ecotheology Archives - ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology

Ecotheology: An Orca’s Perspective

Carson Taylor — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 20:43:49 +0000

This series of student work from a recent elective course taken by both MACP and MATC students is a window into the integration and intersections that take place in our curriculum and our classrooms at ��Ƶ, not only theology and psychology, but also social justice, ecology, local context, and individualized research. This piece from Carson Taylor, a third-year student in our Master of Arts in Theology & Culture program, is the second in the series. For more in this series see Ecotheology: The Last Black Man in San Francisco and the Meaning of Home & Ecotheological Connections: Protest and Celebrations.

An introduction from Dr. Kj Swanson, affiliate faculty, 2022-2023

In spring 2023, 60 students participated in TCE 544O Triune God & Creation, an introduction to ecotheology and its relevance within diverse theological, cultural, and global contexts. Our primary texts centered the voices of female theologians from the global south and other perspectives often under-represented in theological and ecological engagement. We also journeyed with Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance (2022) as a companion text, helping shape our imagination around rest as liberatory and vital for humanity, but also for all planetary life and relationships. Each week, we wrestled together not just with the grief over how we have gotten to the climate crisis we are in, but also what it means to try to envision healing—that it’s difficult to work towards a vision you haven’t let yourself dream is possible. I’m pleased to share some of the insightful and hopeful work students created.

Here, Carson Taylor, third-year MATC student, shares a revised version of their 3-Part Envisioning Planetary Solidarity Assignment. Named from the essay collection edited by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster, this assignment required students to write a short POV (point of view) story that envisions a future wherein human society lives as part of a balanced, sustainable, and thriving ecosystem for all life on Earth. A short timeline was also included to describe some of the changes that occurred to make this not-yet-future possible. Finally, students wrote a reflective essay that theologically interprets their story. Carson was one of several students who chose to tell their story from a non-human perspective!

Envisioning Planetary Solidarity Assignment by Carson Taylor

Introduction

On August 18, 2023, the beloved Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, also known as Tokitae from the L Pod of Southern Resident orca whales, died while living in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium.[1] A few months prior to hearing this news I wrote the story, timeline, and reflective essay for this course assignment. At that time, arrangements were being made to return Tokitae back to her home in the Salish Sea. I wrote my POV story from the perspective of a fictional orca whale, said to be the great-niece of Tokitae. Though I hold a deep sense of grief from the news of Tokitae’s death, I still want to share this piece. While my story and timeline may seem like a far-fetched utopian dream, I hope it helps inspire readers to engage their imagination and envision what a healed, whole planet might look like and take active steps towards planetary solidarity.

POV Story

“Good morning Toki Junior, welcome to your first day here in the Salish Sea! I’m your sister, Tae. I hardly slept last night because I knew you were being born and I couldn’t wait to show you around and tell you all about the legacy of our Great Aunt Tokitae. But first, let’s start with some breakfast. Our mom heard about a big school of Chinook Salmon a few miles away so we’re headed there. You’ll be nursing for now but don’t worry, when it’s time, I’ll teach you how to join the hunt. Mom will help you stay afloat while you build muscles and learn to swim. Let’s go!”

Together, with the rest of our family, we swam through the Puget Sound on our way to enjoy Toki Jr.’s first meal. I was full of excitement and anticipation for when I could teach her how to dive down deep enough to see the gorgeous, vibrant colors that spread across the ocean floor. I’ll show her the sponge reefs and kelp beds that are full of life! Someday I’ll teach her how to jump and do cool flips in the air to say hi to our bird friends and maybe jump high enough to see epic views of snow-capped volcanoes like Tahoma and Komo Kulshan. But for now, I’ve got to focus on teaching her the basics of swimming and breathing so we can go on our first hunt together.

“Okay Toki Jr. you’re doing great so far, I know swimming and coordinating breath can be tough when you’re new to it. Let’s start with a deep breath up at the surface.” With Mom’s help, Toki swam up for air. “Exhale, and take a deep inhale. Great job! Now, let’s take a slow swim near the shore of San Juan Island to work on building your strength.”

Several Bald Eagles were flying along the shore that used to be filled with noisy yachts and whale watching boats carrying tourists around. Now the humans only use quiet, solar powered boats or canoes. There’s much fewer human visitors than there used to be since the government gave the land back to the Coast Salish tribes. As we swam close to shore we saw people gathered for a welcoming ceremony. Mom said the visitors seem much happier since they started acknowledging their role as guests and stewards of the island. Now anyone who comes to the island as a visitor learns about the history of the Coast Salish people. They participate in a welcoming ceremony where they offer gifts to the hosts from their homeland and spend time learning about the local ecosystem.

