Towards the end of Braiding Sweetgrass, mother, biologist, and member of the Citizen Potawami Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer sets out at the end of winter to visit a forest area near her home that she considers hers not in name but in virtue of her love and care for it. On arriving, she discovers that the forest is no more, having been clear-cut by the owner. The wildflowers and the plants she has harvested over the years have sprouted up, but Kimmerer knows that without the forest cover they will be burned by the sun and their places taken by brambles. Continue reading “Meeting the Windigo by Carol P. Christ”
Category: Ecofeminism
Re-reading Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN by Joyce Zonana
And so is born the “monster” most people associate with the name Frankenstein–a lone and lonely terrorist who lashes out against a world that has no place for him. One by one, he strangles all the people his “maker” holds dear: his brother William, his best friend Clerval, and his cousin/bride Elizabeth. Yet the novel invites us to have compassion for the creature, even while it condemns the society that makes him as he is. Victor, raised by a devoted mother and tenderly loved by a doting cousin, should have known better. As should we.
A few weeks ago, a former colleague invited me to visit one of his classes, to discuss Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and the essay I’d published about it almost thirty years ago, “‘They Will Prove the Truth of My Tale: Safie’s Letters as the Feminist Core of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” To prepare for that visit, I’ve spent the past few days re-reading the book, and I’m overwhelmed anew by the beauty of Shelley’s language, the brilliance of her plot, and the profoundness of her themes. The book moves me even more today than when I first read it.
Continue reading “Re-reading Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN by Joyce Zonana”
When the Cranes Come by Sara Wright
Departure.
I stood deep
in a toad hole
slinging mud
at twilight
when the sky
turned lemon
and gold.
They arced
over
my head
in pairs,
loose aggregations –
it seemed like thousands
crying out,
crossing
the river.
Ensouled.
Spirits defying
image or word.
A Mighty Migration begins…
I shivered.
Tears rose unbidden
Who calls them North?
I call out “I love you” –
Believing they know.
A crescent moon listens
cradled by nightfall.
To witness
a sky full
of Sandhill
Cranes
dark red heads
ebony eyes
long graceful necks
curved gray wings
dripping black legs
descending out of the blue
to roost
along this
winding Red
Willow River,
gracing fields
of depleted grain
is a Gift
given
at midnight;
the moment
before
departure.
This turning
of the wheel
births
days full of light
and an empty
sky bowl.
Haunting cries
in my ears
ring in the silence
of beloved crane absence
for another year.
Continue reading “When the Cranes Come by Sara Wright”
For Love of Trees by Sara Wright
Yesterday I dreamed that I discovered a bird’s nest that was hidden in the center of an evergreen tree. This little dream moved me deeply because this is the time of year I celebrate my love and gratitude for all trees, but especially evergreens, and the dream felt like an important message. For me in winter, the “Tree of Life” is an evergreen.
Outdoors, I recently placed a glass star in the center of my newly adopted Juniper here in New Mexico, repeating a pattern that began in Maine years ago with my Guardian Juniper in whose center I also placed a star…Inside the house an open circle created out of a completely decayed tree trunk sits at the center of my Norfolk pine; around the room spruce, juniper and pinion boughs are twinkling with miniature lights. The tree has a festival of lights at her feet. The point of making these gestures is to keep me mindful that tree bodies are sacred in their wholeness and each tree explicates the immanence of divinity. Another way of saying this is to say that Natural Power lives in trees. This goddess is steadfast. Continue reading “For Love of Trees by Sara Wright”
Receiving, Giving, Reciprocating vs. Nonintervention: Two Different Models for Environmental Ethics by Carol P. Christ
“Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, to reciprocate.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer
The notion of a gift economy is at the heart of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer shares a different way of being in the world: one that recognizes the gifts that have been given to us and the necessity to reciprocate. In the modern world we have been taught that nature’s resources are ours for the taking. We have not been taught that nature’s resources are not infinite, that they exist in a web of interdependent relationships in which minerals, plants, animals, and human beings all participate. Everything we do has consequences for other living things.
