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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv8520187772 #yiv8520187772templateBody .yiv8520187772mcnTextContent, #yiv8520187772 #yiv8520187772templateBody .yiv8520187772mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv8520187772 #yiv8520187772templateFooter .yiv8520187772mcnTextContent, #yiv8520187772 #yiv8520187772templateFooter .yiv8520187772mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} } All nature was designed for revelation.
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Wild Courtship-Primal Speech
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| Essay by Rev. Matthew Syrdal
September 4, 2019“The heavens are rehearsing the glory of God… Day pours forth speech unto day; night reveals knowledge unto night. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” - Psalm 19I can still smell the pungent perfume of the desert sage congregating below me, rising up from the black depths beneath the canyon rimrock. Their silhouetted arms reach longingly upward toward the heavens. I feel them waiting, silently witnessing the night. The awakened gaze of innumerable stars burns overhead as the face of the moon delicately traces the warm sandstone contours of the canyon rim in a pale light. Alive and in sheer awe, my body stands at the edge of this dark world, vibrating in the stark illuminating gaze of the moon. A sea of darkness yawns open, revealing some other night calling to me in this thin moment. I hear it with my whole being, deep in my cells and bones. A singing. The unending grief of the earth and the longing of the stars calling to each other. Rising together into the night, the fragrance from the bush floor and the song of the cicadas are sown together in a haunting dirge. I listen to these primordial voices as if hearing sound itself for the first time—the sound of innocence in its world-making beauty. Erotic fragrances pour forth in unending praise, harmonizing with the melodic, meditative sounds of these stringed ones. Each note revealing a vaster, older and deeper liturgy—a courtship—that has long preceded human worship.On desert nights like these, I am reminded of the words of Steven Buhner who says, “There is a language in the world, much older than our own. Ours is only a reflection of that older language, our ‘take’ on it, our innovation.”All nature was designed for revelation. At least that’s what indigenous peoples, the Israelites, our church Fathers, and the Celts believed. Jesus himself, like Moses and the prophets Elijah and John the Baptizer, strode deep into the heart of the world, fasting for a vision—revelation. Jesus taught in parables with insights drawn from the seasons using Earth-based imagery. He and his disciples slept out under the stars in olive groves and in desolate places. Rapt in natural revelation. We experience these moments of sheer awe at dawn or dusk, a crisp silent winter-scape, or the delicate burst of a crocus. We feel seismic shifts of changing seasons, of birth and death, alluring us into our own utter contingency, as creatures. And sometimes we lose ourselves in deep rapture with the wild. These are moments of worship with and within the primordial liturgy of the universe itself. It is in these moments when we hear again the Old Language—when we remember. This is the original speech or conversation, the cosmic Sermon that the poets of Genesis and the the Apostle John wrote about—this Logos. The Word is the source, inspiration, and the longing that is worship, is life itself.I have noticed a resurgence of curiosity and interest in the scientific community for the ways in which all self-organized systems, including plants, communicate with each other and their environments. Truly, we live in a relational universe. Gregory Bateson in Mind and Nature develops the insight that growth and differentiation, the shapes of animals, plants and entire ecosystems, are in fact “transforms of messages.” In other words, there is a sacred grammar, a wild poetry, underlying the structural shape and contextual relationships of the visible world. It seems scientists are confirming what the mystics have intuitively perceived all along—there is no primary “stuff”, only a living field vibrating in liturgical harmony.Praying with nature is more than “I-Thou” communication, it is primal speech, an intuitive and improvisational participation in the cosmic conversation and ongoing courtship between the heavens and Earth, river rush and birdsong, the sacred and mundane, the divine and the natural. It is a process we undergo through faith as the Spirit of God tears a hole in our day to day awareness and we see “behind the veil” perceiving the depths of a meaning-filled, manifold universe.The apostle Paul speaks beautifully of our place in the cosmic liturgy of creation. In Romans 8:19-23, he says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed… We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly…”Worship with is a “groaning.” It a longing, filled with grief and joy. As our species continues to destroy other species and ecosystems, we are joined with creation in a collective grief, often deeper than our conscious awareness. But as Jesus says to his disciples, using the natural process of childbirth as an image of the kingdom of heaven, “your grief will turn to joy.” Our participation in worship with