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Join author and founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality, Victoria Loorz, as she explores the possibilities of restoring beloved community and sacred conversation with All That Is: human and more-than-human.
Stephen: You are listening to a podcast from the Center for Wild Spirituality.
Victoria: Hello and welcome to the Holy Wild. I'm Victoria Loorz. And this is a conversation with human beings who are restoring sacred conversation with all beings. It's a podcast for the edge walkers, those who walk along the edges between an old story of dominance and separation, and an emerging news story. And yet it's ancient, a news story grounded in kindred relationship with Earth.
All it takes is humility, deep listening, and allowing yourself to fall in love again with our holy and wild earth. At the core of the challenges that we face right now is this exaggerated and distorted worldview. It's a worldview that sees humans and only certain kinds of humans at the top of this hierarchy that then devalues and takes advantage of, and oppresses and destroys everyone and everything else.
This worldview is now being paraded in an obscene way in America. And these layers of crises and the cruelty that we're facing right now won't be solved with political or economic strategies. A deeper transformation of heart is necessary to welcome in this new story, and that's a shifting of a worldview.
It's something that doesn't happen as part of a campaign. It's a collaborative, organic emergence. It's one that's happening alongside the destruction, and it's something that the rest of the alive world is part of. And it's been happening. It's been here all along on the edges of society for thousands of years and been at the center of all of human culture for most of human history.
This worldview of deep interconnection with all beings as sacred has never fully disappeared. It's a worldview shift that happens and is happening right now as we allow ourselves to fall in love again with the world and see ourselves as part of an interconnected aliveness. So this emerging worldview is actually a return.
Our indigenous brothers and sisters who have never lost that worldview, or some of them are intentionally regaining their traditional worldview of kinship after being violently disconnected by colonizing forces. These indigenous peoples, along with the land herself, they are our teachers. Our guest today is a scholar and a writer and a professor.
Who recognized his own complicity with the dominant worldview after a near death experience. That experience led him back to his own Cherokee heritage. His name is Don Jacobs, or Four Arrows, and he was adopted by a Lakota community and made a relative. He is now an Oglala Lakota pipe carrier. His work is focused on indigenous rights and inviting others into a worldview that deepens relationship with the world in the ancient way.
His book co-authored by Darcia Narvaez is called Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and the book itself is a sacred conversation. Each chapter addresses 28 of the 40 precepts that they identified that are necessary to rebalance life on planet earth. Each chapter is an essay written by an indigenous writer, and then Darcia and Don explore that essay in conversation.
In this episode, Four Arrows not only talks about his book and the worldview shifts that we're all being called to reconsider right now, and he also shares about what that shift looks like mostly through stories from his own life. He includes a remarkable encounter with the holy wild that he experienced during a wilderness vigil.
It's one that he's never shared publicly before. He begins our session at Seminary of the Wild Earth with a Lakota prayer.
[Transition music plays]
So we are so grateful and feel privileged to have Four Arrows join us today.
Four Arrows: I'm excited to be here and I'm just feeling the energy actually through the waves and, uh, really feeling excited about our conversation today.
And if you would allow me real briefly to just say a prayer in Lakota that reminds us of our connections to all of life on earth.
Victoria: Thank you.
Four Arrows: [prays for a few moments, speaking in Lakota language]
Victoria: Amen. My dear friend. Thank you for initiating our time together with prayer and blessing. I am so grateful for your time and presence here with us today, and I think that that video that you just produced, that you told me about, that might be a good introduction for us today to introduce us to the powerful work that you are doing in restoring sacred relationship with Earth and all of her children.
So why don't we just start with that?
[Video audio music begins with voiceover]
Four Arrows: The Earth is suffering.
Climate change, pollution and pandemics are some of the consequences of human created assault on our world. According to the United Nations Biodiversity Report, 1 million more species faced eminent extinction. Including us. We must live on earth differently, if not for ourselves, for future generations. 80% of global biodiversity now exists on only 20% of the Earth.
It is no coincidence. That this small amount of land is mostly managed by indigenous cultures. According to 450 multidisciplinary scientists, extinction rates have been less severe, are avoided entirely in these areas held by indigenous people. We can all learn to live with greater respect for our non-human life forms.
This is possible if we embrace the worldview that has guided us throughout our existence on this planet. In contrast to the dominant worldview, the indigenous one truly emphasizes our relationship to the land, the environment, and all its interconnected inhabitants. Without remembering this oneness with all of life, we are doomed.
