Tag: nature

There ought not be unnecessary opposition between Indigenous and Christian perspectives. The creative work of caring for our ecology is hard enough; let us not also misunderstand one another.

Wallie is gone; no visible scar remains. Mourning provides no lesson, no answers, no closure. The poet is not decrying grief for its lack of utility.

In this way, “idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; quite the contrary, it is a truly divine way of life so long as one is not bored.”

And this progression from the raw, unabated natural Florida to the ever-more artificial Florida, has grave consequences for both the geographical locale and the people who inhabit it.

And so the shotgun sits in our home like a quiet benediction. It dreams—as I do—of long walks in the valleys of my youth and whispers of future pastures that are untrod and unspoiled.

Rational ideas create hell on earth. Just ask a kulak. Or just ask the lettuce plants in my garden.

But there is something more going on. We also face a new “transcendent reality,” as Klass puts it, in which we see the spiritual world with new eyes. This may include changed views of the sacred, nature, and time itself.

This talk was delivered earlier this year at a conference on wellbeing held at the Sorbonne.

We are the blind, each calling out that which we are so sure we see. No longer aware that the sight we now marvel at is little more than one conceived and praised in our internal darkness... And what becomes of a world under such stewards like me?

If we can foster a freedom to flourish rather than our modern freedom of choice, and if we can recognize versions of a common good appropriate to different real entities of social order from the family to the town to the nation, integrated with the rest of nature at scales from the local and regional to the biosphere, then the need to impose order through laws and regulations is minimized, replaced by deliberative, cooperative action towards a common good.