Important thread here on Reddit regarding Western coffee consumption from areas such as Vietnam (a major source of coffee beans for the United States now) as well as our ecological intentions…
Our coffee addiction is sucking the earth dry. : r/collapse:
My guess is that coffee prices will keep increasing because of climate change disruptions in weather patterns. That would mean more and more, deeper and deeper wells. Until there’s truly nothing left in the ground.
I finally got around to picking up Orbital and can’t wait to read it in the next few weeks. This line with the author Samantha Harvey’s interview in The Guardian stuck out to me as something that very few of us discuss openly, but is certainly a reality of modernity…
“I pretty much hit 40 and became anxious,” she says. “I don’t know why. I think maybe I just decided it was time to have some sort of crisis.” Suddenly, she could no longer sleep. “I was finding the world kind of abrasive. Everything was too noisy and too busy and too huge.”
I’ve been thinking a good deal about language and liturgy lately. That’s due to a paper I’ve been developing on Catherine Pickstock’s incredible work along with William Desmond’s metaphysical approaches.
One of the questions I’ve been fascinated with is the role of human language in our own integral ecologies (not just in the environmental sense but in a broader sense of our being in place, time, and space). Language, in this sense, is a mediator between our own internal self and the concrescence of the world we inhabit and are situated in and responding to with our autonomic as well as intentional senses (to draw from Morleau-Ponty).
Lately, I’ve been returning to the wonderful Merlin app as I pray in the morning under a black walnut tree that we share this property in Spartanburg, SC, with. I’ve also been using the app to help me learn calls from the numerous bird species that share this property. I’ve identified over 30 different species in the last few days, and it’s frankly mind-boggling to consider that so many varieties existed here that I wasn’t aware of in my daily walk and journey. It’s quite humbling as well. In my own sense of being, I try to be while acknowledging their various calls and songs.
Those thoughts take me back to Pickstock and Desmond. What does it mean to call an animal by a name? What does it mean to classify them with Latin and English names that reflect our own human creativity and need for structure?
The need to name something, be it a bird or a part on an automobile, is a deeply intrinsic part of being human.
Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the human should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the human to see what he would call them; and whatever the human called each living creature, that was its name. The human gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the human there was not found a helper as his partner. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the human, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the human he made into a woman and brought her to the human. Then the human said,
‘This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
this one shall be called Woman,*
for out of Human, this one was taken.’
Genesis 2:18-23 NRSV
But why and how did we arrive at that liturgical dance of classification? I suspect that deep in our human story, perhaps hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, we developed an environmental urge to classify things that we could eat, things that could eat us, poisonous things, friendly things, and things we could use to make the tools that would go on to define so much of our ancient and modern classification of ourselves. Perhaps there was a time we shared that information not with spoken language, but with close intuition and dialogue that occurred without the use of our vocal cords as we are so apt to do now as homo sapien sapiens.
Pickstock especially turns my intention towards this contemplation as I suspect that there is something uniquely characteristic of humanity that seeks to find Truth in not just subjective analysis of things or species of birds, but in attuning ourselves towards the sacred re-playing of naming through liturgy (be it the eucharist or morning prayer or a quiet walk on a trail the morning after a thunderstorm).
Here’s the video of a panel I was honored to moderate last week for California Institute of Integral Studies’ Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion’s “Religion and Ecology Summit.”
I thought the panel (as well as the other panels!) were fantastic and I’m still taking notes from the presentation for my own research.
Thanks to Prof. Elizabeth Allison and Charlie Forbes for all of their hard work and time on putting the Summit together.
“2025 Religion and Ecology Summit Hosted by the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies April 21-23, 2025
The Power of Water in Religious Networks and Creation Panel Description: This panel brings together theologians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion to explore how water shapes sacred narratives, spiritual practices, and ecological wisdom across traditions. Together, these voices offer a powerful reflection on how water flows through religion, culture, and creation.
