Humanity's Marriage with the Earth: Part III

Look in the archives for parts 1 and 2 of the series...parts 3b and 4 with the conclusion are coming soon!

Part IIIa: Good Soil

The stories, essays and poetry of Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder and Barbara Kingsolver take on an ecological nature, which are concerned with contemporary ecological sciences, persistently stressing, what scholar Harold Bush calls a “human cooperation with nature conceived as a dynamic, interrelated series of cyclic feedback systems (Bush 267).” While Romantic poets, such as Walt Whitman, were concerned with obtaining solitary inner peace with nature, the “eco-poets” are focused on the interdependent nature of the world, an imperative toward humility regarding the natural world (Bush 267), and an intense skepticism about rationalism and technology. In John Gatta’s study Making Nature Sacred, he argues that eco-poetry “denies the Romantic solitary's view of nature as a functionally private arena of self-transcendence" (Bush 271)”. The Romantics are only concerned with the anthropocentric human benefits of restoration but not the benefits to the biosphere. However, he does not deny that eco-poets do focus on transcendence, but it is not simply the transcendence of self. It is the transcendence to the world through transformation of the self’s heart and mind to sustain and maintain the planet.

The vision of today's eco-poets is to recover and rejuvenate humanity's almost-lost abilities to see nature as sacred. Berry’s “Window Poems” captures the heart of this endeavor, as it starts in Part I.-
Window. Window.
The wind’s eye
To see into the wind.
The eye in its hollow
Looking out
Through the black frame
At the waves the wind
Drives up the river,
Whitecaps, a wild day…

The symbol of the window represents the civilized eye looking out at the wild of the waves of wind driving up a river. Repeatedly through the 27 part poem, the window is given more characteristics, and his connection with nature becomes more sacred. The window, even though, it is an outlet to creation, also blocks the person, preventing them to see beyond themselves. The window onlooker watches a man who is working the land. In stanza six, there is a downpour of rain and the working man submits to the wetness, while the observer sits inside- “How sheltering and clear/ the window seems, the dry fireheat/ inside, and outside the gray/ downpour. As the man works/ the weather moves” (Collected Poems 77). “Window Poems” highlights the ways people try to fence God, under human control, like some domestic creature. In stanza 7, the man, a god symbol, comes inside, and the people react in initial fear, watching his eyes but fleeing from his sight when he looked up. Their fear turns into indifference when they realize he means no harm. “But they stay cautious/ of each other, half afraid unwilling/ to be too close. They snatch/ what they can carry and fly/ into the trees. They flirt out/ with tail or beak and waste/ more sometimes than they eat.” However this man’s greatness reflects his wild nature, which the observer was afraid of, but then ignored. Berry contends that God

is the wildest being in existence. The presence of His spirit in us is our wildness, our oneness with the wilderness of Creation.... it is why the poets of our tradition so often have given nature the role not only of mother or grandmother but of the highest earthly teacher and judge, a figure of mystery and greatpower (Bush 271).

The man, a wild farmer, knows the price of the seed, wishing these people would take more care. The people only understand what is free, and because of that, the man buys the seed, making it free, which is reflective of God’s salvation of humanity- giving a free gift to an ungrateful, apathetic species.

“Window poems” follows Gatta’s perception of eco-poetry, showing how the act of imagining nature as sacred is a co-creative act between place and person—it is to be discovered, possibly through hierophany, the physical manifestation of the holy, and possibly through imagination. But in order to experience hierophany in regards to nature and place, the human imagination must come alive. In Western culture, it is particularly difficult to open up the human imagination. The miracles we see are limited because we have a limited perception of God and an even more limited perception of how He interacts with Creation. Bush says this is where the work of poets comes in, helping us to perceive name nature as sacred, closing the gap between the secular and the sacred, the material and the spiritual (Bush 270). As Gatta declares, “the poetic imagination may require a perception of transcendence” (Bush 271).

The concept of good soil, in relation to place and salvation is pivotal in Biblical scripture. In Mark 4, Jesus delivers a parable to his followers, which perplexes his disciples:

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured it. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and immediately it sprang up, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose it was scorched, and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. And other seeds fell into good soil and produced grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty fold and sixty fold and a hundredfold."

