Roger S. Gottlieb is the author of the new book Nature Spirituality and Environmental Crisis: Embracing a Sacred, Wounded Earth. His many other books include This Sacred Earth. He is the William B. Smith Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Q: What inspired you to write Nature Spirituality and Environmental Crisis?
A: My own experience of grief about what has been lost; of fear about the future; of anger about people who can really do something about the pollution but don’t, the extinguished life forms, the vast accumulation of plastic on the beaches and in the bodies of every living thing.
And the sense that I was not alone in seeing nature, this age-old source of spiritual nourishment, so deeply changed and wounded.
I wanted to work out in my own mind how to think and feel about this, and perhaps help all the other folks who don’t have the luxury of a professor to sit around and think and write—but who are feeling what I am feeling as well.
Q: The scholar Morgan Shipley called the book “a powerful meditation on what remains of nature spirituality and how it might still guide us toward compassion, resilience, and a renewed capacity to heal a wounded world.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think Shipley got what I was trying to do. The point is that nature spirituality cannot take its traditional form any more. We can’t be confident that nature as we love it today, as it helps us be more calm, accepting, compassionate and grateful, will be here tomorrow or in five years.
So, how can we think about it in a way that still nourishes us spiritually despite the wounds?
Q: What do you hope readers take away from your book?
A: That they are not alone. That what they feel is real, important, and vital. But that along with the grief and fear and anger, there are still ways to feel grateful, to be in solidarity with the rest of life, to feel compassion for all our weaknesses and suffering, to believe and act with the understanding that “all life matters.”
Q: How do you think the spiritual relationship between humanity and the earth has changed over the years, and what do you see looking ahead?
A: Take one example. A lot of us would like to help our children enjoy nature, as a relief from all the pressures kids face now—about their bodies, what they say, how “cool” they are, their sexuality.
So we say “No matter how bad things get, you can always go to the forest, the beach, the meadow, the mountain—and that will make you feel better.”
Only now, we don’t know if the forest won’t be clear cut, the beach covered in plastic waste, the mountain torn down for minerals. There is no longer any future we can be confident of. And right now, when the forest fire smoke is making the air bad, we have to say: “You can’t go out to play, we broke the air.”
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A collection of short stories in which people on different sides of the political/moral/spiritual divides in this country come to understand people from the “other” side.
They won’t magically become best of friends, but perhaps in a setting when they come to understand how the other formed their beliefs and what their lives have been like, they would no longer have to be complete enemies.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: There is always a way to show love to life. Grief and fear are real and should be acknowledged, but love is always possible as well. In the neighborhood, at work, in a church, in a group that works locally, regionally, or internationally.
As long as life exists—human, animal, vegetable, fish, reptiles, birds—we can try to care for it.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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