand the idea that something is “natural,” we also create the possibility — even if only in our imaginations — of something which is unnatural, something that is fake or deceptive, something that appears to be other than what it really is. As tool-making animals who take great enjoyment in designing objects in imitation of other objects — and even using our own bodies to evoke the appearance of other humans, animals, plants, spirits and gods in ritual and art — it’s no surprise that we have come to associate “human-made” with this idea of what is “unnatural.” The fact that our self-awareness is itself natural, a result of our evolution as a part of the natural world, does not help us to resolve this paradox.^[4]

The Love of Nature

“I come into the peace of wild things. I come into the presence of still water. I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.” – Wendell Berry

To be a nature-lover is to recognize this paradox, not just as a human being in relationship with the rest of the world, but as a lover in relationship with the beloved. When we love nature, we see that our love both unites us with and differentiates us from what we love. In this way our love of nature affirms the most basic truth of our experience as self-aware creatures: that we are both a part of and apart from the world around us, that we are both whole individuals ourselves in a diverse community of other individuals, and united in a whole that transcends our individuality.^[5]

We can think of our love of nature as something that is holy, because it affirms not only our own wholeness as individuals, but also the wholeness of what we love: the complex, interconnected unity of the whole world, of existence itself. And yet, this love is also sacred and affirms that “everything is sacred,”^[6] because it puts us into relationship with the individuality and subjectivity of the many “parts” of the natural world, including our own selves. We come to know the spirit of a place and to love that place even while recognizing that the boundaries of that place are fuzzy, that it is a place deeply interwoven with every other place. The contemporary poet Gary Snyder puts it this way:

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. You start with the part you are whole in.

Another poet and environmentalist, Wendell Berry, expresses the strange paradox of love that both acknowledges our union with the natural world and honors the space that separates us. In his poem, “How To Be a Poet,” he writes:

Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

And later:

Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

This one simple principle — the love of nature — gives rise to so many ideas and relationships and practices that it would be impossible to even scratch the surface of them all in this post (which is already rather longer than a competent blogger would have allowed it to get). Last year, I wrote a post that encapsulates some of my own beliefs that arise from my love of the natural world, and I’ll share just a few of those thoughts again here:

I believe in the Song of the World, a harmony of interweaving melodies woven from the chorus of atoms and earthquakes, of wind and fire, of sun and starlight, of misty woods at dusk, of the butterfly’s dance and the call of the heron, of rainstorms and rivers, of ocean tides and cresting floods, of blood and gore spilled red upon the white purity of snow and the black of the crow’s wing, of rosebuds and the smell of summer grass, of the gods in their myriad forms, of the beloved dead, of the spirits of the land. I believe this World Song is what the Taoists call “The Way of Things” — both the deep, resonating essential nature of all that is, and the guide of natural harmony that shapes the world and the land around us and within us, and that we shape in turn.

I believe that all things are a part of the Song of the World, and that all things also have a song, a unique self which embodies one of the myriad ways in which existence experiences and is conscious of itself. Rocks and whirlwinds possess a consciousness just as humans and house cats do, not to mention oak trees and gods and computer circuitry. I celebrate the raven-ness of ravens and the mollusk-ness of mollusks, the utter tree-ness of a tree and the stone-ness of a stone as sacred expressions of the numinous, each with its own gift of awareness and experience to give back to the World Song.

In the coming weeks as part of the Pagan Blog Project, many of my posts will explore aspects of my nature-centered spirituality in more depth and detail. For now, let’s set the poetry aside and find our way back onto firmer ground.

Isn’t It Romantic?

“Without beauty and mystery beyond itself, the mind by definition is deprived of its bearings and drifts to simpler and cruder configurations.” – Edward O. Wilson

Speaking of poetry — what about those accusations that loving nature is just a kind of romanticism? In today’s society, romanticism has become a catch-call criticism for sentimentality, superstition, irrationality, naivety — in short, anything that makes us feel somewhat embarrassed and squirmy in public.

Sentimentality is not a problem that’s unique to loving nature, however; it can creep into any kind of loving relationship. The problem of sentimentality is basically one of boundaries. Sentimentality reduces the object of its sentiment from a unique, whole being in its own right, to merely the stimulus for pleasurable emotions. It fails to acknowledge or value the tension that exists between the lover and the beloved as distinct and separate, but instead collapses under the weight of the lover’s enjoyment of the beloved, subsuming the one into the other. In other words, the problem of sentimentality is its lack of distance.

