Willie I want to draw you out in some terms that you've used because they flow in immediate relation to this conversation, this moral connection that you've spoken of, moral connection to the community. And now as we see the community expanding as our indigenous brothers and sisters have brought us to understand the earth community and that you've spoken of that community as animate and communicative. I think those are really powerful and I just wanted to draw you out a bit of how is it possible in the Christian community with the difficulty that we have with these terms, how is it that we can think about the animate and communicative character of the world? >> This is, I just finished it as you know John, I just finished last semester, I taught a course in the debate school on natural theology and the new animus, which is a wonderful course. We had a great time together. And one of the challenges we face is that for those of us who are Christians and that things is the problem goes way beyond just christianity because I think other faiths have have entered into a similar challenge. Is that the idea of the world within as the anthropologists Carlos Viveros noted that the dominant vision of the world is the naturalist vision in which the world is seen as a resource, seen as a thing. And that that very idea already creates profound problems in how we relate to the world. Now, within the Christian tradition, we know that the naturalist vision, which the world is just the thing. It's an anathema because throughout the Hebrew bible, and throughout the new testament, scriptures and other and other scriptures, well, what we know is that again and again, God treats the world to use animus language or do use language of so many indigenous philosophers as though it is filled with persons, some of which [LAUGH] are you. And this is so important because to imagine a world, not just imagine it, to understand the world is full of persons, some of which are human. Without that sense, you cannot read the Hebrew bible or the new testament and see what's going on. Jesus acts as though the world is full of persons, some of which are human, all the biblical, all the disciples of Jesus, all the biblical characters act as though the world is full of persons, some of which are human. Now, why is that so important? Because, an animate communicative world means that it is a world that in order to live in it properly, you must listen. That there is an attunement of the senses to the world that is necessary for the living in the world and thriving. Scientists will tell us this, every good scientist when you look at their own story, right? There were someone who paid attention. They learned to pay attention. Every significant philosophy, every significant spirituality at some point in time, it brings us back to its first deepest canonical logic. Pay attention, listen, right? And the listening is not just an activity in me, it is a work of attunement to the world for my own sake. Now, what that then opens us to is the reality that a world speaks its truth to us. It doesn't speak the truth to us like I'm talking to you as his name just escapes me. Eduardo comments in his wonderful book, like doesn't speak like we're speaking, but it does speak a truth that does communicate the truth to us, a reality of life that we need in order to come to ourselves. And so the reality of a moral center for one's existence. If it is rooted in a sense of well being that is established by attunement to the world. Then we're on the ground for a very powerful ethical imagination, aren't we? Were on the ground of someone who will want to always listen first before they speak. Someone who will always want to make sure that they are hearing the knowledge that is in front of them before they impose their knowledge. The problem with naturalism is that natural now, let's be clear, naturalism has yielded as so many of naturalism has yielded some wonderful results inside a certain extractive logic. I mean, if I approach a forest of trees and see them simply as material and engaging analysis of them simply as material, I can accomplish something there. But what I accomplish pales in comparison to what I could have gained had I thought about those trees not simply as material resource, right? >> And here I'm thinking of the wonderful work by Kimmerer been braiding sweetgrass, both as a biologist and as an indigenous thinker and philosopher. She's exactly right that you can have a scientific approach that attends to the specific materiality. At the same time, you have an approach that says this tree is living and I need to respect it and hear it. Those things don't have to be in competition. Unfortunately, they are, so when we push away the idea of an animate and communicative world, we are profoundly undermine our own humanity and the possibilities of our thriving. >> That's powerful. I'm so moved Willie to have a colleague that we can have this this level of exchange because your understanding of the cosmos vision of that elders now layout also gives new expression to this term cosmo politics that's being used and Isabella Sanger's and others have that this ceases to be simply resistance and cosmopoly or action. Now environmental action that is moved by an understanding of the world that has this deep moral connection, it's no longer simply of objecting to something. But it's rather a vision of bringing into reality a new set of relations. This, I think it's so helpful for people who are engaged in environmental advocacy or activism. >> Well as you and Mary Evelyn have been telling us for many, many years. If we're going to get serious about establishing deep collaboration, we have to have a different framework that moves us beyond, just