LIVING ON OUR ONE EARTH

Before 800 B.C., the thinking on the whole planet, no matter the continent, was tribal, cosmic, mythic, and ritualistic (German philosopher Karl Jasper’s notion of “pre-axial consciousness”). Owen Barfield calls it “original participation.” Simply by watching the sky, birds, and trees, the seasons, darkness and light, people knew they belonged. Though we call these people uncivilized people, Owen Barfield conjectures they might have had healthier psyches than we do because they lived in an enchanted universe where everything belonged, including themselves. The natural cycles of darkness and light, death and growth, loss and renewal, which were everywhere all the time, were their teachers. They “participated” naturally!

So we should not necessarily think of them as backward or primitive peoples. The very word “pagan” is a dismissive word used by the urban elites meaning “those who live in the country.” We thought by moving into so-called civilization, we were better, smarter, and more evolved. Most people who have ever lived learned of the divine through the natural world. God did not leave them “orphans” (John 14:18). They perhaps saw and met God in everything, and yet from our distance we called them animists or pantheists. Religion was much more about healing and harmonizing. “Salvation” was not a reward you got after you died for good moral behavior. God could be found now and IN ALL things! (Which, by the way, is the motto of both the Franciscans and the Jesuits,who rediscovered original participation through Jesus.)