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“Nature Religion”

In the oldest religion, everything was alive, not supernaturally but naturally alive...For the whole life-effort of man was to get his life into contact with the elemental life in the cosmos, mountain-life, cloud-life, thunder-life, air-life, earth-life, sun-life.  To come into immediate felt contact, and so derive energy, power and a dark sort of joy.  This effort into sheer naked contact, without an intermediary or mediator is the root meaning of religion.  --D.H. Lawrence

Nature and its range of wonders has instigated the feelings of awe, inspiration, the sublime and the sacred for as long as humans have experienced the natural environment. In William James’ infamous work The Varieties of the Religious Experience, he cites numerous passages of first hand accounts of sensing the sublime in nature. Whether the passages describe a ‘wilderness’ experience or simply a contemplative moment while sitting in a grassy meadow, each rings true to a presence in nature, a sense of something transcendent, and that presence constitutes a religious experience. Some individual anecdotes mention feelings of joy and bliss, while others are so touched as to evoke tears. Either God reveals something on that contemplative scene, or perhaps, there is no divine intervention into the moment, and nature becomes a revelatory medium in and of itself. With or without an understanding of god, nature becomes an orientating point within that moment of religious experience. But as such a personal experience, does ‘nature religion’ suffice as a term of description, or does it hint at something more organized, something further reaching and more overarching?

In the course of American history, there is no doubt that from the vast and untamed frontier of the North American continent stories would arise of settler’s infinite and influential encounters within the new landscape and its elements. Considering how wild and savage this new landscape was one would have to assume a small handful of American immigrant settlers were sublimely unsettled by their new surroundings. But when asking the question of the depths of this affectation caused by nature on the new American person and the budding American culture, we have to consider the usefulness of the phrase ‘nature religion’ in light of the varieties of nature experiences encountered in the new terrain and how that terrain cultured its new arrivals.

Catherine Albanese uses topographical language in expressing her understanding of “religion” as she links the Algonkians to the New Age to Muir to Animal Telepathy in her book Nature Religion in America . She considers Religion in America by tracing together certain phenomenon that are rooted in a ‘back to nature’ understanding, in a sense people or philosophies that orientate around nature. Albanese explains that these little occurrences fall under the rubric of nature religion, assuming that there is such a thing. Not everything in that category seems to relate to the other besides its natural influence, however, and it can seem a rather random and desultory collection. She subscribes to ‘nature religion’ perhaps out of convenience or for lack of a better term, since ‘nature religion’ is potentially too broad a phrase leaving out peculiarities of experiences. However, her examples are broad, spanning a range of many orientations to nature and nature-inspired practices that connect a body-mind-spirit philosophy which most often refers to the solace of nature focusing on inner and outer balance and harmony, to the experiences and dominating contestations with, for instance, the “frontier” in early American settlement. But in lieu of using the term “Nature Religion” to understand American History and culture she also says that although all the manifestations of nature religion arise at different points in American history, the undercurrent of the influence of nature remains a subtle constant.

In considering alternative terms for nature religion, I stumble on the same obstacles as before, namely, finding one sole term for a variety of phenomenon and manifestations relating to religion and nature. Even calling Nature Religion Practitioners “devotees of the wild” is misleading. True, the great outdoors is less domesticated than the controlled ‘great indoors’, but the separation between the two—in and out—is a linear gradation rather than an ‘unruly and wild vs. tame’ issue. So when one considers Nature religion in light of a continuity of inside and outside the house, nature religion could be considered a state of mind, as in a difference personal perception of one’s person to the elements and the topography. Muir said, “To lovers of the wild, these mountains are not a hundred miles away. Their spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, as a circle of friends.” It seems perhaps that nature religion conversion experiences shift ones awareness to something outside their selves, more so than just out-of-doors. And these individual understandings lead to a plethora of nuances in the meshing of nature and religion.