Regional and global scenarios currently lack explicit considerations of the indigenous worldview. It is also important that we do our best to protect and support the remaining indigenous cultures. They are fighting against all odds to protect the last of Earth's biodiversity. And while doing this, we can all re-embrace the worldview indigenous people's share.
We can come to understand that human relationship with nature is a continuous two-way dialogue that natural resources are better thought of as relatives and teachers. Gratitude is essential. The universe is constantly in flux. Time is circular. Respect for diversity, equality, and justice is crucial.
Spirit is in all things, and that human knowledge must be joined by a fearless trust in the unknowable mysteries of nature. Let us remember who we really are and reestablish our intended way of being with respect, generosity, gratitude, and of course the happiness that comes from this.
We are all in.
[Video audio ends]
Four Arrows: There's two things that, that I wanna say about it. One is, you saw the, the quote, 80% of the bio–
Victoria: Right, you mentioned this.
Four Arrows: Yeah. Now that's been recorded by National Geographic, by the Journal Nature, by, you know, so many people. But a recent article that is a comment and their title is saying, this is a baseless claim that's gonna hurt the indigenous cause.
And so I wrote a rebuttal to that, you know? And I think that their intentions were good. I think their intentions were, as scholars and academics, we don't want to have a quote out there about indigenous sustainable practices that's not true because that will backfire and I certainly appreciate that, but the titles of their thing is baseless, is so far from true.
So I show the statistics that are out there that said, well, we don't even know how many species there are that we haven't discovered. And of course there's no statistics that's gonna be able to say how many species there are and come up with a percentage that's accurate, but with the largest biodiversity report ever done, and that was the one in 2019 by the United Nations.
Four 50 research scientists, 15,000 peer reviewed papers in 50 countries. I show how those statistics say, you know, it's probably pretty close to that, right? So anyway, just so that you all are aware of that so that when it comes out, because I worry that this is gonna hurt this movement of recognizing how we really did learn from our other than human animals to guide us.
And when we began to separate from nature and we begin to practice this anthropocentrism that's in all of our institutions, that has been the beginning of all the things that we're seeing out there that are going wrong.
Victoria: Right. And just that little bit of trying to be so correct. Yeah. You know, like it's, it's like when people say, well, you're just being anthropocentric.
You don't know what that whale is saying to you. You don't know what that tree is saying to you. It's very much the same thing. It's like anthropocentrism is something to be aware of. It's not something to shut you down and to shut off relationship.
Four Arrows: I love how you brought that up, Victoria, because this idea of saying, well, but I learned this and this animal came to me and you know that, you know, sounds new age at best, right?
But, well, for one thing, when I had my near-death experience on the Urique River in Mexico and got my first glimpse, 'cause you know, my Cherokee background, I had no experience or knowledge about it. All I knew is that my grandfather had committed suicide. This is before I was made a relative by the Lakota.
So I had been an officer in the Marine Corps, Vietnam, and I tried to be the first to paddle down the Urique River and the river disappeared into an underground drainage, had a near death experience, and the Cimarron people saved me. And I saw their way of living and I went, oh my gosh. I came back to, you know, the United States.
Quit everything I was doing as a sports psychologist and went and got my second doctorate in an indigenous worldview, and from then went on to Oglala Lakota College. But during that time, one of the things that I really came to understand is that there's no question that the animals talk to us. I mean, the telepathic communication that I witnessed, and when I did my dissertation for that second doctorate, I was waiting for the paper to come in, you know, to see if it was approved.
Uh, my chair had approved it, but I was waiting for the research faculty and it said in there, see me in the office. This is either brilliant or bullshit. That was exactly what it said. And I went, oh my gosh, I was so insulted, you know? And it took him quite a while to say it wasn't the latter, but it was because my dissertation was based on a vision that came from a mountain lion that we had to sleep in a cave with, and a dead baby deer, a fawn that an Indian had run down.
And the communication that I got from it created–maybe we'll talk a little bit about it as a practical way to bring ourselves back into harmony–it's called the cat fawn connection, and then something that I think I've only talked on. I think I've only mentioned this once, but I'll just share this 'cause it resonates with what you said about that.
How do you know that this is an animal saying this message? So I was preparing for, I think it was my last Sundance of my for Sundances, but I was no longer on Pine Ridge where the weather was 114 degrees and I was used to it. I was up at altitude in Idaho. And I heard the temperature of what the dance had it was going to be in a month.