the creation is a type of courtship. Courtship is defined as “a period during which a couple develop a romantic relationship, especially with a view to marriage.” Courtship carries a romantic longing that evokes peculiar patterns of behavior. We make ourselves desirable for the other. We allure, entice, them into noticing us. We increasingly reveal deepening hidden reservoirs of beauty and truth about ourselves, so that the other can come to know us, and we them. There is a playfulness to courtship in the way it quietly stalks, allures, entices and persuades through moments of vulnerability and tenderness. Courtship is not a one-way street but a persuasive ebb and flow of longings, revelations, and risks. “The creation,” says Paul, “waits in eager expectation,” like a Lover for the Beloved “to be revealed.” Paul is using metaphor which hearkens back to the mystical and erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon, the language of desire. Author Trebbe Johnson writes of the World as a “waiting lover,” one who awaits our wild courtship with it. As we discover the soul of the world, we discover our own deepest pattern and unique place within it.What if what the Earth needs most from us right now is not to heroically try to ‘save’ it, but to deeply and hopelessly ‘belong’ to it? As poet Rainer Maria Rilke says, “If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees…” The Earth in its feral beauty and wild wisdom, invites us into courtship through the indigenous Seed, the imago, the Word to relearn what it is to be fully human.By day, I am a Presbyterian pastor at a church in Littleton, Colorado. I have experienced a sense of burnout, depression, and a profound disenchantment with our cultural climate and political world. I have also noticed a shared, but tacit, capitulation in friends and colleagues to some of the realities and forces of our times—a capitulation to a ‘paradise lost.’ With a background in spiritual direction and ecopsychology, I have been training over the years with an organization called Animas Valley Institute in their SAIP program, and have begun integrating Celtic and indigenous theologies and practices into a framework of nature-based wholeness and Self-healing for spiritual leadership development. I have been blessed with friendships from others around the country, including the Wild Church Network, who are also grappling with the longing and urgency for this work. As lead guide for Church of Lost Walls in Denver and a co-founder of Seminary of the Wild, our dream over the years has been to create a living expression of church seeking to journey beyond our walls into wild enchanting thresholds where nature, spirituality, and life meet in wild courtship and sacred conversation for the cultivation of wholeness.We gather to participate in and partner with creation through direct experience between erotic and sensual bodies, learning through present-centered observation, communal worship and dance, meditation, and prayer. Through nature-based practices that draw upon the wisdom of sacred narratives and older traditions, we desire to cultivate nature connection and personal wholeness to inspire and guide one another into a culturally creative vision of life within our expanding circles of community, culture, the wild earth, and the great mystery we call God. We worship with the seasons, the elements, the landscapes and living beings around us through wild and embodied liturgy, guided invitation to sacred conversation in solitude on the land, contemplative prayer practices, deep imagery and dreamwork, artistic expression, and a variety of authenticity based group work. As any courtship moves with intention towards marriage, "Worship with" not only means our participation with, but also our responsibility for, the natural world. Our participation in the feral beauty of wild landscapes that ravage the soul in moments of ecstasy, the tenderness of our own watersheds which nurture life, evokes responsible compassion or sacred reciprocity. A long-suffering commitment to and action on behalf of, rooted in the very wisdom and patterns of nature herself, must guide us in our individual and collective roles and projects in the caring for the delicate web of life nurturing and shaping our innumerable diversity of species. After all, wild nature is the primary matrix from which human nature emerged.~ Rev. Matthew Syrdal
Read online here
About the Author
Rev. Matthew Syrdal M.Div., lives in the front range of Colorado with his beautiful family. Matt is an ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church (USA), founder and lead guide of WilderSoul and Church of Lost Walls and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country. In his years of studying ancient Christian Rites of Initiation, world religions, anthropology, rites-of-passage and eco- psychology Matt seeks to re-wild what it means to be human. His work weaves in myth and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world in which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in the discovery of “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. Matt has been coaching, and guiding since becoming a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute and is currently training to become a soul initiation guide through the SAIP program. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By Jeff C.
