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  • From: Katey <newtribe@hughes.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] 'resurrecting' the thread about spirituality and permaculture
  • Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:39:30 -0500

Would love to take a turn on this lyrical journey.

I hear Sean make a comparison often not fully explained, about the inherent ego of monotheism. I, too, held the sentiments he expressed for a long time. My thinking leans more this way now: Christianity did not go on the Crusades and declare Manifest Destiny, people did. So The Church is where i think this ego lives. For many years i held christianity as the culprit that destroyed the sacred feminine in my european heritage, but it was The Church that did this.

Once there was empire running rampant on the planet it was only a matter of time before the control freaks would make the most of the social managers. People with control (armies) saw the ease of power that comes over a controlled group. So we end up with some pretty perverted (in my mind) ideas that became detrimentally ingrained in our psyche - like original sin.

Life is a gift - a gift from the creator - that is what i believe. And like Paul i don't see that as giving me ownership. It gives me responsibility. When i was 10 years old my grandmother gave me a spoon for Christmas. It was a silver spoon with her name engraved on the handle. At ten years old it was not the most exciting present, actually a little disappointing, but i put it in the silverware drawer with the rest of the stainless and used it every morning to eat my cereal. My grandmother came to visit; she saw the silver spoon in the drawer with the stainless and exclaimed "This is how you treat your silver? I will not leave my silver to you when i die if this is how you will treat it!" So, although it was a gift, i had responsibility for it. At 50 i still the use that spoon nearly every day, it's kept in the same drawer with the stainless and all the silver my grandmother left me when she died. (You see, i inherently understood the power of the gift and chose to honor it in my way.)

One of the things that counter culture did when it discovered the sometimes unbearable reality of what has been done in the name of The Church was to create a space called spirituality. We ran to all sorts of indigenous rituals, eastern religions, crystals and yogis. So Father Culture (sorry can't put the sacred feminine on it) ran out in front, as he always does, to spin the spiritual reality. So now we have huge profit-motivated industries *selling* spirituality. Often it is a solitary endeavor. It is not infused with community, which might lessen its impact on our psyche.

Much of my "spiritual" time is spent in the woods communing with nature, with my husband by my side, but the infrequent times when my larger community gathers and we have group meditations those are some of the most powerful spiritual connections.

Thanks for the ride,
katey

ecoville architechs
www.earthandstraw.net


Paul d'Aoust wrote:
On Tue, 2007-20-03 at 08:27 -0700, Sean Maley wrote:
There is an important distinction to make here. There is no gift.
Such a gift implies property and having power of life and death
bestowed upon humanity. To me, monotheism completes an imaginery
separation of humanity from the wild and bestows as some gift an
exageratedly dangerous and imperfect wild. No matter how much we
believe this hubris, we can not truley be separated from Earth, unless
we go extinct. All life deserves equal "ownership" in the food web,
which entitles all of us from bacteria to animals to nothing more than
participation in any niche available. We are a part of Earth, not the
owners, or stewards, of Earth. What we destroy is a part of
ourselves.

Maybe I should clarify my feelings on the issue of 'gift'. I do believe
that the earth is a gift to us, but I don't make the supposition that
that means we own it or have special claim over its resources, if that
makes any sense. When I say 'gift' I don't mean that God said, "here you
go; it's yours; do whatever you want with it." I picture him saying,
"here you go; I made this and I'm letting you live in it." I believe
that the universe exists simply for its own sake, and in its own right,
so we have to approach it with an 'ours and yet not ours' attitude.

If I weren't a Christian, I'd probably be an animist. Everything is
suffused with sacredness for me, and that gives me a deep respect for
the natural world. Coming from that point of view, I realise I don't
have the right to touch Zone 5 -- it'd be like blowing up a statue of
the Buddha like the Taliban did a few years ago. All I'm saying is that
there are proper places for Zones 1 to 4, and that's where our
'stewardship' role comes in.

I guess I just don't see how monotheism is the logical (or even de
facto) precursor of that separation of humanity and nature that you
speak of.

Perhaps you hear the call of nature, not god.

here's the animist in me again, but -- what if they speak with the same
voice? What if nature speaks with the voice of its progenitor? Because
everything you're saying (except the monotheism bit) resonates with me
so strongly, and yet I still don't feel the desire to abandon
monotheism, I would say the two are not only compatible but intimately
linked.

But maybe my attitudes are rare among Christians. I dunno.

The chorus (Mother Nature) will be louder, as you leave your garden
towards the "wilds", which is why monotheism (Mother Culture) made
such things forbidden and scary.

Hey, maybe this is why our opinions diverge. I don't identify monotheism
with culture. I see it as above and beyond culture, nature, fears,
ideologies, opinions, etc. And maybe you're talking simply about the
culture that has developed around the monotheistic philosophy? Because,
to be honest, most Christians don't really think long and hard about the
whole "the earth and all its fullness is the Lord's" line. If, in fact,
the earth is God's, then there is no opportunity to paint the
'wilds' (and the wonderful spiritual feeling you experience in it) as
evil. Yet Christians often still try to anyway.

Quite frankly, I don't trust our culture. It should be obvious that I
even have serious problems with the Christian culture that I'm
supposedly trying to defend. But to incriminate a belief based on the
culture that has attached itself to it, I think, would be a mistake.

Just some more food for thought.

Paul

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