This Sacred Earth

Religion, Nature, Environment

Roger S. Gottlieb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781136915468
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Philosophie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Updated with nearly forty new selections to reflect the tremendous growth and transformation of scholarly, theological, and activist religious environmentalism, the second edition of This Sacred Earth is an unparalleled resource for the study of religion's complex relationship to the environment.

PART I
The Moment of Seeing

Selections from Nature Writers Linking Nature and Spirit

this earth is in our hands
let it fly, a bird of earth and
light All that moves will rejoice …

—Meridel Le Sueuer

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature—of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter—such health, such cheer, they afford forever!… Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself?

—Henry David Thoreau

The plants give off the fragrance of their flowers. The precious stones reflect their brilliance to others. Every creature yearns for a loving embrace. The whole of nature serves humanity, and in this service offers all her bounty.

—Hildegard of Bingen

No more cars in national parks. Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs—anything—but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives out. We have agreed not to drive our automobiles into cathedrals, concert halls, art museums, legislative assemblies, private bedrooms and the other sanctums of our culture; and we should treat our national parks with the same deference, for they, too, are holy places. An increasingly pagan and hedonistic people (thank God!) we are learning that the forests and mountains and desert canyons are holier than our churches. Therefore let us behave accordingly.

—Edward Abbey

The worship of God, Gods, or Goddesses, prayers for forgiveness or bounty, ethical imperatives to love our neighbors—or at least have compassion on them—all these are familiar and essential elements of religious life. Perhaps less familiar, but certainly as essential, is that “moment of seeing” which occurs when some perfectly magical—and perhaps also perfectly ordinary—aspect of nature awakens our spirits.

This awakening can take many forms. We many find ourselves, as Thoreau understands it, discovering our true nature in wildness—a wildness of place matched, he believes, by our own potential wildness of spirit. Matsuo Basho, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Robert Finch find a mysterious and comforting presence in the perfectly ordinary.

This presence may affect some of our basic values. In a modern age of “human rights,” obligations to social groups, and struggles of oppressed peoples, we may also ask: Of what value is nature? Can we speak of love or mutual respect for a particular tree, an endangered species, or an ecosystem? When Aldo Leopold describes humanity as simply a “plain citizen” of a complex natural setting, or John Muir challenges our presumption that the earth is made only for us, they are responding to the sacred quality of the earth and hoping to revise our view of humanity’s place on that earth.

Luther Standing Bear reminds us that for some traditional cultures being a “naturalist” was not a distinct specialty, but an essential part of everyone’s education. And Linda Hogan brings us back to the ties between love of nature and ethical concern for the human community.

Selections from the Haibun of Matsuo Bashō

Translated by David Landis Barnhill

On Mt. Fuji

Mt. Kunlun is said to be far away, and in Mt. Penglai and Mt. Fangzhang dwell Taoist immortals. But right here before my eyes: Mt. Fuji’s great peak rises from the earth. It seems to hold up the blue heavens and open the cloud gate for the sun and moon. From wherever I gaze, there is a consummate vista as the beautiful scenery goes through a thousand changes. Even poets can’t exhaust this scene in verse; those with great talent and men of letters give up their words; painters too abandon their brushes and flee. If the demigods of faraway Gushe mountain were to appear, I wonder if even they could succeed in putting this scene into a poem or a painting.

with clouds and mist

in a brief moment a hundred scenes

brought to fulfillment

kumokiri no/zanji hyakkei o/tsukushikeri

Matsushima

It’s been said that Matsushima has the most splendid scenery in our land of beauty. Past and present, people with artistic minds have been enthralled with these islands, exhausting their hearts and setting their skill in motion. The sea here is about three leagues, with islands upon islands of various shapes and sizes, as if it were the wondrous carving of heaven’s artistry, so fascinating and fresh. Each single pine is flourishing, all so lovely, gorgeous, beyond words.

islands and islands-

shattered into a thousand pieces,

summer’s sea

shimajima ya/chiji ni kudakete/natsu no umi

An Account of Eighteen View Tower

In Mino there is a stately mansion facing the Nagara River whose owner is named Kashima. Behind it tower the Inaba mountains and to the west a disturbance of mountains cluster together, neither close by nor far away. A temple in the rice fields is hidden by a stand of cryptomeria and bamboo surrounding the homes along the river bank is deep green. Here and there bleached cloth is stretched out to dry, and to the right a ferry boat floats by. The townsfolk busily go back and forth, the eaves of this fishing village are lined up close together, and fishermen are pulling in the nets and dangling fishing lines. All this seems to enhance for the viewer the enjoyment of the scene.

Enchanted, I forget the summer day, which seems to hold off the coming dark. The light of the setting sun changes into the moon; the light of the fishing fires, too, formed on the waves, slowly approaches. The cormorant fishing under the high railing is a truly striking spectacle. The eight views of the Xiao River and the ten sites of the Xiang River are experienced together in the one flavor of the cool wind. If I were to give a name to this mansion, I might call it the Eighteen View Manor.

in this area

all that meets the eye

is cool

kono atari/me ni miyuru mono wa/mina suzushi

Note

Used by permission of the translator.

