Groundswell

An Ecofeminist Pneumatology of Sanctuary

Abstract

Given the metaphoric registration of Spirit as bird, earth, wind and water, conspiring with Spirit would seem among the most obvious ways in which Christians could remember the biocentric scope of sacred interests. Consequently, as theology has gotten grounded, what has been emerging—after a near 1500-year absence in Western Christian theology—is pneumatology. Spirit, a term borrowed into theology from the natural sciences—that is, Stoicism—draws Christianity back outdoors, beyond human referents, in order to view life from within its ecological field. And conversely, then, while recognizing that our speech about Spirit is always metaphoric, thinking Spirit would also seem to require of us this ‘return to nature’.