In this episode Rev. Deborah and Elizabeth talk about the miracle of creation. They discuss their very different attitudes toward time outdoors and how our conversations about nature are a problem not just for politics and science but for the faithful as well.
Transcript
[00:03] Rev. Deborah Duguid-May (DDM): Hello and welcome to The Priest and the Prof. I am your host, the Rev. Deborah Duguid-May.
[00:09] Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe (MET): And I’m Dr. M. Elizabeth Thorpe.
[00:11] DDM: This podcast is a product of Trinity Episcopal Church in Greece, New York. I’m an Episcopal priest of 26 years and Elizabeth has been a rhetoric professor since 2010. And so join us as we explore the intersections of faith, community, politics, philosophy and action.
[00:37] MET: We are so happy you were joining us today. We are going to be talking about something that I know is particularly near and dear to Reverend Deborah’s heart. I am excited because it’s fun for me. We’re talking about creation. This is, it’s fun because Reverend Deborah and I are very different people in a lot of ways. We’ve talked about this. I am what you would call an indoors person. I like, you know, when I go on vacation, I want to go to a museum and, you know, sample the ethnic food. I’m like, When I was relaxing, I stay inside and have a glass of wine and put my feet up and watch TV. Whereas Reverend Deborah, what do you do when you have spare time?
[01:25] DDM: Oh my gosh, I wanna get into the barn. I wanna hang with my goats and my sheep. I love to go hiking and camping. If I had my way, I’d never live in a house and I’d live in a tent. Unfortunately, we live in Western New York and there’s way too much snow for that. But I love to sleep on the ground. I love to swim in ponds. I might even say that I sometimes even like the feeling of mud between my toes.
[01:51] MET: Right on. So when she said, let’s talk about creation, I was like, this is going to be fantastic. But the reason it’s going to be fantastic is because we have such wildly different attitudes about the great outdoors. I think it’s going to be fun because we actually come to pretty similar conclusions about some of this stuff. So I thought it would be interesting to talk about kind of our approaches to thinking about creation and how we think about this thing, this planet that we are floating around on. Anyway, so there’s our intro, if you will. Reverend Deborah, please tell us about our relationship to the world.
[02:33] DDM: Well, you know, let me start by sharing a story. And I wasn’t planning on this, but when you were speaking about it, it kind of made me think about it. When I was about 18 years old, I remember going on a retreat. It was 1 of your traditional, you know, clergy going on retreat. It was a silent retreat. And the 1 day I was, it was a hot South African summer afternoon and I didn’t have a towel. You know when you normally lie on the ground, you put a towel down, always something between us and the
[03:00] DDM: earth, right? Have you noticed that? And I didn’t have a towel with me and I thought oh I’m too lazy to go back and to the room to get a towel and so I simply laid down with my chest facing the ground you know how you do and you put your head on the ground mostly you’re lying on a bed and I could hear you know when you’re lying in the sun on the earth and you start to hear your own heartbeat, and I could hear my heartbeat. And at some point I started to hear a second heartbeat. It wasn’t my own. I could hear my own heartbeat. I started to hear another. And I thought, where is this beat coming from? And I realized that it was the earth. And I thought, does the earth have a heartbeat? And as I lay there and just listened to the difference between my own heartbeat rhythm and hers, right? I heard this voice and it said why do you hurt me? Why are you hurting me? Honestly, if I tell you from that moment onwards, my life changed. Because I suddenly, for the first time, realized creation isn’t just a thing. It’s not just material matter. That there actually is an essence of being that is distinct and individual, that feels pain, and that in some ways can we relate maybe if we if we quieten ourselves down enough to hear. So that’s just a little experiential story to kind of share, you know, really what was a fundamental shift for me in my own relationship to creation. But in terms of the church in September, what we call the season of creation. Now that liturgically was not always there historically, right? Let me just say upfront, this is a new introduction to the liturgy in a response, the church’s response to I think the incredibly severe catastrophe of the environmental crisis that we’re actually in and walking further and deeper into. So the season of creation really, I think has been instituted by the church in order to try to educate us around the importance of creation and our relationship with creation. But for myself, whenever I hear the church speak about the season of creation or just creation in general, There is a deep ambiguity for me in this, right? And so I may be a priest, but I’m not always an apologetic for the church, okay? Just upfront. So if you go back in our scriptures to the original Hebraic understanding, right? So if you look in your early chapters of Genesis there is this understanding that God creates everything number 1 right everything is sacred it’s this world of beauty and diversity and whose relationships are primarily named by Shalom, by peace, right? And so this understanding of all matter being sacred is really important in those beginning chapters of Genesis. There’s not this distinction between the spirit