“On the Lure of the Country”

William Hazlitt

I do not know that any one has ever explained satisfactorily the true source of our attachment to natural objects, or of that soothing emotion which the sight of the country hardly ever fails to infuse into the mind. Some persons have ascribed this feeling to the natural beauty of the objects themselves, others to the freedom from care, the silence and tranquillity which scenes of retirement afford—others to the healthy and innocent employments of a country life—others to the simplicity of country manners—and others to different causes; but none to the right one. All these causes may, I believe, have a share in producing this feeling; but there is another more general principle, which has been left untouched, and which I shall here explain, endeavouring to be as little sentimental as the subject will admit…

Were it not for the recollections habitually associated with them, natural objects could not interest the mind in the manner they do. No doubt, the sky is beautiful; the clouds sail majestically along its bosom; the sun is cheering; there is something exquisitely graceful in the manner in which a plant or tree puts forth its branches; the motion with which they bend and tremble in the evening breeze is soft and lovely; there is music in the babbling of a brook; the view from the top of a mountain is full of grandeur; nor can we behold the ocean with indifference …

It is not, however, the beautiful and magnificent alone that we admire in Nature; the most insignificant and rudest objects are often found connected with the strongest emotions; we become attached to the most common and familiar images as to the face of a friend whom we have long known, and from whom we have received many benefits. It is because natural objects have been associated with the sports of our childhood, with air and exercise, with our feelings in solitude, when the mind takes the strongest hold of things, and clings with the fondest interest to whatever strikes its attention; with change of place, the pursuit of new scenes, and thoughts of distant friends; it is because they have surrounded us in almost all situations, in joy and in sorrow, in pleasure and in pain; because they have been one chief source and nourishment of our feelings, and a part of our being, that we love them as we do ourselves.

There is, generally speaking, the same foundation for our love of Nature as for all our habitual attachments, namely, association of ideas. But this is not all. That which distinguishes this attachment from others is the transferable nature of our feelings with respect to physical objects; the associations connected with any one object extending to the whole class. My having been attached to any particular person does not make me feel the same attachment to the next person I may chance to meet; but, if I have once associated strong feelings of delight with the objects of natural scenery, the tie becomes indissoluble, and I shall ever after feel the same attachment to other objects of the same sort. I remember when I was abroad, the trees, and grass, and wet leaves, rustling in the walks of the Thuilleries, seemed to be as much English, to be as much the same trees and grass, that I had always been used to, as the sun shining over my head was the same sun which I saw in England; the faces only were foreign to me. Whence comes this difference? It arises from our always imperceptibly connecting the idea of the individual with man, and only the idea of the class with natural objects. In the one case, the external appearance or physical structure is the least thing to be attended to; in the other, it is every thing. The springs that move the human form, and make it friendly or adverse to me, lie hid within it. There is an infinity of motives, passions, and ideas, contained in that narrow compass, of which I know nothing, and in which I have no share. Each individual is a world to himself, governed by a thousand contradictory and wayward impulses. I can, therefore, make no inference from one individual to another; nor can my habitual sentiments, with respect to any individual, extend beyond himself to others. But it is otherwise with respect to Nature. There is neither hypocrisy, caprice, nor mental reservation in her favours. Our intercourse with her is not liable to accident or change, interruption or disappointment. She smiles on us still the same. Thus, to give an obvious instance, if I have once enjoyed the cool shade of a tree, and been lulled into a deep repose by the sound of a brook running at its feet, I am sure that wherever I can find a tree and a brook, I can enjoy the same pleasure again. Hence, when I imagine these objects, I can easily form a mystic personification of the friendly power that inhabits them, Dryad or Naiad, offering its cool fountain or its tempting shade. Hence the origin of the Grecian mythology. All objects of the same kind being the same, not only in their appearance, but in their practical uses, we habitually confound them together under the same general idea; and, whatever fondness we may have conceived for one, is immediately placed to the common account. The most opposite kinds and remote trains of feeling gradually go to enrich the same sentiment; and in our love of Nature, there is all the force of individual attachment, combined with the most airy abstraction. It is this circumstance which gives that refinement, expansion, and wild interest to feelings of this sort, when strongly excited, which every one must have experienced who is a true lover of Nature. The sight of the setting sun does not affect me so much from the beauty of the object itself, from the glory kindled through the glowing skies, the rich broken columns of light, or the dying streaks of day, as that it indistinctly recalls to me numberless thoughts and feelings with which, through many a year and season, I have watched his bright descent in the warm summer evenings, or beheld him struggling to cast a ‘farewel sweet’ through the thick clouds of winter. I love to see the trees first covered with leaves in the spring, the primroses peeping out from some sheltered bank, and the innocent lambs running races on the soft green turf; because, at that birth-time of Nature, I have always felt sweet hopes and happy wishes—which have not been fulfilled! The dry reeds rustling on the side of a stream,—the woods swept by the loud blast,—the dark massy foliage of autumn,—the grey trunks and naked branches of the trees in winter,— the sequestered copse and wide extended heath,—the warm sunny showers, and December snows,—have all charms for me; there is no object, however trifling or rude, that has not, in some mood or other, found the way to my heart… Thus Nature is a kind of universal home, and every object it presents to us an old acquaintance with unaltered looks. For there is that consent and mutual harmony among all her works, one undivided spirit pervading them throughout, that, if we have once knit ourselves in hearty fellowship to any of them, they will never afterwards appear as strangers to us, but, which ever way we turn, we shall find a secret power to have gone out before us, moulding them into such shapes as fancy loves, informing them with life and sympathy, bidding them put on their festive looks and gayest attire at our approach, and to pour all their sweets and choicest treasures at our feet. For him, then, who has well acquainted himself with Natures works, she wears always one face, and speaks the same well-known language, striking on the heart, amidst unquiet thoughts and the tumult of the world, like the music of one’s native tongue heard in some far-off country.

Note

“On the Lure of the Country” from The Examiner, November 1814.

from “Walking”

Henry David Thoreau

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that…

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock, spruce or arbor vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw…

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village …

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck ...