‘Tis the season for bringing nature inside our increasingly civilized confines. Homes celebrating Christmas are filled with evergreen boughs; twined wreaths of holly, mistletoe and ivy decked with dried seed pods, fruits and nuts. And as the centerpiece, the pyramid of an evergreen tree spreads its exuberant, lusty scent of fresh-cut pine throughout musty parlors […]
“… In the areas they studied, forests that have been sacred for thousands of years often overlap the areas with the richest biological diversity and healthy ecosystems that are more resilient to the effects of global warming.
Finding a connection between spirituality and conservation shouldn’t be too surprising, given humankind’s history, said Georg Winkel, co-author of the new study and chair of the forest and nature conservation policy group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
“I think the entire conservation movement was not initially driven by science, but was driven very much by connectedness to nature, and by the feeling that we are losing a certain type of nature through rationalization, through industrialization,” he said.
People lived for millennia in close physical connection with nature—our species in its original state, he added.
“It’s only very recently that we live in big concrete jungles like Los Angeles and tech cities,” he said. “Our whole body is used to directly interacting with nature, and now that we have lost this, I could well imagine that there is a certain desire to reconnect.”
That desire, he noted, is documented by multiple surveys and studies showing that, for forests, people consistently rank non-tangible values related to their emotions higher than material values like wildlife habitat or supplies of resources. In other words, people cherish forests most for evoking feelings of well-being and comfort; rather than providing wood for houses.
…
In the paper, the researchers established a chronological framework for understanding forest spirituality, or at least how it changed over time.
During the earliest “nature is powerful” stage, forest spirituality was “omnipresent with an abundance of sacred natural sites where spiritual governance prevailed,” and taboos on destroying certain trees. “Nature’s gifts to humans, such as game, mushrooms, berries, medicines, and wood, are appreciated and embedded in a spiritually grounded dependency on nature,” the authors wrote.
In the “taming of nature” stage, forest landscapes were transformed by intensive land-use, major organized religions emerged and “nature worshiping is banned, absorbed or transformed,” with temples or churches often built in sacred natural areas.
In the third, “rational management” stage, religion and spirituality were replaced as guiding forces by science and technology, and the main function of forests became resource exploitation, like sustained timber production to maximize human welfare. This occurred most directly in industrializing countries, but also, through colonialism, spread to the rest of the world.
Happier New Years
In their paper, the team of researchers posited that society could be experiencing a new phase of “post-industrial” forest re-spiritualization, driven by human emotional experiences and desires for well-being, including mental health. Modern environmentalism, as well as a shift in modern religious values, may have helped kickstart the transformation, including the 2015 Laudato Si by Pope Francis, which, among other things, declared Earth’s climate as a “common good.”
Plieninger said there are also numerous studies showing direct health and mental-wellness benefits of being physically closer to nature, such as lower rates of prescription anti-depressant drug use in areas closer to trees.
The growing wave of forest spirituality is increasingly apparent, but the idea actually never really vanished, said Heidi Steltzer, a professor at Fort Lewis College in Colorado who studies alpine and Arctic ecology and co-authored a mountain section of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Yes, I see this already happening and it will continue to grow,” she said. “Healing ourselves and the Earth at the same time—what does this look like?
“For some it is a re-spiritualization, but It has been there for me, for many, and especially for Indigenous peoples all along,” she said. “There are many who walk among us already who can guide us. They bring spirituality and deep caring into the process of discovery and science.”
Teaching at a university where more than 40 percent of the students are Native American, she experiences the symbiotic relationship of nature and spirituality on a daily basis. Co-learning with people “who see and experience the world in different ways” including varied spiritual relationships to forests and nature, may help achieve global climate and biodiversity goals, said Steltzer, who recently started a new retreat center to focus partly on the topic.
“To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realize: I just had a really good moment.”
kinda random, but as someone who has serious existential slash depressive meltdowns more frequently than i’d like, i’ve been trying to find my way out of these thought mazes for years, and i’ve come to the conclusion that trying to combat it by going a few levels even more abstract in the philosophical meter - which is what i personally thought had to be the answer for a long time - is, in a lot of cases, counterproductive
what i mean by that is that i’m (still slowly) beginning to realize that the only remedy for those particular types of crisis is not isolating yourself even more radically from tangible human experiences and trying to find the answer in your own head, but to fully immerse yourself in daily life as much as possible, and allow yourself to be really, truly part of the world you live in - a kind of poiesis of being, if we’re trying to be poetic, that’s about reinventing yourself with each second you remain open to the reality that is existing in the present moment. that won’t magically sort shit out for you, but i get the feeling it helps paint a different mental picture in which your thoughts can roam in, and maybe find different, new and hopefully better paths of thinking/being
having a rich inner life is possibly the most valuable part of existing as someone capable of cognizant thought, but if your brain goes at 100mph on the daily, it can reach exhaustion levels in the blink of an eye and start almost cannibalizing itself with anxiety and circular thought patterns. the beginning of it is: take a moment to stop. check out that building, the cobblestones in this street, that person selling their artwork on the sidewalk. this is the city you live in. these are the people you’re in the world with. there’s life outside of yourself
On this day, 9 December 1984, Mexican revolutionary fighter Amelio Robles Ávila died in his home town of Xochipala, Guerrero, aged 95. Assigned female at birth, Ávila joined the turbulent events of the revolution in 1912, and his first mission was to extort funds from oil companies to fund the revolutionary movement. He fought in the army of Emiliano Zapata and reached the rank of colonel. He was famous for shooting his pistol with his right hand while holding a cigar in his left, and he was himself shot at least six times.
In 1924 he declared his identity as male, was recognised as such by the military, and was later recognised as the first transgender veteran in the Mexican army. Ávila forged a male birth certificate, and insisted he be recognised as male for his next seven decades. Mexican historian Gabriela Cano explains that Ávila’s gender identity “must be distinguished from the strategic cross-dressing – the adoption of masculine outfits to pass as a man – that some women employed in periods of war to protect themselves from sexual violence that is usually more acute during armed conflict, to access military leadership positions or simply to fight as soldiers and not as soldaderas, that is to say, without the social gender restrictions that usually weigh on women in the military”. According to rumour, on one occasion Ávila was assaulted by men who tried to inspect his anatomy, and in defending himself two of the attackers were killed. A neighbour later recounted how Ávila would challenge anyone who misgendered him: “I always called him Mr. Robles, because he’d pull out his gun if someone called him a woman or Mrs.”
After his death, Mexican institutions began to undermine his identity. A rumour began that he had requested to be buried in women’s clothes, and a school and museum were named after his dead (i.e. christened) name.
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