As a poet, I often practice the "seeing" as a means of "keeping," though your essay has offered a new (and beautiful) perspective that I will carry closely.
Thank you for this. I deeply appreciate your perspective and acknowledgement of the interconnectivity of these "two" realms.
Like many others' experiences, growing up, teachers in my faith used the Scriptures to advocate for, bluntly, the domination and exploitation of the natural world, even going so far as to say that some aspects of ecology are idolatrous. There was more than a small portion of "It's all going to burn anyway!" thrown in there, too. I have since come to a new perspective - heard other voices like yours - that such is not the case and is, in fact, a perversion of both our role as humans on Earth and the Scriptures themselves. Faith can impel people to see and steward.
I think a person of faith presenting scientific information and ecological advocacy is important for cultivating perception and caring within largely-religious communities (or communities that hold on to religious identities and ideas even if they are non-practicing), such as in the South.
Also, I appreciate your highlighting of the range of Hildegard von Bingen's work. I have only been previously acquainted with her by way of her awesome musical compositions.
Great points, and I appreciate it! Means a great deal to read for me personally. The "subdue it" preaching with a good helping of "it's all going to burn anyway," was the water I swam in too, growing up Baptist in the Pee Dee here in South Carolina. It took me years to see how much of that was laid onto the text rather than drawn out of it and still have fascinating and infuriating conversations about it today!
The dominion passage that people go for in Genesis 1:28 uses the Hebrew רָדָה and כָּבַשׁ, and even those words carry more restraint than the pulpits shouting them let on... and then Genesis 2 turns right around and names the human vocation עָבַד and שָׁמַר, to serve and to keep. I think the order does the work.
Likewise, it’s interesting to riff on the "burn anyway" dismissals around ecology from pulpits and religious talk. I actually remember a sermon I heard from my teen years in a Revival on 2 Peter 3:10. From my memory, the main point was that we needed to accept Christ as Lord and Savior b/c the end times and impending rapture were nigh, and if we focus on environmental worries and activism, we are being idolatrous (this was the 90’s). I grew to love 1st and 2nd Peter over the years in theological study (long story) so I was always troubled by this. Here’s the text from Oremus (NRSV):
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”
NRSV uses “disclosed” here instead of “burned up” or “set ablaze,” which led me down a fun rabbit hole in seminary. I’ve spent some serious time with that passage over the last couple of decades. Surprisingly, the earliest manuscripts we have of the text (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Bodmer papyrus 𝔓72 (3rd/4th c.), even earlier) don't say "burned up" (κατακαήσεται) at all. They say εὑρεθήσεται, from εὑρίσκω, to “find”... the earth will be found, laid bare, disclosed before God. So more of “exposed,” rather than something like incinerated. This captures what I was trying to argue in a single verb… the end (telos, if we’re being fancy!) is not destruction but disclosure.
The “burned up” reading in 2 Peter (κατακαήσεται), carried by the later Codex Alexandrinus and the eventual main tradition, looks like a scribal smoothing of the tension with the surrounding fire language. That gets picked up by tradition into Erasmus and then into the formative KJV in the early 1600’s, which informs so much of this rhetoric (I grew up in a “KJV is the only translation” church). Basically, "it's all going to burn" theology is standing on a supposedly faithful English translation of a text that scribes had already quietly corrected, removing its harder, older, stranger word. Really fascinating to see how that tradition and reception over the last two millennia have shaped so much of the rhetoric behind our modern ecological failures!
All said, that’s the work I feel called to… being a person of faith carrying the science and the advocacy into places that still hold, even loosely, a religious identity. That’s most of the South, and it is my own congregation.
And yes... Hildegard's music and her greening are one and the same! The same viriditas that soars through the melodies is pouring through the visions. Glad to have pointed you toward the rest of her, and I love playing her music on YouTube for our children. Also, one of the guys working at our beloved Fretwell here in Spartanburg was wearing a Hildegard t-shirt the other day, so I had to do the old man thing and point out how cool that was… he was also a musician on the side and had named his cat after her. Doubly fascinating to see how her works still shape and impact so many of us today!
The very same waters indeed! Dispensational eschatology tainted so much of a segment of evangelicalism’s approach to life, to others, and to the more-than-human world.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed reply.
I briefly got into textual criticism while shifting from my childhood tradition, so I greatly appreciate your textual and linguistic nerdery. I, too, grew up in a “KJV only” church and have been surprised at how many things presented as “Gospel Truth” were linguistic quirks of that particular translation or relatively recent misinterpretations of English words whose meanings have shifted over the past few centuries. I remember it being revelatory and reassuring when I first heard of other interpretations of 2 Peter 3:10. And it’s cool to see the mechanics of the “scribal smoothing” as you’ve pointed out. It’s also interesting how the “exposed” and “laid bare” ties back to a type of perception.
After reading this, I come back to the old saying, “no man is an island”. Sometimes when I just sit and look or actually admire the scene I tend to reprimand myself for not working. Now I can justify to only me that I am “working” by just seeing. Thanks
Great point! Yeah, I still struggle in the moments of just allowing myself to perceive even if it’s staring at a tree for a bit. But I’ve come to think that’s the real work of being and it’s shifted so much of my life and thoughts these last couple of years when I allow myself to do that incredibly important work!
I love our digital technology and what it affords us (such as conversations like this across space and time!) but putting down the glass slab and “being” intentionally can really shift our worldview and ethics!
As a poet, I often practice the "seeing" as a means of "keeping," though your essay has offered a new (and beautiful) perspective that I will carry closely.