As we continued swimming towards the salmon I helped Toki learn when to breathe and when to simply look around and enjoy the view under the sea. We saw a couple of canoe boats and I did a flip to make the humans smile. Toki giggled. She asked about everything we saw and I told her the names of all our sea friends that we passed by.

The water’s been so clear since the humans stopped drilling for oil. Mom said there used to be big navy and commercial trading ships that were so loud she’d get a headache and struggle to communicate with the family. It made it really hard for them to hunt because they couldn’t hear each other. But thankfully the military and trading industry leaders started listening more to our human siblings from the Coast Salish tribes. Now we can swim more freely and don’t have to worry about oil spills or loud noises.

As we got closer to the Chinook Salmon run I started preparing Toki Jr. “Before we start our hunt, I think you should hear a little bit about Aunt T. Hunting has always been hard work for us, but it used to be extra challenging back when Aunt T was first returned home. Her legacy represents many twists and turns in our relationship with our human siblings and helps us remember to have gratitude for the return of the salmon. Though we always had support from our siblings of the Coast Salish tribes, other humans didn’t care as much and didn’t see us as their kin. When Aunt T was just four years old some humans captured her and took her away to perform for them in Florida. After spending over 50 years in captivity, she was brought back home. Her mom, Ocean Sun, was overwhelmed with emotion when she first saw Aunt T. Ocean Sun was nervous because she had been struggling to find enough food for the family to eat. Some of the salmon they ate even made them sick at times.”

I could tell Toki Jr. started to feel a little scared. But I felt like she needed to know the story before her first time watching the family hunt. I wanted her to know that we came from a long line of strong mothers and aunties who survived through really challenging seasons. And even though hunting still takes a lot of work and energy, she’ll be able to do it someday!

After more swimming, Mom gave me the signal that it was time to start our hunt. She let out a couple of clicks and within seconds we heard the clicks echo back to us, letting us know the salmon were in range. I took one last breath and got ready for my dive. Breathing in, I dove deep and swam ahead of the pod. I twisted and turned all around the school of salmon to herd them together. Flashes of silver, blue, and green swarmed all around me. Mom and the others flicked their fins and we all circled the salmon and each of us took a mouthful of them. Toki Jr. watched in awe as we all ate until we were full.

“Wow, what a treat! You’d never believe that 50 years ago when Aunt T returned home there was never this much to eat. But Aunt T’s story was widespread and people all over the world started paying more attention to us and felt a connection to her and our family. They realized Ocean Sun, Aunt T, and our whole family were being affected by their toxic waste and lack of care. When they saw our struggle to find enough food they put together a global campaign to help restore our ecosystem. They started teaching future generations about us and made big changes to help increase the salmon population.”

Toki Jr. smiled and was filled with joy after watching the hunt and hearing about Aunt T. She let out a big gratitude whistle, thanking me for telling her the story, thanking the salmon for giving themselves to our family, and thanking our human siblings for their advocacy efforts to bring Aunt T back home and their continued efforts that helped make our hunt possible. She vowed to be a good orca sibling and couldn’t wait until she could join our family in hunting once she was strong enough. After the hunt we were all able to relax and swim all around the Salish Sea, with our bellies and hearts full of gratitude.

