Coming Down to Earth:

Baja a la Tierra,
que no es tan terrible vivir aquí.

Come down to earth,
It’s not so terrible to live down here.

Kevin Johansen and Lila Downs

Introduction

In consideration of the diagnosis of the planet’s current ecological condition, as succinctly outlined in various reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), diverse fields of knowledge have been prompted to address the prevailing social and ecological crisis.^[1] This crisis comes to feel like a “climate of change” as the world as we know it comes to an end.^[2] Various dimensions of knowledge and practice have been affected—from Literature, Anthropology, Social Sciences and Philosophy, to of course Ecology and Environmental Sciences.^[3] The realm of religion and spirituality has not been immune to this influence.^[4] Global warming, ocean acidification, and the accelerated loss of biodiversity can significantly challenge narratives that articulate soteriological goals and a sacred dimension of existence. In this article, I investigate a potential emergency of “matters of care” for the living world and her suffering in the field of spirituality, shaping what I call terrestrial spiritualities.^[5]

I initially analyze how the term “Anthropocene” can be interpreted as a concept influencing spiritual narratives. I then introduce two sets of narratives to explore how spiritual perspectives confront the challenges posed by the Anthropocene. These narratives are categorized as follows:

1. Indigenous narratives, which examine the causes and consequences of environmental deterioration within their ontological frameworks, offering perspectives distinct from Western naturalism.

2. Globally disseminated spiritual traditions, which promote a call to pay attention to the earth again through concepts and practices, thereby revising and creating novel frameworks for their soteriological purposes.

Following this, I explore two contemplative practices. I propose the notions of the “body-territory” and “radical listening” as examples of practices that “give cues, inspiring inventions and subversions.”^[6] I suggest that both the narratives I aim to illuminate and the strategies and practices proposed open a conversation on how contemplative traditions could skillfully respond to the Anthropocene and contribute to the construction of a new cosmological paradigm or, as the Mapuche defender (weychafe) Moira Millán calls it, a “new civilizational matrix.”^[7] To conclude, I highlight the Reconectando laboratories in Colombia, which have been conducting work inspired by various traditions such as Buddhism, deep ecology, and Indigenous practices. Their efforts offer a ritualistic approach deeply rooted in spirituality that can enrich our understanding of a contemplative ecology within a communal framework.

To begin this exploration, I will clarify some key approaches. I will employ the concept of the Anthropocene as a collective framework that gathers various indicators contributing to the planetary crisis. I agree with Donna Haraway for whom the current ecological crisis that the Anthropocene refers to “is more than climate change; it is also the extraordinary amount of toxic chemicals, mining, nuclear pollution, depletion of rivers and lakes on the surface of the earth, simplification of ecosystems, vast genocides of people and other creatures.”^[8] The Anthropocene, in this way, is a diagnostic concept of the ecological crisis but also as a liminal epoch that propels new conditions in the realm of spirituality.

The second understanding is related to the dimension of spirituality. The distinction between spirituality and religion can be difficult to grasp. I use the concept of spirituality to refer to phenomena that exceed what is often associated with the term “religion.” The collectives that I am interested in would not recognize themselves as religious but are more likely to associate with the term “spiritual.” Most Indigenous people, at least in Argentina or Colombia (the sites of my fieldwork), would not accept the label “religion” as legitimate for their practices and philosophies. For example, Millán says: “By abandoning spirituality with and from the land, embracing colonial religions, one loses direction, identity, and the purpose of our existence.”^[9] When addressing spirituality, I establish a broader horizon for cultural-spiritual phenomena that could not be classified so easily in the concept of religion.

Anthropocene as Liminality

The concept of the Anthropocene offers the possibility of naming an epochal climate (in the metaphorical and literal sense) in such a way that combines three dimensions: the geological, ecological, and cultural. On the one hand, by considering the geological dimension of the concept, the Anthropocene makes explicit the scale of the impact that industrialized societies have had since at least the middle of the twentieth century. The irruption of what has come to be called the “Great Acceleration” has generated a transformation on earth that impacts the strata, declaring the possibility of the end of the epoch known as the Holocene.^[10] As Jeremy Davies puts it, “If you want to grasp the force, the scale and the shape of the catastrophe as it unfolds, look at how it opens a fresh chapter in the long sequences of planetary time.”^[11]

