We approach "Plantgate" in "Religion & Ecology" tomorrow. We're reading not only Cláudio Carvalhaes' acc of what he was doing, "Why I Created a Chapel Service Where People Confess to Plants,"
but a vituperative attack on it by Rush Limbaugh (recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Principle), "It's true! Leftists are praying to plants." The Limbaugh piece is interesting, actually, as a snapshot of the the denialist view of climate change: environmentalists won't listen to reason, science, common sense or even adulthood, he laments, because their view of the climate crisis is - get this - a religion! There's a good chance our discussion will wind up focusing on it, too, since it's easier to mock than to risk a new engagement... and the "Temple of Confessions," as Cláudio called his plant liturgy, demands more than polite interest:Many of us have a disconnected relationship with nature and relate to nature as outside things, as "it." Today we will try to create new connections by talking to the plants, soil, and rocks and confess how we have related with them. Confessions are also forms of mending relations, healing, and changing our ways. We are all manifestations of the sacredness of life and the "we" of God's love is way beyond the human, so let us confess to “each other" including plants, soil, rocks, rivers, forests.
Cláudio wouldn't be content with our just reading and talking about it - but I'm not comfortable concocting rituals. Besides, he's coming for our Spring Roundtable (and we might do some confessing under his guidance). So I've thought of something more suited to seminar pedagogy. Weather permitting I'm going to end class early and ask students to go out and address a plant. Not to confess to it, but simply to spend some time with it ... and, I'll say, "Tell it about our discussion."
