Tag Archives: ecospirituality

So, Lupa, How *Do* We Make Nature Spirituality More About Nature?

Note: I fiddled around with settings on my site; you can now email-subscribe to my blog from any post, rather than on the front page of the blog itself. It’s a great way to keep up on my writing, news, and more–just plug your preferred email address into the box on the right sidebar of this (or any other) post!

In my previous post I made the assertion that a lot of what’s considered to be “nature-based spirituality” is really more about us than the rest of nature. Here I’d like to present some further food for thought, and invite other naturalist pagans and the like to reflect on where the balance between human and non-human nature may be in your own paths.

I’m going to add in my own thoughts on each of these questions, but please don’t take my responses as holy writ; I mainly offer them up in the spirit of “here, I’ll go first, since I proposed this whole thing to begin with”.

Why should we be concerned about the balance of human and non-human nature in nature spirituality?

Humanity, as a whole, is really, really self-centered. This isn’t surprising; favoring one’s own species has been a successful strategy for us and many other species for millions of years. However, one of the things we humans have evolved to face the challenges of everyday life is a big, complex, self-aware brain. This allows us to be more deliberately conscious of our choices and motivations, and to change them if we will. For example, we still have the genetic programming to gather as many food resources together as we can to feel secure; however, we also consciously recognize the devastating impact that our food consumption has on the rest of nature, and the unequal distribution of food within our own species. Therefore, we’re able to (ideally) adjust our behaviors to still get the food we need, but be less destructive in the process.

In the same vein, spirituality is one way we can make sense of the world around us and our place in it. But a lot of “nature” spirituality is really more about us than about the rest of nature. It’s about what special messages and teachings and other gifts we can get from the animals, plants and other beings around us, without having to give anything back. We might show some gratitude for things like a healthy harvest, but that’s still focusing on how nature benefits us. It’s more like “humans asking and thanking nature for stuff” spirituality. We keep inserting ourselves into the middle of things.

How does the emphasis on things like totem dictionaries, animal omens, and other “instant gratification” in nature spirituality mirror our consumption of physical resources?

Look at the shelves in pagan book stores, or the offerings from pagan publishers. They’re full of books on “the powers and meanings of animal totems” and “how to use herbs and crystals in spells” and other “get your answers right here, right now!” approaches. There’s not a lot on taking the time to create deeper, more personally meaningful relationships with other beings in nature, and even less on what we can do for our fellow beings (other than misguided advice to feed wildlife food offerings, and vague, generic “let’s send healing energy to the Earth” rituals, and so forth).

This is a direct corollary to our consumption of physical resources from nature, whether food or shelter or other tangibles. The vast majority of people, at least in the U.S., only care about nature as far as they can benefit from it. And they want their stuff now. They want to go to the store and get everything on their shopping list, whether that’s breakfast cereal and soda, or a new outfit, or cheap metal jewelry that will leave a green mark on the wearer’s skin but which makes an inexpensive gift for that relative you never know what to get for Christmas. Most people who go to national parks never venture more than a hundred yards from their cars; they oooh and ahhh at the highlights and maybe take some photos, but fewer make the connection between the preservation of these places and their own environmentally destructive actions at home.

And that’s the crux of the issue: fast-food nature spirituality continues this disconnect between our beliefs and our actions. We say we want to revere nature, but our actual interactions are brief and on the surface. Most of the people who claim Gray Wolf is their totem have never given money to an organization that works to protect wolves and the habitats they rely on to survive (though they may have bought t-shirts, statues, and other mass-produced, environmentally-unfriendly tchotchkes with wolves on them). We want something that will make us feel good and “more spiritual” in the moment, but it’s tougher to get us to engage with the deeper implications of finding the sacred in a nature that we too often damage in our reverence. The demand for totem dictionaries and other easy answers just perpetuates this trend.

How does the human-centric focus of some elements of nature spirituality reflect the human-centric focus of more mainstream religions?

Most religions start with us. Sometimes we are the chosen creation of some deity; other times one of our own achieves divine status. There might be some directive to “be nice to animals”, or in some cases refrain from eating some or all of them. But for the most part, the bigger religions are about us and our relationship to the divine, what we humans are supposed to do to earn a good afterlife, etc.

Most pagans were raised in such religions, which reflect the anthropocentrism of most existing human cultures. So it’s not surprising that when we move over to paganism for whatever reasons, we take this human-centric view with us. How do we please the gods? What sorts of nifty things can we get with spells and other magic? And, of course, what special messages does nature have for us human beings?

