Gave my lecture in the environmental humanities course "Writing the Environment" today - by zoom. I'm not sure how well it went, not being
able to see more than two of the students' faces, and not able to move around... I fear I was just "lecturing," without the spark I usually get
from being in a space with my listeners! But my slides were nice, in a template Powerpoint somehow suggested and I somehow accepted. The
only thing that didn't work was breakout rooms - the sort of "turn to
your neighbor" activity that egts a class' juices flowing...
getting ahead of myself, zoomwise! But it gave me a chance to to lay out my sense of what the contribution of
religion might be in the
default-secular environmental humanities. And to introduce some more people to Robin Wall Kimmerer's
Braiding Sweetgrass, "the best gift
I can think to give you." From Kimmerer I also took my title, and my surprise suggestion for how to define religion, and the role an
ecologically inspired religion can play for environmental humanities: appreciating and addressing the depth of "species loneliness."