Mark, I've been following you for awhile and I do appreciate some of the things you say, but what's the deal with this new agey movement for “simplicity”?
A: By Rev. Mark Sandlin
Dear Jeff,The fact is, the wisdom of simplicity is a theme with long and historical roots. The value and benefits of living simply are found in practically all the world’s major wisdom traditions.
Proverbs 30:8 tells us, “Give me neither poverty nor wealth.” Matthew 6:19a says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth...”
In Eastern spiritual practices like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism the teachings encourage a life of material moderation and spiritual abundance. From the Taoist tradition we have this saying from Lao-tzu: “He who knows he has enough is rich.”
>From the Hindu tradition, Mahatma Gandhi wrote: “Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment.” He believed that moderating our desires for “wants” increases our ability and desire to help others. For him, true civilization (that is, humans being civilized) emerged from each of us being in loving service to others.
Also, from the Hindu tradition, is the idea of “non-possessiveness.” Said differently, it's the idea of only taking what we need and finding satisfaction in our lives through that kind of balanced living.
One of the more developed concepts of a life balanced between material excess and simplicity comes from Buddhism. Buddhism actually recognizes that basic material needs require to be met in order to realize our potentials, but it does not consider material wealth as a goal for happiness in life. Instead, it recognizes it as means to the end – that end being awakening oneself to our deeper nature as spiritual beings. It is a balance between mindless materialism and needless poverty.
Even the Greeks understood something of the dangers of overly focusing on material goods. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all recognized the importance of what they called the “golden mean.” It was basically seen as a middle path through life – the goal was no excess, but equally no lack – the end goal was a life of sufficiency. They did not see the material world and its “stuff” as the primary purpose of life. Instead, the “stuff” of the world was more of a tool for the primary purpose of life: learning and spiritual pursuits.
Considering the U.S.'s consumerist-focused society, it is somewhat surprising to consider that many of the early settlers were Puritans. It's somewhat surprising because Puritans stressed hard work, moderate living, participation in the life of the community, and a devotion to things spiritual, not material.
Another early influencer in U.S. history were the Quakers. They taught that material simplicity was an important aid in growing toward spiritual perfection. And, while they did teach that it was normal to want to enjoy the fruits of their labors, they also recognized that our time on Earth is brief and emphasized that people should place much of their love and attention on more spiritual things.
I guess what I'm saying is that the concept of leading a more simple life is not some new “new agey” thing. Its importance has been around for a very long time – humanity just seems to have a confoundingly difficult time grasping it.~ Rev. Mark Sandlin
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Mark Sandlin is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) from the South. He currently serves at Presbyterian Church of the Covenant. He is a co-founder of The Christian Left. His blog, has been named as one of the “Top Ten Christian Blogs.” Mark received The Associated Church Press’ Award of Excellence in 2012. His work has been published on “The Huffington Post,” “Sojourners,” “Time,” “Church World Services,” and even the “Richard Dawkins Foundation.” He’s been featured on PBS’s “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and NPR’s “The Story with Dick Gordon.” Follow Mark on Facebook and Twitter @marksandlin.
