Seeing Nature as an Artist with Christy Berghoef and Thomas Jay Oord

Learning How to See with Brian McLaren

Center for Action and Contemplation

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2024

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does nature inspire your sense of creativity? On this episode, we’re looking at nature through the artistic lens, with Brian McLaren and two gifted photographers, Christy Berghoef and Thomas Jay Oord. The conversation explores the ways in which their individual experiences and practices of photography have deepened their understanding and appreciation of the natural world, as well as the power of photography to inspire a deeper connection to the earth. About the guests: Dr. Christy Berghoef is a civil dialogue consultant, singer/songwriter, author, speaker, mother of four and church planting partner with her husband Bryan in the United Church of Christ. Much of her work and writing has centered around the intersection of faith & politics and nature & the human condition. Thomas Jay Oord, Ph.D. is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. Oord directs the Center for Open and Relational Theology and doctoral students at Northwind Theological Seminary. He is an award-winning author and has written or edited more than thirty books. A gifted speaker, Oord lectures at universities, conferences, churches, and institutions. He is known for his contributions to research on love, science and religion, open and relational theology, the problem of suffering, and advocacy for the full inclusion of queer people. Resources: The transcript for this episode can be found here. Brian referenced two of his books, Life After Doom and The Galapagos Islands. Christy referenced her Substack, you can check that out here. She also posts regularly on her Instagram account. Thomas referenced his website, you can check that out here. Additionally, we wanted to link you to the Center for Open and Relational Theology 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? You can contact via two methods and we may feature your question on a listener questions episode later in the season. 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	When you are a writer, you go through this writing process where you're alone. It's an act of solitude.
0:19.0	And then the book comes out and you have to get out and talk about it.
0:22.7	And these days, talking about it means being a guest on a lot of podcasts and going a lot of different places to speak to groups about this book that you created in silence and solitude and privacy.
0:37.9	And here's the irony. Often it's when you get out and talkitude and privacy. And here's the irony.
0:39.2	Often, it's when you get out and talk about a book
0:41.8	that you realize you could have said something much more simply
0:46.1	and crisply and directly,
0:48.3	and you never thought of it when you were in the writing process.
0:51.9	When I wrote this book, Life After Doom, Wisdom and Courage for a
0:57.2	world falling apart, there is one sentence I wish I would have thought to include in the book
1:03.0	while I was writing it, but it only came to me in the context of talking about it. First, I should say,
1:10.8	a major task in the book was to help people understand our current situation.
1:16.2	And by our current situation, I mean what many people call the multi-crisis or the meta-crisis or the
1:22.9	polycrisis.
1:24.3	This idea that we have several problems, big problems in our world, and each of those
1:29.8	problems make the other problems harder to solve. Climate change is an obvious one of those crises,
1:36.2	but I like to say it's the visible tip of a huge melting iceberg of ecological overshoot. The idea that we're taking more resources
1:47.2	from the earth than she can replenish, and we're pumping out more wastes than she can detoxify.
1:54.2	In addition to overshoot, there's a tiny group of billionaires and multimillionaires who control
1:59.6	more wealth and power than 85% of
2:02.9	the world's population. That inequality of wealth and power is related to our ability to deal
2:10.1	with ecological overshoot or not. In addition to overshoot and power imbalances,
	...

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