Seeing Nature as a Mystic with Douglas E. Christie

Learning How to See with Brian McLaren

Center for Action and Contemplation

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does it mean to grieve the crisis facing our planet? In this episode, we’re learning to see nature through the lens of a mystic. Brian McLaren sits down with Douglas E. Christie to discuss his work in the emerging field of contemplative studies, its relevance to our current ecological crisis, and the importance of acknowledging and processing ecological grief. Together, they explore the historical and contemporary significance of contemplative practices and underscore their role in confronting the "dark night of the world", helping us to foster a deeper connection with the Earth. About the guest: Douglas E. Christie, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is the author of The Word in The Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism, The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, and The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss, and the Common Life. He has been awarded fellowships from the Luce Foundation, the Lilly Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 2013-2015 he served as Co-director of the Casa de la Mateada study abroad program in Córdoba, Argentina, a faith-based program rooted in the Jesuit vision of education for solidarity. He lives with his family in Los Angeles. Resources: The transcript for this episode can be found here. Brian referenced two of his books, Life After Doom and The Galapagos Islands. Douglas referenced his books: The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a Contemplative Ecology, which you can find here. And, The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss, and the Common Life, which you can find here. To learn more about Douglas, visit his website here. Find out more about musician April Stace here. Connect with us: Have a response to Brian's call to action at the end of this episode, or a question in general? Email us: podcasts@cac.org Send us a voicemail: cac.org/voicemail We'll be accepting questions for our Listener Questions episode until November 20th, 2024.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Like a lot of people, I've had a few careers in my life.
0:08.2	The first was as a college English teacher, and then I became a pastor.
0:12.6	And while I was a pastor, I became interested in the intersection between theology and ecology.
0:20.8	I realized that a certain kind of theology had given
0:25.6	people a kind of carte blanche to destroy the earth in the name of God and religion for
0:32.5	profit and pleasure and a feeling that they had a permission slip from God to do whatever they
0:39.2	wanted to the earth. That theology, I realized, was deeply rooted in the Christian faith,
0:46.3	and I felt an obligation as a pastor to face that ugly theology. And I felt that if we were going to find a better way forward,
0:57.0	we needed to find a better theology to fuel it and justify it and energize it.
1:03.0	I found out that one of my former colleagues at the University of Maryland
1:08.0	where I had previously taught, was also a committed Christian
1:12.9	and deeply involved in these very areas.
1:16.3	And I had a friend who knew him, and that friend made an introduction.
1:20.8	It was an afternoon, I'll never forget, the first afternoon I spent with Herman Daly.
1:26.5	Now, if you've never heard of Herman Daly, you could look
1:28.7	his name up and you'd find so many books that he's written. The one that had won my heart was a book
1:34.3	he co-wrote with a theologian named John Cobb that was called for the Common Good. And then I read a book
1:40.2	of his called Beyond Growth and many other books. Herman is known as the father of ecological economics.
1:49.0	And he would kind of mock that title because he'd say,
1:52.9	economists are so arrogant.
1:55.0	They think that ecology is a branch of the field of economics,
1:59.2	when the truth is economics happens within the ecological systems of the field of economics, when the truth is, economics happens within the ecological
	...

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