How much gets lost when a forest burns, or is replaced by pastureland or crops like soy? Forests are three-dimensional, creating a layer of livable world not just along but high above the ground. This image, from the Brasilia National Forest two weeks ago, gives a sense...
I'm trying something new in "Theorizing Religion," to address the reality that most students have no background in the study of religion. For the past several years I had student teams audit Harvard Divinity School "World Religions through their Scriptures" MOOCs (Buddhism or Islam)m a kind of crash course they had to report to the class on over four weeks near the start of the semester. But those MOOCs aren't available anymore, at least not for auditing, so I had to think of something else.
What we're trying this year, instead, also involves student teams giving a sequence of presentations to the class over multiple weeks based on out-of-class research. For the first week, they're to "look wherever you usually look when you want to find out about something" (online of course). For the next, they need to go to the NYU Library and explore the stacks to get a sense of what kind of academic work there is on their topic. For the third we'll either seek out native informants or endeavor comparisons - TBD. The rather naughty list of topics, designed to force reflection on theorizing religion? "The religion of Confucianism / Buddhism / Fashion / ISKCON / Neopaganism / Secularism." These images are from the first presentations.
Back in the Picture Collection at NYPL Little Prince. I've decided to make my way through all the Trees folders, but go as far only as Banana, Banyan and Baobab. More about the prodigious banyan soon. For now, some fruit of the baobab - enough to show that some photographers seek trees (and framings) that make the baobab's look as little like other trees as possible, while others, perhaps in response, show them looking very much like conventional deciduous trees. While some looked almost like the threatening baobabs of The Little Prince, one quite impressively managed to create a scene reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich!
The latest PRRI American Values Atlas is out, with 2023 figures, charts and maps on religious diversity in the US.
A celebrated writer at Renmin University, in whose summer school I taught for a few years, was described to me as an international literary star. His works - dark satires of contemporary Chinese life - were not published in China, but somehow this didn't seem to be a problem. His newest novel (at least in translation) lampoons the program Renmin runs for leaders of China's five officially recognized religions. I've only read about a fourth of it so far, but it's savage. Grimly funny, too, and occasionally unexpectedly lyrical. Two main characters, a young Buddhist nun and a young Daoist priest, sort of fall in love, something she makes sense of through elaborate paper cuts imagining a relationship between the bodhisattva Guanyin and Laozi. Fascinating! But I didn't expect it might involve trees, too...!
This year's "Theorizing Religion" draws students from all over the university. I appreciated the wealth of passion and experience this brings when I asked them today, during a round of introductions today (we haven't seen each other in two weeks, because of the Labor Day holiday), to tell the class about another class they were enjoying this semester. I know our students (and curriculum) are wild but still wasn't prepared for this feast:
Multi-Disciplinary Calculus •• The Blues Aesthetic •• Marketing and Branding •• Dubied Machine Knitting •• Catholic Saints and their Cults •• Immersive Storytelling (Virtual Reality) •• American Dream Soundtrack •• Umami Studies •• Social Media Empires •• Advanced Screen Printing •• Philosophy and Tragedy •• The Politics of Wounds •• Fine Arts Thesis Workshop •• Woodworking •• Qualities of Water
I don't even know what many of these are! We learned that the "umami studies" class includes a mushroom foraging trip and a student kindly showed me the work she'd done with the Dubied knitting machine after class... But what a fun context for exploring implicit and explicit understandings of religion.
(The images above are drafts for covers of a book on religion we came up with.)
In church today, we said the first of three specially recommended Prayers of the People. Trees offer the main emblems of the season; see if you can spot them in the prayers:
Blessed God, whose love calls the whole creation into covenant with you, and who puts in our hands responsibility for the care of the earth and its creatures: we pray for all to whom you have given life and being, saying, “Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.”
[I] For the well-being of the earth; for its resources of water, air, light, and soil, that they may be tended for the good of all creatures, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[II] For the waters of the earth; for their careful use and conservation, that we may have the will and the ability to keep them clean and pure, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[III] For the mineral and energy resources of the planet, that we may learn sustainable consumption and sound care of the environment from which they come, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[IV] For the animals of the earth, wild and domestic, large and very small, that they may know the harmony of relationship that sustains all life, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[V] For the creatures of the earth who do us harm and those whose place in your creation we do not understand or welcome, that we may see them as beloved creatures of God, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[VI] For all who shape public policies affecting the planet and its creatures [especially _____ ], that they may consider wisely the well-being of all who come after us, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[VII] For all those engaged in conservation, in agriculture and ranching, in aquaculture and fishing, in mining and industry, and in forestry and timber-harvesting, that the health, fruitfulness, and beauty of the natural world may be sustained alongside human activity, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[VIII] For the creatures and the human beings of your world who are ill, or in danger, pain, or special need [especially _____ ], and for all who suffer from the unjust, violent, or wasteful use of the earth’s resources or their devastation by war, that all may one day live in communities of justice and peace, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[IX] For the gifts of science and technology and for those who practice these skills, that they may be wise, visionary, and compassionate in their work, we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
[X] For the creatures and the people of the earth whose lives and deaths have contributed to the fruitful abundance of this planet [giving thanks especially for _____ ], we pray: Merciful God, keep your planet and people in peace.