I, among many (though not all) other pagans, became pagan because the idea of a spiritual path that focused on nature was appealing to me, almost twenty years ago now. I didn’t realize it then, but what I was searching for wasn’t rituals and rules on how to be a good pagan; what I really wanted was to reconnect with nature, without intermediaries and without abstractions, the way I did when I was young and before life got complicated. And now that I’ve managed to rekindle that, I’m realizing just how much of purported nature-based spirituality in general really isn’t based in nature at all, except for human nature. And it just perpetuates the same human-centric patterns I was trying to move away from when I became pagan in the first place. Not all pagans are naturalist pagans, so for some a more human-based approach works. But those of us who do claim nature as the center of what is sacred may not be looking deeply enough into nature outside of ourselves.

How can we start shifting our focus away from ourselves and more toward the rest of nature?

Naturalist paganism and other forms of nature spirituality have the potential to break us out of that anthropocentric headspace, to remind us that we, the ape Homo sapiens sapiens, are just one species among thousands. For that to happen, we need to be paying more attention to the other species and parts of nature, and not just in manners that earn us freebies from the Universe.

We can start by becoming more aware of how often we ask the question “What do I get out of this?”, whether we use those words or not. This leads to an awareness of how much of our relationships to the rest of nature hinge on what we get from the deal. Sometimes it’s in the obvious places like assuming every animal sighting is a super-special message from nature, or focusing seasonal rituals only on the harvest of foods we’re able to eat and ignoring everything else happening in nature right then. But this self-centered approach can be more subtle, like using herbs in a spell but never once acknowledging the sacrifice the plants made and the resources they’d need to replace the leaves and other parts taken from them (assuming they weren’t just killed outright for their roots). By being aware of where we’re holding our hands out for gimmes, we can stop taking nature for granted so much.

Next, we can start incorporating the question “What can I give?” into our nature spirituality, again not necessarily using those words. What offerings do we make and to whom, and what actual benefit will they have to physical nature versus the harm? Part of why I emphasize donations and volunteering toward environmental causes as offerings is because they have an actual, measurable positive impact, much more than “I’m going to send some energy to endangered species by burning this petroleum-based candle made with toxic dyes”. If we take leaves from a plant for a spell, what do we give the plant in return? Is it something it can actually use, like water on a hot day, or something absolutely useless like sprinkling a few chips of quartz on the ground around its stem? Can we redirect our resources in more beneficial ways, like instead of buying a cheap wolf statue made in China we use the money (even a few dollars) to help fund the restoration of gray wolf habitat?

We can also start putting more emphasis on appreciating and honoring nature in its own right. A great way to do this is by simply learning more about biology, geology, and other natural sciences, and being able to appreciate the beings and forces of nature without having some spiritual or symbolic overlay involved. The fox that darts out into our path ceases to immediately be a portent of some important spiritual message, and instead becomes a remarkable creature borne out of billions of years of evolution and natural selection, whose strategies for surviving and adapting are equally effective as our own. And that’s all that creature has to be–amazing for itself regardless of some subjective “meaning” we glue to it.

Finally, we can realistically assess how much we’re walking our talk. I remember the very first big, public pagan gathering I went to; it was a picnic in a park, and all the food was on styrofoam plates with plastic utensils that all ended up in a big garbage bag destined for the landfill at the end of the day. It was incredibly disheartening since many of these pagans claimed to be nature-based in their own practices, and the ritual they performed even gave lip service to the “sacredness of nature”. Now, I understand that they probably didn’t want to wash a bunch of glass and ceramic dishes at the end of the day, and maybe didn’t want to spend the extra money for paper plates made from recycled paper, and perhaps they didn’t think to ask everyone to bring their own dishes to the event.

But this dissonance was important, because it gave me reason to assess my own actions and why I took them. It was the first in a long line of events that made me think “Wow, I want to do things differently”. Not “I’m a better pagan than they are”, but a realization that this thing bothered me and I wanted to make a different choice. And perhaps for those pagans, simply gathering outside on a sunny day was nature enough for them. But I wanted more, and I think naturalist paganism in particular would do well to include encouragement toward regularly assessing and improving one’s actions in relation to one’s beliefs when it comes to nature and the environment.