I told my wife, I said, wow, you know, I don't think I can go four days without water. I'm up here. I'm not used to it. She says, well, you better go do an hanblecha–hanblecha being a crying for a vision. So I went up on the mountain. This is a sacred story that one doesn't usually tell in this kind of a venue, and I'm really respecting and honoring what you guys do and, and to do this.
It's so relevant and we've gotta start talking about this.
Victoria: Mm-hmm. Right.
Four Arrows: Fools Crow says that those that don't share this medicine don't know it. So I am still in my mindset of Western professor, and I'm going up the hill, going through the woods. I got my hat, my spot out. I get in, I put my tobacco ties in this circle, and I sit inside of it.
I'm holding my chinupa facing west. When a rat slowly kind of walks in. I'm sitting real still and it just kinda walks in a foot away from my foot. Starts eating one of the tobacco ties, chewing that, some tobacco out of it. So what do I do? Kick it away, you know, because I'm not in my mindset. Right.
Victoria: You're not there yet.
Four Arrows: Yeah. Not there yet. You know how it is when we go out and sit by a tree, right? You gotta first, you gotta kind of get into it. Right?
Victoria: But it happened right away. I love that. She came right when you sat down.
Four Arrows: Right? Yeah. I mean, I sat down and had everything and I, I must have been one minute of sitting down, but I still was thinking about, oh, did I make that phone call?
You know, I wasn't in it, but it came anyway. It was just a, it took a couple of bites. I, what the heck? Get outta here. And of course it was instantaneous. I realized my mistake, you know, 'cause I had done this for so many years. It was just instantaneous. And I felt so badly about it in so many ways and figured that that was it for that, right?
I'm gonna be up there and nothing's gonna happen. And I'm really tuned in. And I said, whatever happens, you know, thank you for that happening. That's it. I don't have an elder here. I don't know the animals of Idaho, but I will find out what that teaching was. I just knew that that was it.
Right? So I'm sitting there and I'm kind of getting back into it and it comes back and it came in and ate some more tobacco and then it came in the center of the circle faced west with its back to me like a pet dog would. And then I going, oh my God, you know, getting. This is it. This was, this is real. You know?
And, and so now I'm just feeling nothing but gratitude and maybe 30 seconds or more, and it just slowly walked away. And so I get back, I start the fire for the lodge, and my wife knows she can't talk to me until I do my lodge. And what do I do? You guys will laugh at this, and I think this is such, so cool in a way.
I don't have anybody, I don't have the knowledge of that animal. I don't have any elders. And I'm out in Idaho, the people that know the flora and fauna. I go right to Google. Yeah. I go right to Google and I put in Animals of North America, you know, and I'm, you know, I'm in my towel and the fire's going and I'm getting, you know, ready for, to go out and I'm on the computer.
I mean, like the last thing I would've ever thought I would do after an hanblecha. I put in and I go to images 'cause I'm, it's the only thing I know. It had these big back long legs and a long tail and it was looked like a rat. So I put rodents of North America and there it was, and I can't remember the Latin name now, but it said the kangaroo rat.
The only mammal in North America that can go a lifetime without a drop of water.
Victoria: Oh.
Four Arrows: So yeah, people can say, ah. That rat did not talk to you and tell you that you're gonna do okay with the dance and in the sun and the heat at 114 degrees without water. He did not say that to you. You just made that up, you know?
But come on. I mean, there's a synchronicity that Yuma would call it, I call it spirit. That happens over and over and over again. You go, wait a minute. So we do have to open ourselves up to listening. We do have to look at that little ant that's walking across the floor or that tree, and we've got to let go of this sense of, ah, that's not even possible.
Only humans have sentience. We've got to do that. And when we do that, everything changes.
Victoria: Yes, yes. It's like, it's like this sense of the holy, the numinous of that moment is so sacred. So that's another thing we do. It's like, oh, this is too sacred. I don't want somebody to start questioning me or whatever. But when we don't share these stories, like, how did you say that?
I want you to say it again. When we don't share these stories, they can be forgotten. They can be abused. They can be missed altogether.
Four Arrows: I had to kind of apologize. I felt even myself, right? Ah, right. I was, I don't really know. I'm, I was doing all this. Maybe I shouldn’t do it. I mean, come on. Right.
