We hold as sacred all of creation and their patterns of form, relationship and behavior, which include
The capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. This is called agency.
That all of creation is able to perceive or feel. This is called sentiency.
That sentiency is a communal endeavor, something shared by all life, something that evolved from the specific elements of place in countless niches all over this planet.
That all life is deeply related–is kin–and that places where humans live are most healthy when this kinship is woven into our stories and lifeways.
We also hold as sacred that the bodies of all beings, and the symbiotic communities who sustain them, are the most eloquent forms of embodied learning, which is how to behave/participate with the rest of life in that particular place/time. And so each place holds the answers on how to live responsibly there: the land is the textbook and the teacher.
So all life depends on other beings for their well-being, and most “complex” beings are made of countless communities of smaller beings, so “individuals” are actually like bioregions to our small kin.
Therefore, we believe that acting as if sentiency is everywhere is one way to attempt to enter into respectful relationship with the world, for even if, say, stones were not sentient (blasphemy to even suggest this!), they are still homes to many who are. Every wee spot on Earth is home to at least one village of sentient beings, so everywhere embodies, or at least hosts, sentiency and agency. So everywhere is sacred, meaning worthy of reverence.
Additionally, the life pattern called imagination urges us to consider the great creative and destructive forces, like fire, floods, volcanism, tornadoes and earthquakes, for example, as sentient as well. It also encourages us to ponder a mythic lens for these times, so that we may be guided by story, heartsickness, tenderness, discernment and intimacy more than by facts, anger, abstraction, unrooted theory and surety.
And so we believe:
That autonomy and sentiency are collaborative efforts, even if seen through our eyes as the essence of individual freedom. The mystery to life, that energy called by many names–we choose to use “Spirit”–is that life cannot sustain very long without community, without a network of connections, without symbiotic interdependency. So we like to think that Spirit asks all life to cooperate and reciprocate, meaning take only what is needed and give back to those from whom we’ve taken. Heeding this asking results in intact self-willed communities, called “wild” by the dominant society, and they operate as complex, multi-member sentient beings with a mind specific to the location who is their home, not so differently than as we “complex” animals do.
That learning to experience the world as walking among gods serves life better than trying to understand the intricacies of creation through life-harming technology.
That humans reach their greatest potential–meaning most integrated and useful to the rest of life–by living with, and knowing themselves to be, of a specific place–by being active, reciprocal members among millions of them in a certain community of life.
This membership within a specific community in a specific place leads humans to lifeways that uphold a kincentric reverence for the local world. In the absence of a culture to gift us this worldview and the skills that come with it, we’ve embraced animism as the foundation of re-becoming place-integrated.
That being place-integrated determines our beliefs about kinship and sanctity. As animals, our most durable devotion is to those with whom we are intertwined–those with whom we have the most intimacy. So all life is sacred, and all life is kin, but those whom we love and interact with regularly are most sacred to us.
That the more time we spend with our kin of a certain place, the more we love them. The more we love them, the more we want to tend to their well-being, and the more beauty we experience with them. The more beauty we experience with them, the more we want to name them as honored kin in art and in stories, so we try to find words and create objects to match this beauty of relationship. The more they permeate our language and crafts, the more we hone our words and art to reflect this land-beauty-culture-kinship ethic.
That to break the habits of being on the take–of our cultural poverty that demands relentless tumor-like growth–a never ending learning about belonging is required, and so a dedication to alertness, perseverance, honesty and curiosity. It requires transitioning our beliefs, our language, our lifeways. It requires us to become cræfters and homecomers, to live with a lot less stuff, to have all our needs met through nurturance of the place who is our home, which includes returning our unpoisoned bodies to the land. It requires we relearn what we mean by “rich.” As Martin Shaw asks, “Is it not time to start beholding and stop dictating?”
And we also understand that modern, civilized human societies have many layers of legal and moral structures that prevent such a homecoming, and that being uncomfortable or indifferent to most other life has been normalized as vastly far more common among us humans than this belief system we promote. Still, each individual may encounter Spirit-driven questions such as, “Who am I? What is real beauty? What compels my beliefs, my words, my choices, my doings? Do they serve beauty or not? Do they serve connection or alienation? Do they serve love or fear?” And so, we believe, if there is to be any hope rooted in human behavior, for stopping the mass extinction caused by our kind, it starts with asking those questions and making small changes within yourself. While this may not be possible for the most marginalized, we see nothing but positive from the rest of us becoming more caring and careful beings.