Here’s where a lot of people run into the sticky trap of dogma. I’m betting a lot of readers have, like me, run into that one variant of Wiccan who interprets “An if harm none” to mean “don’t eat animals!” and then insists that only vegetarians can truly be Wiccan. That’s just one example of where personal choice turns into an attempt to sic one’s dogma onto others. I don’t want to advocate that here. Just as each person’s spiritual path varies according to their needs and restrictions, so too are the actions associated with that path dictated by individual limitations and choices.

More importantly, it’s awareness, reflection, and conscious choice that are at play here. I am well aware that the car I drive, even if it does get pretty good mileage, still contributes to climate change and other results of pollution. However, I would not be able to vend my artwork at events, or take huge piles of packages to the post office, or run weekly errands associated with my business, if I didn’t have my car. Or at least it would eat a lot more into my time and lower my income more than what I currently pay for its maintenance and upkeep. But I try to balance that out by keeping it in good working order and not driving it more than I need to, and by walking or taking transit when I can. It’s that consideration and carefully-made choice that is more important than blindly adhering to the idea that if you have a car you don’t love nature enough.

And that brings me to the last question to ponder: What can I realistically change in my life right now to be more in line with my approach to nature spirituality? This is a question we can ask repeatedly–even every day, if that’s appropriate. The answer is likely to change quite a bit over time through growth and knowledge and experience. But that’s part of having a living, evolving spiritual path: you have to give it space to grow. The answers aren’t all set up in one concise book somewhere. They’re organic and they adapt to change much as we do. It’s a challenge sometimes to always be updating one’s path, to incorporate new information and reflections, and occasionally it may be tempting to just find a one-stop-shop for all the secrets of the universe.

But nature isn’t stagnant, and we only fool ourselves into thinking that only religion stands solid. If we are going to truly align ourselves with the currents and courses of the natural world, if we’re going to understand even a bit of what nature really is, then like the rest of nature we need to be prepared to adapt and explore. That means putting down the book of easy answers and “meanings”, and opening our senses to the world around us.

Sure, it’s scary sometimes, but exciting and full of curiosity, too. And I’m right here with you; you’re always welcome to comment or email me with your questions or thoughts as you walk your own path.

Food As a Pagan Value

Somehow Pagan Values Month crept up on me this year. Luckily, it caught me at a time when a good topic was percolating in my head: food.

Food may not seem much like a value, so much as a necessity. Unable to photosynthesize sunlight into energy, we animals must consume other living beings to get our nutrients, whether in the form of other animals or the photosynthesizers (plants) themselves. And despite efforts to create a one-size-fits-all convenience substitute for food (like this dreadful looking stuff here), we’re still largely reliant on the direct products of the Earth for our daily sustenance.

But we are human, and one of the things that (as far as we know) makes us unique is the control we have over our environments through our intelligence, resourcefulness, and nifty opposable thumbs. One of the many ways in which we exercise this is through our conscious choice of food. Particularly as we developed agriculture and gained more independence on our food supply, we’ve been able to decide whether or not to eat a particular thing, rather than eating whatever happened to be available at the time. And cooking is even older than agriculture, with the earliest evidence arising 250,000 or so years ago.

With cooking came even more diversity in flavors, and with that a greater appreciation for the aesthetics, rather than just the functionality, of food. We can enjoy food, not just because a particular taste lets us know it has good things in it, but because we are conscious of our enjoyment. We are capable of choosing the flavors we like best, combining them in unusual and surprising manners. And in that act of creation, we appreciate and celebrate the food and its goodness.

http://bit.ly/1lrhVuW
http://bit.ly/1lrhVuW
But we don’t celebrate the land itself. Outside of a dedicated cadre of foodies and some wine enthusiasts, most people couldn’t tell you where the thing they’re consuming came from, never mind how the soil it was grown or fed on affects its taste. We may know vaguely that our loaf of bagged white bread was probably made from wheat somewhere in the Midwest–maybe–but that’s about it. For the most part, unless we grew or raised it ourselves, or bought it directly from the farmer, we just can’t say where our food came from. Food is an expression of the place it came from, and our bodies are made of that soil. We carry bits of countless fields and farms within our very flesh, yet few of us could identify every single one that’s provided us with our food.

This goes for most pagans, too. When we have our “harvest” celebrations in late summer and fall, Lammas and Mabon and Samhain, most of us aren’t offering up food that we ourselves grew or raised. Instead, everyone brings things we bought from the store, the farmers and farms themselves left anonymous and forgotten. We come together because someone’s ancestors way back when celebrated the harvest around this time–or because some book explained the eight Sabbats and that’s what we figure we’re supposed to do. There’s an almost complete disconnect between the empty words we speak out of some book of shadows, and the people who actually raised and harvested the food we consume once the circle’s closed.

