If anything, the practice of a religious naturalist is experiential.  The initial impulse of a religious naturalist inclination in a spiritually open person often hangs squarely on experience – the incredible majesty of this bodymind, this moment, this nature, this sunset, this reality, this universe. To come into a relationship with the world in the way that religious naturalism urges, we must first perceive it. Paying close attention, then, to our ability to perceive should be a formative plan for religious naturalists. 

Listening to recorded music is a low-cost, portable and very accessible way for people to experience being.   One beauty of spirituality that takes nature as its ground, is that simple existence and simple experience can be seed for spiritual becoming. The quotidian act of laying down on the floor with headphones on and focusing one’s biological brain (made of nothing but cells and evolved over millennia) on the patterns of compression and rarefaction of the air in the ear canal that are playing on your eardrum (which is made of cells, similarly evolved, very much a part of nature) can bring a wonderful religious naturalist practice into ones life.  

One recent recording by the a Capella vocal ensemble Chanticleer seems to fit hand-in-glove with this religious naturalist sensibility and I wanted to take this opportunity to bring it to the attention of The Religious Naturalist Association.   The recording features a single piece:  The Rivers are Our Brothers, composed by Majel Connery.  As one might expect from Chanticleer (which has won Grammy-awards), it is flawlessly performed, yet as deeply soulful as their most religious work.  A gem of an album, it ought to make its way onto every religious naturalist’s playlist. 

Ascription of human characteristics, or even human identification with nature is usually probably anathema to the average religious naturalist.  Despite this I assert to you that The Rivers is wonderfully anthropomorphized (take the names of the movements, for example: “I am the air” and “I am a mountain” … the entire lyric follows in the same mode.  The piece is described on her website as “a song cycle on ecological responsibility told from the point of view of the land.” and “The songs in the cycle take a first-person view of nature, ascribing human qualities and feelings to elements of the landscape: water, trees, mountains, rivers, etc.”  What she has managed to do is, instead of bring nature down to a human scale, to expand our notion of humans as part of nature, to ascribe to humans the qualities of mountains, trees and rivers, and to create art that manifests as care, love concern and embeddedness in nature. 

Connery is a musicologist who has published in the journal, The Opera Quarterly.  Her PhD dissertation in musicology, written on a Mellon Foundation fellowship, was on the topic of Peter Maxwell Davies:  The Revelation of Peter Maxwell Davies – Theology and Theatricality in the Mid-Century Stage Works.  Davies was a naturalist composer in his own right. I remember a visit he made to St. Louis when I was around 19 years old. He lived in the Orkney Islands in Scotland and I will never forget his ornate verbal description of the islands, the ocean, the wildlife, and his description of his effort to meld the experience of living there (verbal and nonverbal) into his compositions.  Spirituality and nature perfuse both Davies’ and Connery’s work. 

Originally commissioned by Musica Sierra as part of its Musical Headwaters Program, The Rivers was first conceived as a set of songs, featuring Connery as the vocalist, and with a minimal accompaniment (the recording of this version features Ben Matus on vocals and bassoon and Edwin Huizinga on violin).  She has also performed the song cycle with the Brothers Balliet https://www.dougballiett.nyc/brothers-balliett. In transforming and recomposing the song cycle to a set of choral pieces to be performed by one the preeminent choirs in the USA, a thing that defies categorization and stands alone has been created. Connery wrote both the words and the text, in a total creation – something that is unusual in the world of contemporary concert music. 

It’s worth a listen! 

Listen to The Rivers on Spotify HERE.

Or iTunes HERE.

by Jason Keune

J.X. Mason  October 22, 2024

Geometric patterns are often found in nature and science.  Why is this so?  For many reasons:

• If you take a string of any given length, you can enclose more area by forming it into a circle than you can by forming it into any other shape – triangle, square, octagon, rectangle, or whatever. This makes the circle an efficient enclosure used by living organisms.
• The grid or “stacked boxes” pattern is everywhere. The cells of all living things are assembled in this pattern, because it provides the optimum way for each cell to be individual (with its own enclosing walls) and yet in communication with cooperative neighboring cells.
• The branching pattern and the network pattern are also ubiquitous (tree branches, roads, blood vessels), because they preserve some connection while exploring and covering more distance and space. This greater coverage permits access to light, air, water, and transportation (cars, trucks, blood cells).
• As shown on the Home Page of our ContinuingCreation.org website, the Spiral Pattern is present in everything from galaxies to snail shells. Why?  Probably because this pattern can be generated by adding together a simple series of numbers.
• Fractals, where a pattern is repeated over and over on different scales, as seen on a head of broccoli.

Fractal Patterns in Nature 

In 1968, Hungarian theoretical biologist Aristid Lindenmayer (1925–1989) developed the
L-system, a formal mathematical grammar which can be used to model plant growth patterns in the style of fractals.