Means so much coming from someone whose work I admire! Thank you! Shared “To Be an Unloved Thing” with my a few friends… one of my favs.
Right back at ya. I have been enjoying (and learning much from )your essays and poems.
Thank you for this. I deeply appreciate your perspective and acknowledgement of the interconnectivity of these "two" realms.
Like many others' experiences, growing up, teachers in my faith used the Scriptures to advocate for, bluntly, the domination and exploitation of the natural world, even going so far as to say that some aspects of ecology are idolatrous. There was more than a small portion of "It's all going to burn anyway!" thrown in there, too. I have since come to a new perspective - heard other voices like yours - that such is not the case and is, in fact, a perversion of both our role as humans on Earth and the Scriptures themselves. Faith can impel people to see and steward.
I think a person of faith presenting scientific information and ecological advocacy is important for cultivating perception and caring within largely-religious communities (or communities that hold on to religious identities and ideas even if they are non-practicing), such as in the South.
Also, I appreciate your highlighting of the range of Hildegard von Bingen's work. I have only been previously acquainted with her by way of her awesome musical compositions.
Great points, and I appreciate it! Means a great deal to read for me personally. The "subdue it" preaching with a good helping of "it's all going to burn anyway," was the water I swam in too, growing up Baptist in the Pee Dee here in South Carolina. It took me years to see how much of that was laid onto the text rather than drawn out of it and still have fascinating and infuriating conversations about it today!
The dominion passage that people go for in Genesis 1:28 uses the Hebrew רָדָה and כָּבַשׁ, and even those words carry more restraint than the pulpits shouting them let on... and then Genesis 2 turns right around and names the human vocation עָבַד and שָׁמַר, to serve and to keep. I think the order does the work.
Likewise, it’s interesting to riff on the "burn anyway" dismissals around ecology from pulpits and religious talk. I actually remember a sermon I heard from my teen years in a Revival on 2 Peter 3:10. From my memory, the main point was that we needed to accept Christ as Lord and Savior b/c the end times and impending rapture were nigh, and if we focus on environmental worries and activism, we are being idolatrous (this was the 90’s). I grew to love 1st and 2nd Peter over the years in theological study (long story) so I was always troubled by this. Here’s the text from Oremus (NRSV):
“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.
Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”
NRSV uses “disclosed” here instead of “burned up” or “set ablaze,” which led me down a fun rabbit hole in seminary. I’ve spent some serious time with that passage over the last couple of decades. Surprisingly, the earliest manuscripts we have of the text (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Bodmer papyrus 𝔓72 (3rd/4th c.), even earlier) don't say "burned up" (κατακαήσεται) at all. They say εὑρεθήσεται, from εὑρίσκω, to “find”... the earth will be found, laid bare, disclosed before God. So more of “exposed,” rather than something like incinerated. This captures what I was trying to argue in a single verb… the end (telos, if we’re being fancy!) is not destruction but disclosure.
The “burned up” reading in 2 Peter (κατακαήσεται), carried by the later Codex Alexandrinus and the eventual main tradition, looks like a scribal smoothing of the tension with the surrounding fire language. That gets picked up by tradition into Erasmus and then into the formative KJV in the early 1600’s, which informs so much of this rhetoric (I grew up in a “KJV is the only translation” church). Basically, "it's all going to burn" theology is standing on a supposedly faithful English translation of a text that scribes had already quietly corrected, removing its harder, older, stranger word. Really fascinating to see how that tradition and reception over the last two millennia have shaped so much of the rhetoric behind our modern ecological failures!
All said, that’s the work I feel called to… being a person of faith carrying the science and the advocacy into places that still hold, even loosely, a religious identity. That’s most of the South, and it is my own congregation.
And yes... Hildegard's music and her greening are one and the same! The same viriditas that soars through the melodies is pouring through the visions. Glad to have pointed you toward the rest of her, and I love playing her music on YouTube for our children. Also, one of the guys working at our beloved Fretwell here in Spartanburg was wearing a Hildegard t-shirt the other day, so I had to do the old man thing and point out how cool that was… he was also a musician on the side and had named his cat after her. Doubly fascinating to see how her works still shape and impact so many of us today!
The very same waters indeed! Dispensational eschatology tainted so much of a segment of evangelicalism’s approach to life, to others, and to the more-than-human world.
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed reply.
I briefly got into textual criticism while shifting from my childhood tradition, so I greatly appreciate your textual and linguistic nerdery. I, too, grew up in a “KJV only” church and have been surprised at how many things presented as “Gospel Truth” were linguistic quirks of that particular translation or relatively recent misinterpretations of English words whose meanings have shifted over the past few centuries. I remember it being revelatory and reassuring when I first heard of other interpretations of 2 Peter 3:10. And it’s cool to see the mechanics of the “scribal smoothing” as you’ve pointed out. It’s also interesting how the “exposed” and “laid bare” ties back to a type of perception.
Love the Hildegard cat, haha.
After reading this, I come back to the old saying, “no man is an island”. Sometimes when I just sit and look or actually admire the scene I tend to reprimand myself for not working. Now I can justify to only me that I am “working” by just seeing. Thanks
I too love the technology but…when people are so “in to it” that they forget to put it down and just be, that’s annoying.
Great point! Yeah, I still struggle in the moments of just allowing myself to perceive even if it’s staring at a tree for a bit. But I’ve come to think that’s the real work of being and it’s shifted so much of my life and thoughts these last couple of years when I allow myself to do that incredibly important work!
I love our digital technology and what it affords us (such as conversations like this across space and time!) but putting down the glass slab and “being” intentionally can really shift our worldview and ethics!