Category: Ecology

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!

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… 

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects | Insects | The Guardian:

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.”

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.”

Conservation as Communion

Here’s a paper I’ve written on the concept of re-thinking conservation attempts in modern societies based on technocratic and market-based ideas. Conservation and human action (and inaction) is a fascinating area to ponder. As part of my wider work on The Ecology of the Cross, this is a paper that explores some of the roots of our Western concepts of “conservation” and a possible middle way in these uncertain times using fire as a case study 🔥🌲.

Here’s the abstract:

“This paper proposes a paradigm shift in conservation, moving from technocratic and colonial frameworks toward an ethic of interspecies communion. Drawing on Juno Salazar Parreñas’ critique of biopolitical care, Mara Goldman’s analysis of Maasai narrative epistemologies, Barrett et al.’s model of intuitive interspecies communication, and philosophical reflections from Edgar Morin, William Desmond, and the emerging field of Ecocene fire practices, the paper articulates a vision of both conservation and understandings and uses of fire rooted in reciprocity, complexity, and ontological humility. It argues that communion, not control, must ground conservation in the age of ecological disruption.”

Conservation as Communition PublicDownload

Eyelash Mites and Remarks on AI from Neal Stephenson

Fascinating point here from Stephenson and echoes my own sentiments that AI itself is not necessarily a horrid creation that needs to be locked away, but a “new” modern cultural concept that we’d do well to realize points us back towards the importance of our own integral ecologies…

Remarks on AI from NZ – by Neal Stephenson – Graphomane:

The mites, for their part, don’t know that humans exist. They just “know” that food, in the form of dead skin, just magically shows up in their environment all the time. All they have to do is eat it and continue living their best lives as eyelash mites. Presumably all of this came about as the end result of millions of years’ natural selection. The ancestors of these eyelash mites must have been independent organisms at some point in the distant past. Now the mites and the humans have found a modus vivendi that works so well for both of them that neither is even aware of the other’s existence. If AIs are all they’re cracked up to be by their most fervent believers, this seems like a possible model for where humans might end up: not just subsisting, but thriving, on byproducts produced and discarded in microscopic quantities as part of the routine operations of infinitely smarter and more powerful AIs.

The coming (very soon) torrent of artificial intelligence bots on the web and throughout our lives is going to be revolutionary for humanity in so many ways.

The Power of Water in Religious Networks and Creation Panel

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”

Deterioration of the Human and Remembering Pope Francis

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.”

Thinking Religion 169: The Theology of Trees

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?

50 Tons of iPhones

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.