It is not enough to celebrate “Yay, food!” with bland words of “Thank you to the Earth, blah, blah, blah”. What does that really mean? Thank you, entire planet? Thank you, unidentified spot where this apple was grown? Thank you, soil where a migrant worker stepped as they picked this handful of peas?

For those pagans whose spirituality centers on nature, this is a potential area for a deeper connection to the land. We need to go beyond rote harvest celebrations. Just like a Christian doesn’t stop being Christian after the hour-long Sunday service is done, we don’t stop being nature pagans after everyone goes home from the Sabbat (or whatever your chosen celebration is). To really honor the land we get our food from, we have to know it. We have to remove the anonymity as best as we can. And we have to acknowledge the sources and systems that bring us our food every day, to include the harm they can bring to the environment and ourselves, and mitigate the damage as best as we can. If we’re going to claim to honor nature, it’s imperative that we go beyond the generic “thank you”.

This isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Gardening seems like the easiest and most immediate solution to the anonymous food and land problem; I’ve been growing vegetables since I moved to the Northwest in 2006. But it takes money and resources; there are times when all I had was a few pots on the porch, and some people don’t even have access to that. Few of us have enough land to grow enough food for the household year-round; my community garden plot is 10′ x 20′, and it’s a good week if I can pull a few salads for two from it.

http://bit.ly/TPt0f6
http://bit.ly/TPt0f6
We could look to other food growers, of course. I’m spoiled here in Portland because there’s a strong emphasis on local agriculture, from farmer’s markets most days of the week to restaurants and shops specializing in locally grown and raised food. So it’s really easy to get to know the farmer here. It’s tougher to know the land that grew your food when all you have access to is a chain grocery store with plastic-wrapped meat from one of Tyson’s many factory farms and spinach shipped in from somewhere in Mexico. You may have to do some research to find more local resources–and “local” may be relative, if you don’t have viable farmland within a hundred miles, or if all the farmland is owned by huge agribusinesses.

Cost becomes a factor, too, when trying to buy more personal food. Big agriculture gets a ton of government subsidies which allow their products to be sold more cheaply; often the independent farmers can’t compete because they have to sell their food at real cost. This, unfortunately, can price it out of the reach of some people, especially those on lower incomes. This isn’t always universal; in the middle of summer I can go to the farmer’s market down the road and get a giant bundle of carrots for two bucks, but then pay $20/pound for grass-fed buffalo sirloin. (In which case, we just eat more carrots and only a little meat.)

The good news is that there’s no single right way to treat food as a pagan value. Just having more awareness of your food and where it comes from is a great starting point for breaking out of the generic “thank you, Earth!” form of food and land appreciation. As one example, even if all you know about the chickens your eggs came from is that they lived in tiny battery cages somewhere and existed only to lay as many eggs as possible, then at least you know who to really thank for your food at harvest time! And your awareness can lead to more conscious choices in the future, too. You might have access to free range eggs, whether through the grocery store or a farmer’s market. Even if you can’t buy the free range eggs every single shopping trip because they cost a few more dollars a dozen or because you’d have to travel farther for them, you might consider buying them once a month if you’re able, and that’s better than not buying them at all.

I’ll be talking more about issues surrounding food, sustainability, and their connection to spirituality in future posts–in fact, stay tuned for my next post where I’ll be reviewing a really good book that I’ve found incredibly inspirational in my quest to be a more responsible consumer of comestibles.

Hello, Old Paint

Today is an art day. I’m bouncing between a few custom orders and what I call “cleaning through art”. That latter is where I realize the back bedroom where I keep my art supplies is a complete mess, and instead of cleaning everything up like a normal person, I pick up the nearest project idea that’s cluttering up the floor and work on it til it’s done. Sure, it only makes the room a little less messy, but at the end I have a completed project and slightly more space!

One of the projects I’m working on is a dance costume made from a tanned horse’s mane and tail that I got from a Washington taxidermist who collects deceased animals from local farms (among other sources). The tail’s going to be on a belt, as I normally do with my horse tails, and I’m adding a pair of decorated belt pouches; the leather’s all from a deerskin coat I got at the Goodwill Bins a while back. You can see one of the pouches as a work-in-progress in the picture above.

