Agrarian Spirit

Name: Agrarian Spirit
Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
ISBN: 9780268203085

By Norman Wirzba

Publisher Description

This refreshing work offers a distinctly agrarian reframing of spiritual practices to address today’s most pressing social and ecological concerns.

For thousands of years most human beings drew their daily living from, and made sense of their lives in reference to, the land. Growing and finding food, along with the multiple practices of home maintenance and the cultivations of communities, were the abiding concerns that shaped what people understood about and expected from life. In Agrarian Spirit, Norman Wirzba demonstrates how agrarianism is of vital and continuing significance for spiritual life today. Far from being the exclusive concern of a dwindling number of farmers, this book shows how agrarian practices are an important corrective to the political and economic policies that are doing so much harm to our society and habitats. It is an invitation to the personal transformation that equips all people to live peaceably and beautifully with each other and the land.

Agrarian Spirit begins with a clear and concise affirmation of creaturely life. Wirzba shows that a human life is inextricably entangled with the lives of fellow animals and plants, and that individual flourishing must always include the flourishing of the habitats that nourish and sustain our life together. The book explores how agrarian sensibilities and responsibilities transform the practices of prayer, perception, mystical union, humility, gratitude, and hope. Wirzba provides an elegant and compelling account of spiritual life that is both attuned to ancient scriptural sources and keyed to addressing the pressing social and ecological concerns of today. Scholars and students of theology, ecotheology, and spirituality, as well as readers interested in agrarian and environmental studies, will gain much from this book.

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Agrarian Spirit Reviews

4.5

Zachary Adams

Created 23 days ago

“According to Wirzba, “To be an agrarian is to do the work that nourishes life in its many material, physiological, environmental, social, and cultural dimensions. It is to know and act upon the fundamental truth that people are landed beings and so cannot possibly thrive apart from the thriving of the lands and its many creatures” (15). With this definition, Wirzba fleshes out what it looks like to go about spiritual practices with the whole self, and the whole community of creatures and places around us, in mind. There is an unfortunate tendency of escapism in Christian spiritual teaching--our desires should be set on escaping earth, rather than bringing about its transformation or renewal. Wirzba seeks to correct this theology and this mistake in desiring and living that leads to harm for self, others, and fellow creatures and land. “Scripture does not call people to flee their creaturely lives and places. Instead, it calls them to live in places that honor and further operationalize God’s life-giving, life-promoting ways with the world. It calls them to participate in God’s reconciling and redeeming ways with the whole of creation (Colossians 1:15-20)” (53). Christians are not meant to flee from creation, but to be wholly present to it, because that's exactly where God is. He is *with* creation, sustaining it always and saving it, shown most fully in the incarnation of the Son. Wirzba's spiritual practices include (accompanied notes and representative quotes): Ch. 4, Learning to Pray “Life is a relational reality in which people are constantly receiving from others and giving in return. When people pray to God, ‘Give us this day our daily bread,’ they are not only asking to be nurtured every day. They are also asking that their lives be transformed in ways so that they can, in turn, and in ways specific to their abilities, become gifts that nurture others" (80). “When Jesus instructed people to pray, ‘Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors,’ he was reminding them that the best life flourishes in communal, covenantal contexts where every effort is made to absolve people of the forms of bondage that oppress and degrade them…. Followers of God forgive because they know that debt and guilt prevent people from living out the fullness of their lives” (85). “At its core, prayer is the daily action whereby people open themselves to receiving the love of God and letting it become operational within, all with the aim that whole persons–body, heart, and mind–are now directed to being a nurturing presence wherever they are and whomever they are with” (86). Ch. 5, Learning to See The way you see the world forms the way you live in the world. "Jesus... is for Christians the interpretive lens that enables them to see everything in terms of a new framework of significance and meaning. To participate in his ethos is to see every creature and every place as a sacred gift" (97). “The essential task is to come into the presence of others with a student mindset that seeks to learn from them what is advisable to do, and a servant disposition that commits to come alongside them and help them realize their potential” (101). Ch. 6, Learning Descent As humans it makes a difference to say we "grow out of a place" rather than merely living on it. Understanding our proper place in the world frees us to live in life-giving ways in the community of creation. God is not far away as many mystics teach; God is closer than we think. "The 'beyond' implied by transcendence... is not opposed to immanence but refers us to the unfathomable and mysterious divine power moving within creation. If we seek to be with God, then creation ought to be our focus and destination" (113). Ch. 7, Learning Humility "The world God creates is a vulnerable world susceptible to pain and suffering. To live well and beautifully within it, people must not only affirm the good of their need. They must also learn the skills of gentleness and compassion that are essential to life that is always life together" (134). "Humility should not be about loathing oneself but about coming to understand oneself as a gifted and cherished creaturely being that needs and lives through the nurture and love that others must provide" (136-37). The desire to assert oneself gets in the way of a true human life, which is life for others. "Nothing has to be. That anything is at all must, therefore, be the result of a divine love that delights in something other than God being what it is. In other words, creation ex nihilo is also creation ex amore or 'from love,' since it is only love (rather than some divine lack or external pressure placed upon God) that prompts God to create at all" (139). Creation ex nihilo and ex amore meants "that creatures are now free to become themselves. Put another way, God is glorified not at the expense of creatures, as when people believe they must become small and insignificant in order for God to be great, but when creatures live into the fulness of the lives they have been given" (148). "The logic of creation teaches that God's creating and sustaining power is not coercive or manipulating power *over* others. Jesus... demonstrated that divine power is the kind of power that comes *alongside* others, *dwells with* them, and *shares* in their pain and joy" (148). "Salvation is not what happens to people after they die. It is their ever-deeper immersion into God's life--what early church theologians described as theosis--in which embodiment is not left behind but transformed so that each human body can now be a vessel through which God's love freely flows" (147). Ch. 8, Learning Generosity "To live generously is to believe things are worth sharing and others worth sharing with" (156). Our world has a commodifying lens that sees things and people as things to use and consume, resulting in contractual ways of relating. The alternative is a covenantal way of being. In a covenantal mindset, "One assumes that genuine flourishing is mutual and that the good of individuals is best realized in a community that nurture them" (158). "A meal, for instance, rather than being a declaration of another's concern and love for you, now signifies as a package of calories or a unit of fuel that reflects someone else's business interest in you" (160). "In every sacrifice there are two offerings: the offering of what is given to God, and the offering of oneself in the act of giving. Of the two, the latter is the most important because the cultivation of a self-offering mode of life prepares a person to live more gently and generously in the world" (170). Ch. 9, Learning to Hope "The cultivation of hope depends on inspiring the commitment and developing the practices that can position people to live *now* in ways that affirm, nurture, and heal life, ways that draw people more sympathetically into relationship with others and their shared places" (177). "I believe that a desire for forgiveness is vital to the cultivation of hope because practices like confession and repentance communicate an earnest desire to be in right, or at least agreeable, relationship with each other" (180). "There is no hope in being alone in a mute, commodified world. There is no hope in an unsympathetic existence. A hopeful life is founded upon resonant relationships in which confession and care, and repentance and a commitment to healing are primary practices" (194).”

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WinniePDoo

Created 10 months ago

Paula’s Bookshelf

Created about 1 year ago

Jess Lucas

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About Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, and Director of Research for Climate and Sustainability at Duke University. He is the author and editor of sixteen books, including This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World.