In terms of the ecological dimension as elucidated by Earth System Science, the Anthropocene unfolds as an epoch where humanity propels the earth beyond planetary boundaries and tipping points.^[12] These thresholds encompass factors like CO₂ concentration, ocean acidification, biodiversity levels, and nitrogen fixation on land. This jeopardizes the conditions of “abundant life” established on the planet since the Holocene.^[13]

Finally, the cultural dimension of naming the epoch explicitly portrays a transformation in human experience. The Anthropocene provides a warning through naming the shifting conditions of habitability or, as Clive Hamilton suggests, a rupture with the conditions of the Holocene. This change generates a liminal experience in which new questions arise.^[14] On the one hand, the division of nature and culture that is foundational to major Western traditions begins to crack. This crack allows for the emergence of narratives distant from what Bruno Latour calls the purification process inherent in the modern episteme—that is, the effort to separate and categorize nature and culture as distinct and incompatible domains.^[15]

The Anthropocene is thus a concept that defines a predicament in which geology, Earth System Science, and culture (in the broad sense of the term) find themselves challenged by a radical novelty. Building upon the insights of philosopher Isabelle Stengers, the Anthropocene can be conceptualized as an irruption, a phenomenon she aptly labels “the intrusion of Gaia.”^[16] The crossing of planetary boundaries and tipping points in which humanity has dwelled for at least twelve thousand years configures a no-analog condition on the planet, the advent of a terra incognita that ultimately introduces itself as an inevitable condition in our lives and projects.^[17] This intrusion forces us to reconsider the paradigms that have governed the collective life of our societies and the relationship that humanity has established with what our modern ontology has designated as “nature.”^[18] The Anthropocene thus marks a rupture, a liminal moment. In this way, it can be understood as a “borderland,” in which the edges and distinctions that guided the tacit understanding of our reality crumble.^[19] As the feminist philosopher Gloria Anzaldúa said, this time and space presents a “crack in our worlds.”^[20]

I believe this rupture has the capacity to transform spiritual and contemplative practices, prompting a reexamination of their soteriological visions. Is it possible, then, that the Anthropocene and the intrusion of Gaia generate a new understanding within the same narratives we consider spiritual and religious? In considering a spiritual renewal in the Anthropocene, how should we think about spiritual and contemplative practices, and what particular contributions they can make?

As the Anthropocene is perceived as a liminal and existential phenomenon, where the ecological crisis prompts a reconsideration of our worldviews and practices, spiritual and contemplative traditions also grapple with the challenges posed by this predicament. They do so either to reflect and inquire about their own involvement in the advent of the ecological catastrophe or to propose themselves as alternatives to the environmental degradation we are experiencing. For instance, the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh proposes the notion of “interbeing,” which emphasizes the interconnectedness of all life-forms and advocates for an ecological ethics rooted in a new Buddhist narrative. Similarly, Brazilian theologian Cláudio Carvalhaes revises theological perspectives by calling attention to the sacredness of the earth and advocating a spirituality deeply engaged with socio-environmental justice. Both examples illustrate how spiritual traditions can engage in a critical reassessment of certain inherited concepts that may have contributed to the neglect of the earth and material existence, while also offering alternative visions and practices that respond meaningfully to the current ecological crisis.^[21] It is also possible to see the reemergence of traditions that operate outside the confines of the division of nature and culture inherent in Western naturalism.^[22] While various Indigenous philosophies have continued to be maintained, the novelty lies in their practitioners’ analysis of the causes of the catastrophe we are experiencing and their intention to serve as “examples” and present alternatives to the paradigm and way of life that has been the foundation for the ecological catastrophe.^[23] On the other hand, the liminal state of the Anthropocene prompts a reflection and reassessment of certain aspects within spiritual traditions, wherein these traditions scrutinize the underlying causes of the ecological crisis, including conceptual frameworks that may have contributed to it. Thus, the current geological epoch plays a pivotal role, eliciting responses from these traditions in their efforts to become examples that bring deeper respect for the earth and the flourishing of its multiple species. This is why I delve into an examination of the cosmological dualism that constitutes some of the Axial Traditions. What emerges from this critique is an ontological reconfiguration that represents an innovative response to the challenges posed by the Anthropocene.