Much like Albanese’s attempt to link these variant nuances together in some semblance of thematic coherence, there is a difficulty in accounting for the multiplicities in any method of linking things through a history, simply because of the changing sense of place and the changing sense of self throughout a linear timeline. When considering the changing sense of place in America , nature has had a distinct influence throughout its historical development. Frederick Jackson Turner and Perry Miller bring the significance of the frontier to the forefront of America ’s contact with nature. The frontier was wild and savage and uncivilized; it was new, daunting, and totally other. Soon, however, the errand in to the wilderness to manifest destiny began to tame the unruly continent, and soon, neighbors who lived in the wilderness comfortably, could see the smoke rising from neighbors cabins—a closeness to others that was edging on new personal boundaries and changing the expansive American territory. Eventually, further down the historical line, those routes and trails that networked to the west coast, would soon become pavement and worthy of a line from Joni Mitchell: “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Needless to say, the frontier lost that scary edge, and the trail network across the vast North American continent would be detailed by Mapquest.com and compatible with GPS systems worldwide. Before the digital revolution, back when the frontier was meeting the saws of the loggers and homesteaders, there was unrest about the changing landscape from the voice of a shanty dweller on Walden Pond . Thoreau, from his luxury seat free from blue-collar necessities, issued commentary on the changing landscape and the loss of the frontier, stating that “wildness is the preservation of the world.” And so Thoreau, teamed with Emerson and other transcendentals were shaping another part of the American sense of place by adding a mystical quality to the necessity of the wilderness, a more harmonious view than the divide and conquer tactics of those who ventured west to see what they could see in terms of America ’s seemingly limitless expanse. While tracing nature religion, those threads of contention towards nature not only shaped America ’s landscape and culture, but are still prevalent in the topographical and cultural landscape in America today.

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Chewing on the idea of nature in the urban center of the Big Apple

What is the experience of “nature” for someone living in a big city? The juxtaposition of “nature” and “city” appear to be antithesis, but it is difficult to that those boundaries are so clear cut. If being in nature implies a greater percentage of trees and open spaces to people, then in the case of a city like New York—an island to itself that is almost entirely composed of cement and mountains of high-rises, containing droves of people and tailored by designers, stock analysts, and publishing companies—perhaps nature doesn’t fit the fashion. Can nature be trendy everywhere? If, according to William Cronon’s assertion that Nature is as much in our backyards and vacant lots and flower pots as it is in the National Parks, then maybe nature has a place in New York, too.

So just what happens to the experience of nature when NYC is the environment, when a city is all a person has? Is all the writing of nature and the American West just an assertion of value and appreciation of those wild places for people whose only known world is one consisting primarily of cement? Does all that writing merely promote an appreciation so that the value of the western landscape and wilderness is not lost to the assertion of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot? And, what if people belong in the landscape and are part of natural history, then can we find the nature of the Big Apple? More than any other phenomenon of New York City was the staggering amount of people, and for that place, like most cities around the world, people are an integral and obvious part of the landscape, a part of the city’s nature. If people were taken out of the city, the city’s ecosystem would cease to function, and, the environment would go haywire.

But nature as I know it did live in NY, perhaps in more selective quantities. I arrived late on Friday night to a cold November rain, and found shelter in a black leather back seat of a yellow taxi as we drove to East Village , the corner of Second and Avenue B. The first thing I noticed through the rain streaked haze of the neighborhood were soggy Ginkgo leaves on the sidewalk, fallen in the rain from their respective trees that lined the street. That night I fell asleep to the inspiration of the rain drowning out the voices of a city that never sleeps, feeling the nature that precipitates in the city.

Saturday morning was crisp and gusty despite the sun. That morning I learned that besides the resistant species of flies, New York was sans insects—no bees, no mosquitoes, no gnats, and consequently, no window screens. I reckoned that most bugs weren’t designed for concrete habitats. I also learned that there is a place in Central Park where the buildings are not visible, and the noise of the city stops. My gracious host said “it’s like being in nature. I try to stay away from that spot.”

Food has a way of creating a sense of place and the big apple has no shortage of eateries. Each block or neighborhood had its system of deli’s and grocers and restaurants. My sampler platter of New York was sensuous and tantalizing. Even something as simple as an apple in the late autumn was distinctly fragrant and delightful.

The city environment had its own scent. Some scents were not as enticing as others, and tended to be much more damp, a blend of earth and metal and the underground. New York is a city of burrowers that rivals prairie dog colonies. Like a silver bullet beneath the city, the subway is its own place, one that lends it self to the senses in a less attractive way as it screeches, and bumps and grinds metal against metal, and rumbles the passages of the subterranean world that wafts up a metallic aroma scented with something dank. Above ground, the vibration of the mole-train adds reminder of yet another layer to this multivalent city as it echoes an “as above so below” message of transfer of peoples about the cityscape.

So where exactly does nature end and city begin? The boundary may be as blurry as the view of the walls of the fast moving subway tunnel from a seat on the inside. New York has as many of the elements of nature like flies, trees, good food, rain, sunshine, and people. Lots of people. Perhaps it is the balance of people to other aspects of nature that make a city what is it, and what it is not. But people belong to New York . The culture of New York depends on its people, and the people are as much a part of the islands landscape as the water that surrounds it and the pigeons that visit on the windowsills.