For many environmentalists, the goal is to leave “wild” nature alone. In this model, the destruction human beings have done to nature is recognized. But what is not understood is that human beings are part of nature too. For hundreds of thousands of years, we and our ancestors have interacted with nature. The model of setting aside spaces for wild nature does not recognize that human beings can interact in positive ways with nature and that we have done so for millennia. Continue reading “Receiving, Giving, Reciprocating vs. Nonintervention: Two Different Models for Environmental Ethics by Carol P. Christ”
Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer
Almost every day, I walk in Central Park. There are certain trees there I’ve come to know: the gnarled cherry trees by the reservoir, the bending willows and tall bald cypress by the pond, the sycamores that drop their bark each summer, the hawthorn not far from Central Park West. Lately I’ve been taking photos of the trees to try to capture their essence, their posture in the world. The trees around me feel like friends, which is what an ancient midrash (interpretation/legend) called Genesis Rabbah says about trees: that they are friends to humankind. To me, they’ve always been a central manifestation of Mother Earth.
Currently, the national parks in the United States have no staff because of the government shutdown. Some people have taken the opportunity to cut down the rare and endangered Joshua trees in the Joshua Tree National Park—just for fun, I guess, or as a trophy of some kind. Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro of Brazil recently has indicted that he wants to remove protection for the rainforest, in order to allow development. It appears that my friends the trees have enemies. Sometimes the enmity is for personal/corporate gain, and sometimes the enmity seems to have no reason at all.
Continue reading “Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer”
When “The Storm Left No Flowers” – A Review by Sara Wright
During the last year I have been struggling with the catastrophic effects of Climate Change like never before as I witness the continuation of a drought that is withering plants, starving tree roots, shriveling our wildflowers and wild grasses, leaving our mountains barren of snow, and changing the face of the high desert for the foreseeable future. With forest fires leaving me literally breathless from plumes of thick smoke that turn the sun into a ball of orange flames at dawn, unable to cope with 100 plus degree heat, my body forces me to surrender: I will not be able to make my permanent home here. Instead I will migrate like the birds do – from south to north and back again.
Coming to terms with the ravages of Climate Change brought me to my knees; it has been one of the most difficult adjustments I have ever had to make. I mourn the death of the trees, plants, the loss of precious frogs and toads, insects, birds, lizards – every plant and creature is under attack and few of us can thrive (let alone survive) in such an unforgiving climate. Continue reading “When “The Storm Left No Flowers” – A Review by Sara Wright”
Crow and The Pornographic Gaze by Sara Wright
Once she believed that
it was her fault
they came on to her,
that she owed them
something…
They owned her?
Secretly the
girl was pleased
because any kind of attention
was better than none,
or being so “different” –
stitched into an Indian skin.
She was a pretty shell,
an abandoned spiral
worn down by waves –
assaulted from within
by the pornographic gaze.
How she hated being young. Continue reading “Crow and The Pornographic Gaze by Sara Wright”
We Might Need to Die by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee
Last week was the first week of Advent – in my tradition, the week of lighting a candle for Hope. This year has felt uniquely intense as I enter into Advent. Hope, even as headline after headline continues to warn us of the climate crisis. Just this past week alone – the week of Hope – we read:
EPA Rolls Back Coal Rule Despite Climate Change Warnings (CNN)
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accelerate Like a ‘Speeding Freight Train’ in 2018 (NY Times)
Climate Change and Marine Mass Extinction (Science Magazine)
David Attenborough Warns Of ‘Collapse Of Civilizations’ At U.N. Climate Meeting (NPR)
The Climate Apocalypse is Now, and it’s Happening to You (Wired)
Hope? In the midst of literally the greatest crisis in the history of the planet? We are facing alarmingly strong odds of annihilation. Hope? Hope for what?
Continue reading “We Might Need to Die by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”Broken Pot by Sara Wright
When Emmy handed me the pot I held it gently in my palm, marveling over its rounded shape, the warm earth tones, the sparkling mica speckled through the smooth clay.
“It’s broken,” she said simply as I turned the small pot in my hands, laying my cheek again her soft skin. How did she manage to stretch the clay that thin?
“I think it’s beautiful just as it is,” I responded gazing at the lines where the clay had cracked in the fire – almost as if it was meant to be this way.” I peered inside the neck of the bowl to see two pieces of broken lip nestled in the bottom, two sisters asleep in the arms of their mother. Continue reading “Broken Pot by Sara Wright”
Feminism and Religion 