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Re-place Nature

 

Once in a while I bump into an idea that is strikingly novel to me.  It challenges me in a way I have never been challenged.  Usually in the face of this, I have to pause and admit that I don’t know what to think.  It is only after some pondering that I begin to find my way through to an understanding.  I encountered one idea recently when I settled down, picked up one of my alum magazines and began to flip through it.

            I landed on an article that had an intriguing title, “Cities, Climate Change, and Christianity.”  I know the author, Sallie McFague, and I very much like her work.  Probably, I have at least three of her books on my shelf in my study.  So I trust whatever she is thinking is worth reading. 

            Rightly, I assumed, the article had to do with global warming and sustainability.  It seems like we are hearing a little less about global warming now than we did two or three years ago.  But that does not mean much except it is not “hot” news like it used to be.  On the other hand, sustainability is very much the “in thing” in my circles.  What really intrigued me was how cities fit into this mix?

            And then it happened.  Sallie quoted someone whom I do not know, Edward Soja.  She describes him as a “geographer and student of cities.”  I was hooked!  I think I know what a geographer is, but I am not sure I have a clue what a “student of cities” means.  But I trust Sallie.  And she set me up by a quotation of hers.  She said, “we postmodern citizens of cities must acknowledge our situation: we are energy hogs in our use of ‘first nature,’ even if we do not mean to be, and our cities are prime examples of ‘second nature.’"

            “Whoa,” I think.  Suddenly, it is getting more complicated.  First nature and second nature are not concepts regularly discussed at the MacDonalds I go to get my coffee!  But I relax a bit and realize first nature is what our world---nature---would be like if untouched by human hand.  It was there before we were.  It is our habitat, but once we begin to move in, we begin to change first nature.  We begin making “second nature.”  And one of the more stunning examples of this is the cities we humans have made.

            Anyone who visits New York, Shanghai, or Tokyo knows what this means.  They are splendid, but they are not “natural.”  And the kind of energy used to make and maintain them must be truly amazing…even if it could be measured.  That is probably why she calls us “energy hogs.”  I have to admit I agree.

            And now comes the quotation from Soja.  He says “The urban spatiality of Nature in essence “denaturalizes” Nature…once urban society comes into being, a new Nature is created that blends into and absorbs what existed before.  One might say that the City re-places Nature."

            Skyscrapers are not natural to the natural landscape of the island of Manhattan.  They “denaturalize” original space.  But that is the city space---spatiality---today.  And in that sense the city has re-place the original nature.

            Now I feel like I am beginning to get it.  To put it in theological terms, I am beginning to understand that humans have re-crafted Nature that God originally crafted.  This is a mixed bag.  God created us with the ability to think, to create, and to be “like” God in whose image we were created.  And that is good…”very good,” as God said in Genesis.

            But if we don’t do our crafting in sustainable ways, then ultimately we will make the good “bad.”  This is where spirituality comes into the picture.  My job and your job is never turn the good into the bad.  And if you do turn good into bad, minimize it.  It’s still God’s world.

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