All That Is

New Naturalism isn’t really “new,” at least not when it comes to the ideas and beliefs at its core. I chose to call it “new” to differentiate it from the materialist naturalism of the 19th century.

Based on my research so far, a more holistic and spiritual view of the natural world and our place within it existed throughout human time and has been expressed in countless ways. Unfortunately, in recent centuries, it was enlightened out of us. The current movement back to such thinking is simply a revival, a remembering.

As a literary movement, New Naturalism relocates Nature as a primary source of revelation, as opposed to being a mere backdrop for human activity, spiritual or otherwise. Divine wisdom is waiting for us to see and to listen; it’s everywhere in the natural world that surrounds us (of which we are a part)—that world being the sacred text that pre-dates any of the human-bound books that have since followed.

[Note: By literary, I refer to any written text that reflects the culture from which it emerges. This may include: fiction, nonfiction, scientific, philosophical, psychological or religious.]

One Source, One Tree

Here’s what underpins my work and why I believe it matters.

It’s quite plausible to suggest that most, if not all religious texts and the countless splinters of religious denominations that have grown from those texts, share one source of inspiration: Nature (capitalized to encompass all that is numinous in all of life on our living and breathing Earth).

Each of those splinters is evidence of how we’ve tried to understand and express the ineffable throughout our short history on this planet. These attempts, once created, find their tribe, their followers. Being natural creators, humans enrich, edit and supplement what has been tried before them, and the result is texts transformed by a centuries-long project akin to the game of telephone we played in circles as children.

It’s something I visualize in my mind’s eye to be like an ancient tree: one massive trunk reaches up into the highest heavens while below, the tangled roots spread far and wide in all directions, intertwined amongst themselves.

Just imagine how different our world could be if we truly understood that we all originate from and thrive in One Source. These days, it seems we’re desperate for connection and meaning, looking for something to believe in—what some may call a new mythology or a new story—and it’s all around us, waiting for us to see and to listen.

[I like to call it a theory as opposed to a belief because I don’t want to be dogmatic.]

All That Is

Envisioning such interconnection means no single splinter is ‘true’ or ‘false,’ ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ Instead, all are small shoots growing from one source, each one expressing part of a greater whole.

All is sacred. Human and more-than-human—with divinity wrapped around All That Is like a ribbon of fine mist—an extraordinary gift so profound that mere words fail to express and comprehend. As I see it, the work many people are doing now, in various disciplines—literary, philosophical, psychological, religious, ecospiritual, environmental, scientific—are the myriad ways we keep trying.

That is 21st-century New Naturalism.