Theology, Pastoral Action and Counseling
The Iliff School of Theology
Ronaldo Sathler-Rosa, Louise Iliff Visiting Professor
14 March 2001
A RESPONSE TO HOWARD CLINEBELL'S ECOTHERAPY
©2001 Khrysso Heart LeFey
In his Ecotherapy, Howard Clinebell seeks to bring the reader to an increased Earth-consciousness and to outline for pastoral counselors and other caregivers how they might bring that consciousness into their work. As a Gaia-centered Pagan, I am in complete sympathy with such a motivation, especially since western culture continues to honor the mandate issued by the dominant religious paradigm to subdue the Earth while ignoring the accompanying mandate to replenish it (Gen. 1:28).
Since I have been applying many of the principles in Ecotherapy to my own life, self-care, and care of others for the past eight years, I will frame this paper as a response to, not a review of, this book. While in theological school, I have become interested in ritual as a modality for spiritual healing, and I have considered pursuing this interest in a PhD program some day. In the meantime, I will use this opportunity to apply Clinebell's suggestions in Chapter 9 regarding the use of Earth-centered ritual to re-connect with Nature and find healing therein.
In modern Paganism, we draw upon ancient western notions of the elements, namely, air, fire, water, and earth. In many of our sabbat rituals—celebrations of the solstices, the equinoxes, and the four times at which the sun is midway between those points—and during our esbat rituals—the full moons and new moons—we open by invoking into our ritual circles, or at least acknowledging, the powers or energies of those elements, mindful that they consist in us and we in them. Even though the invoking of the powers of the elements is usually only a preamble to the actual work of the ritual, I often find it the most meanfingul part, because it calls me back to awareness of my connection to the Cosmos.
The power of air is the power of my breath, which, as a singer, I am particularly aware of, and the power of spirit, as I see it (others consider Spirit to be a distinct element). It is also the power of mind, knowledge, intuition, imagination, and levity. It is the leavening in our daily bread and in our daily lives. Air, the atmsophere, is all around me, but it is all within me as well, constantly being carried to every cell of my body by my blood (the power of water); it is in my knowing and my intuitive sensing. On my ritual altar I symbolize air with feathers, by which air carries birds aloft, with a wind instrument, and with sticks of incense, whose smoke enables me to see the air. Near these symbols I light a yellow candle, which to me signifies the dawn, for the power of air is associated with the East, and the brightness of a sunny day.
The power of fire in me is the power of my body heat, a furnace stoked constantly at 98.6ºF, and the power of my passions: my will, my anger, my indignation, my creativity, my gut instincts, my sexual desire. On my ritual altar I symbolize fire with candles, at least one of them red to signify heat, placed in the south, the direction associated with the full heat of the sun.
The power of water in me is the flow of my blood and my other bodily fluids: my body's own ability to cleanse and renew itself. In medieval Europe, temperament, character and health were characterized by one or another of the body's "humors": blood, phlegm, choler (bile), and black bile (melancholy). Water was the environment we all knew for the nine months before we were born. For many modern Pagans, to speak of the power of water is to speak of the power of mood and emotion—love, sorrow, and gladness in particular—of wisom, and of the unconscious mind. On my ritual altar I symbolize water with a container of water and with sea shells, and a blue candle facing the east, the direction associated with the cooling of the day.
The power of earth in me is my flesh and bone, the part of me that will become the substance of earth again when air, water, and fire cease to act upon me. The refuse of our digestion creates the stuff of compost every day of our lives, and in some locales it is put to that use instead of washed into the water supply from which it then needs to be removed. Earth- power in the individual is the power of stability, rootedness, and backbone; of growth; and of stillness, serenity, and calm. On my ritual altar I symbolize earth with stones, bones, a clay bowl, wood, metal, and an animal figure, with a green candle, the color of growing things, placed to the north, the direction associated with the stillness of night in which most living things rest.
Even though these powers are always with us, around us, and in us, it is still meaningful and powerful to bring them into our immediate consciousness ritually by the act of invocation so that we might meditate on them and learn new applications for cooperating with them instead of resisting them, as our culture reinforces at every turn: Clinebell reports how ranchers are removed from the earth to treat their cancer instead of brought back into touch with it (156). This ritual act serves the same purpose for me as the Ash Wednesday ritual of placing ashes on the Christian's forehead with the admonition, "Remember, Christian, from dust were you made, and to dust you will return." It is good to remind ourselves of the ephemeral nature of our lives so that we remember not to waste them, but even more, for me, it is important to remember that as an organic part of Gaia, the living Earth, I have every right to be here and am every bit as valuable to the whole as everything else around me. As someone who has been subject to melancholia, that awareness is not to be taken for granted. In fact, it is part of the reason why I have chosen my name, "Khrysso," which derives its spelling from the Greek word for "gold" (khrusos), a precious metal found deep within the earth: my very name is a reminder to me that my life is precious and that I am a part of the all; I belong here. There has been great healing for me in this awareness, and with it I am thus able to affirm the rightness of others to be here, and I can encourage them to find their most productive place in the whole.