Victoria: We do it and it's okay to do it because we're totally shifting our worldview. It's, we're living in a worldview that you described so beautifully as this dominant worldview, and we're living in the midst of it. We still are right now. But the worldview that we're restoring, that we're recovering is opposite.
You know, I love how you just break it down like here it is dominant versus indigenous–dominant versus kinship. You know, we don't wanna talk about binaries too much, but there are two paths.
Four Arrows: Well let’s talk about those binaries. I think it's really, I think it's really cool that you brought the binary up on this.
This is probably one of the most complex part of this. I'd like for all of you, your, you and your students. To go to worldviewliteracy.org and download our worldview chart. Anyone who downloads it, come back in three months on your own will and answer the research questions that we have. We wanna see, well, did you use it?
How did you use it? And we're saying, please make a commitment for 10 minutes a day of just looking at it and going, so, okay. Let's see. Uh, here's the common kinship worldview, and it's talking about seeking complimentary duality. It's number 22 as opposed to dualistic thinking. So that gets to this binary question.
What does that mean and how does that work? And why on earth? I'm looking down here. I say, well, I can see how maybe with egalitarian versus rigid hierarchy, I can see that the matriarchies of pre-colonial times were all egalitarian. They say 78% of precontact cultures were peaceful societies, and the ones that weren't were patriarchies that had different reasons for it, but they still took care of the land.
But we have rigid hierarchies in all of our systems now. And so you say, well, if I just look at that one, I go, well, I'm an executive of a corporation, and by golly, I was moved by this idea. I'm gonna start reducing my rigid hierarchy in my business. But then you go all the way down to, what is it?
Number 39, high respect for women versus low respect for women. Wait a minute. How can we have a non-dualistic, non-binary thing on that? When would we ever have a low respect for women? And this is what's difficult for people to look at this with the dominant worldview, which is a non-binary worldview.
I mean, the indigenous world is non-binary. Well, what you would do that is, think about mountains and valleys to start with. You can't have a mountain without a valley. But then kind of go beyond that metaphor and go. What can I learn from people that have a low respect for women? But increase my depth of understanding how important it is to not have a low respect for women.
And that would increase my actionability in the world because I know what are the manifestations of that better having looked at people that have a low respect for women. So it's still, as Jung called it a union of the opposites, but indigenous people call it the twin hero stories of all our mythologies are about ultimate complementarity between opposites.
And so this complementarity is crucial to how we study this. So if we, we look at the inseparability of knowledge and action versus emphasis on theory and radically, oh, you know, I may be doing too much of the latter. If we look at emphasis on responsibility versus emphasis on rights, we'll go, wow, no, I've spent all my time fighting for the rights.
I thought that was a good thing, but now I get that and I see I'm outta balance in that way.
Victoria: That’s so profound Four Arrows. This precept or this worldview of opposites as complimentary. It's a necessary thing. That worldview is so important for us to learn today, 'cause binaries are simply how life works.
That's what you're saying. But our culture has created opposition between the binaries. Rather than valuing both daytime productivity and nighttime rest, we only value the light rather than, like you're talking about, rather than valuing women and men. Our culture has to fight. We and our, you know, women in our culture and men who get it, we have to fight for our rights because the responsibilities have been forgotten.
So instead we take sides, we're left, or we're on the right and we need to defend our own side, and then we devalue the other. And yet, what you just said is just like, okay, how, what can I learn? How can I be softened in my relationship with others who don't hold this worldview? You know, that feels like part of the path that I don't, I personally am terrible at.
Four Arrows: Just last night we had a group of local people here, nice people.
I just hadn't really met a couple of 'em for the first time and. We started getting into some political kinds of conversations. Long story short, getting into the point here is when I had put forth this idea about worldview, there was some pretty strong resistance. Oh no, human nature is always violent and warlike as opposed to it being a anthropocentric problem.
And uh, so I thought, well, lemme see. There was one lady that had said. Here at Salmon Beach, I'm just loving this. Moving here, I'm starting to learn from nature. I'm watching the slugs mate and realizing how, you know, and she was, she had brought that up. I said, well, I'm gonna take advantage of that. I said, so how many of you think that humans are animals?
Because a lot of people don't. And I thought, I won't be able to go there if, but they all said, yeah, we are, we're animals and we are destructive just like other animals. Some, a couple of 'em said. And I said, so destructive as other animals. And so it, it, we kind of gone on and somebody said, yeah, yeah, I had a parrot one time.