Timeline

In July 2023 Tokitae was returned to the Salish Sea. Her story inspired large-scale movements, challenging world leaders to reflect on the history of colonization and their relationship with making profit through exploitation. There was a rise in global mourning about climate change, leading to heightened awareness and education of its impact on different people and places.
In response to the U.S. news, in November 2023, Americans voted in new politicians who launched a “Truth and Conciliation”[2] committee aimed at retelling the history of the U.S. through the lens of Indigenous peoples and their relationship with the land.
With a new Congress, in 2025, the U.S. government shifted military spending and halted spending on weapons manufacturing. They invested in disbanding Navy ships and created a plan to transition the Navy and Coast Guard into focusing on restoring the coast line and ecosystems. Military funds were diverted into funding education programs that focused on climate justice and investing in developing technology to build infrastructure to reduce waste and increase renewable energy sources.
Throughout 2025-2030, efforts were focused on restoring the salmon population. There was a ban on creating new dams and work to release damned rivers, streams, etc. throughout the North American continent.
As a result of the Truth and Conciliation Committee and ongoing grassroots movements, between 2030-2040, the U.S. government made a plan for reparations for Indigenous tribes which included releasing all government-owned property back to tribes. Collaborative efforts across the continent were made to establish guidelines around welcoming ceremonies and rituals.
In 2030, a global treaty was signed and established a ban on the extraction of fossil fuels. Some oil drilling factories were turned into memorial sites and there was large-scale global investment in renewable energy through solar, wind, etc.
In 2-5 years after the global treaty was signed, an additional ban on new plastics was implemented and there was a global investment in recycling of current plastics.
Over the next 50 years, there was a shift in the relationships between humans and animals. With the land back movement new dialogues were opened up about what it means to be a good guest. Additionally people began shifting their relationships with non-human beings and embracing an understanding of planetary solidarity.

Reflection

This creative writing exercise challenged me to expand my imagination and understanding of what planetary solidarity looks like – solidarity that works toward whole planet healing and encompasses not just humanity but the vastness of creation on Earth. As I began writing Tae’s story I realized how little I know about the ecosystem I live in. How can I even begin to imagine what a healed world/Earth would look like if I am not aware of the ecological issues that are present around me? This course challenged me to think through this and recognize how I have primarily been concerned with how climate change affects humanity.[3] My imagination of a healed planet was fueled by learning about the ecosystem I am a part of.

I wrote from Tae’s perspective because Tokitae’s story reflects many of the ecotheological themes we discussed in this class including the harm that can result from andro/anthropocentric theology that centers humanity over and above the rest of creation, creation theology that imagines the role of humans is to dominate over and subdue the rest of creation, and systemic injustice where profit is made through exploitation. One of the main themes addressed in Tae’s story is a shift away from anthropocentrism towards an Earth-centric perspective. Along with this shift comes a view of humans in the role of stewards instead of conquerors or dominators over creation. Inspiration came from Heather Eaton’s critique of the anthropocentric focus of many climate justice efforts[4], Wanda Deifelt’s reflections on the Genesis creation story[5], and Brunner, Butler, and Swoboda’s discussion of a passage from Numbers 20 [6]. For a detailed discussion of how these theologians informed my story and timeline you can request a copy of my original reflective essay via email at carson.taylor@theseattleschool.edu. I hope this story encourages readers to become more active learners about the ecosystem and ecological issues around them.

Photo Credit:

King 5 Staff, “Tokitae, Southern Resident Orca, Dies in Captivity after Calls to Bring Her Home,”
king5.com, August 18, 2023, .
This idea comes from Mark Charles, “‘We The People’ – the Three Most Misunderstood Words in US History | Mark Charles | TEDxTysons,” YouTube, January 24, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOktqY5wY4A. See also Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2019).
To be clear, it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate impact of climate change on many historically marginalized communities. The truth is, I am not nearly as negatively impacted by climate change as some people and non-human life forms around the world are. Though I am confronted with effects such as smoke-filled air from wildfires and warmer temperatures, I can easily choose to ignore these changes and remain naive or unaware of the suffering that is happening in the rest of the world. In many ways I am shielded from the impacts of climate change because of my proximity to whiteness, living in the highly developed city of Seattle, and participating in the capitalist economic system. While these issues are important to name and address, I found Heather Eaton’s work helpful in expanding my lens beyond humanity and toward a more holistic, planetary perspective.
Heather Eaton, “An Earth-Centric Theological Framing for Planetary Solidarity,” in Planetary
Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, ed. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 19–44.
Wanda Deifelt, “And G*d Saw That It Was Good – Imago Dei and Its Challenge to Climate Justice,” in Planetary Solidarity: Global Women’s Voices on Christian Doctrine and Climate Justice, ed. Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Hilda P. Koster (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2017), 119–32.
Daniel L. Brunner, Jennifer L. Butler, and A. J. Swoboda, “The God of Burning Bushes: Trinity and
Ecology,” in Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), 95–115.