and matter. And so in the Hebraic original understanding it’s almost like spirit is so woven through matter almost at a cellular level that only God can birth spirit into matter and only God can pull spirit out. So you think about a child being born, right? God breathes spirit into that child and at death, the breath returns to God, right? But we can’t separate that deep intertwining and interwovenness of spirit and matter. That’s an important point because that’s going to shift hugely by the time we shift to the New Testament. But in the Old Testament still there’s this understanding that everything has a name. Everything is named and naming is so important because when I know your name, I know something about you, right? To be nameless, I think is 1 of the most terrible things, right? To never be named. And so for everything to be named means that it is there to be known, it is there to be related to. The irony is in the early books of and the early parts of Genesis animals are not even killed for food, right? Only fruit and seed bearing plants are given for human consumption, not even other animals at this stage are killing other animals. And so it really is this image of complete integration, wholeness and that Hebrew concept of shalom, peace. But as Christianity emerges out of those indigenous roots, we start to see a very different way of relating to creation. So in the New Testament ironically it’s an interweaving between the Hebraic understanding but now the Greco-Roman understanding starts to come in, right? And that worldview was far more dualistic, meaning that things were always separated, right? So spirit was seen as sacred, matter was seen as defiling or polluting, right? And I mean, they went on to say, you know, male is like the divine, female is unclean and polluting, right? And they would divide everything. The mind was superior and the emotions in the heart, certainly inferior, right?
[08:40] MET: That gets picked up in like enlightenment thinking later. Cartesian dualism.
[08:44] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And that really comes out of that whole Greco-Roman tradition. So you start to see that worldview now being imprinted onto our relationship, not just to creation, but even in some ways to human bodies, particularly female human bodies, bodies that are in some ways perhaps seen as quote unquote deformed, all right, or the poor, right? So you see that dualistic viewpoint really being implanted on. But by this stage, if we’re to be honest, by this stage, even the indigenous worldview of the Hebraic people had also shifted and devolved into the clean and the unclean, polluting and non-polluting concepts around matter. Concepts around matter. And then of course if you take Christianity further by the time it becomes the faith of the empire in Constantine’s time, right, we have such a hierarchical, I would almost say militaristic view of Christianity developing that that original wholeness and integration by this stage is really literally shattered. And so it’s very interesting because you see these contrary views even within the Christian tradition. So we have these aspects of the Christian tradition that are phenomenal in terms of creation. But later on, we see the Christian tradition really becoming a part of the problem of the destruction of creation, and so emphasizing the spiritual that we start to have very little regard for the material and the physical.
[10:29] MET: So I’m going to use that to kind of transition into a conversation that’s going on in my field, not specifically about creation, but also kind of about creation. Right? So you’re talking about the church kind of being a problem. As you know, I’m in the field of communication, specifically on rhetoric. The field of science communication is a huge thing right now. It’s like a burgeoning field. And it’s specifically because of these problems that you are talking about, right? Like my discipline recognizes that these issues of what we are talking about creation, But these issues of what do we do about climate? What do we do about all these things that we’re talking about are specifically things that we need to be concerned about. So we’re asking about how do we communicate about science and how does science communicate to us, which if you’re a person of faith is a question about creation as well. So I’m going to kind of tell you about what’s going on, where I’m coming from and see if we can make a few connections if you don’t mind.
[11:48] DDM: Nice. Yeah.
[11:52] MET: So I’m going to tell you a little bit about my personal experience. I actually taught, Okay, let me go back a little bit. I actually taught a class in scientific rhetoric a couple of semesters ago. And I think that was a little bit surprising to my students because you don’t think of science is particularly rhetorical, right? Like science is about facts, right? There are facts and they’re not facts. But when I present this idea to my students is science rhetorical, they’re like, no, science is not rhetorical. And I’m like, well, let’s choose an example. And when I choose this example, Reverend Deborah, I’m going to make some wild generalizations, but then I’m going to acknowledge the problems with those generalizations. But I said, okay, let’s take vaccines. Okay. Right. Right. Vaccines. Many people would say that vaccines are a good thing. Many people would even argue they are a universal good thing. Like vaccines save lives. Like we can point to the fact that vaccines save lives. Now, we have to acknowledge there are some cultural things there, right?
[13:16] DDM: I was going to say Africa has a very difficult relationship with vaccines.