It was so destructible. I said, you mean a parrot like inside captivity? And you're using that example of destruction and you know, some people got that. Well, then I said, okay, let's take about animals in the wild because obviously there's a problem with that, that metaphor. I said, what about beavers?
And, uh, this same person that said, talk about the parrot, said, he said, oh yeah, they're more destructive than anything. And I said, well, they are, you're right. They are. And they're known for that. I mean, they can just tear down a tree like this. I said, but point I'm getting at is do you think that the animals that are out there that are other than us, 'cause you say we're animals, do you think that overall in the long, big picture that they are maintaining harmony and ecological balance in the world, unlike what we are doing.
No, no, no. We're, they're just as, just they're destroying things just like we are. Well, he just didn't know Yeah. About what beavers there. There are key piece to clean water and all this. All right. So he just didn't know it.
So, but this I think is where the worldview chart comes in and say, say, look at, you know, let's look at this together. You just go down and you look at. What is this idea of earth systems as living and loving versus earth as an unloving it and about how do you, have you ever been, you know, scared, you know, in nature in a way that was unreasonable?
Have you ever, and you, you start looking, going down this and, and what are you doing for, for ceremonies right now? And how do they involve the natural world and do you see human nature as good?
I've got a lot of folks who are on our side of everything, right? You know, anti-Trump, anti-this, but they rationalize what's happening in the world by saying, yeah, you know, I'm, we should be taking care of our trees and our animals and, but, um, you know, that's human nature.
Oh, they're, I go, wait a minute. If you really believe human nature is absolutely violent and warlike that's a major problem that somehow if we sat down and did psychotherapy, we'd find ways it's manifesting itself in your world. But I said, if you look at, no, this is a digression, right? This was a digression from, and I said, even, you know, and descent of man Darwin, when he wrote it, he says, this is, you know, he never used the word survival of the fittest.
He said, this is gonna be about a long-term adaptability. He said the ultimate description of life on earth is symbiosis. And then Peter Perkopkin wrote his book after, right when that book was out and he was, and Darwin was alive, called Mutual Aid. And he underscored, he said, why are these post Darwinian people taking from that this survival of the fittest when the hierarchy in the animal kingdom isn't about that?
It's about this ultimate balancing. Uh, so he wrote the book called Mutual Aid to really kind of counter the Neo Darwin approach that we are all, all using today. So using the chart, you'll find at least eight or nine things that in addition to the anthropocentrism there's missing and they're all connected and, and you can make them, you can make the connections and then you get into experience.
You go touch the tree. Um, or did you ever have this happen? And, and, and why do you think that if we are so special? Well, that's gonna bring you in into probably one of the Abrahamic religions, right? So it depends on how much energy you want to put in on it, right? And how you want to do it. And I've been doing it for many, many years and I've learned that you, you've gotta do it in a way that really starts where they are and really is recognizing their spiritual energy.
And recognizing that you're a spirit talking to a spirit more than it's about, you know, their behaviors and voting records or whatever. Right.
[Transition music plays]
Victoria: I have a question for you. You talk about how the language of indigenous cultures is generally verb based, and our dominant culture is noun based. I'm wondering how that affects our relationship with the rest of the world.
Four Arrows: Yeah, and, and that comes up for me so often and just earlier we had mentioned about how falling in love is a, is a way to really feel the belongingness out in nature.
You just fall in love. I'll just use that as an example. If we had said, falling in loving action or falling in, you know, and made a verb out of love, it would be even more powerful because I've not been able to find a word for love in indigenous languages as a noun, and I don't think it's just because of the tendency of indigenous languages to be verb based languages.
I think that that word, especially, you think about the tragedy of love in our dominant world and all of the people kill for love. Love is in jealousy. I mean, all of the things that happen to this noun, right? But when love is an action and it's in compassion and it's in all the kinds of things that are actionable, then those things aren't in the psychology because there's an action of loving it.
So I really think that this is a very difficult thing to understand and implement in our Latin languages, and I think that there was no doubt of the intentionality and the wisdom of the verb based languages because it's of the land. It's not of the groupings of social. All of our Latin languages about nine, 10,000 years ago were about society, human society, organization. They're based on that, whereas all of the other ones are nature based.
If I walk from the borderline of United States and Canada through British Columbia, and if I had somebody with me who are several people with me who are experts in the flora and fauna of British Columbia.