In this parable, place plays an important means. Seeds cannot simply flourish anywhere- not on a manmade path, nor on an unkempt piece of land ignored by humans, but in a field flourishing with life, tended and cared for by a farmer. When Jesus explains the story to his puzzled disciples, he draws on his metaphor that the people are the seeds to be planted. A close reading of this passage suggests that human beings as well as plants flourish best where sustainable agriculture is being practice- the place of marriage between human beings and the earth- a farm.

Place is means to experience hierophany. Snyder suggests that no one but the first Americans can bring us to experience this spiritual transcendence in the places we Americans inhabit (Snyder 70). After all, Native Americans had been practicing sacred unions to the earth for centuries. Native American agriculture has been passed on to the colonists, and it has helped the Europeans survive in America, ironically leading to their own dispersion and extinction of culture. Snyder says we have a lot to learn from exclusively the first Americans about our place. While we have a western white history of a hundred and fifty years, “we’re catching just the tip of an iceberg of forty or fifty thousand years of human experience, on this continent, in this place” (Folsom 220). Unbeknownst to ourselves, we have adopted some of their ways, names and beliefs at the same time we have been diluting and absorbing them (Folsom 221). In Snyder’s discourse, The Practice of the Wild, he reflects on living in Northern California:

My family and I have been living twenty years now on the land of the Sierra Nevada range of Northern California. These ridges and slopes are somewhat “wild” and not particularly “good.” The original people here, the Nisesan (or Southern Maidu) were almost entirely displaced or destroyed during the first decades of the gold rush. It seems there is no one left to teach us which places in this landscape were once felt to be “sacred”— though with time and attention, I think we will be able to feel and find them again (Snyder 78).

Bush, Harold K., Jr. "Wendell Berry, seeds of hope, and the survival of
creation." Christianity and Literature. 56.2 (Wntr 2007): 297(20). General OneFile. Gale. Christopher Newport University. 24 Feb.2008 .

Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems. San Francisco: North Point P, 1985. 148.

Literary Study Bible- English Standard Version. Mark 4:1-4:20. Crossway Bibles, 2007.

Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. Berkeley: Northpoint P, 1990.

Humanity's Marriage With the Earth: Part II

Part II: Coping with the Broken Land

An American poet, essayist and novelist, Wendell Berry offers hope to the modern American, a hope that they can re-achieve a connection to Creation by the source of agriculture. To align oneself in relationship to land, imitating nature in agriculture, one can simultaneously align himself to a spiritual goal. This thought travels through Berry’s poetry, whose focus on nature and agriculture run with themes of grace, redemption and transformation. Not only images of farming line up with these themes, but through these connections Berry honors his food. His poem, “Prayer after Eating” encompasses his attitude toward food- “I have taken in the light/ that quickened eye and leaf./ May my brain be bright with praise/ of what I eat, in the brief braze/ of motion and of thought./ May I be worthy of my meat” (Collected Poems 148). The light referenced in this poem could allude to the light of God as incarnation in the Bible. As a popular Christian worship song eludes Jesus Christ in the words “light of the world/you stepped down into darkness/opened my eyes/let me see beauty that made my heart adore you (Hughes),” Berry sees Creation as the light stepping into darkness to expose the eye’s attraction to the leaf, a sign of new life, triggering the mind to see the beauty of his food, in order to honor and adore it, and hope that he might be transformed to be worthy of his meat.

First American spiritual perspectives complement Berry’s thought. The First American sees his relationship to a God force through his relationship with nature. Judeo-Christian tradition does not contradict this notion, but establishes it from the beginning of humankind:

Then the Lord God formed the human from the soil of the ground and breathed breath into its nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in theeast and there God put the human whom God had formed (Gen. 2:7-2:8).

This scripture shows that humanity is intimately related to the rest of the creation. Like all other creatures, we are also formed from the earth. If humans are related to the rest of the earth, it is no wonder that Great Mam scolds her great-granddaughter, Gloria, informing her that flowers are her cousins when the girl picks flowers in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Homeland.” Great Mam, a Cherokee Indian, lives with her anglicized grandchildren on a Kentucky farm, and struggles to retain her dying culture in an environment which does not approve of it. Gloria does not intrinsically understand, like her great-grandmother, the value of other living things in their relationship to human beings. Great Mam tries to explain:

Sometimes a person has to take a life, like a chicken’s or a hog’s when you need it. If you’re hungry, then they’re happy to give their flesh up to you because they’re your relatives. But nobody is so hungry they need to kill a flower (Kingsolver 11).

