Thinking Religion 174: Introducing MinistriesLab

Thinking Religion
Thinking Religion
Thinking Religion 174: Introducing MinistriesLab
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Sam introduces MinistriesLab, a space where faith, ecology, and ministry meet. Drawing on his background as a minister, teacher, consultant, and current PhD student in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at CIIS, Sam explores why churches need to embrace ecological spirituality as central to their mission.

From Thomas Berry’s vision of The Great Work to Hildegard’s viriditas and Edith Stein’s insights on empathy, Sam weaves together theology, philosophy, and practical ministry. Along the way, he offers concrete examples of what MinistriesLab can do for congregations: from rethinking digital outreach with ecological imagination, to planting pollinator gardens as acts of hospitality, to creating liturgies rooted in local watersheds.

This episode is both an invitation and a provocation: What would it mean for churches to “stay with the trouble” of our ecological moment (as Donna Haraway puts it) and to rediscover the Tree of Life in their own backyards?

Introducing MinistriesLab 🌎

For nearly two decades, my work has lived at the intersection of ministry, teaching, and consulting. From the pulpit to the classroom to boardrooms and coffee shops, I’ve found myself in spaces where the central question is always the same: how do we tell our story in a way that is authentic, transformative, and faithful?

Now, as I continue my doctoral work in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies, that question has taken on new urgency. The story we tell as people of faith is not only about our relationship to God and neighbor—it is also about our relationship to the more-than-human world that sustains us.

That conviction is why I’ve started MinistriesLab.

Here’s a podcast episode of Thinking Religion where I discuss some of the background and practical examples of MinistriesLab:

Thinking Religion 174: Introducing MinistriesLab

Why MinistriesLab?

MinistriesLab was born out of the recognition that many churches and religious organizations feel the tension of our ecological moment but aren’t sure how to respond. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and the unraveling of ecosystems aren’t abstract scientific headlines, but rather they are spiritual questions, theological challenges, and pastoral realities.

Too often, churches either avoid ecological conversations because they feel “too political,” or they silo them into one-off “green team” projects. But the truth is this: our spirituality is already ecological. Every sermon, every communion table, every baptism, every hymn, every prayer is situated within a world alive with God’s presence.

My research in integral ecology and what I call the Ecology of the Cross has convinced me that the church’s voice matters profoundly here. Congregations have the capacity to help people see differently and to recover the rooted wisdom of scripture and tradition, and to step into hopeful, place-based practices of care and connection.

What I’m Offering

Through MinistriesLab, I’m bringing together my background in marketing and digital consulting, my years of ministry and teaching, and my ongoing academic work in ecological theology.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

  • Consulting: Helping churches and ministries tell their stories more clearly online and in person, with strategies that are both practical and faithful.
  • Speaking: Preaching, teaching, and leading workshops on the intersections of faith, ecology, and communication.
  • Place-Based Practices: Offering insights and guidance for congregations to engage their specific local ecosystems, whether through worship, education, or community practices that deepen spiritual awareness of place.

A Theological and Practical Invitation

The church has always been at its best when it helps people see the world with new eyes. From the prophets to Jesus’ parables to Hildegard of Bingen’s viriditas (the greening power of God), our tradition is rich with ecological wisdom. What we need now is the courage to embody it in this time and place.

That’s the heart of MinistriesLab: to equip and encourage faith communities to embrace an ecological spirituality that is both approachable and transformative.

If your congregation or organization is ready to step more fully into that work, whether through a consultation, a speaking engagement, or exploring new practices together, I’d love to start a conversation.

👉 Visit MinistriesLab to learn more, or contact me directly.

Trees as Symbols of Life and Spirit Across Religions

Meeting Our Old Teachers

Trees are older than us (though not as old as you might think), longer-lived than empires, and deeply woven into the stories we tell about wisdom and spirit. They are teachers of patience and endurance, bearing witness to countless centuries of human seeking. Our ancient and modern columns of brick, stone, marble, or concrete still pale in comparison to our ancient tree kin.

