Original post from Feb 20, 2021
So far, I’ve been writing about the need to recognize our living world as alive and of value, and to learn to listen to the other than human beings who share it – because I believe that this is the way to a world that is better, more beautiful, healthier, and more whole, in which our lives are more alive. I believe, along with many others, that to get there, we need a new/ancient story, or paradigm. I believe that this is also a way to solve the many problems that threaten humanity, which the climate crisis, only one of these, embodies with great force.
I’m afraid Charles Eisenstein is right when he says that this might not be the only way to solve them. Maybe we don’t “have to” return to appreciating, respecting, and loving the living world that birthed us. Perhaps the human race can find a way to solve our problems by creating a world without nature, without wild animals or plants, without open spaces. A world based on screens, industrialized food, and artificial environments. At the moment it seems humanity is indeed choosing this path – more and more screens and air conditioners and lifeless environments, less and less outside and earth. In our world, children (and adults!) recognize many more commercial logos than they do plants. Not only can’t we appreciate what we don’t know – it does not even exist for us. Or if it does, than only as an object we can legitimately exploit or destroy. In the words of Tami Tzori from CityTree (who helped me a lot to articulate this post in Hebrew), “For this lack of familiarity, many living things pay with their lives – animals, plants, trees, land and water, go extinct due to our disconnection from them, and we spend our lives not caring, because most of the other-than-human beings that live here with us have never been presented to us as friends and companions for life on Earth.”
Since stepping into an animist world, my life has become so much richer and more supported. My world today is rich in community, partnership, intimacy, connection, I am much less alone. Even during Covid, even without joining any organized human community. Whether from here we go on to what Joanna Macy calls “the Great Turning” and create a culture of interbeing, or humanity marches into a brave, new, artificial world, or whether we are nearing the end of the current iteration of the biosphere – whether we are destined to heal the biosphere or mourn it or die off and make room for something new – here and now, the animist experience that cherishes the multitude of creatures and recognizes their value is so much more complete and serene than I could know otherwise. This is why my spiritual path is “Earth Spirituality” – and my experience of divinity is immanent – embodied in everything.
The most accurate description I know of that deity, the Goddess, is by Carol Christ: “The embodied, intelligent love that is the ground of all being.” I like to add a few words and say that:
Goddess is the emergent, embodied, intelligent love that is the essence and ground of all being.
The Goddess, the Godhead, is the ongoing, loving process through which all was created and creation continues. To know ourselves as a part of it is belonging, love, and indescribable commitment.
I’m not exactly an optimist, but I cherish the living, breathing world, and I believe that we take part in creating the world with our speech and our actions – with how we live.
We live the world into being.
Live well.