Gloria does not accept this teaching, defending that she only picked weeds which no one cared about. At that point, Great Mam gently rebukes her, telling her that it is a bad thing to take for one self something that belongs to everybody. “It is a sin (Kingsolver 12).” In this scene, Great Mam unites Christian and Cherokee notions of relationships and sin to correct her great-granddaughter.

Not only are humans part of creation, but Wendell Berry contends from an ancient perspective, we are small in the scheme of the rest of Creation. We are not greater than nature, nor are we its equal. Primal art displays this notion; on a painted wall in a Lascaux cave a small, childish stick figure is surrounded by vibrant drawings of shaped, shaded and colored animals. The stick figure who had cast his only spear into the guts of bison is now without weapon, revealing him to be vulnerable, frail and incomplete against the magnificent animals surrounding him (“Unsettling” 98). The Bible illustrates the smallness of man in the book of Job, when God speaks to his suffering servant Job from a ferocious whirlwind. Job questioning of God’s sovereignty triggers this storm which God uses to show his subject his full bounty and mystery next to Job’s mere humanity (Job 38). If we are but small creatures in the big scheme of things, we need to be good stewards of the environment. We are no bigger than our land, but we act so in the way we treat it. Berry contends that we can be redeemed from our anthropocentric point of view. In the past, we have focused upon rituals of return to the human condition. A man would go into the wilderness and after measuring himself against Creation, will recognize his true place and as a result, will be saved from pride and despair.(“Unsettling” 99). The man went hungry and therefore had to kill animals and pluck plants, but as he killed and ate with care, he became a restorer of order, a preserver of life.

The ethic of reverence for life was set at precedence in Judaic law codes, established early Genesis, and then in Exodus. Richard H. Hiers, professor of Religion at University of Florida, points out that before the Great Flood, humans along with birds and all other land creatures, were vegetarians. In Genesis 1:29-30, God addresses human and animal needs respectively:

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground- everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.”

After the fall of man in Genesis 3, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, humanity eventually faced their downfall. The earth was full of corruption and violence and God saw all man and that every inclination in their heart was evil (Gen 6:5). He sent a flood which would wipe out all of creation, except for Noah, his family, seven of every kind of clean animal and two of every kind of unclean animal, and seven of every kind of bird, to maintain biodiversity throughout the earth. After the flood, God gave Noah’s family animal for food: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” (Gen 9:3). With the initial shalom obtained in the Garden of Eden at the end, human beings were still expected the respect the life of animals and birds killed for food (Hiers 134), as stated in God’s following commandment, “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal” (Gen 9:4-5). Because the life of each animal was contained by their blood, human beings were to express a reverence for life, by not eating it. Similar provisions appeared later in Judaic law, and is the reason why many gentile converts to early Christianity had to agree not to eat blood of the meat of animals that had been strangled (Hiers 134). Judaic law codes were set up to restore human beings back to God and the Earth, however human beings failed to get the point.

Berry, Wendell. A Part. San Francisco: North Point P, 1980. 5.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977.
Hiers, Richard H. "Reverance for Life and Environmental Ethics in Biblical Law and
Covenant." Journal of Law and Religion: 127-157. JSTOR.
Hughes, Tim. "Here I Am to Worship." By Tim Hughes. Rec. 2001. Here I Am to
Worship.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Homeland and Other Stories. New York: Perennial, 1989. 1-22.

Humanity's Marriage With the Earth: Part 1

One of the goals of this blog is to establish the connections between faith and food, which pours into all religions. However, I am a Christian, and as the interactions between other religions and food are interesting, I focus naturally on food in the Bible and the theological framework for Christians to care about what they eat and become good stewards of the environment. My senior seminar food and literature paper focused on this subject and I am posting it on here because I want to engage other Christians (especially those of us on the East Coast of the US) in this discussion. Like my food bio, I will post this in excerpts, starting with my thesis and part 1.

“Our bodies live by farming,” author Wendell Berry contends in his work. “While we live our bodies are moving particles of the earth, joined inextricably to the soil and to the bodies of other living creatures (Unsettling 97).” With this thought, we as human beings are connected to the food we consume, reflecting a marriage, a connection which is rooted in our spirituality. However, as American consumers of supermarket foods, we are ignorant to the fact that our bodies do live by farming, hunting and gathering. We pull boxes and cans from the grocery shelves, which usually contain all the chemically processed ingredients we need to “cook” a meal, which displays our lack of concern for the environment. From the Judeo-Christian perspective, humankind has fallen from being good stewards of their earth, which is prevalent in the ways Western culture regards food. As a result, humans are separated from nature, distancing themselves from the source of their food as technology progresses. However, humanity can be redeemed, by realigning themselves with the notion of creation care. This is seen through practicing good, sustainable agriculture seen in the writings of Wendell Berry, in which he consummates his marriage with the earth. Although the Puritans separated their religion from the Native Americans, as they separated the material from the spiritual, Christian faith can be edified through adapting the practices of Native Americans, in how they view nature as sacred. Although much of this culture has died, writers Gary Snyder and Barbara Kingsolver still challenge people to keep their sacred notions alive through their novels, essays and poems.