A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself over different size scales. These are also called “self-similar” patterns.  For example, the irregular, in-and-out shape of a coastline looks the same from a mile above, from 10 feet above, and (under magnification) from a millimeter above. The ins-and-outs are so numerous, that the true measured length of a coastline is practically infinite.

Fractals are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven feedback loops, fractals are images of dynamic, recursive systems.  A perfect example of a fractal pattern in nature is a floret of broccoli, below:

More Patterns That Repeat in Nature and Science

Science and mathematics can also explain how Nature produces many other patterns, including the following:

• Chains and ladders, such as the strands of DNA found in every living thing.
• Weaves, such as spiders’ webs and birds’ nests.
• Concentric rings, like the growth rings in tree trunks.
• Hexagons, such as the cells in bees’ honeycombs.
• Spots and Stripes on animals – leopards, tigers, zebras.
• Waves, Bubbles, and foam in liquids.
• Tessellations (tiling patterns) on things like dried mud, fish scales, and pineapples.
• Widmanstatten Patterns can be seen in the cross-sections of meteorites.
  

 Widmanstatten Pattern in the cross-section of a meteorite

Laura Emerson

Some people find autumn and winter depressing and prefer spring and summer.  

I am not among that group.  To me, the brevity of a gorgeous, Alaskan fall is a very visible message to appreciate each day, each morning, each rapidly changing view.  Part of the reason is psychological: Because THIS WILL NOT LAST, so enjoy it.  Part of the reason is practical: the changes of fall and winter contribute to the fecundity of spring and summer. 

Sometimes, we need to be hit on the head with important reminders like this.  Autumn does both.  It feels transient but its benefits are long lasting.   

Sadly, I have two friends whose cancers have metastasized.  Both are using phrases like, “I will never see X or Y again.”  I think of them as I watch the leaves drop to the ground.  Is this their last autumn? Some of us know when death is right around the corner, but others are caught off guard.   We are lucky who enjoy a springtime youth, a summer’s middle age, and transitions to autumnal and then winter’s old age.  Not everyone does.  Fall drives that message home.  

So I luxuriate in the beauties of the season.   I stare in awe of electric yellow birch and larch trees (the latter is the only conifer that sheds its needles), framed by purple mountains.    I inhale the earthy aroma of highbush cranberries and the tannic scents of crispy leaves as my boots shuffle through the accumulating piles of red, orange, yellow, and brown that  flutter gracefully to the ground.    I harvest rosehips and berries and potatoes and horseradish root. 

Besides the beauty, this annual blanket of fall leaves is as important to the ecosystem as elders are important to younger members of society.  The skirts below trees and bushes blanket them from cold and add biomass to the soil.  The leaves deter weeds.  From the trails that do not need the leaves, I rake piles to strew over my vegetable and flower gardens as mulch.  Over the winter, the leaves break down under the snow weight to lighten the soil the following year.   Voles and insects burrow beneath the leaves for protection from winter weather.  With so many benefits of autumn leaves, I don’t know why anyone rakes them into a garbage bag to be carted off.  They are valuable to every plant and critter in your yard. 

Looking upward from the lake shore, I see termination dust (initial snow) coating the cap of the 4600 foot mountain west of our lake and draping the 5000 foot mountain range to our north.  Each 1000 feet of elevation is about 5 degrees cooler than below.  So after each rain or fog here, we watch the snowline creep downhill until it envelops us, too.  The natural world is our thermometer and barometer.  Mine is beautiful.

October 10 we awoke in the dark to the sound of hundreds of geese, swans and cranes vectoring south.  In the early morning light, we saw a flock of a hundred or more bright white geese resting on our lake.  They huddled so close to one another that they looked like an island. I don’t think my dog, who gets very excited about individual water fowl, could even interpret what that mass was.  The timing of their flight south was clear when the light lifted and we saw the first dusting of snow in our yard as well as deeper incursions on the mountain tops.  These huge migratory departures in fall and  arrivals in spring punctuate our year more decisively than any calendar date.

In this short and dramatic season, I know that some morning later this month, we will awaken to a black and white world.  Technicolor autumn will disappear for a year.  For others, this is their last season.  So, for me and for them, I savor every image of these last few days of evanescent beauty.  

Though I was raised in the progressive, justice-focused Lutheran Christianity of my parents, over time I have come to identify as humanist or spiritually independent because my personal sense of the spiritual arises from many diverse sources within and outside of the Christianity of my childhood. For example, since I was a child, I have been enchanted by the natural world, finding magic, mystery, and wonder in the beauty of forests or the transformation of a flower into an apple. And in divinity school, I began conceiving of the Divine as something akin to the Buddhist concept of Indra’s Net – where the jewel – the being at every eye in the net – reflects all others infinitely. I came to think about the Holy as this web of interconnectedness, reflecting the space between you and me and all the intertwined relationships in every ecosystem (big or small) across the universe.