I would say I want you to, as soon as you start to see different plants growing significantly, and there's different animals and birds and insects, I want you to tell me if they did that. The research, I'm using that as an example of actual research, shows that a different language is actually happening because the languages are based on vibrations, the sounds, the images.
They're based literally on the surrounding world. It's amazing. And when I first learned that I was at the amazing place in Victoria where they have these museum showings that are just fantastic. And it was a museum showing of all the British Columbia languages and how the languages relate to the flora and fauna, you know, and, and that they're, I mean, they didn't talk so much, they didn't talk about verb baseness, but if you think that the language coming from animals and plants is action and growth and cycles. Well then obviously it would be verb based.
Victoria: It is like, it's a, a relationship. Relationship isn't nouns. It's the, in fact, even just saying even within the Christian, this is one of the things that comes out in the, the Church of the Wild book that I wrote, is just that the relationship between is the presence of the holy.
Four Arrows: It's so interesting that you said it, 'cause you know, in our book, Restoring the Kinship Worldview, we have one Christian indigenous person that is, we quote, and I really, I really, and with intention, I said, you know, because you know Robert Warrior and some other of my colleagues, they say no, there's no way that there is a compatibility between Christianity and Indigeneity.
And, and they have good, good arguments, right? And I wrote an article you can find for the University of British Columbia called False Doctrine. And I put that in quotes because that was a quote by Thomas Paine about why the United States should not, you know, use Christianity as its foundational religion.
So I put it in quotes, and then I, I write Christianity as a barrier to the indigenous political will, something like that. But in it, I don't go as far as Robert Warrior, I say no, you can have all the religions, all the Abrahamic religions, which even though they're all based on anthropocentrism, you can still use and pick and choose in those religions for the social benefit.
Right? And for whatever kinds of things. And, and I kind of have wishy-washy positions on it, but I think that all religions, you know, you can use for what they can offer you. If you're aware of the pitfalls and the things that say the opposite of what something you like. So it's a very dicey road, but it's like, yeah.
If that's a way for you to get involved with communicating and there are segments and sections. Unitarianism, for example, kind of does this and it, they call themselves a Christian religion. But I think that this idea of, of religion has got to be looked at from the same viewpoint that we're talking about.
And even though there's some, you know, Thomas Aquinas or people that, oh, if you look at 'em really carefully, they still even, I've got Buddhist friends and I say, well, in Buddhism, you know, you don't come back as an animal. A study that was done called, uh, Amerindian Rebirthing in, in British Columbia.
Showed that replicating Ian Stevenson's work outta the University of Virginia perceptual studies about souls that were souls are really leave our bodies and all that stuff. That, um, 40% of the reincarnation experiences that were described by indigenous children weren't humans. They were from everything from cedar trees to crows.
And so anyway, we don't know. It's a great mysteriousness. This is all great.
Victoria: Keep it mystery. Keep it mystery.
Four Arrows: Yeah, we gotta keep it as a mystery, but we've got open to this idea that we are animals that are, and you know, not, there was a time, and it was maybe, I don't know, 25 years ago, not long ago, I'm 78, where I said, you know, humans are like a cancer to this planet.
And you've heard that from other people, right? Right. Well, I'm so apologetic for having that thought. We are creatures of Mother Earth. Just like the ants and the cockroaches and the snakes and the birds and the everything we are, and the, the evidence, if you want to go to the Western science evidence is really clear in that like the, the 13,000 years of Amazon indigenous people, great studies showing 13,000 years of human impact.
The human impact was just as significant and, and as what would happen to beetles or, or beavers, but. No extinctions, right. Things black earth was developed to develop in, in, in accrue. So we have a role to play. You know, we don't wanna look at pristine forests because you humans have a role in that pristine forest.
Right? One of the barriers to this is the not knowing this, right? Yeah. And so the, the chart can help that. Well, looking at animal nature as dangerous or utilitarian. I wrote a book with Walter Block called Differing Worldviews: Two Scholars Argue Cooperatively and everything I had read of his violently upset my stomach.
Right. You know, I mean, I'm just exaggerating.
Victoria: It was very brave to enter into.
Four Arrows: and I said, look, write a book with me. We're in this time of divisiveness and you and I are two scholars. We both got lots of publications. You're at Loyola, you're an economics professor. So we wrote the book. It's called Differing Worldviews.
My wife says, don't ever write a book like this again. 'cause I would get his statements and I would have to respond and I couldn't fight back with a debate because it was my idea to try to understand his position. Now not everybody agreed with the book. I gave it to Alice Walker of Color Purple. She was my neighbor in Mexico and I had it autographed and sent it to Alice.