critique, but actually starting to envision together what it means to be in a real community of reciprocity. And when I started talking about what would it mean to to rethink our pedagogy if in fact we understood that there was a reciprocal reality that really shaped the intellectual life. And they said Dr. Jennings, nobody else in university other than a few folks in the school environment, you've got [LAUGH] a few others are really interesting what you're talking about. I said, I understand, but here's where we have to understand that the kind of interdisciplinary that everybody wants the kind of share projects that really will make a difference in the world. They had to be approached with the harmonics of reciprocity, >> Yes >> You have to have a harmonics of reciprocity in order for that to actually mean anything, right? So that you build in ways of listening, not just other colleagues. But how does that listening to other colleagues and other disciplines, a part of a wider attunement the world so that the work we're doing we are already opening space for those who don't exist inside the academy. For intellectuals who are doing significant work for artists doing significant work, but they're not going to be walking the halls of Yale. But the kind of attunement we want brings their wisdom, brings their knowledge to the table, not as objects for study, but it's true intellectual partners because together we're trying to be attuned to a planet in the world and the realities of the many person. >> Yeah, beautiful. >> Beautiful. [COUGH] Willie we love this connection between worldviews and action ideas and practice the ethical and the transformative ways of thinking that we've always said are deeply into interconnected. So that's why this cosmo vision and cosmopolitaics. I think it's going to have more and more traction going forward. And you have also called for a doctrine of creation that you see absent. And so we'd love you to bring this forward in terms of the Christian tradition and theology and ethics, but however broad you'd like it to be this doctrine of. >> I've been working on this for a while and I'm hoping [COUGH] to continue to try to articulate this in writing as I'm moving forward. The Christian doctor creation in my mind in many ways one of the most tragically formed and tragically articulated doctrine of Christian life and thought. As I like to say, most Christians don't really have a doctrine of Creation. What I mean by that when you talk about the doctrine of Creation, most Christians, their minds focused on only basically one thing, the question of origins. Yeah, origins is important, [LAUGH] but that is a profound narrowing of what the doctor of creation is about. All that we've been talking about is the doctrine of creation from the very beginning, the doctrine of creation is about attunement. It is about learning how to inhabit life with persons who are non human, but are persons, it is about habitation. And so what I'm trying to do is to recalibrate the doctrine. And first of all, to try to resituate how those who became Christian entered into it. They entered into a conversation with other people and entered in a way in which a new conversation about how many people see the world is being engaged from inside. This reality of life with Israel's God. And then it opens out from that to a recognition that many people's introduce us to many new persons, other animals, other plants and how then to think about that introduction. Now, here's what's missing, right? And this is the history of colonialism. The history of colonialism is the fundamental denial of the introduction by various peoples to us, those of us who are Christian and coming to them of the new persons that God is calling them to relate to. The denial of of meeting the buffalo, the denial of meeting, the various trees, the denial. So that denial becomes crucial. And so I want to retell the story. But ultimately, what has to happen is we have to bring the doctrine to the thing that is crucial responsibility, but has never been taken up. And that is habitacion. We have to bring it to as well as we began talking to bring it to the shape of neighborhoods. We have to bring it to the very structure of habitation and the structure of the body and life, the structure of the psyche, the structure of human existence. What I'm arguing is that there is a much closer connection to the very structure of our subjectivity is if you will, the structure of habitation, it does something to not be raised with trees. It does something to not be raised in a walkable neighborhood. It does nothing to us to be raised thinking that my life is inextricably bound to this thing called a car. And that's a part of a doctor creation. But right now within theology, these things I've just mentioned if they appear, they appear at the very edge the theological imagination. But I mean the very edge of it and there and then they just wander what was ethics, what's it tied to? It's not even understood as being an integral part of this. So what does that mean? It means that so much ecotheology which I'm thankful for. But so much ecotheology wanders kind of wanders around, trying to figure out what to do with sidewalks, what to do with neighborhoods. It doesn't really know what to do with these matters other than to say shame, shame is terrible how these things that now exists. There was a deeper philosophical and theological work. It's necessary to understand The whole history of how habitation comes to be. So, in this next work, I'm trying to tell the story of this through three crucial agents, my friends. Three crucial agents that together help to create this problem. The merchant, the missionary and the soldier. Those three agents