Category: nature and ritual

Where Is Here?

7 June 2021
essays, articleslandmoving, mobilitynature and ritualspace, territory
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A block away there is a plaque tucked away in a front yard filled with so much greenery that the house is almost hidden. Each time I pass, I stop to read, “We would like to acknowledge that we are on the Haldimand Tract, land promised to Six Nations in 1784, traditional territory of the…

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Sacred Space and the Southwest

29 May 2021
ecology, environmentimagination, creativitylandmetaphor, symbolmoving, mobilitynature and ritualtheorytime, historyworldview, ontology
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Sacrality is, above, all a category of emplacement. –Jonathan Z. Smith A few years I saw a map of Christendom put forth by a Protestant Reformation Society in which the catholic countries were painted black, and the protestant countries in a light color. The black was the Kingdom of the Beast where the children of…

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Ritual and Nature

28 May 2021
ecology, environmentnature and ritualritual, festival
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By some accounts ritual behavior is utterly natural, “hard-wired” into the structure of the brain and nervous system, a function of our biological or animal “hardware” rather than our cultural “software.” Even if we try to escape explicit rites, tacit ritualization nevertheless emerges unbidden. If we do not initiate youth into adulthood, they will, perversely…

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