Nature Awareness

This section is perhaps most and least difficult to me. I live in a modern world, yet hearken back to an ancient time spiritually; I look at the world through the eyes of an engineer, and so believe in taking care of the environment. There is a saying, “The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts.” When I first saw it, I applied it to the art and science of engineering; later, I would apply it to environmentalism. I did not yet know it was part of a larger quotation of Aldo Leopold (some variants are attributed to Paul Erlich) that had an explicit natural focus.

It would seem as if that saying promotes a mechanistic view of the world, but to me this promotes a large picture view. The environment is as bound by wyrd as we are; our actions affect it. My own personal experiences of the environment from a spiritual standpoint have taken two forms. One, which has arrived unbidden as well as through clearing the mind, is that of the intense complexity and throbbing of life through the environment. This awareness causes me to see things completely differently than I did before. The other, which has only come unbidden, and only on occasion, is a sense of the immense unity of all nature, with us. Bound together by wyrd, it’s hard not to intellectually realize how each part interacts.

As a system with multiple parts interacting, nature too takes part in reciprocity. The question, then, is how to give nature appropriate honor. One can make offerings to subsets of nature directly. The winter birdfeeder I put out after winter is underway is an offering to the birds, who in return bless me with their presence in winter. (Discussion of the pros and cons of feeding birds is likely beyond the scope of this essay, but is something I consider – and the reason I don’t feed year-round.) In the Spring I do not discourage my wife from putting out eggshells and hair for the birds though it does look a bit odd. The birds eat the eggshells for calcium needed to produce eggs, I believe, while the hair is for nests. I also more directly participate in the collection of vegetable compost, which we return to a local farm (without cost or payment) as a way of returning the excess plant matter to the Earth.

From a more manifestly religious view, though the above is quite religious, I also make offerings to the Earth Mother, and strive to never forget her as I walk upon her every day. Later note-taking on my daily ritual practices has included weather comments – if I am part of the system of nature, my rites are likely to be affected by the weather here on earth. I can say that I’ve never had an outdoor rite rained out, though whether that is luck or blessings in return is not always clear. Every action taken with the appropriate care is an offering to honor the Earth. Care must be taken because not all appropriate actions are obvious; being penny-wise and pound foolish does not benefit nature.

Still, it is one thing to have such experiences, another to act on them. I do spend at least a few hours every week out in nature, as weather permits. I bring my collection of canvas bags to the grocery store to collect my groceries. I take my paper, cans, glass, plastic, and cardboard to the local collection site as well. I try to reuse items; as the home shrine pictures attest, I have a collection of reused containers. Indeed, to support reuse I not only joined Freecycle (local email lists devoted to keeping items out of the landfill by giving them away) but I also run the local Freecycle group and help operate the state moderators' help group (and a more distant group whose moderator needed help).

I have volunteered with the local watershed protection group, ClearWater Conservancy, to try to help organize local Pagans into a group responsible for a clean-up area. Also, I have been signed up with a local organic Community Supported Agriculture farm for the last four years, and help them on their volunteer workdays. Through this connection I also buy local meat and dairy products. As I live in an apartment it is not easy to directly use more efficent applicances, but I do clean the fridge coils and attempt to reduce energy use otherwise, including what my wife has described as “turning off lights religiously.”

It was on a workday at the farm that, perhaps, the strongest experience I have had of unity of nature came to me. Unbidden, I abruptly was struck by Thor’s role as an agricultural deity and supporter of the folk, and how it wasn’t just about us. I understood the reciprocity of His rains in the water cycle. I understood the linkage of nature to the artifice of agriculture. Even now, words are insufficient to express that sense of things. Perhaps they still are, but the sense of reciprocity – perhaps aided by my own cycle with the compost and other support to that farm – continues on.