Transcendentalisms and Cosmological Dualisms

Karl Jaspers proposed the term “Axial Age” to describe the historical moment in which some of the most influential spiritual traditions in human history emerged, such as Buddhism and the Upanishads in India, Confucianism and Taoism in China, Zoroastrianism in Iran, and Greek philosophy.^[24] The accuracy of the periodization is not as suggestive as highlighting certain features that would identify a common legacy in the various spiritual traditions of humanity. Philosopher Charles Taylor contends that the distinctive feature of the traditions highlighted by Jaspers lies in their proposition of a novel perspective for evaluating and valuing the world, initiating a process of disengagement from the three realms of human embeddedness: social order, cosmos, and human good. There is a transformation in the religious and spiritual dimension, shifting from a religion intimately linked to what could be called the fundamental aspects of human flourishing (such as crops, progeny, etc.) toward an ideal that appears and is proposed as more perfect, thus conflicting with mundane virtues. Taylor says about Axial Traditions, “All of them question received and unquestioned understandings of human flourishing, and inevitably the structures of society and the features of the cosmos.”^[25]

Likewise, Alan Strathern analyzes the emergence and close connection between politics and religion, specifically the relationship between the rise of states and Axial Traditions.^[26] Axial Traditions are called by Strathern “transcendentalisms,” in contrast to pre-Axial “immanentisms.” Strathern argues that the fundamental distinction lies in the “ontological break” initiated by Axial Traditions, radically opposing them to “immanentist modes of religion” that had preceded their emergence.^[27] He proposes that the term “Axiality” should be approached conceptually rather than as a form of periodization.^[28] Strathern’s typology systematizes some fundamental characteristics, of which I would like to mention a few: Immanentist traditions relate to a world of subjects, rather than objects; their cosmologies are monistic; the afterlife is not significant in their visions and practices; and there is a marked attempt to access supernatural power on this earth, for the flourishing of existence here and now.^[29] Regarding transcendentalisms, Strathern notes, among other characteristics that they generate an ontological gap between the transcendental and mundane dimensions; the escape from mundane existence becomes the ultimate goal; and there is an inversion of mundane values where a caste of soteriological virtuosos is created.^[30]

The central point I wish to emphasize about the concept initially proposed by Jaspers is the fundamental feature known as the ontological gap or cosmological dualism. This characteristic introduces a notion of the sacred that exists beyond the domains of both human and more-than-human flourishing. In the words of Strathern, “Since the sacred was no longer entirely immanent in the world, the world would no longer need to suffice as the locus of one’s hopes and aspirations. The new values that were imposed on the human being in relation to this great unthinkable were unearthly.”^[31]

It is indeed true that the “unearthly quality” and the cosmological dualism attributed to Axial Traditions present challenges from multiple viewpoints. This categorization risks oversimplifying these traditions into homogeneous belief systems, failing to acknowledge their immense diversity and complexity. Strathern himself suggests that so-called transcendentalisms have only emerged as an unstable synthesis with immanentisms, nuancing this drastic separation.^[32] Nonetheless, my focus lies in highlighting this very “unearthly quality” as a feature of some spiritual expressions. It is at this juncture that I see a response and ontological reconfiguration within spiritual traditions such as Buddhism in light of the ecological crisis. This is precisely what the philosopher and Buddhist teacher David Loy argues in his book Ecodharma:

[The fact that] cosmological dualism and individual salvation encourage indifference to social and ecological problems, seems to apply to some Buddhist teachings . . . but not to others . . . Our social and ecological problems encourage us to clarify how Buddhist teachings should be understood today.^[33]

As David Loy asserts regarding the Buddhist tradition, some of these teachings may fit into this cosmological dualism as understood by Taylor, Strathern, and various authors. This does not mean that the Buddhist tradition, in its complexity and diversity, can be defined as dualistic or axial. However, there are certainly “unearthly elements” in early Buddhism and a rearticulation of them in contemporary Buddhist perspectives that highlights the impacts of the Anthropocene. This reexamination can be clearly perceived in the metamorphosis of a concept like dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda).^[34]

