A Mother’s Call: A Shaman’s Eco-Thought
Shamans have been known to be one of the foundational healing components to any development of community. Don Jose Ruiz, a Toltec Shaman from Southern Central Mexico, defines a Shaman as a “nagual,” meaning the awakened ones in the Nahuatl language. Ruiz goes on to say that nagual or Shaman symbolize “the life force energy, the divinity that we all have inside of us – the Shamans are the ones whose eyes are open to this realization.”[1] Thus, Shamans embody a symbolic life source that allows them to heal and create life. As a Shaman in journey, I aim to co-create new spaces of community that offer aid in healing past traumas. In creating these spaces, a Shaman’s journey must continuously consider the mutual immanence[2] between Creation and the imago Dei: the interconnected relationship between one and the many. Such considerations carry over into conversations surrounding ecological healing, and the violent rape perpetuated by humanity’s exploitive ecological footprint inspires such a theological response. The Shaman is both healer and ecological symbol submerged in a community where “healing…is of more than individual benefit, because an incapacitated person requires sustenance and time from others. We gregarious mammals do not easily abandon members of our group; instead, we seek means to restore them to normal capacity.”[3]
Earth, a Mother to us all, is a life system: a form of God giving life to all inhabitants of Earth. If a Shaman is a life force energy, then the Earth the Shaman stands on is also a life force energy because the Shaman only eats what the ground yields. Every meal is a gift from Her fertile soil. Yet, we have failed to acknowledge the mutual immanence of the relationship we have with God through Earth. However, salvation is within our choices. Gustavo Gutiérrez is a Peruvian Catholic Priest who discovered God in the socially and economically oppressed lives of those living in Latin America. In considering Gutiérrez’s explication of salvation, one can come to understand salvation through the echoing cries for healing and protection. Gutiérrez writes, “Salvation – the communion of human beings [imago Dei] with God and among themselves – is something which embraces all human reality, transforms it, and leads it to its fullness in Christ – a symbol of wholeness. Thus, the center of God’s salvific design is Jesus Christ, the example to wholeness, who by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for the person to reach fulfillment [wholeness] as a human being.”[4] It is the journey to becoming human that will enable us to think of how our choices heal or traumatize all existence.
For humanity to journey towards being human, we must ask ourselves if we are including all life systems when attempting to be environmentally sustainable. Christopher Uhl, professor of Biology at The Pennsylvania State University, wrote a book on developing an ecological consciousness. Uhl says, “Earth operates as one interconnected system – our lives will begin to unravel if Earth’s climate continues to shift in the direction of frequent and unprecedented floods, horrendous hurricanes, catastrophic droughts, epidemic disease outbreaks, torrid temperatures, and accelerating sea-level rise.”[5] Uhl invites us to take action when he quotes the poetic farmer and environmental activist, Wendell E. Berry:
“We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”[6]
Be so bold to reflect on your own ecological footprint. Begin with yourself and observe changes in all spaces you occupy. It takes a community to make significant change. I invite you to join our collective community and consider how you can help heal Earth – a Mother to us all.
[1] Ruiz, Jose. Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life. San Antonio, TX: Hierophant Publishing, 2019. XII.
[2] Davis, Andrew M. Mind, Value, and Cosmos. On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publ., 2021. 199. God, and the world also remain mutually transcendent such that any world happening owes it to its existence its own actualization as its own decision of unification of its relationality.
[3] Kehoe, Alice Beck. Shamans and Religion: an Anthropological Exploration in Critical Thinking. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000. 27.
[4] Gutiérrez, Gustavo, Caridad Inda, and John Eagleson. A Theology of Liberation History, Politics, and Salvation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014. 86.
[5] Uhl, Christopher. 128-129.
[6] Uhl, Christopher. 165.
