Earth: Sacred/Possession . . . is a bit of a blog to book and very much in progress.
It will be a reader and is intended to become part of a new required course for the high school and/or undergraduate world that will help our next generation to open their eyes and hearts — and most importantly to question and to explore — the ethics of human relationships to the natural world that is our home and habitat.
A bit of the intro is excerpted below:
Earth: Sacred/Possession
A Reader in progress
Is Earth* — our home, habitat, wild lands, farm lands, empty lands, urban lands, the whole of Gaia — Sacred* or a Possession*?
Obviously it’s both, or at least humankind* has made it so. Although other species, by their behavior, demonstrate “territory*” to be worth fighting for in the daily struggle for survival, our human family seems to be the only on Earth which at once uses resources found in Earth and yet locates God, Creator, or Magic in the same bit of land*
The Earth is our habitat. It is our home; it provides all we need for living for ourselves, our children, and children’s children. But as our habitat, it also requires rest (or being rested) and care if it is to continue supporting our species. Stewardship was the old version or moniker of such care of Man over Earth, but like the historic estates in Europe and the United Kingdom, the vast ranches of North America and plantations of the Old American South, even the best Stewards cannot manage something so dynamic, complex and complicated well enough. It’s a tricky art, this stewardship. The degradation of the land and resources of any human-owned Estate are soon too great to be sustained without ever-larger influxes of money with which to attempt to balance our overuse.
In our time, money, and man-made chemicals keep the Land producing for our billions, and we ever seek “control” or “possession” and with it tapping into the few remaining raw, wild lands — our remaining Eden and wilderness areas — to provide the raw resources for our voracious appetites and our expensive way of living.
None of this is new. It is the argument for living sustainably; it is a movement toward thinking about the Earth as our Home brought up generation after generation from John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Emerson, and Thoreau forward to Thomas Berry, Barry Lopez and myriad other writers and peers of my own as an early conservation journalist and writer forging my way in the 1980s.
Yet, the generation growing up in the industrial nations of Earth now is the first who has lived in a mind in which nature —Nature, Earth, our habitat — is not perceived as being a meaningful factor in daily life. … The new reality of disconnection to the Earth is shocking:
• Among the more developed regions of the world, 77% live in urban areas, according to the UN.
• Even among less developed regions, just under half of the people live in urban areas.*
• Children in the UK spend 10 times as much time in front of a computer or television screen as they do outdoors; in the US a study found that only 8% of the group ages 9 – 12 spend time hiking, beach play, gardening, fishing and other activities not involving organized sports.
As a result of urbanization and increased use (and delight in) computers and other technologies, a vast majority of students in schools now are at least 2 generations and thousands of hours of their lives away from experiencing first hand the ebb and flow of living with the stresses and rhythms, the beauty, bounty and battle of eking food and sustenance from the land around them and of dealing with wild weather that can leave one homeless in a flash, not to mention the hours of quiet and experiencing awe-inspiring beauty when in wild areas or parks set aside for, simply, living with and as part of Nature.
This young generation, from 9 to 29, lives rather in a mind of needing rescue from the forces of nature, and experiences great discomfort in being in the uncontrolled and uncontrollable environment that is nature, our garden home, the Eden of old. In developed regions, these young students live where water comes from a tap regardless of whether they live in a desert or floodplain, food comes from a mega store, and the resources and materials that power and create their technological virtual world arrive already packaged into useful tools, while the mined, raw source of this miracle of technology is always ‘millions of miles away’ in consciousness.
Movements are stirring to get the younger children outside again. Courses on Environmental Science are taught but as often these courses deal with the processes rather than the policies, arts and realm of ‘belief’ about Nature and our Earth-Home. Yet it is belief that motivates humans to respond and react; it is emotion and awe that connects us to the land.
I feel ethical and social conversations are needed, exploring how humans engage with the Earth, whether learning from beliefs in the past, or exploring human beliefs now, as we watch our environment posing ever larger challenges to our “normal” way of living.
How do we kindle such a conversation among our youth (9 – 29) on the Earth and their interaction with it? The days of such a conversation while working with the land whether on farm or in prayer, while under a canopy of stars or in the course of engagement with the natural world in our nearby parks and backyards, have been replaced by a virtual world of virtual watching but not observing, pretty pictures and seeing but not feeling the air, temperature or experiencing a sense of magnificence and awe at the power found when in Nature.
Earth: Sacred/Possession is to be a reader for student use that raises questions, but also a reader that leads to creation of a course, preferably one that is held on location in Nature. I hope it will take its place on the shelf along with the brilliant books of Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac (Keepers of the Earth, for example, which I acquired for a publishing house early in my career) as resources for teachers devoted to reconnecting their students with the Earth and raising their emotional and intellectual IQ on human engagement with the Land.
Earth: Sacred/Possession, as a reader containing myriad authors, writers, religious texts, and poets, is a book exploring how land defines humans, how humans define the land, how we interact with our Home and how through ages, our Home Habitat was a source of awe and of “God” for so many cultures. Such a reader, used either at home or in courses in high schools and universities across the world, could be a way to raise a conversation about the Earth and the individual student’s relationship with our Nature — our home, our shared habitat, and the source of life for all the generations to come. Use of such a reader is an opportunity to help them explore intellectually, socially and religiously what the Earth is, so that they can think about it rather than take from it without thought.
It is hoped it is a Reader that will inspire creation of courses and curricula throughout upper level schools across the world to consider the relationship between humans and our Home Habitat. It could be incorporated for use into existing Earth Science courses at upper level or high school level or advanced middle school level, or into lower level humanities courses such as found in US universities.