My last Bins trip also netted me the paints next to it. Shopping there is less like a regular excursion where you have a list of things you want, and more like a giant yard sale that happens every day and there’s more brought out every fifteen minutes and you really don’t know what you’re going to go home with. In recent trips I’ve hauled out a pillowcase full of pine cones, a vintage Black and White scotch bottle (empty, of course), an empty antique projector case, and a bag full of several dozen partially full tubes of acrylic paints. I wasn’t able to open up the tubes prior to purchase, so I knew it was a gamble, but it paid off–only one was all dried up, and the rest were primarily in the earthy colors I use a lot. Although acrylics are a better paint green-wise than oils, with fewer toxins and a water base, they’re still a guilty convenience purchase (I mean really, I could just be mixing my own paints from egg and pigments, right?) So I was more than happy to keep these out of the waste stream and keep myself from having to buy new paints for a while, too.

We All Fall DownHowever, just because they weren’t dried up didn’t mean all the paints were in prime condition. Most of them just needed to be stirred to get the pigment to mix back in with the solvent, but some responded better than others. I hate to waste anything, and so I’ve turned working with imperfect paints into an art all its own. If some of the pigment has solidified and the paint that’s left is thin, it makes a good wash or faux-watercolor. Too thick, but still brushable? Look, it’s a texturing medium! They need to be treated a little differently than when they were new, but they’re far from useless. Even the dried out clumps of pigment can be carved into interesting shapes for assemblage work, or made into flakes to glue in as colored details.

Some artists are really particular about their media; they can’t get the exact effect they want if the chemistry’s a little off, or the texture is wrong. I, on the other hand, love all the wrongness. There’s a certain joy I get as an artist out of using things that were discarded by others, whether it’s old hide scraps or bits of plastic or damaged household items. I love the challenge of making the imperfect beautiful, of watching it transform from refused into rejuvenated.

And I think, as a society, we might do better to fall in love with imperfection a little more. I know people who won’t shop at a thrift store because “That’s where the poor people go”. The classism of that statement is a whole other rant in and of itself, but I will point out now that this attitude ties right in with what I was talking about a few weeks back about saving only the best for ourselves. We waste so many resources, artistic and otherwise, because we turn out noses up at the imperfections, the challenges in making something work.

But that’s why I’m a Hyena Artist following the Way of the Scavenger. Their loss is my gain, and few things thrill me more than digging into the Bins and seeing what goodies I come up with to make stuff out of. And now I’m going to go back to painting with my old paints, on the secondhand leather pouch, because it’s going to be awesome when it’s done.

*By the way, the assemblage piece a few paragraphs up is made with one of those aforementioned pine cones, along with other reclaimed materials. You can find out more about it here.

Books, Blogs, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium

Lupa news round-up! Here’s what I’ve got for you dear readers:

–My newest book is out! Plant and Fungus Totems: Connect With Spirits of Field, Forest and Garden is a continuation of my spiritual explorations the past several years. In it I focus on what fungus and plant totems are and how they’re unique from their animal counterparts (and each other!), different ways of working with them, and how to give back to them and their ecosystems, among other topics of interest. As with all my books, this is no mere dictionary stuffed with page-fillers, but instead a versatile toolkit to apply to your practice. You can read more about it and buy a copy here.

–In a similar vein, I just today discovered that the shopping cart feature on my website has not been working since I switched it over in March. The back end showed that a few people tried to buy books, but I got absolutely no information other than a date and time, and no money was received here. If you were one of those people (or if you still want to order books from here instead of at my Etsy shop), I have reverted back to the old Buy Now buttons which, while not a pretty, are proven to be effective. My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience.

–If you’d like to sample even more of my writing for absolutely free, one of my co-writers at the now-defunct No Unsacred Place, Rua Lupa, has teamed up with me to offer you all a new blog at Patheos, Paths Through the Forests. We’ll be continuing our thoughts and conversations on nature, bioregionalism, spirituality, and more. While I’ll occasionally post a link round-up here, you can get more frequent updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. Rua Lupa’s already posted there, and my first official post is due out Thursday of this week.

–Finally, thanks to sales at Faire in the Grove this past weekend, I was able to make a donation to the Monterey Bay Aquarium! They are a world leader in research on marine biology and ocean health, as well as the developers of the Seafood Watch pamphlet, website feature and phone app, which allow you to look up which seafood choices are sustainable, and which to avoid. Plus they always have an amazing array of sea creatures on display at the aquarium itself, well-cared-for and healthy, and accompanied by plenty of information. You can find out more about the Monterey Bay Aquarium and their work at www.montereybayaquarium.org/