[13:19] MET: I am sure Reverend Deborah could point to the fact that vaccines have been used to cover up a lot of ills in various parts of the world. Like vaccines have been weaponized in certain places. Western medicine has been weaponized in various parts of the world, but we can point to the fact that vaccines have been like saving a lot of lives for like we eradicated polio, right? Like smallpox is not a thing in many parts of the world. And I feel assured in saying that a lot of the people who are doing this anti-vaccine rhetoric are not thinking about what happened in South Africa and Palestine, right? Like they’re talking about different conversations. Yeah, They’re talking about, oh, it causes autism and oh, COVID vaccines didn’t save any. That’s nonsense. Like none of that is true. So the question then is why are we debating vaccines? Like Why is America having a vaccine debate? Right? Like the people who are anti-vaccine are not concerned about Tuskegee. Right? That is not what they are arguing about. We could have a discussion about Tuskegee. It would be a important and good discussion, but that is not what we are talking about. So what is happening? Science is rhetorical, right? Like that is what I am saying. We don’t argue about facts anymore. The fact is that vaccines save lives. That is not what we are talking about in public anymore. We are arguing about who has the best argument. And that is an important part of thinking about creation at this point. The reason I bring that up is because if you’re gonna talk about climate, which is essential to creation, we have to think about this as a rhetorical maneuver. And it is wild to me because I think about like when I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, this wasn’t an argument, right? Like the world was getting hotter. There was a hole in the ozone layer.
[15:28] DDM: I remember that.
[15:29] MET: We just did something about it. Like as a planet, we just decided, well, the world’s getting hotter. We should do something about it. CFC is we’re going to fix it. And we did it. And like, the ozone got fixed and like, we’re like, okay, problem solved. It wasn’t until much later that there was this rabid vitriolic anti-science narrative. And that is 100% a capitalist issue. We can talk about that all you want to later, if that’s your jam, but this anti-science narrative really picked up. I don’t even know if I could put a date on it, but it is a rhetorical problem as much as anything else, right? And 1 of the things we talked about in my class is that the both sides-ism of it is hugely problematic, right? Like there is consensus on why this is a problem. There is not a question in the scientific community. Climate change is a problem and humans caused it. That’s the end of the story. But it has been such a misguided narrative in the public. If 99 scientists agree this is the problem, this is why it happened, and 1 scientist disagrees, And you have 1 scientist who says it is a problem and we caused it. And then the 1 scientist who disagrees, and you put them in conversation, you are not representing the debate. That is, That is a misrepresentation of what is going on. That is not democratic or egalitarian or whatever it is you’re trying to do. And in America, we are so obsessed with, oh, we have to have a democratic debate. That is not a democratic debate. That is a misrepresentation of the issue. And we have like, there are people of ill will who have used this, oh, we have to be democratic to misrepresent the debate. And the reason I bring this up is because this idea that science is rhetorical and the both sides of it, we have made the discussion about creation sinful. Science is rhetorical. And we are making the discussion sinful in my mind because we are lying about it.
[17:57] DDM: Right, right.
[17:58] MET: And that’s not what I taught in my classes, obviously, because I don’t preach the word when I’m teaching.
[18:05] DDM: Elizabeth, it’s so interesting you use the word sinful, because when you said that, I was trying to unpack in what way you were meaning that, because the root of sin is to alienate us from 1 another. And so when you’re representing the climate catastrophe that we’re in and facing, in a sinful way, it’s a way that actually does alienate us from 1 another because we no longer can even agree on the facts, but it also alienates us from the reality of the context that we’re actually having to face. 100%. Yeah, it’s very, it was an interesting choice of words, you know, because I always like to unpack theological language, you know?
[18:43] MET: Right, and like, this is, once again, this is not how I teach this concept in my classes, but in my mind, the climate debate is sinful because we are misrepresenting what we know about it. It is. It is a lie. And I have, it is 1 thing to say, Oh, I disagree with this argument. It is quite another to say, I am going to lie to you about what is being said. For sure.
[19:18] DDM: I mean, That is an unethical position to take.
[19:23] DDM: Absolutely.
[19:25] MET: And so I think the creation argument that’s out there is, As it’s purported right now, it is a state of sin. If I can be so judgmental, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s just my, whatever. The other thing, I don’t know, did you want to jump in?
[19:47] DDM: No, no, I was fascinated just by that.
[19:49] MET: The other thing that I would say is there are ways that creation talks to us, right? Like we talk about creation that way And there are ways creation talks to us. I’m gonna talk about, there’s this article in my field and it’s so funny, because I absolutely hate it. But I keep coming back to it. By this guy named George Kennedy and it’s called “A Hoot in the Dark.” And in my mind, it’s just nonsensical. But whatever, I’m going to talk about it.
