Thinking of Edith Stein while in The National Gallery of Art today.
St. John of the Cross
Lincoln Memorial and Mall Barriers
We made it to the Lincoln Memorial as well as the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials last night for our first evening here in the D.C. area.
I was particularly struck by the number of barriers and fencing that has been “deployed” all over the National Mall (I’m guessing in preparation for the “parade” on June 14). I’m sad that even getting a glimpse of our White House is buried behind rows of police and security lines like something out of a dystopian future-movie (compared to just a decade ago).
We’re heading off to the Smithsonian Museums and then the Capitol this morning. I’m hoping that I the barriers we’ve erected don’t just strike me as something that we should strive to have no need for in our Nation’s capitol in the very near future, but something we resolve to do in our collective consciousness.
Alexandria, VA
Big props to Del Ray Pizzeria here!
Launching Carolina Ecology
I’m excited to launch Carolina Ecology this week. This is a project I’ve been working on in my head for a while, and I’m excited to see it come to fruition.
The idea is to provide a place to bridge the worlds that make up our region’s ecologies: to draw on spiritual traditions, ecological science, and grassroots activism so that each informs and deepens the other. There will be regular essays (already a couple there written by me) as well as a weekly podcast that will hopefully include voices from around North and South Carolina exploring these ideas, possibilities, thoughts, or events.
From the about page:
What You’ll Find Here
Essays & Reflections: Essays highlighting the vastness of ecologies in the Carolinas as well as explorations of theological frameworks and their relevance to Carolina landscapes, from the Coastal Plain’s salt marshes to the Piedmont’s waterways (from myself and others).
Local Conservation News: Updates on land-preservation efforts, watershed restoration projects, and progress (or setbacks) in state and municipal environmental policy.
Indigenous Perspectives: Profiles of initiatives, interviews with tribal leaders, and deep dives into traditional ecological knowledge, especially fire and water stewardship practices in our region.
Faith & Ecology Resources: Sermons, liturgy ideas, and study guides for congregations seeking to integrate environmental ethics into worship, outreach, and education.
Events & Calls to Action: Listings of Carolina-centered conferences, citizen science opportunities (like stream monitoring or butterfly counts), and gatherings where activists, faith communities, and scientists come together.
Here’s the essay I just published there regarding World Oceans Day and Pentecost as well…
Sustaining What Sustains Us – by Sam Harrelson:
It’s World Oceans Day across our planet today. There won’t be many sermons about that here in the Carolinas, I fear. However, I am hopeful that a young person somewhere in our two states will be inspired today to think about our oceans from its amazing creatures to the quizzical nature of the ever present tidal cycles to the circulation that helps regulate our climate despite our worst intentions at control or extraction (whether with intent or not). Folly Beach is hosting a gathering if you’re in the Charleston area or the Lowcountry of SC.
I hope you’ll subscribe if you’re interested in such topics and tell a friend or two!
Estonia’s AI Leap in Schools
I tended towards doing more oral responses and having students complete assignments in class on paper in the classroom the last few years (and have always fought against giving homework although some admins were not big fans of that…), but I think this approach also has serious merits if you have qualified and well-intentioned teachers (and parents) on board (big if)…
Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI | Schools | The Guardian:
In the most recent Pisa round, held in 2022 with results published a year later, Estonia came top in Europe for maths, science and creative thinking, and second to Ireland in reading. Formerly part of the Soviet Union, it now outperforms countries with far larger populations and bigger budgets.
There are multiple reasons for Estonia’s success but its embrace of all things digital sets it apart. While England and other nations curtail phone use in school amid concerns that it undermines concentration and mental health, teachers in Estonia actively encourage pupils to use theirs as a learning tool.
Now Estonia is launching a national initiative called AI Leap, which it says will equip students and teachers with “world-class artificial intelligence tools and skills”. Licences are being negotiated with OpenAI, which will make Estonia a testbed for AI in schools. The aim is to provide free access to top-tier AI learning tools for 58,000 students and 5,000 teachers by 2027, starting with 16- and 17-year-olds this September.
Maple, Black Walnut, and Oak
My ongoing “cultivation” of the bamboo grove on the property (not developed) behind the fence there is going well… it’s been a long process, but there’s definitely been progress!