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Origins of the Bible, Part V:
The Elohist Document
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 23, 2008
Most people do not seem to realize that events in what we call the secular world of history shaped so much of the writing of the biblical story. When I get to the formation of the gospels in this series, it will become obvious that the Jewish war with Rome that began in 66 CE in Galilee and ended in 73 CE in Masada shaped the content of all four gospels in a dramatic way. In 70 CE, in the midst of that war, the city of Rome fell and the Jewish nation for all practical purposes disappeared from the maps of the world until it was restored in 1948 under the plan that had been set out in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. To read the gospels with no sense of the historical context in which they were written leads to dramatically ill-informed understandings. Not only did the cataclysmic effects of this war shape the apocalyptic “end of the world” chapters in Mark, Matthew and Luke, but I would argue that the story of Jesus” transfiguration makes no sense unless the reader is aware that the Temple in Jerusalem has already been destroyed. This is one of the ways that we are able to date the gospels so accurately.
Likewise, in Jewish history a wrenching and datable split in the nation of the Jews was responsible for the development of the second strain of written material that would someday constitute the Torah. This split was basically between the Joseph tribes in the north that came to be called the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the powerful southern tribe of Judah, from whom the north chose to separate itself around the year 920 B.C.E.
This Jewish division, however, had its roots in a far more ancient time. Some scholars even suggest that the escaping slave people from Egypt, about whom the book of Exodus writes so lavishly, were not all of the Jewish people, but perhaps only those who would later be called the Joseph tribes. Certainly Joseph is the central figure, according to the biblical narrative, in the settlement of the Jews in Egypt. At the time of their escape the narrative tells us that life in Egypt had degenerated for the Jews because a Pharaoh arose in Egypt “who knew not Joseph.” Joseph, according to the Hebrew memory that stretched back some 400 years according to the book of Exodus, had risen to power in Egypt, achieving a position in the land second only to that of the Pharaoh. The Torah said that Joseph had done this through his prescience and foresight that enabled him to build up the food supply in time of plenty and then to administer it in time of famine.
This allowed the Egyptian nation to survive hard times. When the Jews made their exit from Egypt, the book of Exodus informs us the Jews took with them the bones of Joseph so he could be buried in the soil of his former home. Joseph was a figure clearly identified with the Jewish slave people who came out of Egypt.
More Semitic people than just the fleeing slaves, however, were included in the Jewish nation and clearly made up the conquering army that overran the Canaanites. In defense of this historical reconstruction of the conquest of Canaan under Joshua, these same scholars see evidence in the Torah itself, that during the wilderness years the escaping slaves came together with other nomadic Semites in an oasis named Kadesh to form a common cause. Their common ethnic kinship was recognized, as was their common heritage. Eventually they formed a political alliance and began to think of themselves as a single united people, but organized in a loose confederation. Even their folklore made it clear that while they recognized their kinship, there was always a distinct difference between the two groups. This split was accounted for in the biblical story by suggesting that their father Jacob has actually had two wives. Leah, the first one, was the mother of Judah, whose descendants formed the tribe that settled the South. Rachel, the second wife, was the mother of Joseph, whose descendants settled the North. There were of course other tribes, indeed twelve it was said, but they tended to be satellites of the two major tribes. The Northern Kingdom was later called the “Ten Tribes,” while the tiny tribe of Benjamin tended to be associated with Judah as the remaining two. They were more an alliance than a unified people. The biblical book of Judges described this phase of Jewish history. Survival in that day, however, required them to become a strong and unified nation. The way to reach that goal was to have a king.
The first king of the unified nation was Saul, who was a member of the tribe of Benjamin. Saul was not, however, able to bring about the needed unity or to pass the throne on to his son. The second king was Saul’s military captain, David, a member of the dominant tribe of Judah. About Judah’s power the Joseph tribes of the North were already apprehensive. David, with both military and political skill, unified the country and reigned for 40 years, passing on the throne to his son Solomon who, in turn, reigned for another 40 years. It was during the reign of Solomon that the first strand of the Bible identified today as the “Yahwist Document” was created to tell the story of the history of the Jewish people. As we noted in a former column in this series the “Yahwist Document” had a clear political agenda. It extolled the royal house of David, the capital city of Jerusalem and the Temple in Jerusalem from which the religious life of the nation was organized. The theme of this writer was that each of these centers of power was an expression of the will of God. To rebel against the king, the high priest or the city of Jerusalem was to rebel against God.
