Eco-systems – Feminism and Religion

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: The Spirit of Capitalism vs. the Spirit of Traditional Rural Life

This was originally posted on Dec 29, 2014

In this picture, Marika from Skoteino Crete toasts our group and downs a glass of her homemade raki. Marika, who is best friends with Christina who makes lunch for us, has just returned from her home next door with her gift of a glass of raki for each of us.

Marika, who has little, is eager to give to us. Hers is but one of many gifts from the heart we receive on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Why is it that we who have so much do not give as spontaneously?

One answer is that capitalist individualism has taught us to count our worth by how much we have and to fear for the day when we will have nothing.

These words may be a cliché, but they hold a profound truth nonetheless.

Heide Goettner-Abendroth tells us that in matriarchal societies with small-scale sustainable agricultural economies, people did not hoard or save for a rainy day. With the labors of their bodies and minds, they took only what they needed from the land. When there was a surplus, they gave parties, sharing what they had with others. Even with the coming of patriarchy, ancient matriarchal customs of generosity survived among rural farmers.

Autumn Equinox ’26 – Seeding by Sara Wright

Everywhere I go seeds are taking to the air or spilling out of capsules, flowerheads, mushrooms and lichens.

Yesterday two women gathered in the local pollinator garden where millions of seeds were rattling in light winds. Hundreds of wild asters had shriveled flowerheads, seeds still hidden. Some bean pods were splitting open spilling out black and white beads. The entire garden was a celebration of what seeds do so effortlessly. Provide for the Future of Life.

Accustomed to a riotous bouquet of blossoms, initially I noted the lack of brilliance that characterized summer in this overstuffed garden! But because we were meandering, I began paying more attention to seed heads while the woman I was with was collecting seeds. The more I looked the more ingenious these capsules, seedheads, pods became! I too began seeding, entranced by the infinite variations on one theme; after a while all I could see were seeds!

This was a perfect day to acknowledge the autumn equinox turning because this was the time of the seeding up and the time of letting go.

Notes from the ‘Field’ in August 2026, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

Choosing Change:

Because of such poor air quality Coalie and I walk in the morning when the air is clear or isn’t as toxic as it will be by afternoon. For the last two years the ozone level has skyrocketed due to unchecked deforestation, and the ever- worsening particulates burn my eyes. Headaches strike as soon as the air begins to thicken. As a result, summers have become another challenging season with me prioritizing clean air over outdoor time. My Coalie has a small set of lungs and mine are aging.

Although making this transition has been hard on the naturalist who thrives in the woodlands, the outcome is that we have adapted. I am grateful (and guilt -ridden) that raging fires are not at my door. I sense that the trees around me know their sisters and brothers are burning. I also note that when the air quality deteriorates Coalie wants to come indoors of her own accord. The lack of bird song on any day that the air is polluted is astonishing. My guess is that poor air quality is very apparent to all non – human beings.

I used to complain about my sensitivity to moderate air quality. Now I am grateful that my body makes it clear that we belong indoors, not even on the porch on ‘bad air days’ which are increasing in severity. It troubles me to watch others running or biking on the roads for fun. Virtually all other outside work is done with air polluting machines contributing mightily to the problem. The exception is a person like me who chooses to do outside chores by hand. But only on days when the air is relatively clear. But I still drive a car.

Notes from the ‘Field’ in August 2026, part 1 by Sara Wright

I thought that I would tell a few personal animal stories because they are for the most part uplifting and demonstrate how easy it is to develop relationships with just about any non – human being you meet.

Heron – A Visitation

Imagine my astonishment when I walked by the window and saw a heron striding through tall grasses. A sword -like slivery beak and sinewy neck. One glassy eye. Grey blue body. Long splayed feet firmly planted on the ground with each determined step. My dog Coalie barked once and poof – heron was gone. Oh, I was so disappointed.

Baffled, I immediately walked outside trying to imagine what a heron could be doing walking by the house. Illumination struck when I noted a slight depression that led into wild summer greenery. Thick lush ferns hid the ‘pond’, a sunken barrel ringed with stone. Heron must have been on his way to fish there, a place where frogs often hunted from a partially waterlogged, moss-covered log. I parted the greenery as one green frog dove into murky waters. No doubt there were others close by.

Historically herons could be found hunting at the brook. l sometimes glimpsed one flying out of the gorge – a prehistoric being flapping his great, syncopated wings. With worsening drought conditions, the waters were low. Yet, frogs and toads were still abundant the last time I had been down there a few days before – enough to keep mink and weasels around all year. Tell -tale footprints were often visible in the mud.

Miriam MacGillis Discusses Thomas Berry’s View of the Universe, Transcribed by Janet Rudolph

Introduction: Miriam MacGillis is a modern-day prophet who not only holds a broad understanding of cosmology but brilliantly expresses it. She was an early colleague of Thomas Berry, introducing many people to the Story of the Universe. I have had the great honor of transcribing the tapes of her lecture series called Education for a Small Planet from 1986. Below is an excerpt from Tape 1B. It is edited for clarity. Excerpts from tape 1A can be read here and here.