Relational Roots and Ecological Futures: Bridging Whitehead, Cobb, and Gullah Wisdom Toward a Decolonized Ecological Civilization
I spoke today at the Center for Process Studies’ conference, Is It Too Late?: Toward an Ecological Civilization on the topic of Gullah Geechee insights and practices that would urge the process philosophy of Whitehead or Cobb towards active participation and engagement in local communities. Here’s my paper and the presentation below…
R.I.P. Holmes Rolston III
Holmes Rolston III, Pioneer of Environmental Ethics, Dies at 92 – The New York Times:
But the dismissal propelled him on to a restless intellectual and spiritual journey, with stops as a trained theologian and a natural historian, until, as a newly minted philosophy professor, he posed a question that had been unasked or routinely dismissed since before Plato: Does nature have value?
His answer — that nature has intrinsic value apart from that derived from human perspectives — appeared in a groundbreaking essay in 1975 that launched his career as the globally recognized “father” of environmental ethics. Moreover, in tune with rising public concern about land, air, water and wildlife, his thesis heralded what the philosopher Allen Carlson called the “environmental turn” in philosophy after millenniums of neglect…
Professor Rolston’s essay “Is There an Ecological Ethic?” was published in the prestigious journal Ethics. It was the first major article in a philosophical journal to accord value to nature.
Dead Sea Scrolls and AI
Fascinating (and much needed) work here on texts that still have much to teach us…
Many of Dead Sea scrolls may be older than thought, experts say | Archaeology | The Guardian:
“Overall, this is an important and welcome study, and one which may provide us with a significant new tool in our armoury for dating these texts,” he said. “Nevertheless, it’s one that we should adopt with caution, and in careful conjunction with other evidence.”
Center for Process Studies Presentation June 2025
I’m excited to present a paper this weekend at the Center for Process Studies’ conference (Pomona College, CA), “Is It Too Late?: Toward an Ecological Civilization.”
My paper is titled Relational Roots and Ecological Futures: Bridging Whitehead, Cobb, and Gullah Wisdom Toward a Decolonized Ecological Civilization and I’ll be posting that up after the conference this weekend!
Origins of Human Use of Fire? 🔥
Lately, I’ve been thinking and writing about human uses and conceptions of fire in relation to liturgy, language, and ecologies. Research such as this about early uses of fire as technology (and I would include language, spirituality, and mythologies in there) has fascinated me recently as a result…
Stone age BBQ: How early humans may have preserved meat with fire:
Prof. Barkai explains, “The origins of fire use is a ‘burning’ topic among prehistory researchers around the world. It is generally agreed that by 400,000 years ago, fire use was common in domestic contexts—most likely for roasting meat, and perhaps also for lighting and heating.
“However, there is controversy regarding the preceding million years, and various hypotheses have been put forward to explain why early humans began using fire. In this study, we sought to explore a new perspective on the issue.”
“Not a forest, but a museum.”
You may want to sit down to read this…
Today, as well as being an ecologist Wagner feels he has taken on a second role – as an elegist for disappearing forms of life.
“I’m an optimist, in the sense that I think we will build a sustainable future,” Wagner says. “But it’s going to take 30 or 40 years, and by then, it’s going to be too late for a lot of the creatures that I love. I want to do what I can with my last decade to chronicle the last days for many of these creatures.”
Northern Mockingbird
Here’s the final part of the Northern Birds of South Carolina trilogy. I encounter the Northern Crow, Northern Cardinal, and Northern Mockingbird each day here in the piedmont of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and they always have something to teach me.
Northern Mockingbird
In the hush just before morning,
he perches above the old creek,
a plain gray cipher, alert in the fog,
summoning every sound the watershed has ever uttered.
He is the weaver of other voices:
the high whistle of the hawk,
the rattle of hub city train tracks,
the hymn fragments that once drifted from clapboard churches,
even the keening of a lost child calling for home.
Here in the Blue Ridge, they say
he was made by the Creator to keep watch,
not just to sing,
but to recall all that is spoken and unspoken,
to give shape to the inarticulate ache of mountains
who know they are ancient but cannot say so themselves.
I once thought of mockery as scorn,
the cheap imitation of what is true.
But he teaches me another meaning:
that to echo is to bear witness,
to catch the echo of what matters and make it linger,
to gather up the lost notes,
the sigh of a dying ash,
the wild laughter of children,
the whispered prayers that never found an altar.
Some say the mockingbird is a trickster,
Hermes with a Southern drawl,
but I see a priest in plain feathers,
administering the liturgy of memory,
baptizing the day with a polyphony
only he can conjure.
What is revelation but the repetition
of what we have forgotten?
Isn’t this the task of the faithful,
not to invent, but to remember,
to sing back the world to itself until
even God might hear it again,
and call it good?