This is why Romanticism as an aesthetic and philosophical movement was so often attacked by thinkers grounded in the values of the Enlightenment and modern science. Nothing is more important to the scientific mind than objectivity, the distance between the observer and the object being observed, which allows the observer to aspire to as unbiased a perspective as possible of the nature of things, that is, the “way things really are.” Respecting the distance between the observer and the observed is also essential to acknowledging our limitations as observers, our inability to know or see everything — and so, repeatability and peer review are also highly valued from a scientific perspective. These values clash with the Romantics’ tendency to prize individuality and originality, the uniqueness of every person’s own subjective experiences as unlike anyone else’s and valuable in their own right, whether they can be verified or not.

The problem is that this desire for distance and objectivity collapses in the other direction. If sentimentality is the lack of distance, then objectivity can err on the side of too much distance. For instance, science has a tendency to think about love in terms of affinity and attraction, ascribing its effects to chemicals in the brain and the bloodstream, and it takes no real interest in the subjective experiences of the objects that it studies. This reductionist view has had some bizarre consequences that have actually kept scientists from being able to understand “the way things really are.”^[7] Subjectivity is an essential aspect of how we experience and understand reality, and attempting to suppress or downplay our own subjectivity has led to a tendency (in the hard sciences especially) to deny the subjectivity, and therefore the individuality and innate value, of others.

This is why the Romantics themselves were so skeptical and distrustful of the rationalistic mindset of their day, which they thought reduced the world (and the human beings in it) to mindless, mechanistic processes that could be harnessed and manipulated according to the whims of those in power. It’s important to remember that the Romantics did not merely idealize nature as pure and good, they also defended the rights of the individual against institutions of injustice and exploitation, and upheld the importance of cultural diversity in the face of colonialism and imperialism.^[8] When we shy away from acknowledging the subjectivity of others, we make it easier to think of ourselves as the only ones who really matter, reducing everyone and everything else around us to utilitarian means to our own ends.

The truth is that Romanticism and Rationalism are two sides of the same coin, and in many ways they were reactions to (and shaped by) one another. We live with the legacies of both movements in today’s society, and each has been tempered and challenged by the other. Today’s artists and poets make ample use of irony and postmodernism to maintain some of that distance which preserves their works from becoming merely sentimental. Today’s scientists have to grapple with an ever-expanding array of specializations, some of which (like quantum physics) undermine the very belief that we can be objective observers of the phenomena we measure, while others (like ecology) affirm that we are, in fact, part of a vast, self-sustaining living system that functions as a single whole. Even the poster boy of scientific genius himself, Albert Einstein, said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” and discovered some of the most astounding insights into modern physics through imaginative thought-experiments, such as trying to imagine the subjective experience of a wave of light.

What does this mean for those of us whose love of nature plays a vital role in our spiritual lives? The lesson is, once again, one of dynamic balance between contradictory ideas — a kind of sacred paradox. We can work to bring art and science, romanticism and rationalism, into conversation with each other. We can understand our relationship with the natural world as characterized by both emotion and intellect, intimacy and mystery, union and separation. We can appreciate the knowledge that science gives us while also acknowledging the subjectivity and individuality of beings vastly different from ourselves.

In fact, we can heal the rift that both the Romantics and the Rationalists were unable to heal in their day: the rift created by our ability to imagine that we are separate from the natural world. This perceived separation is neither a sign of our sinful, fallen state of being, nor an illusion that we must force ourselves to awaken from, nor a mastery that we need to achieve.

Our perceived separation from nature is an expression of our capacity to love — for we could not love the world if we could not in some way see it as the beloved, the Other towards which we feel such longing. It’s our very ability to love — and not our imperfections or our inability to see the “way things really are” — that gives rise to the old schism that we have tried so hard to resolve one way or the other.

As soon as we see through the eyes of the nature-lover, we see that there is really nothing to be resolved, and that we wouldn’t even want to resolve it if we could. Just as the lover and beloved are forever swept up in the dance of union and differentiation that both sanctifies them as whole individuals and carries them beyond themselves into relationship with the other — our love of the natural world both unites us with nature and forever holds us at a distance. This tension between intimacy and mystery is both ecstatic and deeply fulfilling, and our longing keeps us moving through the spiraling dance. We are children of nature who make and unmake the world, and ourselves, again and again through our creative acts of love:

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
     And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
     I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
     The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
     Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
     And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
     I arise and unbuild it again.

                                                                 - from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “The Cloud”

[8] Folks today who accuse nature-centered Pagans of being “romantic” and culturally appropriative might be surprised to discover that the trend within Paganism towards reconstructionism as a way of respecting cultural context is itself a legacy of the Romantics.

This post is part of the Pagan Blog Project. Why not join in?

Stay tuned next week for “By Candlelight: Celebratory Ritual”….