Until a year ago, I didn’t know anything about religious naturalism as a worldview or an organization. But after almost a decade of work as a hospital chaplain, I was delighted and fascinated when I recently started hearing and learning about religious naturalism as a worldview and the RNA as a chaplain endorsing body. Reading about religious naturalism brought me a sense of spiritual alignment that I have not felt when trying to fit myself into other religious organizations and worldviews. Religious naturalism aligns with my awe and wonder in nature, from the small microorganisms to the cosmic movings of galaxies. It makes sense of my foundational beliefs in mystery, curiosity, and interconnectedness, all of which then impact how I try to live my life grounded in these values and in a reverence for all life.

I especially find comfort in religious naturalism naming the shared story of the universe,via the big bang. I love the commonality that this shared central story can bring. And I personally feel very spiritually grounded in this extreme spiritual long view of the universe, that is, in the understanding that human existence is but a small moment in the vastness and mystery of the cosmos. We are not the center of the universe, literally or figuratively, and I believe the universe will continue on in beautiful ways someday when humans are gone. Many find this view of the potentially-fleeting nature of human existence to be depressing or fatalistic, but I find it comforting and inspiring, because we get to be part of the beautiful dance of life and death and change that is the universe. We get to consciously live in the sacred interconnected space in which our lives affect and reflect all that is around us.

 In my work as a healthcare chaplain (and especially in my current work in palliative care), this long-view story of the universe that religious naturalism holds is a source of spiritual grounding and sustainability for me. Looking to the natural world and the vastness of the cosmos for perspective on human joy, suffering, life, and death helps me feel grounded in something bigger in the midst of my chaplaincy work. In addition to this sense of spiritual groundedness that gives me energy, perspective, and comfort in my day to day work as a chaplain, religious naturalism is also helping me consider ways of looking towards nature to learn about how to live well with and for others. Engaging the concepts of religious naturalism encourages me to consider what I can learn from plants and creatures about how to live and work in ways that honor natural lifespans, that value interdependence and collaboration, and that use resources sustainably. In many ways the religious naturalist worldview felt familiar to me when I encountered it and has been a spiritual grounding for my chaplaincy work for many years, and I have been excited to engage this worldview now in ways that are deepening my thinking about the world and how I live, think, and act both in my work as a chaplain and as a human being.

 Cynthia Driedger-Bauer, MDiv, BCC

Photo by Robin Stuart on Unsplash

Knowing more than Human Self is an enormous part of this journey. It takes time, I am not going to lie, many in the ‘old ways’ of journeying to know self, aren’t at a space to consider that through their separation they have never found their wholeness. That without discovering ourselves within, as a part of, all things, we never truly know who we are. In fact our journeying to this point has led us through the tail of the snake back into our own self and minds. 

We are in fact beyond this skin. This form. We are formless. 

To know and understand the One Living System means we see beyond our own being to truly recognise that all that is above, below, within, without, is a part of our wholeness. And so to step in to seeing more of Life we must first recognise this point of Being that is all around us.

From the book

…

From Soil to plants, we find the deep connection beneath us. From plants to people, we allow all that has grown to flow through us. To the solar skies above – which begins the cycle from solar to soil yet again. there is a weaving of energy that subtly exists between us all, it is alive, thriving, energetic, and exists visibly as the One Living System.

From soil to plants

The deep connection that exists throughout the universe is felt within all sentience for we are but one, each an expression of this. Within each expression we find the universe itself, or as Rumi would say ‘we are not a drop in the ocean we are the entire ocean within a drop.’ The sky looks down at us as its own reflection. Each planet, each plant, each person holds all of the universe within it and so to regenerate, to sustain, to nurture, nourish, we consider the whole. We begin with the soil to plant connections. That the sun and moon, the stars, every planet all sets itself upon this soil, it holds the very beginning for all life.  All that lay within it is a necessary element in the equation of conception. Not only that it provides us with our capacity to live, within its systems we find our own heart beat. Deep engagement with nature and the elements provides us with knowledge in design. A simple example of companion planting can provide pest control, water management, and stronger yields. 

This space also engages instinct and intuition, that to be connected and conversational with the plants as sacred expressions of life allows us to acknowledge them with love, honour with gratitude and protect with vigilance. The soil biochemistry and its vitality is written and spoken about by many scholars, their fields of expertise tell us daily that new discoveries highlight all that can be achieved through the soil. More than, MORE THAN, its carbon sequestering service, within lays its own desire to exist and to fulfil its purpose and role within the Living System. To begin, grow soil. Seeking nothing more from its being other than for it to grow and become. As with all living things, its being is valid and of worth to its own existence, and that then, is valid and of worth to all else that exists from it, including us.