from the colonial moment forward the profound effect on the shaping of our world and in a sense, a fundamental effect on what a doctrine of creation will look like in effect. They work together intimately and intricately to create the problem. So, I'm trying to recast that doctrine in a way that creates a different conversation. I have long and I know both of you know this so very well. One of the greatest tragedies of the way Christianity in the west is that it destroyed so many indigenous peoples. And a deny to itself as Christianity, deny to itself their wisdom. And a Christianity that has formed without indigenous wisdom, it's a Christianity that really undermined its own deepest logic. Hebrew bible in the new testament, that's indigenous wisdom, that's indigenous wisdom. So, how is it that, that indigenous wisdom was not allowed to link up with more indigenous wisdom. And to me this is one of the great, great tragedies we have not reflected upon in a serious way. Whether we're talking about North America, the Americans or we're talking about the continent of Africa or we're talking about the Pacific islands wherever we're talking about. I mean that Christianity that came, it's as though it took what was there and squandered it. >> Totally. >> And decolonization in this sense, which is a primary pedagogical direction now an indigenous education but it's in the mainstream also the decolonizing act is what we're called to. I hear it in your call for this deep moral connection to the world around us. We need to deal effectively with this merchant, this missionary and soldier in each one of us. >> Absolutely, absolutely. >> Willie, we can't wait to of course to see this book but we've been hearing. [LAUGH]. In your commitment and your incredible schedule. We'll hope that it's birthing will happen in due time. But I wanted just to probe just a little bit more on maybe one concluding point is so much we could talk about. But, when you talk about returning to animates and communicative, and animate gives a notion that I like to say the personhood is certainly one important way of speaking about it. But there's also sentience, right? And you mentioned subjectivity a few moments ago, right? And [INAUDIBLE] used to talk about the communion of subjects, right, in all reality. And so I just wanted to draw you out because this sensibility I think that we share, evident in the personhood of the world. But it could be as well in something about matter itself that it's sentinent, right? And emergent properties, etc and evolution and ecology are showing us this. So, let me draw you out on sentience and subjectivity a little bit more. >> Mary Evelyn, you know that I think you're exactly right and I have learned so much from your work, your work about these matters. And as you know, there's a number of people to use the language of Bennett or talking about the vibrancy of matter [COUGH] in that wider sense. And I think that is so important. I think for me, I am in complete agreement. I wanted to try and roll down another track because I think part for me I'm deeply worried about the inability and that's why for me persons is so important. The inability to thicken reciprocity in so many and see I think part of the challenge with vibrancy and sentience of matter is that if we're not careful, it lends itself to continuing visions of extraction and exploitation. Because it continues, I mean, part of the difficulties, how might we think of vibrancy and sentience without also drawing commodification to us? >> Yes, such a good point. >> And that's, and see I think that's the danger of it in relationship to it being talked about inside of in many ways the industry of science. Because as you and I both know, this is one of the difficulties that sometimes when we hear people talk about it. They're talking about it in the context of, what does this mean for the possibilities of new drugs, new materials, new. I mean, so they're talking about it in terms of its market viability, its market possibility. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not against some of that. But the danger is that, if it's used to strengthen the problem of commodification. >> Sure. >> And then it strengthens the problem of exploitation extraction. So for me, if there's a way I can talk about vibrant matter in relationship to the wisdom of the Osage people. The wisdom of Tink Tinker saying, some rocks talk [LAUGH] but not all rocks, now that becomes crucial, right? Because then that means how I behave, how I interact, already is a part of the conversation of vibrancy. But without that, if I'm just talking about vibrant matter, I mean, the image comes to mind of a laboratory, doesn't it, I mean in some way. >> But let me just, let me interject for a moment. Because I love what you're saying. And I think there's complementarity here. >> Reciprocity. >> There's different strategies for all the reasons you're just saying. But where I'm coming from, is the Confucian tradition of China, okay? Which has probably influenced more people over time than almost any other tradition. And the idea of chi is what I did my thesis on, this notion of matter energy that is throughout everything, right? We can cultivate it in chi gong and tai chi and so on. But that the whole universe and all earth systems and the livingness of animals, plants, etc, even mountains, and that, that's the interiority in matter, is vibrant. And part of something larger and we could even say therefore sacred, you see so it takes it into another realm of not being manipulative and so on. So that sensibility along with personhood I think these are great compliments. >> I agree and I always learned so much from when you talk about these things Mary Evelyn, listening