Part I: Holy Marriage and Broken Ground

We are currently in the midst of an ecological crisis in America – by ignoring nature we have ignored the source by which our food comes from, distancing ourselves from what we daily consume. However, the movement in sustainable agriculture is providing a means to address a source of the ecological crisis- agribusiness (Unsettling 5). This has brought many Christians to address their call to care for creation. Christians in America for a long time have separated themselves both from the soil and from natures. This rooted in the foundations of Christianity in America. Nature and religious writing typically occupied separate spheres in Puritan American literature. This is reflective of the settlers’ eager preference to possess the land, than be possessed by it. The longing to survive in an environment removed from their society, compelled them to desire control of the land rather than appreciating the marvels of an environment almost untouched by Western society. Due to this, first-generation Puritans armored themselves against the wilderness, walling out what they regarded as untamed and ungodly (Gatta 17). The early attitudes of the Puritan settlers fed into a misinterpretation of the book of Genesis. They found warrant in Genesis 1:28-29 to destroy the wilderness and achieve mastery over nature. They defended their expansion into territories by invoking the Old Testament precedent of Hebrew advances into Canaan. Because New England’s indigenous peoples, were not indulged in the habits of Europeans, never taking formal title of their lands, enclosing them to maintain livestock or establishing permanent dwellings in the same manner of the English, the Puritans justified possessing the land to improve cultivation over the existing environment.

Bruce Breseford’s 1991 film Black Robe historically addresses the similar domination the Jesuits seized over the Native Americans. The Jesuits will only worship God in the cathedrals they build and do not grasp the ability to worship God in nature as the Native Americans did. Father Laforgue views the Algonquin Indians as savage because they do not consider his view of eternal paradise as one they would also desire. Scenes of Laforgue’s early interactions with his teaching priest in an ornate cathedral are juxtaposed with him struggling to survive in the North American wilderness. Jumping off the assumption that Christianity is the true faith which brings truths from other faiths into completion, the Puritans and the Jesuits in their attempts to convert the Native Americans did not contextualize the gospel to their culture. Rather they used the gospel to dominate their culture, replacing primal ways with their own ways perceived as superior and more civilized. Laforgue attempted to convert the Algonquin, however his failure to do so resulted out of his own pilgrimage with the natives. He went up the Hudson River with them to convert the Herons. Instead, by leaving his civilization, his struggle with his personal faith became more real. To the European settlers, civilization was closer to godliness than nature. If the Puritans and Jesuit settlers had a more complete understanding of the Bible’s connections with the environment, and were not inspired by ungodly motives to dominate, nature would take precedence over civilization.

Many scholars have held the mainstream tradition of biblical Christianity responsible for the ecological harm caused by Western culture. Historian Lynn White Jr. made known the idea that the Judeo-Christian doctrine of Creation is fundamentally exploitive of the natural world because of the “biblical” assertion that man’s dominion over nature establishes a trend of anthroprocentrism, because Christians view themselves as the pinnacle of Creation, and they can subdue the earth to their will. Genesis 1:28 has been read by some in this light, but has been read by many theologians as a message of stewardship- “And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” There is no doubt that God created human as the pinnacle of creation. God created human in his image, blessed them and deemed them very good. However, according to Genesis, before he created human, he created nature and every other living creature. It is important to note that the earth preceded human and humans completed the earth (Gen 1:31). After God saw everything he made, in its completion, he deemed it very good. He did not only claim humans as very good, but the rest of creation once humans were brought forth. An anthropocentric version of the creation story would have deemed nature as not having worth. In Eden, nature is not separate from human. God brought Adam into Eden to work the land, not because the land would suffer without him, but so that humans could imitate God’s act of creation and stewardship (Beisner). Bringing Adam into Eden put Adam in a holy partnership with the Earth, which is reflective, but not the same with his bond with Eve. God brought every kind of animal to Adam as a companion for Adam to name, but with each animal Adam could not find a partner (Gen 2:18-24). God created Eve for Adam to be equal partners, on the same spiritual, emotional and intellectual level. Unlike the rest of species, humans were created in the image of God, which gave them dominion over the earth. This dominion, however, was not meant to be a dominating, exploitive rule. The concept of dominion has been for centuries, manipulated and misinterpreted by western Christians who failed to recognize the limitations of the English language in fully translating scripture, word for word (Beisner). Dominion comes from the Hebrew letters בּעל, which is translate to ba’al, meaning to be husband to or to marry ("Dominion."). This makes it a command to be in relationship with the earth, to care for it, and nurture it. The biblical concept of rulership, furthermore, is far different from our modern ideas, although we still live in a society where we are subservient to someone. God’s rulership is clearly established in Scripture, as a rule of peace in both the Old and New Testament. Job 25:2 ascribes all authority to God- "Dominion and fear are with God; he makes peace in his high heaven.” Colossians sets Christ with God as part of the triune God- Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace (Col 3:15).

