AFON
Belonging to Nature – by Casper ter Kuile
Welcome to our series of blog posts in the run up (originally) to the general election (7th May 2015). Over this month AFON members will share their own Visions for Nature: what they want the natural world to look like by 2050 and how they want to get there. Despite the election being over, we have decided to continue the series as more posts keep arriving from our members! We have created a hashtag on Twitter so why not join the conversation? What’s your #VisionforNature?
As a trainee minister for non-religious people, the guiding force in my work is the experience of belonging. Most obviously that means belonging in a community – but it also speaks to our sense of belonging to a place, to the natural world. More than a third of American Millennials are unaffiliated to any religious tradition, and in the UK those numbers are even higher.
This spring, I co-authored How We Gather – a study of non-religious communities and how they mirror many functions of faith groups. We mapped fitness communities like CrossFitalongsidecreative arts communities and dinner clubs. Many of them are doing stellar work to bring people together to experience that sense of connection and belonging that helps us remember we are human, social creatures.
But are they helping us remember we are also creatures of the natural world? To some extent.Certainly, fitness communities that run, climb and survive difficult obstacle courses together can claim to get many of us outside. But I sense that there lies a real opportunity in engaging more actively with ritual in nature that might unlock our sense of belonging to our natural world.
In the UK, old traditions like May Day, Bonfire Night and Boxing Day are all ready to be reclaimed, repurposed and reintroduced. What I’ve learned from leading numerous celebrations like a maypole dance, is that if hosted with confidence and a sense of humour, most guests will delight at the opportunity of engaging with the natural world and our celebration of the seasons. By 2050, I hope to see a whole host of organisations offering people opportunities to mark the passing of time, and the changes in the landscape with food, music, laughter and community.
One example of how to change how we engage with the natural world is Jon Alexander’s project Rabble which helps families connect with local heritage sites to volunteer with planting trees, make birdboxes and much more. With a simple opening and closing ritual of a poem, or a song, these days outside as a family might yet open up a whole new sense of belonging to one another, and our shared home, this earth.