The Alabaster Box
More thoughts about Christianity and Neopaganism and their differing approaches to the spirituality of nature:
I think the argument can be made that magic is an effort to control nature. Using spiritual means to achieve physical results… changing consciousness in order to change reality… finding a spiritual solution to your problem, etc. etc. However you want to define magic, it seems that it so often boils down to an effort (whether through ritual, spellcraft, energy work, or just “being” in the flow) to shape what is (i.e., nature) in accordance with the will (or Will-with-a-capital-W, depending on your philosophy of magic). In its most benign form, magic is the effort to align the will/Will with nature, which gets into the murky waters of obeying nature. Meanwhile, Lon Duquette might argue that magic is an effort to control nature, but only the nature of the self: such magic-as-self-mastery is perhaps the form of magic with the most ethical/moral potential.
Kenneth Leech, the author such wonderful books as Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality and True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality, once suggested to me that magic flourishes whenever a community loses touch with the sacramental. Sacraments: outward signs of inward graces. Rather than using ritual or spiritual energies to control nature, sacraments are about using elements of nature (water, wine, bread, oil, etc.) to celebrate grace. Grace, after all, simply cannot be controlled. But through the sacraments we can at least point to it and say, “here it is.”
Even sexuality is involved: If you believe that marriage is a sacrament, then lovemaking becomes a means of grace. No matter what the dualistic conservatives may think.
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In my post from yesterday I complained about Christianity’s troubled relationship with nature over the years. Reflecting on this, it occurs to me that Jesus himself may be the key to re-visioning Christianity’s relationship with creation. Think about it…
- His ministry begins with 40 days in the desert (sounds like a vision quest to me!);
- He makes a name for himself as a very earthy, body-positive healer;
- Again and again, various vignettes in the New Testament depict him as particularly kind toward women and willing to flout convention in order to relate to women in positive ways;
- At one point he performs a healing by creating a poultice using saliva mixed with dirt;
- In terms of setting, the Gospels dance through nature: Jesus lives by the sea, he preaches on the mountain, he prays in the garden, he retreats to the desert… this was no effete urban snob! Jesus was a man of the earth;
- Consider this amazing passage from Luke (7:37-8): "And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment." Jesus clearly appears to be someone very comfortable with sensual pleasure. Even if we assume that Jesus was somehow above getting "turned on" by the frank sensuality of this woman’s actions, we cannot but think he must have been very comfortable with physical pleasure in order to calmly receive such attention, in a social setting no less;
- After his resurrection, Jesus is depicting as eating real food. His resurrection is not some sort of spiritualized appearance of a phantom, it’s a real event involving a real occurrence… in the natural world;
- Finally, even the miracles — feeding the multitudes, calming the storm, walking on water — can be interpreted as evidence of Jesus as a nature-positive figure. After all, these stories suggest a deep cooperation with nature on his part, presaging the “harmony with nature” that is the object of so many 21st-century spiritual seekers, Neopagan or otherwise.
While these few examples of how Jesus is depicted in the New Testament in relation to nature do not necessarily add up to a comprehensive nature-positive theology, I think they do go a long way toward undermining Christianity’s traditional ambivalence toward nature. In our day, given how badly the human community has compromised our collective relationship with the environment, I think whatever we can use to begin to re-vision Christianity’s relationship with nature will be a Good Thing. And it’s encouraging to think that a revitalized nature-friendly Christianity actually begins at the top.
