A Climate of Hope Where Religion, Ecology, and the Arts Meet

When I was asked to contribute some reflections to Reflections, I first took pause. I am not, after all, a theologian, nor do I deal particularly with Christian traditions. And yet, here I am as a Fellow working with the Religion, Ecology and Expressive Culture (REEC) Initiative at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music at Yale. And what I see there are convergences in the study and practice of religion(s), ecology, and art across divides and disciplines that give me steady energy and rooted hope.  

But even in “modern” contexts, people do find in nature and in natural processes, quite routinely, an eternal (and often cyclical) story of hope. There is a kind of redemption in seeing heaven in a wildflower. 

It is perhaps unremarkable to say that we live in a time of poly-crisis: there is large-scale climate change and environmental degradation, war and conflict in many parts of the world, pandemics of biological diseases but also of loneliness and drugs, deep wealth and resource inequality, violent religious fundamentalism in different robes, the emergence of new artificial intelligence technologies and big data (and the potential of their misuse besides adverse consequences for some jobs) and so on. To clarify, many peoples in many parts of the world have faced (and sometimes survived and sometimes not) other configurations of multiple crises. And many scholars have noted how crises are indeed productive or useful (for some people)—“never waste a good crisis,” as Winston Churchill (in)famously articulated during the Second World War. Indeed, anthropologists among others have noted that the effects or burdens of any crisis are shared differently by different people involved. And so, all this often translates into a crisis of confidence, and a crisis of faith—in other human beings and in God (in the most expansive non-sectarian sense of the term). How do people cope? How does one retain faith in goodness? How can different ways of being and believing flourish alongside one another? 

The Long Arc of History

One of higher education’s challenges in times of crisis is the pressure to take action (or to train people who can take relevant action) and find solutions while balancing the needs of dispassionate scholarship. I am not mounting a defense in favor of fiddling while Rome burns, but the long arc of history is also wrought with the debris of well-meaning solutions that have arguably done as much (if not more) harm as good. Pesticides present an example. Of course, instruments and technologies are not to be blamed for the (mis)use they are put to. Nevertheless, particular problems occur in particular places, where they are particularly felt, and so also to a great extent, particularly solved.

This is where the humanities, broadly speaking, play a crucial role before there can be “solutioning.” They do the vital work of developing an understanding from multiple, but grounded, vantage points. Such a pursuit of knowledge and understanding can take many forms: ethnography, literary criticism, deep meditation, communal chanting, artistic creativity among others. The interpretive work of the academy attempts to make different ways of understanding mutually intelligible to each other. The idea is not so much to find or invent a “master code” that can explain all disciplines, but to create a space and nurture a mode for intelligible and effective interdisciplinary conversation. 

The Music of Collaboration

Cultivating such a dialogue is what REEC at the ISM tries to do. Partnering with the Yale Divinity School and the School of Music, the ISM is an extraordinary center for the pursuit of interdisciplinary teaching, learning, and research. Begun as a platform to train students in church music, the Institute has in the years since its founding cultivated a space that welcomes perspectives from all faiths and from an astonishing diversity of creative traditions. The REEC initiative is a particularly potent medium for nurturing this humane interdisciplinary attitude. It opens up room not just for many approaches to the study of sacred music—singing and performing music, of course, but also exploring how such music is received, transmitted, stored in architecture, text, or other formats, and how those have changed over time. Thus, the interdisciplinary research it supports extends to other ways of experiencing the divine: stained glass, architecture, art history, acoustics. In this way, these disciplines and sub-disciplines begin to speak to (or shall I say sing with) each other. 

Moreover, in addition to music, people experience or worship the divine also through the environment. It is not just that divinity is represented using environmental symbols (e.g. trees, water, dove)—it is also experienced through the environment itself. Members of Indigenous communities and practitioners of the “eastern” religions, among others, know this well. But even in “modern” contexts, people do find in nature and in natural processes, quite routinely, an eternal (and often cyclical) story of hope. There is a kind of redemption in seeing heaven in a wildflower. Conversely, there is growing recognition among global environmental conservationists (e.g., witness global actors such as the United Nations’ Environment Programme’s Faith for Earth Initiative or the World Wildlife’s Fund Sacred Earth program, amongst others) that partnering with and cultivating such an attitude of reverence can do much for environmental protection. 

Spiritual Centering

Amongst recent grantees of the REEC initiative was the Coastal Futures Conservatory in Virginia, which brought together a team led by a music composer, an environmental scientist, and environmental ethicist. The ensemble “sonified” data based on research gathered by the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-term Ecological Research team about sea-level rise, oyster reef restoration, shorebird extinction, and seagrass meadows. Their musical performance made it possible for us to hear what the ocean might sound like had we other ears, and how it breathes, and so made this magical otherworldly underwater life cognizable to human experience.[1]

Another project featured mixed-media artworks by the artist Lance Flowers, who used repurposed materials—often discarded by others as trash—to highlight the resilience and vibrancy of Houston’s Third Ward neighborhood even as it wrestles with violent crime, drug abuse, climate disruptions, and economic downturn. In his art there is the promise of finding value even where others don’t see it. Such works illustrate how even in the midst of great challenges and crises, mindful attention to one’s surroundings can inspire a kind of spiritual centering, and a new envisioning of hope and harmony. 

Such a varied set of interdisciplinary inquiries and projects, supported in a multi-faith, multi-modal context nurtured by REEC and the ISM, is both rare and necessary to promote collaboration and co-creation across apparent divides. This enriches individual disciplines, particular artistic practices, and interfaith understanding even while strengthening particular belief systems. Thus, in the coming together of art and culture, environment and faith—even (or especially) in the midst of crisis—there is an opportunity, through the academy, for gentle uplift of self and society so that each person can find their own resonant ways to nurture the planet and the life that inhabits it. 

Lav Kanoi ’24 Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institute of Sacred Music and a Lecturer in Anthropology at Yale University. His research in environmental anthropology, and in the environmental humanities more broadly, seeks to understand human relationships with the environment and with each other in the contemporary moment, as well as how these relationships have themselves come to be understood, articulated, repaired, or improved, throughout history.