Nature, Spirit, and the Convergence of Christian and Islamic Ecopoetry, or, How Our Poets Can Help Us Rediscover Our Spiritual Connection to the Earth and Each Other

Abstract

This paper is focused primarily on our ethical relationship to nature, but my concern here is that the success of any environmental or earth ethic must be grounded in spirituality. The main operating premise of the paper is that to address this spiritual grounding we need more than just religion to guide us especially as religions become more antagonistic toward and isolated from each other. I argue that if we cannot turn to our religious leaders we can turn to our poets since reacting to a poem’s pulse and images may resonate deeper than policy pronouncements. The poet is free to expand our understanding of the self and the other which means that it is the poetic that is best suited in a modern age to connect us to different viewpoints and show us our world as it is seen through the eyes of another and, perhaps more importantly, see our own reflections in the world around us. I utilize several poets from both the Christian and Islamic traditions but my primary focus is on the works of Wendell Berry and Jalal al-Din Muhammad known more popularly as Rumi. Through these poetic works I examine the roots of our disconnection from nature and attempt to show how poetry can help us replenish ourselves and restore nature by bringing us back to an understanding of Human that is a part of and partner with nature not its sovereign ruler. Toward this end I attempt to draw conclusions from both Christian and Islamic traditions to demonstrate how closely related their ecological projects are to one another in explaining the convergence of the ecological and religious world.