Reciprocity: The Measure of True Connection: Payten Gary

A Reflection on Guest Speaker Christiana

Christiana’s experience walking the Camino through industrial zones profoundly redefines what it means to have a true connection and reciprocity with nature. It wasn't until the soothing and sacred wildness was replaced with an industrial area where she was deprived of the soothing, readily sacred wildness that she was forced to confront where the true spiritual work lies.

In the natural spaces, her connection was passive; nature soothed her and she felt like she was not needed by the environment around her. It did not require her assistance.This suggests a one-sided relationship, nature as a beautiful catalyst for human self-discovery.However, in the "manmade sanctions" of manufacturing and capitalism, the sacred felt "asleep." Her ability to see the divine became a matter of active engagement, not passive reception. To reanimate her pilgrimage, she had to take on a creative, Adam-like role: she called to the small bits of nature. These included the weeds in the cracks. She gave them philosophical attention. This leads me to a question.

  Is genuine connection with nature, and perhaps with the world in general,only achieved when we feel ethically compelled to collaborate or intervene with it, rather than just retreat into it for personal solace?The essential philosophical shift here is from seeing nature as a Labyrinth (a space of meditative, self-contained journey) to seeing the man-made world as a Maze (a chaotic space we must actively order and call the sacred into being). The former is relaxing, but the latter is where true reciprocity,the recognition that we are needed to sustain the sacred,demands the most rigorous work.

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