Later this morning is the annual pressing of the muscadine and scuppernong grapes. With two-hundred pounds ready to press, it should be the work of a few short hours to convert into juice. And, then another few months of turning that juice into wine. So, with plenty to be thankful for in the short-term, here is one from the archives. This theme, of not being connected with the natural world, is much on my mind. That Los Angeles, poster child for excess and disconnection, a city of 18.79 million, had the great hubris to declare recently a climate emergency, does nothing to ease my mind about the track we are trudging.
Being neither a Catholic in the specific nor religious in the general, I’m surprised to find my farmer’s mind wandering along these paths while watching the sunrise:
It is early Saturday morning and the mists bunch up in the holler near our farm. An ancestor might have thought them in quiet conversation before they lifted slowly in the predawn light. Perhaps it was an act of praise as Brother Sun approached, all rise and disperse.
Brother Sun…he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor.
Would our world be different…better if we had stayed closer to our animist past? Not usually given to speculation on matters theological, I have wondered if Francis of Assisi was moved by that longing when he wrote Canticle of the Sun. One of the few pieces of that heritage that celebrates and loves the natural world, seeing it less for the resources to exploit than for the connectedness of wind, air, moon, sun, dirt and fire.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and beautiful.
A work of looking behind the rational to the inner heart of our connected natural world. A world where we could just as easily have been stone or water and valued as either.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
The power of that vision, an interconnectedness, gives an opportunity for reverence in the use of this world. That an incomprehensible vastness of the universe, springing from a single act, gives us a bond with all that is animate and inanimate. Those ancestors, living in closer communion with the world, knew better of those links than we moderns. We have travelled far from that sense of belonging.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.
What would the world look like if that had been our path? Better, worse? I know little of Assisi, whether he felt a kinship to that lost pagan world. Or if he followed a, now lost, tradition of his own religion, one that embraced an element of the animist. An air of lost possibilities hangs over these lines.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits and colored flowers and herbs
That is an outlook of one connected to the land, the peasant tied to the rhythms of the world. One we disdain from the vantage of our disconnected lives. We, who even in death, strive to be apart from the world which gave us birth.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape.
There is consolation in the knowledge that of the poor choices we make, the destruction we wield and the damage done to this world; that the act of creation continues across a universe indifferent to our actions and sense of importance.
And the next act for this farmer may be as a speck of dust, adrift.
…with great humility.
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Still reading, Icelandic Sagas
I am a Catholic and I mourn for the lost world of which Brother Francis sang. The modern church claims kinship with Francis, but belies it with all of her actions. The Church tries to claim it is “countercultural”, but doesn’t act it at all. I can’t see that Catholics use up or waste less any of the beautiful Creation we were all given. I sometimes fall into despair, but reading your blog is helpful, thank you for writing it.
Heather,
I appreciate your comments. Funny that a non-Catholic, like myself, is drawn to a lot of Catholic writers whose belief was essential to their identity. Certainly, Francis is of that group. But I throw in GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc as well. What is interesting to me, is that a large number of the people I most admire as friends and neighbors are Catholic. Which, I guess, echoes Clem’s thoughts. That we shouldn’t confuse the institution with the body of believers.
Cheers,
This entire writing is really beautiful, Brian…makes my spirit feel so humble and sad. One of my MANY FAVORITE quotes by Saint Francis is, “If you have man who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow man.” (I’m not Catholic, but certainly Christian, AND often awe-inspired.)
Jeanne,
So glad you liked it. BTW I had a great time visiting your two sons this past week.
😘
To Heather’s point that the Church doesn’t act countercultural… at least in the environmental sphere… wasting less for example. I’m less convinced. Though I will readily agree the Catholic Church has its hands full on many fronts these days, I would also point out that the Catholic Church is an enormous collection of folk. As with any other enormous collection of human beings there are good folk and some less so.
There are many examples in the neighborhood where I live of people doing positive things for our piece of the planet; some are Catholic, some Lutheran, some from many other religious persuasions. And there are also many helpful folk around who claim no particular religious affiliation. But by geography of sharing this space there is formed a neighborhood. A parish if you will (to use the Louisiana approach to naming smallish governmental districts). Parishes vary in their welcoming and wholesomeness – just as our many brothers and sisters do in their individual ways. But a strength I find in a parish over what I find in the larger Church is that the local community is more knowable. It is not some ephemeral notion, some nearly abstract construct. The parish is yet a living assemblage – better at some times than at others – but as a member of a parish one can (must) influence the whole in ways beyond the reach of the individual to influence the larger assemblage. And for me the hope and yearning we hold forth for a better future can bear fruit best at home, in the immediate vicinity of our daily activity.