He stands in the half-light,
not red like fire, nor black like the secret,
but a vessel for all colors,
the fullness of sound and shadow.
In his song I hear the crow’s wisdom,
the cardinal’s blaze,
and something more:
the promise that every borrowed voice
can become a prayer
when given with intention.
By dawn, I find myself singing too,
not my own song,
but fragments stitched together
from ancestors, wild earth,
and whatever holy silence
will let me listen.
The mockingbird does not mock,
he remembers.
He calls forth what the world has spoken
and lets it live again
as hope in the air
above a waking world.
Emerald Ash Borer and Spartanburg (and Us)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the remaining ash trees here in Spartanburg. These quiet giants are now gravely threatened by the emerald ash borer, a small, invasive beetle that’s making its way across our county.
This beetle (first discovered in the US in Detroit in the early ’00s) burrows beneath the bark of ash trees, cutting off their lifelines. It’s a slow-motion crisis, one that’s easy to miss until a favorite tree starts to show signs of stress, such as leaves thinning, bark splitting, a hush settling over a place that once felt vibrant.
But this isn’t just about trees. In my work and study, I keep coming back to the idea that we’re all entangled here… people, trees, insects, the soil under our feet. What happens to the ash tree happens to the creatures and people who live around it. Our ecosystems aren’t just backgrounds; they’re communities, and we’re an integral part of them, just as they are an integral part of us.
So what do we do? For me, the first step is to pay attention. Notice what’s changing in your yard, your local park, or the street where you walk your dog. Talk with your neighbors about what you’re seeing. And when you can, support local efforts to monitor and care for our ecosystems.
Maybe most importantly, let this be a moment for spiritual reflection and a reminder that our call to care for the earth isn’t just about preservation, but about love and connection. The fate of the ash tree is tied up with our own, whether we notice it or not.
Let’s notice. And let’s act with intention (not sure releasing non-native wasps is the way to go, either)…
Invasive Emerald Ash Borer attacks South Carolina ash trees:
“I would argue that the Emerald Ash Borer is the most invasive forest pest of this generation,” Clemson University forestry professor David Coyle said. “It’s on the level of Chestnut blight.”…
“We can expect Ash to be very rare in South Carolina, as it’s becoming a very rare tree in most of the U.S.,” Jenkins said.
Here, they often follow the rivers, which is where most Ash trees are found. That includes Lawson’s Fork Creek, which flows right through the Edwin M. Griffin Nature Preserve…
“That tree’s doomed; there’s no coming back for it,” said Sam Parrott, executive director of SPACE. “I think most of our mature Ash trees are toast, unfortunately.”
Northern Cardinal
He appears, a flash of red
against the gray-branched sorrow of late spring,
not summoned, not prayed for,
but suddenly here, as if the world’s liturgy
required a single, burning presence.
His song is an ordinal, notes rising like incense
through the hush of my morning litany.
I remember how the grandfathers spoke of angels in disguise,
and how every sparrow counts,
but the cardinal is no messenger.
He is the message,
blood-bright and unapologetic
in the ruins of what I thought was ordinary.
I pause, mid-step, boots sinking into mud and leaf mold,
and let my catechism falter:
If every creature is a word of God,
what language does he speak
when he flares his crest, flings his voice
across the ravine of silence between us?
I think of the psalms,
the trees clapping their hands,
the stones crying out,
the heavens declaring, but here
on this cool fence post, it is enough
that red exists, incandescent,
in the waning light.
There is something Eucharistic about him:
how he breaks the dullness open
with his body, how he makes the sacrament
not of bread but of being,
the wild, pulsing glory
of being here,
now,
in this battered world.
I want to confess to him
my small faith,
my brittle hopes,
my longing for resurrection that comes
not as thunder, but as color
in the middle of the woods.
He cocks his head
unconcerned with theology,
yet radiating the kind of grace
that leaves a mark,
that stays in the body like a refrain.
In his departure,
I hear nothing but my own breathing,
a little steadier,
my heart echoing
some silent, ancient amen,
the red in the gray,
the promise of return,
the gospel of this world.
“creation comes from chaos”
Beautiful post from Guy Sayles here…
A Morning Walk, an Unsettled World, and a Proimise – From The Intersection:
…Both the beauty of the morning and the disturbing news are part of the “real world.” I choose to trust, however falteringly, that the really real world is the world Jesus announced and enacted: a world of justice and peace, of beauty and goodness, of truth and tenderness, of love and mercy. It’s possible that I am naïve. It feels, instead, like I am clinging, desperately and hopefully, to a promise made sure by the resurrection: creation comes from chaos and life from death.