Across traditions, trees have anchored human imagination. They serve as symbols of wisdom, life, and connection. However, more than symbols, they are living presences, mediators of the sacred. From Genesis to the Bodhi Tree, from Yggdrasil to the cottonwood of the Lakota Sun Dance, trees appear where human beings grapple with the mysteries of being alive.

The philosopher Owen Barfield once suggested that human consciousness itself has a history, that the way we experience the world evolves over time. He pointed to the so-called Axial Age, when religious and philosophical traditions in Israel, Greece, India, and China reimagined humanity’s relationship to the cosmos. Trees appear in those traditions as if marking the shift: not just as backdrops, but as active participants in our emerging sense of meaning. They carry forward the memory of the older ways of knowing, when spirit and matter were inseparable, and they gesture toward futures in which we might relearn that intimacy.

To pay attention to the trees is to pay attention to our own evolving consciousness. It is also to listen to what Donna Haraway calls “tentacular thinking,” the recognition that all beings are entangled in webs of relation, that meaning itself stretches across roots and fungi and soil and sky. Trees remind us that life is not linear but branching, not heroic but networked. They embody what Ursula Le Guin called the “carrier bag” story of humanity: not a single plot driven by conquest, but a gathering of seeds, fruits, and stories carried in community.

TraditionWisdomLifeSpiritual Connection
Hebrew Bible / JudaismTree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis); Etz Chaim (“Tree of Life”) as Torah/Wisdom (Proverbs 3:18)Tree of Life in Eden and eschatology (Revived in apocalyptic visions)Olive tree as Israel’s covenantal identity; sacred groves as contested spaces
ChristianityCross as Tree of Life (Acts 5:30; 1 Peter 2:24); Hildegard’s viriditas (greening wisdom)Tree of Life in Revelation (22:2) offers healing to nationsThe Cross links heaven and earth; saints/monks often dwell in tree imagery of rootedness
IslamSidrat al-Muntaha (Lote Tree) marks the limit of knowledge (Qur’an 53)Tree of Immortality in Eden (Q 2:35); olive tree as “blessed tree” (Q 24:35)Trees as signs of God’s creation; paradise described as filled with shade-giving trees
HinduismAshvattha (cosmic fig tree) in Bhagavad Gita represents eternal samsaraBanyan, neem, tulsi as living presences of the divineSacred groves; Bodhi tree as meditation site; cosmic tree with roots in heaven, branches on earth
BuddhismBodhi Tree: site of enlightenment, source of awakened wisdomKalpavriksha (wish-fulfilling tree) symbolizes abundanceTrees as natural meditation sites; Bodhi tree as axis between ignorance and awakening
Indigenous Traditions (Americas, Africa, Celtic)Oaks and yews in Celtic Druidic tradition as sources of sacred knowledgeTrees like baobab as “roots of life”; cottonwood in Lakota Sun DanceWorld Tree as axis mundi (linking underworld, earth, heavens); trees as homes of ancestors/spirits
Norse MythologyYggdrasil’s roots drink from the Well of Mimir (wisdom)Yggdrasil sustains nine realms of existenceYggdrasil as cosmic axis, linking worlds; ravens, serpents, and gods interact with it
Chinese TraditionsFusang tree marks sun’s rising, cosmic orderPeach tree of immortality (fruit of eternal life)Sacred peach tree of Queen Mother of the West links heaven’s gifts with human fate

The Tree of Life in the Ancient Near East

The Hebrew Bible begins with a garden, and at its heart, two trees: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life (Gen. 2:9). To eat of the first was to awaken to wisdom — to the awareness of moral boundaries and human limitation. The story is often told as a fall, but it can also be read as the story of consciousness coming into its own, with trees as the threshold between innocence and maturity.

Proverbs later describes wisdom herself as “a tree of life to those who lay hold of her” (Prov. 3:18). Here the metaphor is clear: to live wisely is to be rooted, nourished, fruitful. In Jewish tradition, the Torah itself becomes the Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life, literally embodied in the wooden rollers of the scrolls used in worship.

But trees could also lead astray. The prophets railed against “sacred groves” where Canaanite deities were honored (Deut. 16:21). Yet, even this reveals the deep human instinct to find the divine among trees. And the symbol endures: the Book of Revelation imagines the Tree of Life restored in the New Jerusalem, its leaves “for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2).


