“Riven: A Mysticism of Place in Times of Grief” by Patricia M. Zimmerman is a part of Special Issue #3: Contemplative Ecology.
Abstract: What does a particular place and its unique yet integrated life-force do for our lamentation amid ecocide? Do we suppose that nature mourns for us? Restores us to full resurrection? I avoid either/or solutions as at best a misplaced romantic optimism and at worst escapism enabling capitalist exploitation. Rather, I draw upon Christian mystics Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and John of the Cross alongside contemporary nonfiction authors Robert Macfarlane and Annie Dillard to move us beyond metaphor into the material. Masters of holding complicated paradoxical truths in real bodies and time, they wake the dying and entice us into spiritual practices as poets of apocatastasis, postulants of apophatic energy, and epistemologies of integration.
Keywords: mysticism, ecogrief, climate crisis, materiality, place, Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, John of the Cross, Robert MacFarlane
