My Druid/pagan group recently had its annual retreat, where we rent a cabin in the woods to spend time thinking about the direction of the group and deciding what we might change for the coming year. We also consecrated a new symbol for the group (based on a pawpaw blossom, as the group has had meaningful experiences with that tree in the past) and refreshing the group’s living water. People have collected water from many places, both locally and in sacred places abroad in places like Greece and England, which I and others were given some of on becoming stewards. It was a lovely experience, though cold, and unexpectedly extended when the river’s level raised over the bridge we had crossed to get in! We eventually made it home in one piece and all was well.
My job was sending out a member survey, compiling the results, and also summarizing facts about the kinds of events we did over the last year to make it easier to see what direction we’ve been heading so far. The conclusions we came to were around wanting to do more events that encourage connection with the living world. We all wanted more frequent meditative events and walks, rituals that invite people on their own internal journeys on the occasions we do them, and for myself, I came to the conclusion that while I love the book discussions, I wasn’t really reaching people in the ways I was hoping to, especially those to whom some of the ideas in the books I selected might be new. I also recently read a blog entry by Dana O’Driscoll where she mentioned that when she moved to a more conservative area, she found she was better able to share ideas through hosting foraging walks, a topic people in her area were highly interested in and which she knew more about than other people nearby. I’ve been hesitant to hold foraging or plant walks with regularity, but I’m feeling at this point that I’ll be more effective reaching people by sharing what I know more directly through more experiential events.
In my head, someone coming to this blog looking for spiritual and/or religious content could be wondering how foraging or gardening has anything to do with paganism or spiritual practice. (I’ve certainly heard it in person, phrased a little differently but a similar sentiment.) Partly it is a means of service I feel I can be good at (and I got several meaningful coincidences around “fair share of the world’s resources” when the monastic stuff started). I think it’s mainly this – before I got more seriously into foraging, then into learning how to grow food, the living world* felt more like a place to visit, but not a place I was allowed to interact with, like a museum. Something I wasn’t really part of. I think this is the (profoundly fucked up) way most people in this culture were taught to be in the world. The two stories most widespread (two sides of the same coin of separation) seem to be either “we are free to exploit and consume ‘nature’ because it is separate from us and only has value if it is directly useful to my ends” and “we must never interact with ‘nature’ except to restore it to an (imagined) pre-human state, and then must never touch it again because we are inherently harmful to it”. Both stories have the same lie at the core of “us and nature”, or often “us-vs-nature”.
It’s a false story. We are part of the ecosystems that we live in, and in many contexts have functioned as stewards or custodians, changing and interacting with the living beings around us in ways that encourage mutual flourishing, that can leave it more vibrant and diverse than it was before. What colonists in the Americas and Australia called “untouched wilderness” were flourishing forest gardens or grasslands knowledgeably tended by the people already living there. When I get to building the list of books and resources that I hope to share on the Resources page, I’ll share more knowledgeable authors who have written about this better that I can, but here is just one specific example from my most recent book club on Starhawk’s “The Earth Path”:
“Range management expert Allan Savory describes the vast herds of buffalo and prides of lions that stalked the land he managed in the 1950s in what is now Zambia and Zimbabwe, and he talks about how people coexisted with those creatures:
” ‘People had lived in those areas since time immemorial in clusters of huts awat from the main rivers because of the mosquitoes and wet season flooding. Near their huts they kept gardens that they protected from elephants and other raiders by beating drums through much of the night… [T]he people hunted and trapped animals throughout the year as well.’ “
“Nevertheless, the herds remained strong and the river banks lush and well-covered with vegetation, until the government removed the people in order to make national parks.
” ‘We replaced drum beating, gun firing, gardening and farming people with ecologists, naturalists, and tourists, under strict control to ensure that they did not disturb the animals or the vegetation… Within a few decades miles of riverbank in both valleys were devoid of reeds, fig thickets and most other vegetation. With nothing but the change in behavior of one species these areas became terribly impoverished and are still deteriorating… [T]he change in human behavior changed the behavior of the animals that had naturally feared them, which in turn led to the damage to soils and vegetation.’ “
Our (western modern) culture’s story about ourselves as somehow separate from the rest of the living world is an aberration in how humans have perceived and functioned within the world for many thousands of years. It’s also an exceptionally bad lens to operate with for having a spiritual relationship with the trees, plants, animals, land, and spirits around us.
I think that is probably not too hard to understand intellectually. (Though I’ve been thinking with these ideas for a while now, so speak up if you find them challenging!) But when I actually started feeling that deeply in my bones, it was when I started learning more about the plants around me, at first in the context of foraging. Going outside to harvest plants known as “weeds” for food, learning how they grew and how to harvest responsibly, brought me a profound sense of gratitude and joy and I lost that unconscious sense of separation as I started participating in the living world around me. The scrappy, weedy woodland parks I can walk to became sacred places to me. You become really deeply aware of weather patterns and the subtle shifts of the seasons when certain plants are only available or in prime condition for a couple of weeks. And of course, you begin to observe the other plants and trees, birds, mushrooms, insects, soil, and the patterns and connections between them. I’m certainly not saying it’s the only way to deepen your spiritual connections with the lands we live with and the beings who live there, but for me, it was a profoundly transformative one. Gardening has had a similar effect on me, and like foraging, has been an entry to deepening connection with the world and the beings who sustain me (as well as a better understanding of our food systems and a love for supporting local farms). My bigger agenda when I share this stuff is not necessarily about the skills themselves, but the profound shift in worldview they can bring, if you let them.
In the context of our larger problems, too, I think these skills play an important role. When I was learning how to teach music and reading about teaching a growth mindset, one of the things that really stuck with me was that fear and shame shut down the parts of the brain that allow you to learn new things and change behaviors. So, as self-righteous and productive it felt when I was younger to yell on the internet about the truly awful things happening, it was probably actually discouraging people from engaging with the problems at all. However, when you love something and are profoundly connected with it, you might start to notice how some of your habits have more effects than you were aware of before. You might continue to try new, adjacent skills or expand to other areas of study to deepen your relationships and understanding. And when you really love someone or something, you are much more likely to fight for them, when it is needed.
Personally, I think that things like foraging, growing food and preserving it, making things by hand, and other “earth skills” are easy to love. They are satisfying and meaningful, doing things with your hands makes happy chemicals in your brain, and you get rewarded for your work with something delicious, beautiful, or often both. Certainly there’s physical work involved in growing, harvesting, preparing, cooking or preserving food, but I actually thing that’s a benefit over the kind of “convenience” that allows you to be sedentary and disconnected from your own body, and from the living beings who become your body. I think we should interrogate the idea of, and costs of, “convenience,” and what ways to spend our time we consider most meaningful and valuable.
So, I’m sharing plants, but hopefully slipping in connection and relationship along with it. I hope that passing these seeds among the folks around me can, in time, lead to growing something good.
*I use this phrase a lot. Words like “nature” and “environment” have a connotation of separation in how they have often been used. I try not to use those terms most of the time and feel like “the living world” encompasses better the idea that it is something we are inherently part of and inseparable from.
Becoming Part of the Land 