Reverend Dr. Brian Fiu Kolia Malua Theological College “The Power and Politics of Water: A Riverine Re-reading of Naaman’s Cleansing in 2 Kings 5”
Rabbi Dr. Ariel Mayse Stanford University “The Headwaters of Theology: Reflections on Water in Jewish Law and Thought”
Dr. Stephen Lansing Santa Fe Institute “A Letter to the Future from Bali’s Subaks”
Michelle Boyle California Institute of Integral Studies “Sacred Source: Culture and Spirit in the Valleys of the Po River Tributaries”
Dr. Willis Jenkins University of Virginia “Designing Research with Sacred Waters: Interdisciplinary Labs for Integrative Understandings”
Moderated by: Reverend Sam Harrelson California Institute of Integral Studies”
I’ve been watching some coverage of Pope Francis’ passing this morning and I keep asking out loud, “Why isn’t anyone talking about Laudato Si??”
This feels like such a dark day, just a few hours after we Christians celebrated Easter. I pray that we all have the power to speak up about the importance of integral ecologies and the ecology of the cross in the coming days/weeks/months/years as technocratic oligarchic capitalistic interests will surely challenge the concept Francis championed…
I’m thankful for Bill McKibben to pointing out this aspect of Francis’ legacy…
Pope Francis and the Sun – by Bill McKibben:
The ecological problems we face are not, in their origin, technological, says Francis. Instead, “a certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us.” He is no Luddite (“who can deny the beauty of an aircraft or a skyscraper?”) but he insists that we have succumbed to a “technocratic paradigm,” which leads us to believe that “every increase in power means ‘an increase of “progress” itself’…as if reality, goodness and truth automatically flow from technological and economic power as such.” This paradigm “exalts the concept of a subject who, using logical and rational procedures, progressively approaches and gains control over an external object.” Men and women, he writes, have from the start
“intervened in nature, but for a long time this meant being in tune with and respecting the possibilities offered by the things themselves. It was a matter of receiving what nature itself allowed, as if from its own hand.”
In our world, however, “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational.” With the great power that technology has afforded us, it’s become
“easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit.”
The deterioration of the environment, he says, is just one sign of this “reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life.”
Amen…
How I Learned About Great Literature from Comic Books:
Opinion leaders nowadays would scorn these graphic novels. They would justifiably point out the narrowness of canon enshrined in their garish pages (even though, as the recurring presence of Afro-French author Dumas indicates, there was more range here than you might assume).
They would deride the corny images, loaded with anachronisms and stereotypes. And they would probably mock the middle-class aspirations of parents who bought these ten-cent classics for their children. It’s all so embarrassingly middle-brow.
But maybe we need more middle-brow in our culture mix today.
Here’s episode 2 (of 8) of Rooted in Mystery: A Season of Thinking Religion Rewilded…
A physics teacher’s confession and the call of a wilder truth.
For nearly two decades, I taught high school science — physics, environmental science, and life science — and believed I was helping students understand how the world works. But something never quite fit. In this episode, I open up about the quiet tension I carried in those classrooms: the gap between what I taught and what I knew in my bones — that the world is more than parts and particles. This story is about the limits of reductionism, the pull of mystery, and the day I stopped mistaking control for understanding. We’ll explore Alfred North Whitehead’s “Nature Alive,” embodied learning, and the freedom from letting the cosmos be alive again. If you’ve ever felt disillusioned with modern science’s flat explanations or if you’ve longed for something wilder and more sacred, this episode is for you.
I’ve been asked if I would share this on Facebook or Instagram, but I don’t use either. However, if you’d like to share there, feel free.
Here’s the new episode of the next season of my Thinking Religion podcast. This season is titled Rooted in Mystery: The Rewilding of Thinking Religion.
It’s a short episode, and this season will have a few longer episodes as I unpack some of the ideas I’ve been working on in the braids that combine theology, ecology, intentionality, faith, family, and life.
But let’s start with this one and this question… What would change if you believed the world was watching you with love?
I’m about to hit 4,000 (since 2006) here, but 10,000 is pretty incredible for sure! I started blogging in 2002 or so and had a few different iterations before I settled in on this place and platform for good.
Congrats, Seth!
Give or take. It’s hard to get the exact count through the sands of time. But it’s at least 10,000 blog posts as of today.
Staggering numbers, indeed. 50 tons of new iPhones sold in the US EVERY day. Imagine the manufacturing scale alone, but really imagine the resource acquisition needed to source every bit of material to make these things. Wow.
Daring Fireball: How Many New iPhones Can Fit on a Freight Plane?:
But Apple sells about 50 tons of new iPhones in the US alone every day. We all know that Apple’s iPhone business is huge. But when you start to consider it in practical terms like this it’s just staggering.