God and Nature II began unlike any of our courses thus far this semester. Well, come to think of it, it begins unlike most college courses… with the Sunday morning Church service in Upper Barton Creek, an old-order Mennonite community. Church was followed by a home stay with families from the community, where we engaged in conversations about why we live the way we do in farm houses lit by candlelight and built by hand by friends and neighbors. Come Monday night, we were back on Campus ready to begin God and Nature pt. II with the weekend home stay as a platform of rich theological and philosophical discussions touching on everything from community, to land tenure, to ethics, to Biblical interpretations.
The course wasn’t lacking in content, ranging from themes of anthropocentrism, technology, animal rights, deep ecology, and nature. Nature. Hmm, what a broad, vague word! How nonchalantly used in our society, from the “pristine” wilderness to urban landscapes to “natural foods” to basic human instinct, “nature” is truly a mysterious chest of confusion soon to burst its lid. While many of us started the week with diverse perspectives, there were lots of new an interesting things to consider and through discussion and readings, we were able to gain a new and different lens in which to see our surroundings, be they natural, human-made, or somewhere in between.
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