While the biblical concept of marriage does not suffice many modern day scholars’ views in accordance to feminism, it is not meant to shame or exploit women. Like the humans’ response to nature, marriage is a sacred union, which has been defiled and blasphemed by many men who have abused their headship in marriage. Many ideas of biblical marriage are simply not biblical. These ideas marginalize women, stripping them of their voice, and constricting them to the household. Written in a patriarchal society, many parts of the Bible were very progressive in its time, allowing women the ability to associate with men in public. In the days of Paul of Tarsus, Greek women were seldom allowed outside their house, or to participate with men in religious services (Carson). Paul’s first command to the wives seems misogynistic out of context- “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” (Ephesisans 5:22) However Paul’s marital directions in Ephesians were even sterner and more descript to men:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh (Ephesians 25-31).

These directions leave no room for abuse or marginalization. Paul goes as far as to instruct men they must give themselves up for their wives, loving their wives as Christ loves the church. Furthermore, the wives must be empowered by their husbands for the display of their splendor- not an outward, domesticated beauty, but a beauty which is reflective of God’s glorious nature. If humans assumed the role in marriage to the earth in a similar way that the Bible instructs husbands to take, earth should not be exploited. As human beings, we are to cherish nourish the earth for its own beauty and splendor.

Our relationship with the earth is neither one of possessing or being possessed by it. In a biblical perspective, humankind must take partnership with it. The partnership is often symbolized by a triangle, used in Christian theology to also illustrate the triune God and marriage (Beisner). In theologian Dean Ohlman’s illustration, God is at the top, in control over all. Both humans and the earth respond to God in obedient praise. God is in fellowship with his covenant people, and is in ownership of the earth. People are to respond to the earth in a peaceful stewardship, and the earth is a subservient provider to the people. Before the fall of man, as recorded in Genesis, the earth is full, alive and without blemish. It is perfect bride to its people.

In Eden, God, people and the earth were all part of one holy, complete body. According to Ohlman, everything was in harmony or shalom from the Hebrew שלום, meaning- peace, nothing missing, nothing broken, wellbeing, and complete. However, Genesis 3, records the fall of human, where this concept of shalom was broken. Adam and Eve both disobeyed their creator, in their first act of human control, when the Serpent deceived them, telling the humans that they become like God, who had authority, knowledge and power. All the relationships of paradise were broken by that act of control, and along with the fall of humanity, the earth also fell (Beisner) It became an imperfect provider, resistant to people, fragmented, and blighted by death. The relationships humans had with themselves, God and nature were shattered as they became self-centered, deceptive and deceived, profane, unmerciful, unloving, unjust, evil, violent, and condemned to die (Ohlman). Ohlman says that “Peace was shattered and humanity’s covenant of care, compassion, and priesthood for the earth ignored and eventually forgotten.” The sacred union between humanity and the earth was then subject to futility.

Sources:
Beisner, Calvin. "A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship." Acton. Acton.
6 May 2008.

Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977.

Black Robe. Dir. Bruce Beresford. Perf. Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, Sandrine Holt,
and Tantoo Cardinal. DVD. Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1991.

"Dominion." Strong's Bible Dictionary.

Ohlman, Dean. "The Two Ways Powerpoint Presentation." The Practical Ponderings of
Dean Ohlman. Restoring Eden. www.restoringeden.org


More to come!