***

Thomas Berry speaks about three principles which have been at the heart of the unfolding of the universe from the beginning. They are very simple and can’t be separated. I’m just separating them now [to discuss them]. In reality they’re three in one. They are extremely simple. Very often, the simplest things are the hardest things to grasp. But once we really begin to reflect on them and their implications, it’s so logical, so clear, so simple.

The first is the principle of differentiation. When we talk about the universe and its guidance system, this principle becomes even more highly articulated when we get to the Earth. It’s a very simple dynamic. Literally, all it means is that from the very beginning everything that is, is differentiated. You couldn’t have a universe unless there was differentiation of its elements. Because hydrogen and helium and carbon or whatever, grow into more complex structures . . it’s because they are different that they interact with each other and in that interaction cause each other to change. They cause each other to break down from being what they are in their simple state. In the dying of what they were in their simple state, they change and become transformed into something more complex.

Missing Trees by Beth Bartlett

The gap in the trees is a painful reminder of the one that is missing. This past winter an ice and wind storm late in the season brought down the aspen that had sheltered our deck. Its absence is more than a hole in the canopy – it is a hole in the heart. I miss its friendly presence, its shelter, its shade. I suspect I never fully appreciated it until now. It is just the latest in a long line of missing trees – trees lost to disease, insects, climate change.

The paper birch were the first to go. When my dad first bought our family cottage in 1964, paper birch trees arched delicately over the cottage, framing it in white branches against the blue sky. Another large birch stood as a landmark on the top of the hill, and another by the lake was the centerpiece of the circular bench built around it. Several more lined the path down to the lake and dotted the hillside.

When we bought our home in Duluth, paper birches graced the yard on all sides. In the woods out back I’d befriended several of the birches, naming them according to their distinctive shapes – there was the “Mama” birch with its bulging pregnant belly, the three then four-clump birches that I’d named after our music group – “Wild By Nature,” and the glorious “Tree of Life” – a magnificent clump birch of at least twenty connected trunks that served as a talisman for me during the most difficult days of my illness and for many years after my transplant.

Omen by Sara Wright

I was driving down the road when I noticed a dead owl. Sun glare blinded me, but I stopped to identify the bird.

It has been many years since I picked up dead owls on the road – thirty five years in all. I began this practice of bringing home the bodies of these creatures when I first moved to the mountains. Finding so many dead owls in a brief span of five years was frightening, but someone in me knew that I needed to honor these Harbingers of Night. Yet the last thing I wanted was to be identified or aligned with an owl, so my behavior rose out a body that never lies. Visions of my mother’s love of owls clouded my mind. Within months of this mountain move a Navajo Medicine woman informed me that I had Owl as a Familiar. Horrified, I resisted mightily. Yet despite what seemed like a curse, I was still compelled to sculpt owl pots out of clay for five years. The losses I endured during this time changed the course of my life.

I taught myself how to dismember owls. I burned owl remains in my woodstove as a symbol of deep respect and out of fear. I always kept feathers and wings in honor of these mysterious night beings not understanding why.

The Littlest Balsam by Sara Wright

Five years ago
I dug a seedling
in protest
ki’s deep green
needles
slender trunk
and roots
yielded
to sweet
spring earth
with prayers.

I believed.

One winter night
I will celebrate
your life
the lives of
thousands
with a
candlelit
spiral
of tiny white lights.

Tonight
white flames
adorn you
old longings
and heartbreak
we share the same
root
stilled by
simple beauty
a single
reflection
of Love.

A Goose Tale by Sara Wright

It’s the last day of November and small groups Canadian geese are still drifting around on patches of open water. I saw two small groups on North Pond. Although many skeins have flown south along the Atlantic flyway – they can migrate south as far as Mexico and South America -some geese spend the winter along coastal areas in Maine if food resources are available. It’s hard to know whether these groups are migrators from Canada who have stopped over to rest or a few that winter over nearby on the Kennebec or elsewhere along the southern coast of Maine. With warming temperatures Canadian Geese migratory patterns are changing.

Soon after their arrival the female disappears to lay 8 – 10 eggs in her nest that is securely hidden in the reeds while her mate stands watch. When the goslings are born both parents escort them through the water, one parent in front, the other behind. If threatened the male becomes aggressive, a totally appropriate behavior from my point of view. When the little ones are big enough these birds join other families for the rest of the summer and some will probably migrate together. These are such community oriented birds. They make it a habit to get along. Geese are omnivores that will eat almost anything and they mate for life, returning to their designated ‘home’ places to breed year after year. Even before the chicks arrive geese are drawn to some of the 400 million lawns in this country (especially those that are close to water) much to the dismay of some.

The Return of Little Deer by Sara Wright

“From out of the mountain he comes
Like the Spirit of Light he comes…”
Cherokee Myth

Having just spent almost three hours on Zoom with an interviewer from NPR during which we spoke about the normalcy of interspecies communication for some like me, Little Deer appeared at my window, lifted his head and stared right through me.

I haven’t had a young buck roaming around the house for a while but this kind of conversation between humans who believe we are all part of one fabric brings in the animals.

I recognized him Immediately.

The Cherokee myth states that a mysterious deer materializes from out of the mountain on behalf of the animals in times of trouble. They call him the Justic Maker.

As Justice Maker, he protects creatures from harm and redresses grave imbalances between humans and the rest of Nature .

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at his return.