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A Tradition in Question: Women in the Catholic Tradition
In special tribute to Pope Joan.

“The potential threat of a papal Est-fest in the chair of Peter remains as threatening as castration anxiety to heads of the papacy.”

Why does the Catholic Church have such a stigma with women in roles of papal leadership? Writings that have survived since earliest Christianity suggest that women had prominent roles in the churches and that women liked the change from social constraints that Christianity offered. As one of the earliest writers, Paul wrote many texts alluding to women’s roles within authoritative positions in his churches. Yet the same writings of Paul have been misconstrued through the centuries to support the stance of subordination of women, thus denying women certain roles within the Church up until the modern day. In Early Christianity, the roles of women and men were on more egalitarian ground, but as writings passed through the centuries and out of the original context, they passed into the social realm that sought the defined earthly status of women and men.

“The Acts of Paul and Thecla” is a non-canonical writing featuring Paul’s female disciple Thecla, a woman so enraptured by Paul that she follows him around like a whipped spaniel. In the story, forlorn Thecla was on the brink of an arranged marriage, until she heard Paul preaching in the streets. She was so moved that she left the life of well-endowed marriage that had been arranged for her, and followed Paul in almost obsessed fixation. Paul takes little notice of Thecla, as she larks in the trail of his sandals. Later the story mentions Paul ditching Thecla and leaving her to the threat of molestation. Like a woman modeling the ‘Miss Piggy’ archetype, she wards off her attacker by her very own strongholds. The remainder of the story places Thecla in a very holy role, suggesting her healing powers and her devotion to the mission. Her character becomes a mark of strength and significance not only in her role within the early church, but also her exploits communing with wild beasts and her denouement as she vanishes into a rock. Thecla, as the story illustrates, was performing feats attempted by god-protected men. She became a woman who sought her voice and, perhaps, reached equality in apostolic consideration along the lines of a Mary Magdalene figure. Thecla was a woman performing the blessed duty as an acetic early Christian convert who longed for a way out of the constraints provided by her culture of restriction and subservience. For women in the early church, Christianity was a refreshing change, and women were a voiced presence in churches and a strong support in many church roles from assisting Paul to teaching and preaching to prophets. And “The Acts of Paul and Thecla” supported those liberating views of women’s roles.

The tale of Paul and Thecla is interesting as a non-canonical text as it portrays Paul as a strong advocate of a strict life of asceticism and chastity; yet, Paul never made salvation contingent upon complete abstinence in his own writings. Paul wrote with a heavy apocalyptic flavor that heeded preparation for the end times when Christ was to come again, so naturally he would not promote large families, and he would deem excessive sexual desires unnecessary in light of the assumed apocalypse on the horizon. Paul may have never meant for his message of chastity and abstinence to be so prolonged, nor to be taken out of its context and construed so as to taint the image of sexuality. Moreover, the writings of Paul himself can too easily be misread in modern contexts so as to keep women in subservient roles within the Church and to deny them any authority positions in the Church, which is what happened by the first century as women met opposition to assume roles of church authority. For Paul, although men and women were equal in Christ, the equality was not equal in the earthly social realm, in which patriarchal hierarchies succeeded the ancient ideologies of gender.

In the aftermath of Paul and the ‘no-show’ status of the proclaimed end times, conflicts arose over the roles of women in the Church. Likewise, Paul’s words were taken out of context to argue for women’s subordination to men, and therefore, to deny them any involvement in the churches. It may be safe to say that these feelings towards women have persisted to the present day within the Christian tradition, since women are still denied the highest roles of authority, especially in the Roman Catholic Church. The trend of subverting women from the male thrones in the Church stems from the trendsetters of the status quo, more so than the words of Paul when considering that he had little problem with women being on top of things and assuming roles of authority. Yet, in the midst of a Church hierarchy being strongly based in a patriarchal tradition, the event of a woman piercing that structure is highly unlikely. The potential threat of a papal Est-fest in the chair of Peter remains as threatening as castration anxiety.

The notion of a woman on Peter’s throne is absurd, just by the nature of the phase, as it places a woman in the acclaimed and established territory of the phallus and other symbols of patriarchy. To those in the throne, she is meant for the kitchen, the bedroom, the convent. She is meant to sit at his feet, not to nest on his throne. She is the ‘other.’ She has 3 holes instead of two. She bleeds. She doesn’t penetrate by nature, she is penetrated. In her lie the mysterium tremendum, the mystery of the dark, the unseen, and the feared. By her own nature as womb-bearer, she participates in experiences unknown to men. She is biologically set up for the ultimate experience of pregnancy and birth, a mystical union in which two become one. She has powers and intuitions beyond the realm of male comprehension, and it is those aspects of her nature that set her apart in the realm of social status. In the arena of Patriarchy, she is contained to domesticity to keep her power from being subversive, to keep her under a glass ceiling, so as to not intervene in the glorious and exalted works of men. Until the structure that patriarchy built is turned on its head, women will meet obstacles as they search for equal ground in the Churches or beyond.