Ritual in the Wiccan tradition—the most visible organized form of modern Paganism—focuses on the "Wheel of the Year," the cycles of the seasons, to bring practicioners back to awareness of the rhythmic nature of life: the fact that whatever season of life one may be in, one has somehow experienced it before, and has experienced its passing, and can expect to experience it again. Seasonal rituals remind us that nothing is permanent, that all trials can be weathered, that joy and sorrow, growth and pruning, ebb and flow.
In the wheel of the Pagan year, as informed by ancient Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse tradition, there are eight festivals, marked by the solstices, the equinoxes, and the times at which the sun is directly between them, which we call "cross-quarter" holidays.
Samhain (Celtic for "Summer's End"), or Hallowe'en, October 31, is the Pagan new year. It has long been thought that at this time of the year, the time of the final harvest in northern Europe, the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is thinnest—even in the Christian calendar, this time of year is occasionally referred to as "the thin time"—and we are most able to touch the spirits of our beloved dead. It is a time for reminding ourselves of the hope that life goes on and that the refuse of our lives can be tilled into the earth to become fertile ground for new growth. Birago Diop says,
Those who are dead are never gone.
They are there in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the tree that rustles,
they are in the wood that groans,
they are in the water that sleeps,
they are in the hut, they are in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.
Those who are dead are never gone,
they are in the breast of the woman,
they are in the child who is wailing
and in the firebrand that flames.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the fire that is dying,
they are in the grasses that weep,
they are in the whimpering rocks,
they are in the forest, they are in the house,
the dead are not dead.
Samhain is also the time for weighing grain: with the dawn of agriculture came the need for growers to be conscious of their use of their harvest both for food and for seed. After the final harvest, celebrated at Samhain, came the time for weighing grain, for making decisions about what part of the harvest must be kept aside to stave off hunger through the barren winter, and what part should be set aside for the next year’s planting. A bad decision could be as fateful as a bad harvest. Religious traditions the world over remind us that we reap what we sow. At Samhain, it is appropriate to meditate on what we have sown over the past year. That which has come to fruition in our lives is ours now to feed from or to cherish as seed for planting later, and it is time to ask, how shall we put them to best use? What shall we keep for our nourishment, and what shall we put away as an investment for the future?
Being in the fall, it is a time of grounding, and so we eat of pumpkins and squash that grow close to the ground and of root vegetables that grow within the soil, and so we regain our stability by grounding ourselves.
Yule, derived from an old English word connected with the Winter Solstice festival but now co-opted to mean "Christmas," is a festival of deep darkness and the anticipation of renewed light, and of the time when seeds go into deep germination. As in Greek myth Demeter mourned and the world became cold and dark, so we remind ourselves that "it is always darkest before the dawn." In many cultures, festivals surrounding the winter solstice are festivals of light; once upon a time, researchers say, it was believed, according to the magical notion of correspondence—like attracting like—that light could be coaxed back into the world with light, and so people lit bonfires and candles and Yule logs in order to ensure the return of longer days that would enable another life-giving planting season. And so we remind ourselves that after the darkest times, the dark nights of the soul, light will surely return, and when it does, we will have new resources at our disposal, just as the rest of winter is necessary for the trees and other plants to enter a new cycle of growth.
The down-time of winter was, in former days, the time for mending and repairing and for preparation for the next busy season: work clothes and tools could be fixed while people were isolated inside, and new equipment and furnishings could be built while there was nothing else to do.
Yule is the time when, before refrigeration, people were still able to eat from their stores of less-perishable foods, and so the winter festivals have historically been able to be times of feasting, though perhaps the last such times, for fresh produce was dwindling: it was time to enjoy what could be salvaged and to settle in for the remainder of the winter.
It is sad, in a way, that refrigeration and central heating have taken away our opportunities to observe the down-time of winter, and the commercialization of Christmas has turned this festival season of stillness and anticipation into a time of frustration, busy-ness, and exhaustion instead of a time for regrouping—were it not for Advent, Christians would have no way to recover these valuable lessons of the Wheel of the Year.