I thought she'd be really, think I did a good thing. She thumbed through it for about 10 seconds and threw it in a waist can. Right in front of me, she says, you're in bed with the devil. Because she's had a lot of anger. She has a lot of anger. That's why the movie was so powerful and, but I found him and I became friends, but he still taught me things from the things that were despicable to me.
For example, when he said, if you wanna save the animals in the world, you gotta privatize. And I said, let me understand this. So like, like whales, how would you do that? And he says, well, you put, you know, little things in them that, that people can electronically track them. And if someone kills one, then you use the legal system to and on, on and on.
I, I said, or so Walter, just, I'm trying to understand that's the idea of our conversation here. It sounds like you think only humans have intrinsic value, thinking that there's no way he would say that. I wait about a week and he comes back with his, his response. That's how we wrote the book. And he says, Four Arrows, I've, this has been an interesting experience.
I think we've learned from each other, and da, da, da. But he says, I'm surprised you asked me that. Of course, only humans have intrinsic value. Everything else on earth is utilitarian.
Victoria: There's that foundational worldview.
Four Arrows: And this is, and I, and I was what it helped me do after the, you know, the surprise and the wow came out is, wait a minute, he's teaching me that actually this is the entire capitalistic system.
This is not a, a one off. And so it was a, you know, it was a value. And you know, we're still, we still talk with each other. We're not beating each other up. And I think maybe he's modified some things, and maybe I have. But here's the point. The point is we've got to open ourselves up to see spirit in all people.
All people meaning four-legged, all beings, legged swimmers, crawlers rooted ones. We've got to really open ourselves up and one way that I've done over the years for, from everybody, from troubled youth incarcerated youth to monks in Japan.
I'll sit before they sit down at a meeting, I'll say, please, I've picked some trees or shrubs or plants out, I want you to go touch one and come back. They'll do that like, this is kind of weird, but I'll do it. And then before they sit down, I go, whoa, wait a minute. I want you to go back out one more time and go to the same tree off. Or if you see another one that's okay and you're gonna maybe laugh, but this time, I say, I want you to stop and truly, truly, even if you have to act, I want you to imagine that that tree can hear you or that plant can hear you, and I want you to ask permission to touch it, and I want you to wait for an answer. I've done this for so many years, and I'll tell you what, it blows your mind. Some of the things that people bring back who you'd never, ever think would, would be somebody that would do that, right?
Victoria: It's beautiful. I mean that, that's sort of the, the core practice, even in Church of the Wild, there's, there's a couple hundred churches of the wild in the, mostly in, in North America. But that practice of just asking per it is just like if you, if you and I met in a coffee shop, I wouldn't just sit down and start talking to you.
I would ask permission to sit down next to you. It's just basic kindness and civility. But I was also gonna say something you were saying before about how the science is catching up. It's like the science that you've gotten grants for that other scientists and biologists have done the research to see that even plants communicate with us.
Four Arrows: Yeah.
Victoria: Even plants, not just communicate with each other, but with us, and we just have forgotten how to listen.
Four Arrows: And if people don't find there, if they don't read the Secret Life of Trees or if they don't go to some of the science right. Things that when we choose a tree for the Sundance, you know, we go to its relatives and ask permission for the tree that we're gonna cut down for the event, right?
This has been known for thousands and thousands of years before the science has shown that trees can communicate with each other. But I think it's in our DNA and so. So if people, I mean, it's great when people get. You know, the intellectual piece of it. This is the science. That's great, but it's not enough.
And that's what's so beautiful about your school. The first part of it isn't about teaching, it's about belonging to and feeling the belongingness, you know? And then most of the learning probably comes from the, from that alone, right?
Victoria: That's where, that's where all of the transformation comes. Yeah.
Four Arrows: Guide others in some ways, you know, because people, people say, oh, if you can't show it to me with some kind of a logic or, you know, science, I'm not gonna buy it at all. Right? So, okay, you, we can do a little bit.
Victoria: We'll give, we'll give them that too. But it's really about experience and that's, that's right.
Four Arrows: Looking at a dying. I mean, look at some of the famous ecologists, right? We know the stories about him. The guy that was a wolf hunter, kills a wolf, but he gets to it before it dies and he looks in the wolf's eyes. Those kind of experiences, right, are hard to have. I had a near-death experience for mine, right, as an ex-Marine.