Saturday Morning Thoughts…
Northern Cardinals, trees, and The Lord…
The more I read Plotinus as a 46-year-old PhD student, the more I want to focus on Plotinus and spiritual ecology (and meld in some Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edith Stein).
Northern Crow
Along the margin where the asphalt fails
and wild sumac rises,
the crow walks, black-lit and watchful,
a silhouette feathered by histories I barely remember.
His eyes, polished stones, regard
the world with the patience of a thing
that has already lost so much,
that expects nothing but cold wind
and the promise of old bones beneath the leaves.
He knows the taste of November’s first rot,
the hush of frost just before dawn
when the world holds its breath.
He forages among the offerings;
rusted keys, shattered acorns,
fragments of an unsaid prayer
left behind by children or priests.
I remember something Thomas Berry wrote,
about the necessary darkness,
how death, in the webbed roots of things,
becomes soil, becomes future,
becomes the cry of crow at daybreak.
He is not above or below me,
he is kin in the loosest sense,
stranger and prophet,
who gathers what is broken
and makes it part of his living.
Sometimes, when I walk the boundaries of my own heart,
I feel his shadow pass, a brush of wing,
a reminder that nothing is truly wasted,
not even sorrow, not even longing.
Under a sky bruised by the ache of dusk,
he lifts his voice, not as lament,
but as invitation, a way to say;
Even now, the world is not finished.
Even now, something unnamed and winged
waits to be born from what is left behind.
First Swim Meet!
Emmylou and Ben have their first swim meet tonight. They both rocked their first heat races and Emmylou left them in a trail of bubbles 🏊♂️🏊♀️🫧
Be Not So Fearful
I remember sitting in my apartment in New Haven, CT, and watching I Am Trying to Break Your Heart for the first time. I was (am) a fan of Wilco, and the documentary covering the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (and the remaking of Wilco in the face of all sorts of adversity) was powerful. I was a naive 23-year-old grad student at Yale Divinity and full of my own anxieties about what the future might hold and where life might lead, so this particular scene where Jeff is signing (another) record deal to get YHF released shortly after their original label dropped them because of the band’s insistence on putting out what would become the best album of the 21st Century so far seemed like a clarion call to me.
Particularly this song… what was this song, I wondered??
I wish I could go back and tell Young Sam that everything would turn out well despite life’s inevitable ups and downs and my lingering anxieties about the past, present, and future (and social situations). I tried to pass that on to my children and my students in the almost 20 years of classroom teaching as well, and hopefully those seeds will find good soil.
I didn’t give up the pursuit to find “that song” after hearing Wilco perform it live a few times and eventually tracked it down to Bill Fay, who composed and recorded the original version back in the early 70s. I just read this morning that Fay passed away in February of this year. That makes me sad, but also uplifted, because his music, especially this song, has touched so many of us over the years.
Those seeds found good soil in my head canon. I’ve been changing diapers for my children since 2007, and I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve sung this song to them while doing so (including this morning). I have had big moments in meetings, in the classroom, before a speech, after a business call, etc., and this song is what I’d call my mantra for centering myself when those anxieties creep in and try to steal the moment. I can’t remember preaching a sermon when I didn’t at least hum the tune while getting my robe on before service.
I’d like to think that most of us have something like this song in our lives that brings us back to ourselves in moments of fear, doubt, loathing, or anxiety. I’m not sure if it’s cognitively the best long-term fix, but it has worked for me in the last 23 years since originally hearing Tweedy strum the tune while surrounded by tired and exhausted bandmates.
Thank you, Bill Fay. Thank you, Jeff Tweedy.
Thinking Religion 172: Matthew Klippenstein
Matthew joins me again to discuss artificial intelligence, ancient constructs of aid, panpsychism, science and the humanities, and formation of religious texts.
Mentioned:
More than a fingerprint on a pebble
Fascinating and all too familiar…
The pebble discovered in the San Lázaro rock-shelter (Segovia, Central Spain) is the oldest known non-utilitarian object with a fingerprint made in Europe. Its morphology and the strategic position of an ocher dot, where a dermatoglyphic image has been detected, may be evidence of symbolic behavior. This object contributes to our understanding of Neanderthals’ capacity for abstraction, suggesting that it could represent one of the earliest human facial symbolizations in Prehistory. All the analyses carried out suggest an intentional effort to transport and paint the pebble for non-utilitarian purposes, suggesting that it is indeed the work of Neanderthals.