Christianity: The Cross as Tree

Christianity radicalizes the symbol by naming the cross itself a tree. The Apostle Peter writes that Christ “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). A Roman instrument of execution becomes the world tree of redemption. The symmetry was irresistible to early theologians: where Adam and Eve grasped at fruit, Christ is lifted up on the wood, reversing the fall.

Medieval mystics expanded this imagery. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) described divine life as viriditas, “the greening power,” pulsing through creation. In her visions, the universe itself was a tree, verdant with God’s wisdom. Monks, too, saw trees as ascetic companions: silent, patient, enduring through storms.

For Christians, then, the tree is paradox. It bears death and life, judgment and mercy, sorrow and redemption. Like Yggdrasil, gnawed by serpents but still sustaining the worlds, the cross stands at the center of human story… fragile yet cosmic.


Islam: The Blessed Tree

In the Qur’an, trees shape both warning and blessing. Adam and Eve are commanded not to eat from the Tree of Immortality (Q 2:35). Yet another tree, the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary (Sidrat al-Muntaha), appears in the Prophet Muhammad’s night journey. It marks the furthest boundary of created knowledge: beyond it lies only God (Q 53:14–16).

The olive tree carries special significance. The famous Light Verse declares: “God is the Light of the heavens and the earth… lit from a blessed olive tree, neither of the east nor of the west” (Q 24:35). Here, tree and light merge: the olive, ancient source of fuel, becomes metaphor for divine illumination.

Paradise itself is pictured as a garden of abundant, shade-giving trees — a vision profoundly embodied for people whose daily lives knew desert heat. The tree is not abstract; it is rest, sustenance, and divine nearness.


Hinduism: The Cosmic Ashvattha

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna describes the universe as a cosmic fig tree, the Ashvattha: “With roots above and branches below, whose leaves are the Vedas; he who knows this tree is the knower of the Veda” (Gita 15:1). Unlike earthly trees, this one grows downward, its nourishment flowing from the eternal into the temporal. To attain liberation, one must cut it down with the “axe of detachment” and seek the source beyond appearances.

But trees are not only metaphors. Living trees are venerated: the banyan, with its aerial roots; the neem, with healing powers; the tulsi plant, tended in courtyards as a goddess in her own right. Sacred groves still shelter temples, holding ecological as well as spiritual memory.

The cosmic tree gathers together time, scripture, and existence. Like Barfield’s insight into symbolic consciousness, it points to a way of seeing in which reality itself is read as text, and trees as living letters of the divine alphabet.


Buddhism: Under the Bodhi Tree

Perhaps no tree is more famous than the Bodhi Tree under which Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment. Sitting through the night, he confronted desire, fear, and illusion until he awoke into Buddhahood. Ever since, the Bodhi tree has stood as the site of awakening: wisdom that arises not from conquest but from stillness, from simply being present beneath a tree.

Buddhism also speaks of the Kalpavriksha, the wish-fulfilling tree, symbolizing abundance. Yet the Bodhi dominates the tradition’s imagination, embodying the dharma itself: impermanence in its falling leaves, interdependence in its roots, patient endurance in its trunk.

Like Le Guin’s “carrier bag” theory of narrative, the Bodhi tree is not a hero’s monument but a gathering site. Pilgrims circle it, meditate beneath it, collect its fallen leaves. It is not conquered; it shelters. It contains, carries, holds the story of awakening.


Indigenous Traditions: The World Tree

In Native American cosmologies, the World Tree or Sacred Tree connects earth, underworld, and sky. For the Lakota, the cottonwood chosen for the Sun Dance becomes the axis around which the world is renewed. Dancers tether themselves to it in prayer, embodying the life-giving bond between human and cosmos.

In Africa, great trees such as the baobab and iroko are revered as ancestors themselves, places of gathering, storytelling, and ritual. The tree is not a metaphor for community; it is the community’s center.

