Religion and Ecology 2022

 In researching for the exploratory essay assignment one, I have been thinking about ways that the environments in which we live shape our view of the world. Our class discussions have mainly focused around habitat versus habituse and cosmology studies. A mythology I've always found very interesting are the stories that come out of the Polynesian Islands and Hawaii. The environments in these places are full of life and activity. Most notably, the volcanoes in these areas shaped how these peoples saw the environment and attributed humanistic/cosmic actions to times of destruction or unknown events. The Disney movie Moana is the most recent pop culture rendition of these myths. Even though this movie is obviously meant for children and is not wholly accurate to Hawaiian mythology, it explores the elements within Hawaiian myths in an easy to understand way. I've since found out that Maui is actually a real God in Hawaiian mythology with a fish hook. He is known as a trickster, and...

 This reading brought about really interesting ideas about the ways we exist within our home. Generally, I feel like quite a few people have acknowledged the damaging effects technology has had on our relationships and state of being. Many people have televisions in their bedrooms, which scientists are now saying can damage their sleep patterns, cause anxiety, and even impact the sensual relationships with a partner that shares the room. Bedrooms should be for sleep- not watching tv or eating or working. However, I feel like escaping from technology in certain spaces is extremely difficult for college students. Personally, I do almost all of my homework in my room, and I often eat there too because of the work I'm busy doing. In many ways, I am also very separate from my environment. I don't garden or harvest my own food, and to be honest, it's sometimes hard to even find time to spend outside. While I live at home with my parents, many people in college live in dorms. All ...

 In class today, we discussed the topic of viewing the Earth as a machine. Sometimes we can view the world as a circuit board and see that all the circuits are in some way connected through a connecting point in the cosmic web. I believe it came from an essay, the idea of using a machine gives humans a machine heart and I would like to provide my reflection and questions on that. Furthermore, how it disconnects humans from the earth, not allowing us to remain in a sensuous connection with the world.  I agree with the statement, that using machines gives humans a machine heart, and laugh at the irony of it, because machines, non-living thing, does not have a heart. I think that this means that to have a machine heart is to view all things, living or non-living, as assets to use for one's own benefit. This is shown in how humans can interact with nature. Sometimes, nature is seen as a pleasure to satisfy humans. Other times, it is a tool to be used and discarded once we're done ...

    More often than not, I come across people who no longer believe in anything spiritually. As someone who grew up Catholic, the idea of not believing in some entity is strange to me. I find it hard to imagine not believing in anything beyond explanation. I do love science and understand the desire to always want the answers but to the things I cannot understand, I have always placed that weight on God. I cannot comprehend what those who do not believe in anything spiritually do when they do not have the answers.      I am not sure if at all in the past there were this many people who did not believe in something spiritually. I am not suggesting that everyone HAS to believe in something but to not believe in something is mysterious to me. I feel like there is a connection between myself, nature, and the creator that makes me love the world around me. I also believe that most of my morals are based on my religion and most of these morals allow me to be...

 I had tried looking in my notes for any mentions of the reading of Dr. Redick's talk on the AT, but I couldn't find when it was. This is a reflection on this talk. I often find myself thinking about a specific idea or moment on a repeated cycle for a couple days, if the moment's influential enough for my conscience to ruminate on it. This past week, I found myself ruminating on Dr. Redick's talk about the Appalachian Trail. The story I focused on was about him and the doe, and their silent communication. In particular, he mentioned that he felt as though she was trying to communicate with her face. Later, Dr. Redick quoted something about the trees having faces as well. Neither of these examples aimed to anthropomorphize the creatures. Instead, they describe what I understand to be the cosmic web and the communication between the creatures in it.  The 'said' versus the 'saying' was the most confusing thing that I attempted to understand and yet, I think...

 Maggie Spencer-Pick - From Nature to Creation Intro and Ch 1 This reading honestly surprised me. I grew up in church, raised in a Christian household. My family wasn't super strict about it- I eventually stopped going to church in my senior year of high school as my own choice, and it wasn't a big deal. I'm also lucky in the fact that my family could probably be considered pretty progressive Christians- not overly strict in the way some devout Christians are, and this became even more apparent as me and my siblings have all reached adulthood.  With that background established, I'll again assert that this reading surprised me. I wouldn't call myself religious- more spiritual and agnostic than a strict adherent. But this reading made me understand the type of Christianity that I would maybe be a follower of. I'm an environmental studies student, so the world around me and the people in it have always been important to me. The Bible has always been a document open...

Page 4 Michael Taussig would suggest Juan's understanding of the meaning of a place emerges out of the process of an imitation of all the “differences” that we discern there. We mimic (in language and action) the full range of sounds, movements, and other sensory perceptions that come to us from the more than human world.” It’s hard to put a place that strikes us as sublime into mere words; we can try to describe it as a feeling and try to put language to that feeling, but sometimes the feeling of the beauty of nature or the power of a sacred space is too big to try to translate or make sense of. Would every place and experience be subjective, and would the discourse be the same? Would the mountain top make me feel the same as another? Or does my personal experience with the natural world and divine keep it intimate/ unique, or would my experience be relatable enough? The author uses the messiness, ambiguity, and mystery of people's deeply personal experience of place. I love t...

 Today we talked about in class on language. More specifically about how humans animate things through language. In addition to this, we spoke of Hellen Keller and how she was separated from the world because of language. Some questions that I wrote down in my notes were the following:  Do we only understand things because of language then?  Do we animate things because this is the only way we understand the world? Can we (truly) understand the world outside the living (human)? Miscommunication between not understanding the animate [living (human)] and the inanimate? We do this to humans.  We’ve anthropomorphized things for so long; this is the only way. As I read over this, I thought back to a concept that Descartes described as "representative reality" or "formal reality" where we understand things based on the reality around us. Just as we describe the world through our human experiences, each unique and particular to the individual, we understand the world in th...