Ecology is an act of devotion

Lest it seem I'm not also teaching, here's some of the whiteboard from "Religion & Ecology" today. We had a terrific discussion of arguments made in student papers, which I put up without identifying their source. Discussion was rather lively when we turned to the assigned work of biblical scholarship, though it may be that half the class allowed themselves to be engaged instead with a robin perched on a branch of one of the red maples in the courtyard out our window. Even an animist-inspired rereading of the Hebrew Bible, which discerned agency and divinely assigned responsibilities for sun, earth, oceans, forests, etc. hidden in plain sight in familiar biblical narratives proved too theistic for my students: they don't get to choose their involvement, one said, and can't change their minds. Oh.