The post Ecotheology: An Orca’s Perspective appeared first on ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

Alumni Spotlight: A Conversation with Mary DeJong MATC ’17 and Sarah Steinke MACP ’19

��Ƶ — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 18:19:22 +0000

This is something truly spectacular about relationships—that we can make something together that we wouldn’t have made on our own. -Sarah Steinke MACP ’19

Curious about alumni partnerships, Jocelyn Skillman, as Supervisor of Alumni Outreach, recently had the opportunity to interview , MATC ‘17 and MACP ‘19. Together these two alumni bring their training, gifts, and strengths – Mary as an eco theologian and spiritual ecologist and Sarah as a psychotherapist, yoga instructor, and poet – to their collaborative work, as they guide pilgrimages to Iona, Scotland, where travelers and seekers explore the rich heritage of Celtic spirituality and sacred rewilding practices, synching the body and the soul in this journey.

How long have you known each other? How did you get/stay connected?

Sarah Steinke (SS): The first time I remember meeting Mary was at her graduation party, which I was attending with my husband. It was our final stop before heading home, and I remember being tired and ready to call it a day. But when I stepped into Mary’s backyard, I felt a big sigh move through my body—this place was one of restoration and peace, and provocation, as here was a woman who was awake in ways I didn’t often encounter. Mary and I have been connected ever since. Our souls connect across the water from each other—she being in Seattle, and me in Bremerton—and our bodies meet in Iona.

Mary DeJong (MD): My first time encountering Sarah was at our class’ (S)end event. She was leading a yoga session for soon-to-be graduates. She radiated grounded calm and centered peace. I was captivated! I had already been guiding pilgrimages to Iona for some time, and had been imagining a movement component to complement the journey. Encountering Sarah enlivened this imagination as the way she held the space and offered guidance through the practice resonated with the hope I held. Sarah and my friendship has deepened over the years of co-guiding pilgrimages to Iona. The nature of our lives here in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t support us seeing one another very often; but when we meet on Iona, it is as if time and distance folds on itself and our friendship picks up where we left off, sending exponentially deeper taproots into the relational terrain we now hold between us.

Please tell us more about your Pilgrimages to Iona! What do you offer? What do you hope to share and gift?

SS: Mary has cultivated a soul journey that includes not only the bright goodness of adventure, but also shadow work, where we encounter the deep, dark underbelly we’ve forgotten is ours. On this pilgrimage, as we walk the earth’s body, we also walk the land of our bodies. Through pilgrimage in our bodies, we come to know our internal land, encountering the places we haven’t breathed into in some time, the places we’ve forgotten or maybe are afraid to enter, and we begin to rewild, and reconnect to our innate wholeness. All the while, we’re held by the earth’s heartbeat, and her breath of tide.

MD: The Iona Pilgrimage aims to provide a contemporary way to experience the archetypal stages of a transformational journey to an ancient holy site, and in particular, a journey that will re-awaken and reconnect participants to the reality of a sacred living Earth. Iona is singular in its role within the Christian church: it is considered to be the birthplace of Celtic Christianity, a stream of spirituality that integrated the Christian mission with the Celtic imagination of divine animism.

provides programmatic support in re-engaging a Celtic worldview, which resonates deeply with the more modern expressions of spiritual ecology and eco theology. Every aspect of our programming is influenced by the underlying theme of sacred interrelationship.

How did this Iona Pilgrimage vision come about? Have the contours of it changed over time?

SS: While the contours of this pilgrimage have been shaped by Mary with her teachers and the community of Iona, my collaboration with her is ever-changing, as together we lean into spontaneity and play. This is something truly spectacular about relationships—that we can make something together that we wouldn’t have made on our own.

MD: I actually started taking groups to Iona in 2004 as part of a vocational discernment program I was asked to run for Seattle Pacific University. As I folded the program into my own Waymarkers work, I enhanced this offering to explicitly move one through the archetypal stages of the pilgrimage journey within a Celtic spirituality context to support a journey of sacred eco-awakening. In 2018 Sarah began to offer the yoga component, which was an integral part of the emergence of this program. Synching the body and the soul are paramount to a journey of transformation.

What’s your favorite part(s) about your pilgrimages? Any special memories/images you’d want to share with alumni?

SS: My favorite part of pilgrimage is coming to the end of my planning, and to the end of me. Iona is a place of wilderness, where plans and contingencies are thwarted, and where the invitation is to simply be. Though Spirit is ever present, Her great lap is the North Beach.

MD: My favorite moment is the calm confidence that Spirit has guided all the efforts to create the space on Iona for precious souls to show up and do such beautiful and challenging work. It is bearing witness to the unfolding, the remembering, and the reconnecting.