Celtic Druids likewise revered oaks and yews, holding ceremonies in groves. Mistletoe growing on oaks was especially sacred, believed to embody divine vitality. These groves were what Haraway might call “tentacular nodes,” entangled sites of relation where human, animal, plant, and divine life braided together.


Norse Mythology: Yggdrasil

Norse mythology centers its cosmos upon Yggdrasil, the great ash tree. Its branches span the heavens; its roots drink from wells of wisdom and fate. Odin, in search of knowledge, sacrifices his eye at the Well of Mimir. Later, he hangs himself upon Yggdrasil for nine nights to gain the runes. Wisdom here is costly, rooted in suffering and sacrifice.

But Yggdrasil is under threat. Serpents gnaw at its roots, Ragnarok looms, yet the tree sustains all realms. It is fragile and resilient at once, much like our own ecological situation.


Chinese Traditions: Trees of Immortality

In Chinese myth, the fusang tree in the east holds the rising sun, anchoring cosmic order. The peach tree of immortality, tended by the Queen Mother of the West, bears fruit every 3,000 years, granting eternal life. Pines, peaches, and cypresses all became emblems of endurance, long life, and the Dao’s flowing balance.

Here again, trees bridge the human and cosmic, marking time’s rhythm and pointing to the way of harmony.


Wisdom, Life, Connection

Stepping back across cultures, we see three recurring themes:

Wisdom: Trees stand at thresholds of knowledge — Eden’s fruit, Yggdrasil’s well, the Bodhi’s silence, the Sidrat al-Muntaha’s boundary.

Life: Trees embody vitality — food, healing, shade, immortality. Their seasonal cycles mirror death and rebirth.

Connection: Trees serve as axis mundi, mediators of heaven and earth, ancestors and descendants, divine and human.

But with Haraway and Le Guin in mind, we can say more. Trees are not just vertical axes; they are networks. They are “carrier bags” of biodiversity, gathering species in their canopies and roots. They are “tentacular,” stretching mycorrhizal threads through soil, binding together whole communities.

If earlier ages saw the tree primarily as a ladder to the divine, perhaps our age can see tree as a web, and recognize in that web our own entanglement with the more-than-human world.

Religious traditions often use trees to point beyond themselves, such as metaphors for wisdom, life, and connection. But metaphysics reminds us that this pointing is not merely symbolic; it reveals something of reality’s very structure.

For Alfred North Whitehead, reality is not made of inert stuff but of events, relationships, and becoming. A tree is not simply a “thing” but a nexus of processes: roots drawing up water, leaves breathing light, fungi threading connections underground. The tree discloses the metaphysical truth that being is relational, that life is constituted by giving and receiving.

Edith Stein’s On the Problem of Empathy makes a similar point from a phenomenological angle: to encounter a tree is to recognize it as more than an object, but as a living subject with its own interiority, its own trajectory of growth and flourishing. The “tree of life” is not a metaphor we impose; it is a reality we meet.

This is where Owen Barfield’s insight comes in: the symbolic power of trees is not arbitrary but reflects the way human consciousness evolves in dialogue with the living world. We do not invent the tree-as-symbol; rather, the tree discloses meanings that consciousness gradually awakens to.


Conclusion: Listening Again

Religions around the world remind us that trees are more than scenery. They are wisdom keepers, givers of life, and cosmic connectors. They hold our evolving consciousness: from mythic imagination to axial philosophy, from medieval mysticism to today’s ecological science.

In a time of deforestation and climate upheaval, the old teachers still stand. They whisper lessons of rootedness, interconnection, and renewal. Perhaps the most spiritual act we can take is also the most practical: to plant, to tend, to listen.

The Ecology of the Cross: Cruciform Trees

If trees are life-givers, they are also sites of suffering. The cross itself was once a tree that was chosen, chopped down, shaped into an instrument of execution that was reused countless times in the Judean countryside of what we modern people of the inherited West would call the first century anno domini or Common Era. And yet in Christian imagination, it became the cosmic Tree of Life. This paradox lies at the heart of what I have been calling the Ecology of the Cross.