[20:24] DDM: Okay.
[20:25] MET: And it’s, he claims that rhetoric predates speech. And the way he makes this argument is he says animals have been making claims and arguments way before we were talking and he uses owls as his examples, right? A hoot in the dark. So he’s like owls and other animals, like they are out there in the wild and they’re marking their territory and they’re saying things like, don’t come my way and I’m looking for a mate. And like, and he’s talking about, owls are out there in the twilight in the middle of the night and they’re telling you things. He says, so animals make arguments, they make claims, like they stake out their territory. They are out there making noise, telling you things. So he says that this is rhetoric. Animals are involved in rhetoric. I think that is a nonsensical definition of rhetoric. But he then goes on to talk about, if that is the case, then rhetoric is this force that enlivens all of us. So rhetoric is not this argument. It is not identification the way this guy Burke talks about it. It’s not this Aristotelian like make your claim, provide your proof, blah, blah, blah, which you learned in fourth grade, you know, persuasive writing, whatever. Rhetoric is an animating force at the heart of all of us that leads us to announce I am here. I have wants. You know, I am. Right. Okay. That’s interesting. But in my mind, that’s not rhetoric. That is like creation. You know, that’s the divine spark at the heart of all of us. That’s for theologians, not people in my field, which is why I keep coming back to this Kennedy article because I’m fascinated by the idea that there is something we all share that is at the heart of us that is spark of us. But I don’t think that’s rhetoric. I think that’s something much more divine. I don’t know, so that’s my…
[22:48] DDM: But you know, it’s interesting you say that Elizabeth, because you know, that divine spark in all of us, how interwoven that divine spark in us has to do with communicating. Like if you look at it, I mean, the first thing God does when God creates is begin to communicate. And the first thing we do is we start to communicate. I mean, think about a child and a parent. The first thing we do is we start to communicate. I have no idea on the definition of rhetoric. I have no idea. So whether what is rhetoric and what isn’t, I have no idea.
[23:20] MET: Like when I tell people what I do, that is a 100% conversation killer.
[23:25] DDM: But I love that concept of, of that, of, of that big, that’s something that is alive within us and within creation. You know, I mean, for me, spirituality is always essentially about being known and knowing another, right? I mean, theology is not essentially about concepts, laws, right? You know, concept essentially is about is about relationship and that expanding relationship.
[23:56] MET: That takes us right back to that first episode where we talked a lot about relationship versus rules. I think that’s going to be thematic for us.
[24:04] DDM: Absolutely. And so it’s an expanding concept of knowing God, knowing myself, knowing other human beings and knowing all of creation, but in this deeply relational way, right? And what does it mean to even be known by creation? You know, like, I mean, it’s something I think we seldom think about, like, how does creation know me?
[24:31] MET: That is a great question. You know,
[24:33] DDM: You know, how does the earth know me? Like, does the earth know my footprint and my steps on her body? Does the earth know the sound of my laugh? You know, What impact does my physicality in this world have on the earth and how does she feel about it? And I’m sorry, I’m just using the pronoun she. I guess that’s just my own experience. That’s my own experience with God, you know. I think what’s also so interesting is in theology, there is this concept of, it’s not like we have creation and it simply is and how do we save it but there really is this concept of in latin it’s called creatio continua right but this understanding that God didn’t just historically create, but that God is consistently creating new life every single moment of every day. And I love this concept, right? That in a way that divine spark is manifesting every single time the skin cell on my body regenerates or the hair cell on my body regenerates. There is creation happening within me at this very moment and there is creation happening within the soil at this very moment and there is creation, you know, new species are being born and so I love this idea of creation not just being a thing, so we talk about creation like as a thing that we, how do we deal with or relate, but creation as this living dynamic, constantly evolving being that has life, you know? And so constantly literally is alive at the heart of everything. So I just think that’s incredibly beautiful. I think the other thing that I love about a theological perspective on creation is really that that naming That everything is given a name and you know, I think about for myself the difference between I’ll tell you a sad story tiny little 1 right now I’ve just got a new flock of sheep and I named my animals I and I know a lot of people would laugh and in farming right I name every 1 of my animals because it’s a way of saying, I’m gonna get to know you and your little personality and what you like and what you don’t and how you relate. I’m gonna give you that dignity of really relating to you, not just as a member of a whole flock of sheep, but you as little Rosie, for instance, right? But I have a little sheep right now that is going to become lamb. And it’s very interesting that I haven’t named that sheep. He’s simply, sorry to Chanel, but he’s, he’s sheep number 5, right? He’s sheep number 5. Right. And there’s a way in which I’m reluctant to name him because I’m scared to build a relationship with him knowing that that’s going to be the end of that relationship.