Tensions, however, between these two ancient Jewish groups grew during the reign of Solomon as the people of the North felt that they were over taxed to provide the wealth of the people of Jerusalem. When Solomon died around the year 920 BCE the throne passed in an orderly fashion to his oldest son, Reheboam. The people of the North, however, were not ready to pledge their allegiance to Reheboam without some changes and so, led by one of their military generals named Jereboam, a delegation came to Jerusalem to negotiate their grievances with the new king. Those negotiations were not successful and when they collapsed the new, and perhaps rash, young King Reheboam decided that he must put this rebellion down with brute force. The people of the North, led by Jereboam, then organized for resistance and in the ensuing civil war won their independence. There were now two Jewish states: The Northern Kingdom that would build its capital in Samaria and the Southern Kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem.
The only written narrative that either group possessed at this time was the Yahwist document that was so pro the institutions of the South that it would hardly do for the rebellious tribes of the North. That version implied that the Northern Jews had violated God’s chosen House of David, God’s dwelling place in the holy city of Jerusalem and God’s chosen high priest. It condemned all that they stood for and it did so in the name of God, so the Jews of the North began to feel a need to create a new version of the sacred history of the Jewish people. Once again a court historian was appointed, but now by the king of the Northern Kingdom, to write this story. The result was a second version of Jewish sacred history.
There were many differences between the two documents. This writer called God by an earlier Canaanite name El or Elohim, so his work became known as the “Elohist Document.” For the Elohist writer Joseph, not David, was the hero. We see that idea develop in the story about Joseph being the favorite son of Jacob, his father. That is also why Joseph was said to have received the coat of many colors. Rachel, Joseph’s mother, was portrayed by this writer as Jacob’s favorite wife, while Leah, Rachel’s older sister and the mother of Judah, was pictured as having “eyes like a cow” and was actually thrust on Jacob by their scheming father, Laban. This “E” document also portrayed Judah as the evil brother who sold Joseph into slavery. He de-emphasized Jerusalem, relativized the Temple and reopened and re-sanctified the ancient shrines in the north. Finally the divine right of kings was dismissed by this writer, who claimed that the king was not chosen by God to rule the people, but was elected by the people and was, therefore, subject to the will of the people. If the king violated his trust, the people were competent to remove him. This was the claim that solidified the rightness of their rebellion against King Reheboam. While these differences were sharp, many of the stories in the two histories were nonetheless quite similar. By around 850 BCE the Elohist narrative appears to have been substantially complete. Now there were two Jewish nations, two kings, two worship centers and two sacred stories that were read in worship and each was called “The Word of God.” The two Jewish nations fought each other in numerous indecisive wars and formed competing alliances with foreign powers, frequently on opposite sides. When Assyria became the major Middle Eastern power, the Northern Kingdom joined Syria in armed resistance, while the Kingdom of Judah formed an alliance with Assyria and accepted vassal status.
In 721 BCE the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom and exiled most of its people to lands under their control. Then they imported peoples to repopulate the land that had been the Northern Kingdom. In time these foreigners intermarried with the remaining Jews and their descendants became known as the half-breed Samaritans. After this defeat, however, some unknown person managed to escape to the South and brought with him or her a copy of the Elohist document. Over the years in Jerusalem the two sacred stories were merged. The dominant Yahwist version was given priority, but the Elohist story and the point of view of the lost Northern kingdom succeeded in being intertwined with it. By the turn of the century, certainly before 690 BCE, the sacred story of the Jews had become the Yahwist-Elohist version. The scriptures of the Jews were growing. There would be more changes and transitions to come, but this was stage two in the development of the Torah. Stage three will be discussed when this series continues.~ John Shelby Spong |
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