We Live in a Shared World: Scott Russell Sanders on Awe, Imagination, Compassion, Craft, and Community

Scott Russell Sanders is a Cambridge-educated novelist, essayist, conservationist, and a distinguished professor of English, emeritus, at Indiana University. He has written and taught for decades about nature and place, family and community, and the concerns of social justice and ecology, woven together with a spirituality that is rooted in awe and wonder. This conversation explores the joys and disciplines of spiritual imagination, writing, and a well-lived life, in communion with others and within our one shared world.

RESOURCES:

Earth & Spirit Center website: www.earthandspiritcenter.org

Scott’s website: https://scottrussellsanders.com/

Some of Scott’s books:

Small Marvels (forthcoming): https://iupress.org/9780253061997/small-marvels/

The Way of Imagination: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/way_of_imagination.html

The Engineer of Beasts: A Novel: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/engineer_of_beasts.html

A Conservationist Manifesto: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/conservationist_manifesto.html

A Private History of Awe: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/private_history_of_awe.html

Hunting for Hope: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/hunting_for_hope.html

Writing from the Center: https://scottrussellsanders.com/book_pages/writing_from_the_center.html

Loving the Whole World: David Haberman on Finding the Divine in the Landscape of India – And Beyond

Dr. David Haberman is Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Much of his work focuses on Hindu temple worship traditions of northern India, where he has spent a great deal of time studying how worshippers encounter the sacred in stones, trees, rivers, and all of the more-than-human world. In this conversation I reconnect with my undergraduate mentor from decades ago to discuss the intersection of religion and ecology as it unfolds in the richly diverse religious landscape of India – and beyond.

Related Resources:

More about David Haberman: https://religiousstudies.indiana.edu/about/faculty/haberman-david.html

Books by David:

River of Love in an Age of Pollution: The Yamuna River of Northern India (University of California Press, 2006)

People Trees: Worship of Trees in Northern India (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Loving Stones: Worship of Mount Govardhan: Making the Impossible Possible in the Worship of Mount Govardhan (Oxford University Press, 2020)

Understanding Climate Change through Religious Lifeworlds (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021)

Book mentioned on the podcast:

War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, by Carlos Eire (Cambridge University Press, 1986)

Earth & Spirit Center homepage: https://earthandspiritcenter.org/

Life Wants to Happen: Sisters of Charity of Nazareth on Honoring Earth in Communal Living

Sr. Susan Gatz is a member of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, formerly in community leadership and now serving as the chair of the sisters’ international ecological sustainability committee. Carolyn Cromer is the director of ecological sustainability for the sisters. In this conversation, Sr. Susan and Carolyn reflect on how deep spiritual commitments to caring for Creation play out in the context of communal religious life.

Resources:

Sisters of Charity of Nazareth homepage: https://nazareth.org/

Learn more about the SCN community’s ecological work, with tips for your own efforts: https://nazareth.org/office-of-ecological-sustainability/

Join the SCN family as an Associate member: https://nazareth.org/associates/

Earth & Spirit Center website: https://earthandspiritcenter.org/

The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: Marianne Welch on Conservation and Creativity

Marianne Welch is an avid gardener, a musician, an artist, a philanthropist, and a conservationist, deeply involved in support of the arts and environmental causes. This deep and broad conversation explores creativity and beauty as paths for the flourishing of people and the planet.

Resources:

Documentary on Netflix about interconnection in forest ecosystems: “Fantastic Fungi”

Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, by Douglas Tallamy. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 2019

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World, by Peter Wohlleben. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2016

National Resources Defense Council: https://www.nrdc.org/

Earth & Spirit Center Website: www.earthandspiritcenter.org

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim on Serendipitous Creativity, Religion, and Ecology

Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim are a husband and wife team of Senior Lecturers and Research Scholars at Yale University in the School of the Environment, the Divinity School, and the Department of Religious Studies, with specializations in East Asian religions and Indigenous religions. They co-direct the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and are the creators of the new Coursera series, Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community. In this episode, Mary Evelyn and John discuss their decades of work at the intersection of ecology and the world’s religions, as informed by their mentor Thomas Berry and with the hopeful, deep-time perspective of our evolving universe.

Resources:

Coursera courses by Mary Evelyn and John:

Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/religion-ecology

Journey of the Universe: A Story for Our Times

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/journey-of-the-universe

Yale Forum on Ecology and Religion: https://fore.yale.edu/

Journey of the Universe film/book/podcasts: https://www.journeyoftheuniverse.org/

Thomas Berry Website: https://thomasberry.org/

United Nations Environment Programme Faith for Earth Initiative:

https://www.unep.org/about-un-environment/faith-earth-initiative

Greenfaith: https://greenfaith.org/

Ecology and Religion, by John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker. Washington DC: Island Press, 2014

The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times, by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams. New York: Celadon Books, 2021

Wonder in All Seasons: Red Oaks Forest School and the Value of Nature-Based Education

Tina Brouwer is the co-founder of Red Oaks Forest School in Eastern Kentucky. Amid the beauty and ecological diversity of the Red River Gorge area, Red Oaks invites youth to connect deeply with the natural world in creative ways and in all sorts of weather. In this episode, Tina shares how interweaving nature and education helps cultivate wonder, curiosity, trust, vulnerability, courage, and mindful groundedness.

Resources:

Red Oaks Forest School:

https://www.redoaksforestschool.org/

https://www.facebook.com/redoaksforestschool

https://www.instagram.com/redoaks_explorers/

info@redoaksforestschool.org

Children and Nature Network: https://www.childrenandnature.org/

Natural Start Alliance: https://naturalstart.org/

Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest: https://bernheim.org/

Talking to the Rivers, Listening to the Wind and Stars: Victoria Loorz on Church of the Wild and Restoring the Great Conversation with Nature

Victoria Loorz is the co-founder of the Wild Church Network and Seminary of the Wild, and she’s the author of a new book, Church of the Wild: How Nature Invites Us into the Sacred. In this c…

A Restored Earth: Quaker Environmentalist Justin Mog on Opening Our Hearts to Right Relationships

Dr. Justin Mog, Assistant to the Provost for Sustainability Initiatives at the University of Louisville, describes himself as a “car-free, TV-free, vegetarian, beekeeping, gardening Quaker with a f…

Freed from Prisons of Our Own Making: The Enneagram as a Tool for Belonging Fully to Self, Society, and the Earth

Halida Hatic is long-term student of the Enneagram, a tool for personal self-understanding and transformation. She serves as the Community Weaver for the nonprofit Enneagram Prison Project, with a…

A Spiritual Startup: The Thomas Berry Place as a New Form of Ministry and Mission

Anthony Mullin is the founding executive director of the Thomas Berry Place, a non-profit center for spirituality, community empowerment, and ecological stewardship, in New York City. In this…