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An excerpt from Hallowed be Thy Pet: ‘Dog Is My Co-Pilot’ And Other Acts of Significant Otherness: Animals and their companions: Identifying a bond of mythic proportions from fables to Hollywood , and the every-day rituals in-between.

The customs and practices of companion critters—in the animal-human relationship—becomes a lived religion of sorts, stemming from its very own mythology, consisting of numerous daily rituals and providing an interesting intersection point for considering Identity in this relationship of furry boundaries between human self and animal other. In the discourse of how we relate to animals, many questions are raised concerning not only issues of self and other, but also animal difference, anthropomorphism, social structures, language and communication, and the whole nature/culture debate. These inquiries are fast becoming part of a cutting edge, interdisciplinary field in the academy concerning the animal. But whatever the questions raised from the Ivory tower, this shift is indicative of an expression of values—values that center around pets and our relations to them.

Pet owners in American culture orientate their lives around their pets in uncanny, undeniable and near religious ways. Many pet owners will attest that having a pet in their life radically changed the way they live, their habits and behaviors, and the way they consider themselves and their pet. Donna Haraway says that when she entered the Kennel, she found that she had to become aware and mindful her ways in relation to the dogs—who were more aware of the subtleties and semiotics of body language—that she had to remake her self. Learning about the self more through a life with pets is a transformative experience.

Within the realm of pet and pet-person hood, there is much wrapped up in images and emotions in a heavily romanticized manner. In such a way that Caroline Knapp attributes as “Pack of Two,” pets can ‘complete’ their guardians in a unique love affair and provide sentiments of unconditional love, trust and understanding. Despite the functioning ideal of a pet that we hold in our minds, of a fantasy dog, that fantastic bubble can be burst—and chewed up and peed on—with a real tail-wagging pooch: “You enter into the relationship with that soft-focus ideal of the devoted family pet, and instead of fetching your slippers, the dog eats them.” We convince ourselves that everything tastes better with dog hair in it—yet, still this fantasy endures.

When considering the mystical motif, we see an ecstatic union of god and human—two different species, tempted to become one—and if no longer a human, then there has been a change of species, a transubstantiation of sorts, which perhaps produces a third. In the horse-human relationship we can see this explicitly while riding: a horse and a rider are no longer just a horse and just a rider, there is a communication between them that unites them into something new, a third much greater thing. For a horse-crazy girl, hysteria akin to the women mystics, wrought with burning desire for a horse of her own, the moment at which she unites with her dream horse is nothing less than ecstasy. While some may see the face of god in their animal, others see themselves more clearly in a greater image of themselves as they have never seen before the advent of a companion animal. Applying the mystical motif to human-animal relations, we see something that transcends boundaries at the intersection of human and animal.

On another paw, if religion remains to be ‘what is of ultimate concern’ according to Paul Tillich, then leaving pets out of the temple wouldn’t make a lick of sense. Darter tongue kisses, along with walks and pooper scooping, jaunts to the park with the tennis ball, playing with balls of yarn, etc., are part of a sacred game. They tell of story of valued interaction and a meaningful relationship. There may not be a bed-chamber in this fairy tale, but there is significant otherness oozing from this union like a soggy tennis ball. In this relation we see species transubstantiate—the symbol becomes flesh—at the intersection of human and animal. So writes Donna Haraway:

We have forbidden conversation; we have had oral intercourse; we are bound in telling story upon story with nothing but the facts. We are training each other in acts of communication we barely understand. We are, constitutively, companion species. We make each other up, in the flesh. Significantly other to each other, in specific difference, we signify in the flesh a nasty developmental infection called love.

Love, trust and understanding are the name of the game, even when the fairy tale beginning comes void of those elements and more in the form of chewed up footwear. Despite messes and misunderstandings, and there’s always forgiveness, and more so, hope, that there will be a tail-wagging, drooling, fetch of an ending.

The commitment necessary to develop that ideal, made-in-Hollywood relationship with an animal, is directly proportional to the change that occurs when animals challenge the habits of the human. In turn, those furry critters help shape an identity. Leslie Irvine writes that animals can contribute so much to our histories, that a woman she interviewed suggested that “instead of translating dog’s lives into human years, we should measure our own lives by the animals who have populated them.”

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