On the Proliferation of Religion and AI
Fascinating thoughts here on AI, religion, and consciousness from Matt Segall (one of my professors in my PhD work on Religion, Ecology, and Spirituality at CIIS who is helping to lead the way through the pluriverse)…
We might dismiss ancient religious as overly anthropocentric or indeed anthropomorphic. But I think from my point of view, we need to recognize that before we rush to transcend the human, we have to understand what we are, and all of our sciences are themselves inevitably anthropocentric.
Denominational Journeys and Paths
Merianna, the kids, and I decided to make the trip up the mountain to Asheville, NC on Sunday (I keep finding it astonishing that we’re so close to Asheville now after our move back to Spartanburg, SC, last year) for church and a family visit to our favorite local pizza place.
We worshipped with Asheville First Congregational United Church and their pastor, Rev. Dr. Kendra G. Plating. Merianna and Kendra were friends from their time together at First Baptist Greenville, as well as our Cooperative Baptist Fellowship community here in SC. I’m always curious about the religious journeys that people take in and out of and through various congregations and denominations, and how those journeys shape the person and they shape those communities.
Walking alongside Merianna in her journey through seminary and then being a CBF pastor and then ultimately a pastor in the United Church of Christ was a fascinating period of development and growth, and we often talked about the “how’s” and “why’s” of that walk over the years.
My own journey in faith is tangled in denominational and polity wanderings. Growing up as a Southern Baptist in rural South Carolina, I felt a call to ministry and that attraction to religion as a cornerstone for my life fairly early (15? 16? I wish I’d written more of that down as a young person). While attending Wofford College, I realized that my denominational sentiments leaned more towards the Methodist tradition (Wofford is a Methodist college, after all). I was convinced I’d end up as a Methodist minister (as a member of the Wesley Fellowship and frequent participant in campus church, the Methodist State Conference we hosted at Wofford every summer, and especially our Tuesday afternoon Chapel services). I evidently upset a girlfriend’s mom by making the flippant remark that “maybe I’d go Catholic” as I was toying with the idea of “high church” after getting to travel to Europe. I never did end up making the formal leap to Methodism. However, Methodist liturgy and hymns still play a big part in my life, and I frequently use those when leading services.
When I arrived at Yale Divinity, I wasn’t exactly sure what to call myself, and there was no polity class for my technical status as a still-Southern-Baptist. So, I found myself taking American Baptist courses, much to the confusion of my advisor. It was a happy accident, and I also grew to respect and cherish what I found in the American Baptist tradition (especially given the short drive to the City for Riverside Baptist Church services on MLK weekends). I graduated from Yale Div as a still-Southern-Baptist, however.
Shortly after graduating, I ended up teaching (science!) at Hammond School back in South Carolina. A colleague’s spouse was the head of a group called the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in South Carolina. Perhaps the selling point for me was that President Jimmy Carter was also a member of the CBF and taught Sunday School in his hometown church. I began to attend services at the local CBF church in Columbia, and it felt like I had finally landed in a fellowship structure that fit me and that I fit as well. I attended Gardner-Webb University Divinity a few years later and met many good friends and colleagues who are now serving or did serve in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship as pastors and leaders. Some of those have ventured into other denominations such as Presbyterian, Methodist, Southern Baptist, and UCC. I finally had my Baptist ordination signed (by 3 women, I might add) in 2014 and remain a member of Emmanuel Baptist Fellowship in Lexington, SC.
Now, as Merianna and I look to the next part of our joint journey and our individual paths of calling, we are discussing polity, denominational structure, and liturgy. Being that we’re both ordained (in two separate denominations), these talks can get tricky when we discuss the possibilities of joining a new church here in Spartanburg and what that might look like for us and especially for our children (infant baptism? blessings? open communion?).
It’s fascinating (to use that word again) how telling the story of our life journeys can seem so complex and winding unless you’ve lived the story. In my head, teaching Physics and Physical Science for almost 20 years easily explains my PhD work in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion. Growing up a Southern Baptist influenced by Methodism, Aquinas, Quaker polity, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Catholicism (and Rosicrucianism and more esoteric faith traditions) makes for a completely coherent path in my own mind.
Wherever this journey takes us, I’ll continue to find inspiration and revelation along the path. I like to think God demands that of us who choose to listen to the still small voice of the Divine whispering in a rush of wind, in the garden, and late at night as long-haired teenagers dreaming about the future (or as grey short haired men in their late 40’s telling stories and trying to understand the universe one day at a time).