[27:33] MET: Isn’t that what they tell all the farm kids, right? Don’t name the ones you’re gonna…
[27:37] DDM: And what does that say? Is that I’m not able to enter into a relationship with you. So naming is essentially about relationship. And, you know, I think like, I mean, we think about the Genesis, the naming of everything, but I think to myself, like, how do we relate to trees around us if we don’t know their names? Because a tree is not just a tree. There is an oak and there is a maple and there is a locust and they’re very different and they have their own energies and their own medicinal qualities and their own relating to their own tree kin folk, right? And so, you know, I feel like there is a duty for us as human beings to actually start learning the names of those that we share this planet with. What are the names of these birds? What are the names of these trees? What are the names of these flowers and these herbs? And start, because we can’t start to build a relationship with them if we don’t know their names. And so I think there’s something very profound about making the time and the effort and the energy to learn the names of those that surround us. And then the other thing that I love also in theology is this concept of God so often coming in non-human form. You know, we live in this world where we’ve literally made God in our image, right? I mean, 100%, we’ve made God in our image. And yet, if you go back and you look at the scriptures, you know, God comes as a burning bush. God comes as light. God comes as a pillar of cloud or as fire by night. God is the dove or the lamb, you know, and, and I think we’ve, we’ve in many ways in the Christian tradition forgotten that God chooses equally to reveal God’s self in non-human form as God does in human form.
[29:29] MET: Well that relates directly to what I was talking about with that ridiculous article, right? Like, right. If there is something within us, then God can communicate, like creation can communicate to us in any number of ways. And I say this as somebody who is not out there in creation that frequently, but I am well aware that creation can speak to me as well. I mean, and if I can be receptive to a message from creation, anybody can. And like I say this jokingly, yes, I am not an outdoorsy person, but rest assured, I am well aware it is beautiful out there and we should be doing everything we can to conserve it because this is the existential crisis of our time. I have a child and if we don’t do what we can to preserve this miracle of creation, the world is not going to be habitable for my child. Like, just because I am not an outdoorsy person doesn’t mean I recognize this is the crisis of our time. Right? Like I can, I can talk all I want to about race relations? We can, you know, we’ve talked about poverty, we’ve talked about so many things, but This is it. This is the thing that’s going to face us all in the next 50 years and is going to be the thing that decides whether our planet is livable.
[30:54] DDM: Right. And I think part of for me, the essence of the problem is that we’ve lost the capacity to see creation as sacred. So we no longer see our forests as sacred, they’re commodities. We no longer see our rivers as sacred, they’re commodities. We no longer see the the animals that we share this planet with as sacred beings in their own right, they’re commodities. And so I think for me at the heart is we’ve lost the sacred worldview, to see ourselves and everything around us as sacred. And so what would it mean for us to really begin to reclaim that sacred worldview that says everything holds the life of God. Everything has a life and has a right to be and to flourish in this world just as we do as human beings.
[31:41] MET: And I think that’s why for me it was such a profound realization when I was thinking about like the way we talk about creation, these conversations are not just a rhetorical contrivance, right? Like when we talk about creation and we misrepresent the debate, it’s a sin. We were talking earlier, I have a bad relationship with that word because of the way I was raised, but sometimes you just have to call it out, right? Like, this is a misrepresentation of God’s will.
[32:16] DDM: Absolutely, absolutely. And I think the other side as well is to really recognize, you know, like for instance, there’s this beautiful book called, and I’m going to forget the name of the title now, The Life of Trees, I think it is. And I mean, it’s all the scientific research on trees that actually communicate. Oh, right. Trees feel emotion. Trees have compassion, you know? And it was really fleshing out almost the inner life of trees, right? And so what does it mean for us as human beings to actually begin to say, hang on, I’ve actually got to learn to begin to see how do these other species communicate? How do these other species forge a life for themselves that is about wholeness and integration, right? And yeah, I think we need to be called much more back into relationship with creation.
[33:30] MET: Thank you for listening to the Priest & the Prof. Find us at our website, priestandprof.org. If you have an questions or concerns, feel free to contact us at podcast@priestandprof.org. Make sure to subscribe, and if you feel led, please leave a donation at priestandprof.org/donate. That will help cover the costs of this podcast and support the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church. Thank you, and we hope you have enjoyed our time together today.
[34:00/span> DDM: Music by Audionautix.com