But, um, you know. We can cultivate those. If we open ourselves to looking at 'em, then we see them all around and we see them every day.
Victoria: Right. And it's it, it happens all the time. It's a matter of us being aware of it and being open to it.
So grateful. Oh my gosh. Thank you for this time with us and just always, you're so full of passion and loving action.
Four Arrows: Why don't we close with a flute song as we, as we fade?
Victoria: Let's do that.
Four Arrows: This is a song that, uh, my ancestors sang on The Trail of Tears, the Cherokee Trail of Tears. That was a forced march out of the territories of the Carolinas into Oklahoma. It was a genocide. A third of the people died. But this lullaby says what I want all of you to remember, because times are, are, are difficult, and you may go from loving me to hating me in this next second, but I don't have hope that things are going to turn around.
I believe that we've got to redefine hope as not the certainty of an outcome that we want, but the certainty that what we're doing is the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome. Doesn't mean that things might not change, but I think that the vibrations of your work are gonna be crucial for the rebuilding of what we're gonna probably do, and I hope I'm wrong.
But that said, you've got to live your life with a faith. And that is what this song is about. These women that sang this lullaby to the children, Carlos Mackay taught me this song. The song went like, yeah, you we're on this trail. You're watching people be beaten and, and dying and the, the horrors of it.
But did you see the beautiful clouds in the skies and the animals in them? How they're keeping their responsibility by letting the rain drop on us, giving us water. Did you see the beautiful fish in the creek when we passed over it and how it's keeping that water clean for us? Did you see the dancing grasses and the prairie?
And how they are feeding the four Leggeds and the four Leggeds are helping us. And did you hear the beautiful sound of the mockingbird and how that's reminding us to keep our songs and it went on like that? And so we've got to see every single day the beauty in the world, while we fight against the difficult things that are happening like in Gaza.
And so this is the message of this song. And imagine the courage of the women and the beauty of the women. Right. Here I go.
[Four Arrows performs a flute song in farewell]
[Soothing sounds of birdsong and a trickling stream fades up]
Victoria: Encounters with the holy wild happen when we are open to them. When we approach the natural world with reverence and an open heart. Each week, I offer an invitation to wander in the wildish places of your home and to do so with reverence so that you might enter into sacred conversation with the holy and the wild yourself.
For this week, considering the worldview of kinship, of seeing all other beings and even the other elements like mountains and clouds, and the moon as relatives, as ones who have something important to say to you in particular and through you to our communities and these others, desire your respectful attention as well.
Sacred encounters with a deer or a sunset or a kangaroo rat is more than a cool accidental moment. There is intention involved and mysterious connection. It may be difficult for our Western minds to embrace this reality, which is why we need to practice it. And so for this week, go out and wander in your wildish place and begin with asking permission.
When you feel drawn to a particular place or being ask permission, honor the sacred agency of the other to choose to enter into relationship with you. It's respectful consent and like Four Arrows shared in this episode, you may be surprised at what unfolds.
Michele: This is Michelle Walker. I am, uh, I'm in Central British Columbia, Canada. And I remember the first time that I realized that I was witnessing a conversation between the river and the wind. The river had been so still that day and so calm, and suddenly there was this gust of wind and it moved across the river and down the river in this really joyful way, and that's when I recognized I was witnessing a conversation between the wind and the river.
And that my joy in witnessing this meant that I was part of the conversation as well. I'm so grateful to have witnessed that and recognized that.
[Outro music plays]
Stephen: Have you experienced an encounter with a tree or a wild being or a particular place that felt sacred? Maybe it's an everyday occurrence or something more mystical. Did it occur to you that you may have been entangled in a holy conversation? If you have such a story, please record a voice memo on your phone in a quiet space with the microphone about six inches from your face while speaking softly.
If you're comfortable, share your name and where on earth you're speaking from. Please keep it no longer than five minutes and email the voice memo as an attachment to hello@wildspirituality.earth, putting sacred conversation in the subject line. We'd love to share your voice and your story in sacred conversation.
This has been another episode of the Holy Wild. For more information about the movement to restore sacred relationship with Earth, visit wildspirituality.earth and please subscribe to the podcast, leave a review and share this episode with someone you know who is hearing the call of the Holy Wild.
Music by Alec, Slater, and Sandy from inside the silo at the farm, produced by Stephen Henning at Highline Sounds and hosted by Victoria Loorz.