to you talk, I mentioned before we came on and I'm having back problems now. And so like my acupuncturist explained to me the importance of this [LAUGH] for my healing. >> She said what these needles are going to do is to redirect your chi. >> Yes. >> Okay, and it's been working [LAUGH] I think this is really important and but it requires an openness to learning, doesn't it? >> Yes. >> And an exploration of the ethical dimension, the behavior that the reciprocity and the behavior. >> Yeah, no, I I love this, I think it's absolutely crucial the personhood, the deep sensibilities about she moving towards greater complexity and ultimately reflects of consciousness in the human. But if we add a third piece here and we celebrate the explosion of more than human animal behavior understandings, right of the fish world, the bird world migration patterns. The intelligence is there, I think can also give us both a spiritual [LAUGH] impetus for conservation and for collaborative work for ecosystems for example. >> So yeah, I think this is so helpful for me, I'm constantly playing catch up to try to understand these matters because there's so much there because as those of us trained in the West. The thought of an expanding reality of intelligence this is all new territory for us, right, so many of us. >> Yes. >> So, just to for me to I'm grappling with, okay, what does that mean if I understand intelligence in this reality, many years ago when we started thinking about multiple intelligences. Thanks to Gardner's work that was opening up some things for us but now the recognition way beyond that the kind of intellectual that's going all among plans among she's it's just >> yeah, >> it's incredible. >> And it's so inspiring, especially for the next generation who really gets this, this My Octopus Teacher about the intelligence of octopus. This film that's just captured the imagination and I watched something this morning John and I about sharks and this woman for 25 years has been taking hooks out of sharks. Who have been subject to fishing practices and the sharks come to her because they can sense what she's trying to do, there's so many Jane Goodall is iconic. Probably the most famous scientists on the planet because she understood the sentience and community building. >> One of the things I said to the students last semester, my new animus course I said one of the things that we have to understand is that the idea of the Doctor of Revelation. That God speaks is an interesting one when we take seriously that God has a relationship with other creatures that we have nothing to do with [LAUGH] >> Beautiful and you can see you can see like this is [LAUGH] A withdrawal actually God is in relationship with these plants, with the shark with that. You have nothing to do with this is to them and God [LAUGH] The tought of that was overwhelming, presumably because they only imagined an intelligence, in many ways. It's the poor reading of the many of the strains within Christian thought, in which only mind is in the human creature and analogous to God's mind. But there are there's no mind and anything else and, but the recognition that not only are there multiple intelligences, but there's a communicative reality outside of us, that's a really humbling. >> Yeah, this is why your two terms are so powerful Willie and I'll conclude but my enthusiasm for this dialogue is so great because, if we talk about animal and communicative. Look at the literature that's exploded, exploded on trees, right, the hidden life of trees, the song of trees, how forest think it's staggering, right? And that's why these two words that you're using, I think are gateways into expanded worldviews, but action to, yeah >> Prayer, because I think especially for students coming through the academy now they desperately need a wider vision that allows them to situate themselves. Not just in terms of thinking in a particular way or talk in a particular way, but living in the world in a way where they can see the, the profound positive effects actions if they are moving in the right direction. As you as you are, I'm sorry, so many students, are you concerned about what they eat and I'm glad to see that and they're starting to be concerned about where they live and I'm glad to see that. And if we can bring all that together in a really helpful formation process, exciting possibility >> Really integrated ecology >> Totally Willie I propose we teach a course together on this, wouldn't that be great? [LAUGH] So I don't know if you have any follow up for ending questions but. >> I have so many but I'm situated right now in a kind of a deep serenity because there is a sense among indigenous communities that where I visited with elders. Where I see that serenity in the elder I'm speaking with and when I talk about it, I hear them articulate something very similar Willie to where you brought us. And abiding confidence in that others are performing gratitude and ceremonies that we don't have anything to do with, but they're doing it for us too >> Yeah, hold on to that, as I watch birds and look at the deer moving around, I'm like there is yeah is a wisdom that says to us okay, things are pretty messed up but yeah, okay. There's something about a deer looking in the face and just saying [SOUND] It's going to be okay [LAUGH] >> Beautiful. >> Well this just you're so gracious to give us this time in your schedule. >> Yeah, it must be in communication because two deer sat in our yard this morning and we were just in trance, we sat with [LAUGH] We're all meditating together [LAUGH]. Willie, we are enormously grateful to you as colleague, friend, mentor, teacher just so wonderful to be with you, thank you. >> Thank you the feeling's measurement.