The Presider concludes the Prayers with a suitable collect.
Did you find the trees? They're not there, nor any of their plant relations! We get animal and mineral but not vegetable. The plant-blindness seems almost wilful. We recall the earth's resources of water, air, light, and soil, that they may be tended for the good of all creatures [I], but, while light and soil matter especially for our plant kin, the only creatures mentioned in these prayers are animals [IV, V]. (It's another problem that human beings are distinguished from creatures [VIII], but at least we're mentioned.)
The existence of plants is clearly implied in VII, as it calls to mind agriculture as well as forestry and timber-harvesting (trees!), practices which should be so engaged in as to sustain the health, fruitfulness, and beauty of the natural world. But the natural world (like the environment in III) is just backdrop, an echo of the ordering of plants to providing food for all animals in Genesis (1:29). The failure to even acknowledge plants in themselves is most patent in the final prayer [X], which bids us reflect on the creatures and the people of the earth whose lives and deaths have contributed to the fruitful abundance of this planet. Had plants been mentioned before we might think that creatures here eminently includes them - there is no animal life without plant death, none! - but I don't think they're there. They're the and of the earth and its creatures.
I'm surprised how disappointed I am by this, a call to revere the harmony of relationship that sustains life [IV] that makes relationship with plants unthinkable. The history of Christian denigration of the other-than-human is clearly not over. Maybe I should take a more positive attitude. Recognition of animals as kin is already a huge step (though there's still that distinction between creatures and human beings to work through). More steps await!
Before the semester moves into full swing, I took the chance to check out the Open Orchard on Governors Island (a place I confess I'd not been before) and the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library. The orchard is the brainchild of sculptor Sam Van Aken, who has for several years been grafting "Trees of 40 fruit," bringing together on one stem huge varieties of stonefruits. For Governors Island he's supervising an "orchard" of fifty trees which represent two hundred varieties of native and imported apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, cherries and apples.
I write about grafting in my book but my experience with grafting has been all books (and videos). This was a chance to see grafting in person, raised to the level of public art. It confused me in all the right ways. "In person" - how many persons is it when a tree sports branches of such different provenance? Was this a wonder or a horror?
Grafting has been the way fruit has been grown for millennia; the Encyclopédie reported it was known as le triomphe de l'art sur la nature. Aken's Governors Island trees preserve species (and share fruit) from varieties long forgotten or abandoned by agriculture, and the human worlds, tracing from far and near, which cherished them.
It's late in the year, so I spotted only two fruits (neither ripe yet), but at other times these trees will sport many colors of flowers, and many shapes and sizes of fruit. How ... bizarre. And yet, seeing these with the southern tip of Manhattan in the distance, it was impossible not to see them as representing the American experiment. Better than melting pot, better than salad bowl. I wasn't expecting that but was quite moved. 
The NYPL's Picture Collection is something else again, files of images clipped from books and magazines going back over a century (they started in 1915), organized by subject. I'd sent an inquiry indicating my interest in trees but wasn't prepared for the shelves of files, sorted by tree species. There's a generic Trees file (one of three, the others stored in another room), too - coming right after the fat file on Treehouses! 
There may or may not be bibliographical information available for the images, but the point is to encounter them as images, indeed as part of a windfall of pictures - the Picture Collection is beloved or artists, designers and others in search of inspiration. Quite different from, or perhaps a different kind of, research! And what fun! I leafed through the first of the generic Tree files as well as the two on Trees - Oaks. Educational texts and advertising, photography and art, wall papers and even butter molds... Will be back for more. 
The Religion of Trees Instagram is up and running again! It wasn't completely dormant during my leave - I posted the occasional photograph, many of the courtyard. But it was set up for the drawings from classes and a new class is now drawing. We're not quite nine: this includes drawings by our first year fellow, who happened to be visiting class today, and yours truly. The prompt, riffing on the premise of David Haskell's The Songs of Trees: "a tree singing."
Helped assemble ice cream sundaes again at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, a Labor Day tradition. Fell into a conversation with a fellow parishioners who's also a Facebook friend. He wanted to know all about my well-traveled life. My well-traveled life? A few days ago, in a moment of distraction or procrastination, I'd decided to fill out my "places lived" in my profile, making do with their somewhat quixotic options. I wasn't aware that each item would be shared as an update with all my friends! It is a rather impressive list, I suppose - and doesn't even include every one of my toings and froings.
