Not One With Creation

My relationship with God's creation is best expressed by dipping into family lore and the story of my Mother waking up in the middle of the night in a Glacier National Park campground to see a bear seated between the cots holding my older brother and myself. As Mother described it, the bear's head was swinging from one of us to the other as if deciding which to eat first. My brother and I slept through all of it. That was the last night of what till then had been the family tradition of always camping on our vacations!

I had never really understood why one would trade the comfort of a bed and screens for lumpy ground or a malodorous cot and no windows. I do enjoy nature - I am awed by it, enthralled by it, amazed by it, but I am also keenly aware of why our ancestors sought to civilize the wildness of God's creation - it is frightening, threatening, and downright uncomfortable. We may be of creation, but we are not one with it. We remain strangers in a strange land because we can never forget that we are not one.

The Ecology of Eden by Evan Eisenberg (1998; Vintage; $16.00) was recommended to me by a friend who teaches theology and designs gardens: it is one of those books that I wish I had written. It is a broad musing on humanity and our relationship with the rest of nature. Using the mythologic poles of the mountain as symbol of wilderness and tower as symbol of human culture, Eisenberg explores our deeply felt goal of unity of self as the integration of the two poles. Like the wilderness that always recedes when humans take up residence, so this unity recedes from being settled. The book spans the microcosm of the soil, creation myths of the ancient Near East, gardens from the Persians to the suburban lawn, and modern ecology movements. However, it is solely Western in its purview. I am now curious as to whether the same disequilibrium could be described from an Asian perspective.

Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully (St. Martin's; 2002; $14.95) narrows the scope of inquiry from the human relationship with the whole of nature to our relationship with the animal kingdom. I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this book, because on the back cover is the author in suit and tie with a bio that indicates he is a speech writer for President George W. Bush --- a combination which does not call out to me 'animal rights' or 'environmentalism'. Scully writes from an unabashedly conservative point of view, politically and theologically, but so much the better for he takes on what I would describe as the commoditization of animals in contemporary society: animals turned into production units by hunting groups such as Safari Club International that raises animals to be released at the hunt and by commercial meat producers who raise chicken, pigs and cattle in factory conditions. Scully hunts not for our warm fuzzy feelings towards animals but for the more divine and humble qualities that we call mercy and justice. This is part expose, part jousting with scientists and theologians who view animals as unconscious and unfeeling, and altogether a challenging read.

On a less intimidating but no less moving note, is the book Dogspell: A Dogmatic Theology on the Abounding Love of God by Mary Ellen Ashcroft (Forest of Peace/Ave Maria Press; 2000; $10.95). If you are a dog lover, or know someone who is, get this book. Ashcroft muses on her dog named Cluny and other dogs they have met and thereby provides insights into the nature of God that are heartwarming, playful, and deep. Those who prefer a transcendent and uncivilized God will bristle at her audacity, but those who prefer that God was incarnated as a baby, played in mud puddles, sweated, shaping wood and stone, and died, all to demonstrate an outrageous love for the world, will be well rewarded.

And to come out full circle to meditations on the whole of nature and the human experience, Earth's Echo: Sacred Encounters With Nature by Robert M. Hamma (Sorin Books; 2002; $12.95). This is a daily meditation format book topically divided into the shore, forest, desert, river and mountain. Each topic has eight readings; each reading contains a page-length quote from authors as diverse as Terry Tempest Williams, Tony Hillerman and Loren Eiseley plus solid reflections and poems by Hamma. These are not cloying trifles on pretty sunsets and playful kittens. Hamma grapples with nature's beauty and grace and with its fearsomeness as well, always finding God in its midst.

David Davies is co-owner of Soul Desires bookstore in Omaha NE with his wife, the Rev. Susan Davies.