Is the Earth sacred as it has been for millennia of human history, or is only a possession to be managed, used, drained, or destroyed by and for humans?
This coming generation — my children and yours — are facing great environmental challenges that for the first time are challenging at a global level. They are largely human-caused challenges rather than innate in human/animal survival questions in a world of uncontrolled (and uncontrollable?) environmental processes. And the challenges the next generation faces are piled on top of the “normal” questions of “normal” survival: daily access to clean water, sufficient food, breathable air, resources for building homes against the extremes of weather in historic times and promising to be ever more extreme in decades to come.
One could argue that whether the Earth is sacred is now moot; that we have what we have as an environment, and we have to deal with whatever is thrown at us or attempt to control it, the last of which has never yet been done in human history. So why even consider whether the Earth is now or ever was Sacred? And even if it was considered Sacred, how does that inform our human definition and our days of working toward sustainable society now?
According to a recent Pew study,* 84% of the world’s billions believe and practice a religion. The use and relevance of the Earth and Nature is part of the belief system in a majority of our human family’s many religions whether Hindu, Christian, Islam or among the many spiritual practices or religions that are not named. In many religions, God is found in Nature, wilderness is a holy and sacred place in which to experience God’s voice, wisdom, or a place in which to revere the Creator of all. This is found to be true of all major religions as well as the many Indigenous religions which locate God and Creator in the fabric of the Earth, whether agricultural, wilderness, or home-territory (as in Jerusalem) as Sacred Land.
When humans face struggle, especially life and death situations like disease (environmentally created most agree), extreme weather events, or in wars over food, energy or water resources, humans increase spiritual/religious behavior, calling upon God for help even if such a belief was not in the vocabulary yesterday. If anecdotal reporting on recent storms and the reflections of those who survived them is accurate, this is true even for the 9 – 29 set as well. Whether it’s called faith in God, whatever deity it might be, a prayer for survival or Good, or using ceremony to make peace with the Gods who cause the rain to fall or winds to cease, or looking to an ancient Magick among those who reach back to old days when Earth was of God and God’s face could be found in the wilderness, being human we seek the sacred to make meaning of the events that are out of our control and scaring the Hell out of us, so to speak.
Perhaps more importantly, when we approach the Earth with an understanding of these core spiritual or even instinctual beliefs we reach to in times of challenge, we define the solutions possible before us.
The telling of story opens our eyes and raises awareness of those areas which need healing in our society and our world: domestic violence, child abuse, war, women’s and native rights and abuses at the hand of political or business injustices. Who tells the narrative or story of Earth as being sacred or possession, as a location of God, a raw source of today’s needs and tomorrow’s well-being, if not a collection of viewpoints (admittedly all human) regarding where the Earth fits in the most heartfelt aspect of our collaborative life? When Earth —all of nature as well as wilderness — is considered at the same time to be a place in which to find the Face of God and of the Devil, we’re exploring at the deepest definition of what makes us human, and a species seeking to control our environment.
Earth: Sacred/Possession explores this complex world of how the land is viewed by humans historically, religiously, artistically and philosophically as we reach for sustainable living. It reveals how we define the land and how the land defines us, in our relationship with it. It tells a story through excerpts of essays, religious texts, poetry and image, of how we view, experience, revere or destroy our host, home, and habitat. It is a narrative and a reader intending to give our students a sense of meaning and approach, wisdom and enlightenment by opening a conversation about what their place can be in a world of environmental challenges and enhancing their understanding to choose an intelligent response.
Our Human experience indicates we do indeed have freewill— choice — in how to live here on Earth. It is my hope that the wisdom and view of ages in this reader will provide some guidance to our children and children’s children — our seven generations coming — as they choose what of the Earth will survive, whether as wild, godly, sacred, alone or with co-inhabitants, and as they grapple with the environmental challenges of survival we are culpable of leaving behind for them.
. . .
Some definitions:
Earth: the whole of the planet on which humans live and which is shared with all other species living, meaning our ecosphere, habitat, natural resources on top in and under the land, from core to air in atmosphere. It can refer to agrarian lands or wild lands, oceans or lakes, watersheds or mountain valleys, existing or mined into oblivion. Earth refers to our home habitat and the source of all we need to live.
Sacred: Pertaining to or of God, or other invisible deity with which our Souls — that which animates us — seek union or to revere. It is that quality of recognizing the sacred that seems to set us apart from other species — at least as far as we know. Although we have discovered by witnessing and observation other heretofore ‘only human’ emotions in other species, such as grief, compassion, care and concern for young, anger, we unfortunately have yet to observe long enough and with open enough heart to understand if other species have an experience of what we call God.
Possession: Can have a double meaning of course: Possession as in something one possesses, owns, uses as property private to an owner, without need to consider others’ preferences for use of the Thing. In past years, humans were considered ‘possessions’ of other humans, of course, so the idea of possession is a shifting one. At the other end of the definition, is possession in the religious sense, whether ‘possessed by the devil” or other dark energy which ‘owns’ that which gives our eyes light and which animates us, or ‘possession by God” who is the “Author and Creator of our Lives”. In this book, possession usually refers to the making a Thing of the land and resources of the earth, and of the land being a “possession” of humans, as property or estate. This is a cultural meaning, of course, as many people and religions considered the possession of Earth as being impossible.
*Land: In this book, land will refer to Earth, including the oceans or other parts of a habitat in which humankind lives. We look to ‘land’ of our birth as a definition of ourselves and our ways. Although many now might consider their city of upbringing, the urban environment as divorced from the land, here cities and land will be synonymous except where obviously differentiated.
*Territory — any land or habitat capable of supplying sufficient food, water and space to support an individual of a species in living
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