How has your understanding of God, community, Love deepened or changed? How has your own spirituality been informed, formed, evolved through these pilgrimages?

SS: My understanding of God has changed as I’ve allowed myself to be known, by fellow pilgrims, by Mary, the land, by the rocks and water, by my Self, by God. The journey is always different, but each time I walk away with blessing that I couldn’t have imagined had I not stepped into the stream of Life’s unfolding.

MD: I was raised within the church, and quite simply, I would say that these pilgrimages to Iona have reminded me that the Holy One is awaiting our gaze and our adoring presence outside of church walls and can be encountered through the watching eye of a puffin, through the blasting wind, through the clarifying turquoise waters of the sea and the dolphins who play within them.

Are there any academic/formational touchstones from your graduate education that continue to inform your work now?

SS: One of the gifts I’ve been given from ��Ƶ is the way, albeit clumsy at times, this community seeks to live out encounter, invitation, embrace, recognizing the sovereignty of one another. I was given a robust relational education in a courageous place that didn’t always get it right but that wanted to make it right.

MD: My graduate and postgraduate work has been steeped in the intersection of ecology and religion, as well as cultural expressions of myth and deep story. ��Ƶ taught me the importance of knowing our stories and how they interrelate. This includes knowing the stories of our soul, the soil, and the Sacred!

The post Alumni Spotlight: A Conversation with Mary DeJong MATC ’17 and Sarah Steinke MACP ’19 appeared first on ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

The Dawn Chorus’ Prayer

Mary DeJong — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:00:59 +0000

I can still see the Big Dipper when I wake early enough. The city’s din of lights are quiet and there is a silence with its own kind of pre-dawn chorus. Even in the aurora of my urban context, I encounter the matins of a howling pack of Coyotes; the low honking of a gaggle of Canadian Geese; and the commuting caw of a murder of Crows. I remember where I am because of the presence of the more than human world around me.

Walking early one morning with the cloak of night still around me, I looked up into the sky expecting the familiar and storied orientation of the North Star, Sagittarius, and Scorpius, and saw something that instead stopped me in my tracks: a string of starry pearls moving in formation were stretched out in an evenly straight line over my head. For the two minutes that I observed this celestial sequence I lost the sense of knowing where I was; the stars were shifting and so was I. It wasn’t until days later that I learned that I had witnessed the 23rd mission of Starlink satellites, a satellite internet constellation being constructed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX that will consist of over 42,000 satellites that will provide near-global internet coverage of the populated world in 2021.[1] A whole new artificial constellation is being created in the cosmos.

What happens to our deeper sense of knowing when you can no longer distinguish the stars from the satellites? What happens to our storied sense of the sky when it shifts? Will we still see Andromeda chained to a rock or Hercules slaying a lion? Or in North American Indigenous communities, will they still find their bears, sweat lodges, and thunderbirds in the sky? How will we still know who we are when the cosmos converts?

“We lose our souls if we lose the experience of the forest, the butterflies,
the song of the birds, if we can’t see the stars at night.”
—Thomas Berry

The storied stars are part of how Indigenous people all over the world have made sense of the world around them. But more than that, it has provided people a sense of place and a bone-deep knowing of belonging to this Earth and the community of creation. These celestial stories have helped humans make meaning of the natural world and understand its variable features. It is within the night sky that we are reminded of our sacred evolutionary cosmology: that we too are made of stardust!
Stars are our birthright and connect us to a cosmic kinship. Stars that go supernova are responsible for creating many of the elements of the periodic table, including those that make up the human body. Planetary scientist and stardust expert Dr. Ashley King explains: “It is totally 100% true: nearly all the elements in the human body were made in a star and many have come through several supernovas.”[2] When we look up at the stars, we are reminded of our stellar ancestry and of our own storied existence, ultimately receiving guidance for our journey through life on this planet.

Star navigation has been used by seafarers for millennia. For thousands upon thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have navigated their way across the seas and lands of Australia using paths called songlines or dreaming tracks.[3] Songlines will often follow on from one another, creating an intricate oral map of place, linking important sites and locations that exist in the outer world to their inner world, their soulscape. The soil and the stars become the medium by which one knows where they are, and when we know where we are, we know who we are.

