REsources for Living
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It is, I strongly believe, well worth it to make a direct, intensive study of earth-centered spirituality.
For my part, I’ve spent many hours working in the garden, becoming grounded, as it were, in the earth. For instance, I know that the earth in front of my house is veined with tan streaks of clay, which, true to its nature, bakes hard as pottery in the sun. By contrast, the soil in the back yard flowerbeds is loose, crumbly. Once I have painstakingly retrieved it from the crabgrass and dandelion roots that have been laying claim there, it becomes utterly yielding, and I can dig holes for my new plants like a kid in a sandbox, without even needing a shovel or hand trowel.
Poking about in the dirt is one way of practicing earth-centered spirituality, but I would advocate even beyond that, for earth-centered theology. I find that earth-centered religion provides both the best description of my system of beliefs that I can find, and it also provides a constant challenge to live my life in accordance with those beliefs.
As I understand it, earth-centered theology refers, at heart, to a way of mapping out the world. For centuries the western world has operated under the assumption of a map of the universe that became entrenched during the middle ages as the Great Chain of Being. In this worldview the cosmos is seen as vertically linear—God is on top, beneath Him are the angels, all ranked in order, and beneath them are men, then women, and beneath them are animals, then plants, and so on. Everything is neatly in its place, the pope stacked above priests, and lions above lambs, birds above bugs.
Earth-centered traditions, however, see the universe arranged in a web of relationships. All beings stand in relation to all others, whether intimately or distantly, and all of us hold responsibility for those relationships. The divine, in this scheme of the universe, is not a supreme being who is “watching us from a distance,” as the old pop song asserts. Rather, the sacred is nearer than breath, present in all beings, in all moments. The bear carries divinity, but so does the dragonfly and the white pine, granite and sandstone. Each being has its power, its story, each different from the other, all necessary for the balance of the world as a whole.
Unlike the simplicity of the Great Chain of Being (which I picture as sort of a straight hose, through which all power and authority flows from God the Faucet), the world from an earth-centered view is complicated, tangled. In a linear world view you know who you have control over, and who has control over you. Relationships between men and women (the Great Chain doesn’t really recognize non-binary genders) are “simplified” by clearly declaring the head of the household and the head of society. As a human being, fulfilling your needs is simplified by knowing that the rest of the earth belongs to you as “natural resources” to be utilized in the most efficient or convenient way possible.
Life in an interdependent web is a lot more complicated. It requires of us that we come to know each other beyond the scheme of up and down, mine and not mine. It demands that we learn each other’s stories, know each other’s needs and gifts. It declares that the community we inhabit consists not only of our friends and family, but also our environment, the animals, plants and minerals with which our lives are entwined. It reminds us that the threads which connect us reach back into our past and forward to the future we are creating.
And whenever you try to keep that web of connection in mind, the decisions become hard. Say I need lumber to build a house but the spotted owl needs old-growth forest in order to survive. If we are both beings who matter, then what now? I eat the flesh of animals who have not only lost their lives to serve as food, but have also spent those lives treated like components in a factory. Do I have the right to be part of that bloody business? The rainforests are being decimated, often by people who are very poor and are doing whatever needs to be done to survive. How do I respond?
These are the kind of questions that an earth-centered spirituality demands we grapple with, questions thorny as blackberries, tenacious as dandelions. Questions without easy answers, which demand of us that we go deeper, look closer.
Honoring the interdependent web means respect for all my relationships, with whatever sort of being. It does not mean, however, that all those relationships are of equal weight. I think of the interdependent web as being built like a spider’s web, a series of concentric circles, connected by spokes that weave through them all. Like any animal, my first allegiance is to my family, my friends, my tribe. I don’t value a mouse or a mosquito the way I value a human being. But acknowledging that my circle of concern radiates out from a center that starts with my family, the human race, does not mean that I can forget those larger circles. The spokes of the web pass all the way through, and when any piece vibrates, like the spider, I feel it.
Living in this web of relationships is not simple or clear-cut. It isn’t always possible to know the right thing to do, let alone to do it. Giving up on the Great Chain of Being means releasing a whole lot of being right. However, it also opens the complicated, tangled, always-shifting possibilities of being in right relationship.
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