The feast of Imbolc, celebrated in the Christian calendar as Candlemas, honors Brigid, the Celtic goddess of the hearth, where people spend most of their time as the winter wears long. This is the time of year when the light is clearly returning, offering tangible hope for the spring, but the resources gathered during the fall are beginning to run low: cured meat and root vegetables may be drying out, and what is left is grain, dried beans, and the like: meals are becoming monotonous and people have cabin fever. Among the animals, pregnant mothers are far along in their gestation. Nature is gearing up for renewed fertility, but it is clearly a time for endurance.
Eostre (or Ostara), the Old English name for the goddess of spring, was originally not a moveable feast but the celebration of the Vernal Equinox. Because of its associations with rebirth and new life, it is a festival accompanied by a wealth of rich symbolism, such as eggs, chicks, and baby rabbits, and the phallus intersecting with the matrix as illustrated in the Celtic Cross and in hot cross buns. Eostre is a time for hatching new dreams, for tilling the soil, and for sowing seed, both literally and figuratively. It is a time to remember that reaping reliably follows sowing, and that growth and maturity can be counted on, no matter the circumstances under which the sowing took place, as the Psalmist says: "They that sow in tears will reap in joy" (Ps. 126:5, JPS). It is the time to look forward to the end of monotonous food, also, for green shoots are beginning to reveal themselves and edible plants hardy enough to survive the winter have emerged from beneath the snows.
The equinoxes, both vernal and autumnal, are times of balance, for the powers of sun (day) and moon (night) are equal, and it is useful for us to remind ourselves that the forces of life balance one another out occasionally.
Beltane, the May Eve celebration, is usually associated with fertility and fire, since the natural world is green and flowering, young animals are becoming old enough to gad about on their own, and hormones are coursing through the veins of humans young and old. With the sun waxing bright and hot—this is the last stop on the wheel of the year before the summer solstice—growth is apparent everywhere. The same impulse that inspires spring cleaning long ago inspired the building of Beltane fires for purification. It is customary to jump the fire, figuratively casting into it the things one wants to rid one's life of, and to seal new relationships in purity and clarity by jumping the fire hand-in-hand with a sweetheart. The May dance gave color and symbolic power to the phallic May Pole, and the finishing of the dance is said to produce magical pairings of young men and women who wind up face to face at the end of their ribbons, and children begotten from couplings at the May dance were said to be lucky.
By extension, Beltane nowadays calls us back to making the most of fertile time, reminding us to "strike while the iron is hot," and to remembering not to ignore times when rejoicing is appropriate.
The Summer Solstice is the time to both rejoice in the fulness of the sun and acknowledge that the sun will begin now to fade, the time to remember that of the good as well as of the bad, "this, too, shall pass." At this time of year, the fate of what we have planted has been sealed: if crops will fluorish, it is beginning to become evident, and if they are struggling, this is our last chance to fertilize, irrigate, and weed. As the sun is at its most dominant place, so we are exhorted again, as during the late spring, to remember not to slack off in the days of our power.
Lughnasadh, better known in the Christian calendar as Lammas ("loaf mass"), is the celebration of the first harvest—the grain harvest—and the time to acknowledge and grieve the fact that the days are becoming noticeably shorter: in the British Isles, there are old songs about the death of John Barleycorn and other images of the Corn King who must be cut down in the harvest in order for there to be food and brewed beverages. Lughnasadh is a bittersweet time, for birth and death come into sharper relief against each other. It is also a time to lay one's hand to the task of harvesting what has been anticipated, of not missing opportunities, of making the most of the efforts that one has invested in the goal. Harvest-time is like the time toward the end of the marathon at which runners "hit the wall" and must keep going in order to find their second wind, for harvesting is just the beginning of work: the fruits of one's labor must be put up so that they will do their work of sustaining the community through the long winter ahead.
The Autumnal Equinox is another time of balance between the powers of light and dark, of day and night, only this one, in contrast to the Vernal Equinox, is marked by the awareness that winter is on its way with all of its restrictions: no more going barefoot, no more picnicking or outdoor recreation, no more sleeping beneath the stars. Meanwhile, it is still time to stay at the task, for it is the thick of harvest-time: one is beginning to be able to recognize, appreciate, and celebrate the fruits on one's labor—there is food in abundance to feast on when one comes in from the fields for supper!—but it is not yet time to rest from the labor of gathering, sorting, and storing.
By observing the cycles of the earth and the heavenly bodies, we can bring ourselves back to important lessons about the rhythms and needs of our own bodies and lives, and this is a major reason why I was drawn to Paganism. As I have made myself observe the earth and my environment, I have become more aware of my connection to the whole—indeed, I have been able to embrace the notion of the Earth as Mother Gaia, a single organism of which we are member constituents, and to see that to care for her is to care for myself, and vice versa.
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