“Tell me the landscape in which you live, and I will tell you who you are.”
— José Ortega y Gasset

In the Hebrew Old Testament scripture of Jeremiah, we encounter a journey that guides Israel back to her city, to her homeland, the place of her belonging. In Jeremiah 31:21 there is a command to set up way marks, collected items from the natural world believed to likely be heaps of stones, or pole-like trees, put upon the path to guide the traveler through wild and spacious landscapes.[4] Here there is a sense that the natural world is coming alongside the pilgrim to provide guidance, wisdom, and a sense of direction towards a place of belonging. Stones, trees, and stars are in place to offer both guidance as well as meaning; they are meaning-makers, subjects that are offering a sense of our storied existence and insight into how we make our way upon this planetary home.

This world, like the night sky, is dramatically changing, however. Trees that once were there to mark our way, have been chopped down; deforestation occurring the world over at a rate of 10 million hectares annually.[5] Stones that sat and offered sacred guidance for millennia in the shapes of mountains are being removed for coal surface mining. With these way-markers gone, people are existing separately from an increasingly degraded world, moving through memories of resplendent places, which are quickly evaporating.

We are forgetting the wonder-filled world that used to guide us and tell us where we are, and why we are. Our sense of our self, along with our imagination of the Sacred, is being desecrated along with the land. With ongoing environmental degradation at local, regional, and global scales, people’s accepted thresholds for environmental conditions are continually being lowered and storied landscapes are being forgotten.

In the absence of oral traditions, nature-based myths, or personal experience with historical environmental conditions, members of each new generation accept the landscapes (and starscapesǃ) in which they are raised as being normal. This psychological and sociological phenomenon is termed shifting baseline syndrome (SBS), which is increasingly recognized as one of the fundamental obstacles to addressing a wide range of today’s global environmental issues.[6] I would suggest it has huge implications on our soul formation as well.

Consequences of SBS include an increased tolerance for progressive environmental degradation, changes in people’s expectations as to what is a desirable (worth protecting) state of the natural and wild world, and the establishment and use of inappropriate baselines for nature conservation, restoration and management. It also creates a general malaise and environmental amnesia for the interconnection between the more than human world and our own human existence. At the same time, for those who are connected to the memory of a place, ecological grief can set in as sacred stories seem to dissipate under the bulldozer’s blade.

How do we survive wandering in this kind of desolate wilderness? When we re-story our lives, we restore not only ourselves, but the land upon which we live as well. It is a way to quite literally, save ourselves——and the more-than-human world. Reverence, interconnectedness, service, and solidarity are the keys that help us unlock the prison of our false sense of separation and fortify our resilience in this world. A flourishing future is possible through recovering a reconnection between people and their place.

Jeremiah offers us insight into the Divine impulse that desires restoration. We can participate in this meant-for-pattern by engaging in rewilding efforts, restoration endeavors that bring landscapes, and soulscapes, back into whole interrelationship with all of creation, including the cosmos. Ecotheologian Thomas Berry wisely stated that, “The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.”

Our planetary home needs us to remember its wild wonder, to reconnect to the voices that are singing praises all around us, to restore the stars with stories of our sacred ancestry, not satellites. And if we can commit to this rewilding work, we may yet have hope that we will witness the manifestation of the dawn chorus’ morning prayer: that humanity will experience peace by finding their belonging here and will join with the choir of creation, singing the lines that lead us all home.

Sources

[1] Yan Huang, Michelle, Bob Hunt, and Dave Mosher. “What Elon Musk’s 42,000 Starlink satellites could do for—and to—planet Earth.” Business Insider, March 4, 2021 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-elon-musk-42000-starlink-satellites-earth-effects-stars-2020-10

[2] Kerry Lotzof, “Are We Really Made of Stardust?” National History Museum https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-we-really-made-of-stardust.html (accessed March 30, 2021).

[3] Beau James, “Songlines: The Art of Navigating the Indigenous World,” Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, Australia, Australian Government, May 31, 2016. https://www.sea.museum/2016/05/31/songlines-the-art-of-navigating-the-indigenous-world (accessed March 30, 2021).

[4] Jeremiah 31:21 (Revised Standard Version)

[5] The State of the World’s Forests 2020 Report; Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

[6] Masashi Soga, and Kevin J. Gaston. “Shifting baseline syndrome: causes, consequences, and implications,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Volume 16, Issue 4 (May 2018), 224.

The post The Dawn Chorus’ Prayer appeared first on ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology.

ecotheology Archives - ������Ƶ of Theology & Psychology