In ecological terms, forests today stand as cruciform realities: logged, burned, cut down, yet also central to the healing of the planet. The crucified tree is not only Christ’s cross but also the Amazon rainforest under chainsaw, the black walnut in my backyard enduring storms, the pines of South Carolina clear-cut for development, or the oak trees that are carefully manicured for aesthetic purposes in countless pieces of “property” surrounding churches here in what we now call the Southeast of the United States.

The Ecology of the Cross invites us to see cruciformity not only in human suffering but in the more-than-human world. Trees bear the wounds of our extractive systems, yet they also continue to gift us life: oxygen, shelter, shade, renewal. In this sense, the cross is ecological: a revelation of life’s pattern as death-and-renewal, as sacrifice-and-gift.

Here the metaphysical vision and the theological converge. To stand before a tree is to be confronted with both beauty and fragility, both gift and wound. It is to be drawn into what William Desmond might call the metaxological, the between, where mystery breathes through being.

So when religions speak of trees, whether as wisdom, life, or cosmic connectors, they are not only projecting human stories onto nature. They are intuiting something real about the metaphysical and theological shape of existence.

And in an age of ecological crisis, these intuitions call us back. To see a tree as a teacher is to see the world as sacramental, alive with wisdom and suffering, calling for care. To embrace the Ecology of the Cross is to recognize that redemption is not apart from creation, but through it… through roots and branches, crucifixion and renewal, leaves for the healing of the nations.

As Wendell Berry once urged, “Practice resurrection.” A tree knows how.


Notes

  1. The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: National Council of Churches, 1989), Gen. 2:9.
  2. The Holy Bible, NRSV, Prov. 3:18.
  3. The Holy Bible, NRSV, Rev. 22:2.
  4. The Holy Bible, NRSV, 1 Pet. 2:24.
  5. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (New York: Paulist Press, 1990).
  6. The Qur’an, trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2:35; 53:14–16.
  7. The Qur’an, trans. Abdel Haleem, 24:35.
  8. Bhagavad Gita, trans. Eknath Easwaran (Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007), 15:1–3.
  9. Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).
  10. Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016).
  11. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (London: Ignota Books, 2019).
  12. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected ed., ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978).
  13. Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989).
  14. William Desmond, Being and the Between (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995).
  15. Wendell Berry, The Mad Farmer Poems (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2008).
  16. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), esp. chs. on sacred trees and the axis mundi.
  17. James Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1922), selections on tree cults and sacred groves.
  18. Matthew Hall, Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011).
  19. Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (New York: Bell Tower, 1999).
  20. John B. Cobb Jr. and Herman E. Daly, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

Integral Plasma Ecologies

Here’s a paper on integral plasma thoughts that I posted over on Carolina Ecology… I’m deeply fascinated by this topic that weaves together my background as a physics teacher and my PhD work in Religion and Ecology…

Integral Plasma Ecologies – by Sam Harrelson:

Plasma is not just a category of physics; it is a discipline for attention. It forces our concepts to move with fields and thresholds rather than with isolated things. Thomas Berry’s old sentence comes back to me as a methodological demand rather than a slogan… the universe is “a communion of subjects,” so our ontology must learn how currents braid subjects, how membranes transact rather than wall off, how patterns persist as filaments rather than as points.[1] Plasma is one way the communion shows its hand.

Integral_Plasma_Ecology.pdf

Integral Plasma Dynamics: Consciousness, Cosmology, and Terrestrial Intelligence

Here’s a paper I’ve been working on the last few weeks combining some of my interests and passions… ecological theology and hard physics. I’ve been fascinated by plasma for years and had a difficult time figuring out how to weave that into my Physics and AP Physics curriculums over the years. I’m grateful to be working on this PhD in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion and have felt a gnawing to write this idea down for a while now…

Abstract:

This paper proposes an integrative framework, Kenotic Integral Plasma Dynamics, that connects plasma physics, advanced cosmology, consciousness studies, and ecological theory through the lens of the Ecology of the Cross. Drawing on my background as an AP Physics educator and doctoral studies in Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion, I explore how plasma, the dominant state of matter in the universe, may serve as a medium for emergent intelligence and information processing, with implications for AI, ecological stewardship, and cosmic consciousness. Synthesizing insights from classical metaphysics, process philosophy, and modern physics, the work reframes cosmology as a participatory, kenotic process linking matter, mind, and meaning. It critiques the narrow focus on chemical-fueled space exploration, advocating instead for deepening terrestrial engagement with plasma, electromagnetic, and quantum phenomena as pathways to planetary and cosmic intelligence. The study highlights relevance for those interested in the physics of consciousness, information transfer, and plasma-based phenomena. It concludes with practical suggestions for interdisciplinary research, education, and technology aimed at harmonizing scientific inquiry, intelligence development, and integral ecological awareness to address critical planetary challenges through expanded cosmic participation.