Plants to people

Asking – as we do the Earth, which plant is needed for soil and plant nourishment to build its greatest terrain –  we ask our inner system where do we need nourishment? Where can we increase our immunity and diversity, with what foods? So we build the best terrain for our inner system through the outer system. We are asked to deepen our knowing. Testing, listening, responding – like soil knowledge – becomes self knowledge. How we move to understand our cycles to strengthen and build resilience. We tune into energies and release elements to create our most nourished self. Mimicking – is in our becoming – our being. We learn and become from mimicking. We observe what way can we flow as one with nature? How can we mimic nature in our living? Using awareness and observation as components of being one with nature and her systems – as one system. In what way can we BE a part of this system of life? At all times in mutual benefit to the other, never how do you serve me, how do we serve each other?

From plants to people and beyond

Since time immemorial, the cycles of the Moon have been used as a guide to life in many facets and forms.  This is not based on superstition, rather tradition.  Even science has a significant amount of research showing that the elemental forms of life (such as plants) are strongly, intimately (albeit invisibly) connected to the rhythms of the Moon. Likewise the moon cycles impact human life in many ways, from the ocean tides to the female cycle. This is old wisdom, deep wisdom, dating back to centuries old cultural and traditional knowledge. In reconnecting to this ancient wisdom we reconnect to the resonance of the unified energy that is held between all that lays beyond our Earth and all that lays within and upon it. Rudolf Steiner’s work with Biodynamics is arguably one of the more modern approaches (despite it coming to recognition in 1924) compared to that of the First Nations peoples of our lands who have held all systems as one and navigated the stars in a way that has held our systems in place since time began

Into the elements

In going beyond, we are called also to understand and reconnect with the elements of life, that which are ‘alchemically’ at the base of creation of all things. In allowing the elements to be experienced again, in their visible form, as well their invisible form within all things, we come to recognise an even deeper connection to all things as one. We feel and experience the elements as a part of this language of life for it resonates within our own being when we are exposed to their natural form. The raw truth found sitting around a fire, the ease when floating on the water’s surface, the grounding we long for from the earth when we are off balance, or the air’s capacity to allow knowledge to be drawn to us. We cannot and should not turn from our unique connections to the elements and in living into the system of life, ask ourselves to explore the potential of expansion offered through knowing ourselves in this capacity.

More than human form

There is of course another essential element to the Living System and that is the essential role of more than human form, which is of course referring to all other sentience as animal, plant, insect, creature.

Every aspect of life requires all forms of life for balance of any living system.  Livestock for soil success, as much as being human companions for our mental health. Padfoots, clawfoot, hooves, trotters, to butterflies, bees, frogs, all kinds of above ground livestock, that all play a vital role in building and maintaining an efficient and thriving ecosystem both externally and internally.  Likewise essential is the underground livestock, the earthworms, insects and bacteria that are required for a truly whole ecosystem. There is an abundant need for the ‘having’ of more than human life in every way.  From ground stimulation and movement, to providing space and flow for water, to controlling the delicate balance of life elements, we need all life to complete any Living System.  ‘Live’ stock comes in all forms and shapes and sizes, many without legs, all an essential element, without them we can say that not only is the system incomplete it is not fully regenerated. The role of every living sentience within the Living System can never be ignored or taken for granted.

Sacred system

The final, arguably the most important quality of the Living System, is that it is a Sacred System. It is the Sacred thread of Life that exists within all things as one energy. It expresses itself in all forms at once. At no time are we truly separated or individual, for we are at all times one within all things. We each are unique aspects of the whole and this uniqueness is the quality that life itself calls for to build its symphony. That we and all things exist is proof of our worth and value and we are tasked with stillness to allow our uniqueness to rise and be offered in service to the Living System, as well as silence, through which life’s language is revealed in nature. The sacrality of the Living System is not hard to find. No human could have dreamt of the wide array of colours in the master craftsman’s pallet, nor devised a way for space to give life for all things, let alone for the creation of love in which to continue its own existence. Life is Sacred. That we step in and revere that is all our tasks, that we hold ourselves to moments of breathless awe at the beauty and wonder that stirs us to love, that we take long walks into her arms to return to our very essence is at the core of our being. We are each a thread of sacred yarn destined to weave ourselves back into the web of life’s meaning. That we seek life itself to nourish and nurture its own creation is essential. We are but one of its many creations, therefore listening and observing are the ways to fully embodying her wisdom. As we apply this system we find what works with us and our environment as one. We add things, adjust things, create things, all in response to the Living System as a whole system. It is alive. It is all knowing.

Returning to the foundations of life as the Living System considers every aspect of our wellness and wellbeing amongst that of the whole, from our mental and physical state, our food/home/relationships, our sources, our environment, our connections and becoming as one.  It considers each of us as an entire system as well as our place within that system. It is congruent with making Life whole, and what place we make within that.  It is life’s living philosophy.