Well said, my friend.
The bond between humans and the Charismatic Entrepreneurial Beings CEOing their lives seems a strong one.
We’ve had people attempt to break free from the predominant Christian one, only to land in the Buddhist one’s lap.
Any and all religions allow for a believer to quietly do his life’s work as that speck of dust, no more and no less.
Yet all of them are at present bending over backwards to accomodate each modern worshipper’s daily cerebral climate emergency checklist.
Listening to Steve Tilston – The Greening Wind
…modern worshipper’s daily cerebral climate emergency checklist
There should be an app for that Michael (if there isn’t already). At least with such an app a larger portion of the population might share in the fun of witnessing our climate fouling freedoms. The next campaign slogan for a green ball cap could be: Make Earth Great Again.
The Gods of Commerce have heard your prayer. And, they have answered: https://www.fifthsun.com/lost-gods-mens-t-shirt-make-earth-great-again-hat-black?gclid=Cj0KCQjw3KzdBRDWARIsAIJ8TMQq4r7IdNL-AUlfzu2Xp58A-qjdqzXMuXYOjw9q_nFp4L3DbC5LEPcaAmDVEALw_wcB
I should perhaps have written daily ‘cerebral climate’ emergency checklist 🙂
I contend that no amount of wanting to make Earth great again will happen if brains continue to be so fry-able.
The other day I talked to someone about what we might call the next Two Great Leaps in our, and probably lots of other European countries:
Number one is comparatively easy – end the extreme income inequality that this country is experiencing right now, preferably by reviving solidarity as the foundation of effective political action.
Next: Tell all those people who are, now that you’ve been successful, experiencing improved financial safety, lessened stress levels, more confidence in the power of positive political action etc., that fossil resources as we know them are about to run out and that while solidarity will still be the goal of political action, it’ll have to be fought for in a world whose resource base is rapidly reverting to 19th century standards.
I told him that while you might achieve the first Leap, you are unlikely to bridge the chasm separating it from the second one.
My goodness – and the image at the link looks exactly as I’d imagined it. May have to get me one o’ them so’s I kin be found amongst the masses at any local event featuring more than a few of the locals. 🙂
Why thanks kind stranger for knowing the ‘Gods of Commerce’ on such an intimate level. I suppose I owe you one… (kicks dirt).
Michael,
Jody has a link to a piece you might find interesting, along the lines of your last comment: http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf. I just don’t think it is in our disposition to make the changes needed…until…of course, it is too late.
Clem,
I just had a feeling the Mr. Google had a hat for that.
Thanks for the Jem Bendell link. Interesting on several levels. It has been peer reviewed, but not published (yet?)… have only skimmed the 31 page piece thus far, but was curious enough to link through to his blog site and found this:
https://jembendell.wordpress.com/2018/08/25/after-acceptance-some-responses-to-anticipating-collapse/
You can go through a list of ways he sees folks dealing with this issue. One might find their own perspective(s) reflected there.
Christopher Flavelle has a piece published yesterday (9-26) at Bloomberg titled ‘New Climate Debate: How to Adapt to the End of the World.’ [can provide a link if anyone has trouble finding this]… in it Chris reviews this particular topic and mentions Bendell’s work. He also links to some other work of which some is more desperate and some less so. Complex. But if it were easy, even the dolphins could do it.
Reading both of your links, I was at first astonished to find Clem’s lumping together agroecology and geoengineering, but then I started reading the abstract of Brian’s, talking about strategies for assessing societal collapse due to climate change (as the other one had, too) and began to understand that I’m not in a position to comprehend their approach because I am an ecosystem designer.
Which in my case is not a title but a practice. What they are lacking is a lack of neuroticism (we’ve talked about that). They’re enunciating the names of their God, whom they’re investing with powers of either healing or annihilating, never getting beyond name-dropping.
When agroecology to them counts as a ‘Bruce Willis’ deus ex machina approach, the only thing I’m hearing are the voices of a class of people who already sounded tired and exhausted in Freud’s Vienna, and were merely given a limited new lease of life by petroleum extraction.
I managed to read JMG for half a decade before realizing that the historical approach he favours is the one thing beyond our practice we should be insisting on.
The list of approaches in the article isn’t worth considering simply because it’s lacking a historical perspective.
If you lack that perspective, all you see before you are choices; nothing grounds you, you are making those faux choices in an imagined state of weightlessness.