Boundaries: Ecological Theology, Migration, and the Sacredness of the Non-Human

Presented to the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture June 2025 at University of California Santa Barbara.

In this paper for the ISSRNC, I explore how boundaries—ecological, theological, and social—are being redrawn in our time of climate disruption and mass displacement. Drawing from Christian theology, phenomenology, and lived experience in the Carolinas, I argue that the sharp lines we’ve inherited between human and non-human, land and sea, self and other, are not only breaking down, but inviting reimagination. From Aquinas’ vision of a diverse creation reflecting divine goodness, to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodied perception, to Edith Stein’s account of empathy beyond the human, I trace a theological-phenomenological approach to seeing the more-than-human world as sacred.

Through stories of storms like Hurricane Helene and the increasing migration of people, plants, and animals, I reflect on how we might live more ethically in a world of porous boundaries. What does it mean to see a floodplain or barrier island as holy ground rather than real estate? How can faith communities respond not only to human migrants but also to the migrations of forests and species? Ultimately, I propose an “Ecology of the Cross”—a theology rooted in kenosis, interdependence, and sacramental welcome—as a way to meet this moment with humility, compassion, and reverence.

Re-envisioning Boundaries: Ecological Theology & Migration in the Carolinas

I presented this paper earlier today at the ISSRNC conference in beautiful UC Santa Barbara…

Re-envisioning Boundaries: Ecological Theology & Migration in the Carolinas:

Today, I presented this paper at the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture’s 2025 conference titled “Crossing Borders, Transgressing Boundaries: Religion, Migration, and Climate Change.”

Here is the abstract of my paper, followed by the full paper below, as well as the slides to help those who enjoy such…

“This paper proposes a fresh theological framework for addressing climate-driven human and non-human migration by re-envisioning ‘boundaries’ as sacred membranes rather than fixed walls. Starting with biblical exile narratives and covenantal land ethics, the study traces a scriptural arc from Edenic displacement to the open-gated New Jerusalem. Drawing on Thomas Aquinas’s Aristotelian metaphysics of diverse participation in divine goodness, it affirms the intrinsic value of every creature and landscape. A phenomenological lens, as seen in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of “flesh” and Edith Stein’s embodied empathy, reveals the porous intersubjectivity of humans, animals, and ecosystems, thereby challenging the modern Human/Nature divide.

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!

“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.”

Ecological Intentionality: Performing Peace Beyond Human Boundaries

Here’s a paper that I presented at this year’s American Academy of Religion, Western Region held at Arizona State University in March 2025 (Tempe is quite beautiful in March, btw!). It’s a good starting point for approaching my work and research called The Ecology of the Cross as a part of my PhD interests (and hopefully beyond)…

“This work explores the intersection of ecology and religion, theology, and phenomenology, drawing particularly on process thought, embodied consciousness, and participatory awareness via decolonization. I want to suggest that ecological intentionality offers a framework for peace that extends beyond Human interactions, challenging anthropocentric models of peace and instead envisioning peace as a relational, ecological, and more-than-human performance. I’ll begin by defining this concept of ecological intentionality within a phenomenological and process-relational framework, then explore its implications for peace beyond Human boundaries through examples drawn from both ecological and spiritual contexts. Finally, I’ll propose that peace, in this framework, is not simply an absence of conflict but a mode of relationality grounded in ecological reciprocity and mutual flourishing. This is part of a larger project for my PhD work that I’m calling Ecology of the Cross in reverence to Edith Stein and her influential work (on me), The Science of the Cross.”