Some Buddhist narratives that have emerged in recent years are paradigmatic in this sense. The notion of dependent origination—as articulated and taught by lay and monastic representatives of Buddhism such as Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, David Loy, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama—among others, presents an innovation or reinvention.^[35] This “reinvention” of the dependent origination concept, whether interpreted through “systems theory” and deep ecology as done by Joanna Macy or as understood by Thich Nhat Hanh with his concept/practice of “interbeing,” may raise questions about its legitimacy.^[36] This process of reinterpretation is dynamic and demonstrates the historicity of practices and the lively dialogue in which the Buddhist tradition is immersed. As William Edelglass expresses:

Religious traditions, however, are not static. They only survive to the extent that they are able to meet the needs of contemporary practitioners. Today, practitioners in all the major religions are exploring the resources within their own traditions for help in addressing the ecological crisis. Buddhism is no exception. The Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and other Buddhist leaders are formulating ecological interpretations of Buddhism . . . Buddhist environmentalism has become one of the major expressions of engaged Buddhism.^[37]

What many expressions of Ecologically Engaged Buddhism appear to share is a reinterpretation of certain understandings of the Buddhist path that may, at times, emphasize liberation as a transcendence of material conditions or nirvana as complete cessation. While Buddhist traditions are often described as nondual and fundamentally oriented toward understanding the causes and conditions of suffering, some readings have led to a diminished attention to the ecological and material dimensions of existence. Ecological Buddhist perspectives seek to revisit these interpretations, foregrounding the interdependence of all life processes as central to both insight and ethical action.

A similar impulse can be found in contemporary Christian eco-theology. Theologian Cláudio Carvalhaes, for instance, calls for a renewal of attention to the earthly, more-than-human dimensions that have often been marginalized in Christian liturgical and theological practice. In his words:

If we think of metamorphoses in our communities, where are the rivers and the seas in our spiritualities? Are there any trees in our prayers? Do our songs have animals in them? What about our theologies? Do our theologies have other beings besides humans? In our worship services, do we honor God the same way we honor other species and the land we live? Do we connect with God through the soil, seeds, fruits? Who controls the land we inhabit? To whom do we need to newly relate? What is the deep sense of the “where” of our theologies, liturgies, and spiritualities?^[38]

Read in this light, both Ecologically Engaged Buddhism and Christian eco-theology respond to the ecological crisis by challenging interpretations of spiritual “emancipation” that construe liberation as transcendence of materiality rather than as a mode of earthly co-belonging within Gaia’s living processes. By “emancipation” I refer here to those soteriological frameworks—whether articulated as liberation from suffering or salvation—that have sometimes been interpreted as a movement away from embodied and earthly existence. The ecological crisis and the intrusion of Gaia thus prompt a reconsideration of the very meaning of emancipation within these traditions. This reconsideration generates a productive friction with certain inherited interpretations, fostering an enriching dialogue between doctrinal legacies, the novelty of planetary disruption, and the ongoing task of ontological reinvention.

Immanentisms

The second phenomenon I highlight entails the reemergence of immanentisms, exemplified by Indigenous movements on a global scale. This resurgence illustrates how these perspectives manifest themselves in the present, offering examples that can contribute to the paradigm shift required to establish a sustainable way of life for both humanity and other species on the planet amid the numerous catastrophes triggered by the Anthropocene. In the field of spirituality and contemplative practices, the questioning posed by the Anthropocene may be giving rise to:

1. A new sensitivity to perspectives that we consider non-modern, especially those ontologies, ways of life, and perspectives of Indigenous peoples;

2. These perspectives offer an examination of the environmental crisis through their unique ontologies, presenting a distinct and radical perspective on the origins and outcomes of the Anthropocene. They introduce concepts that reveal the ecological crisis from perspectives often neglected by the modern episteme, fostering a “democracy of voices” essential for shaping narratives capable of halting or redirecting the path toward a “Greenhouse Earth.”^[39]

For example, Millán argues with her concept of “terricidio” that environmental destruction has an impact on various dimensions of reality. In addition to ecocide, “terricidio” also involves various other destructions, including “epistemicide,” where various practices and ways of inhabiting the earth are disregarded or directly attacked. This generates a disruption in the spiritual forces that maintain the Mapuche cosmos in dynamic balance. Moira expresses it in this way:

Terricidio is the synthesis of all the mechanisms of death that the system found to extract life from the planet. It implies a three-dimensional view: it is not only the tangible space, that is, ecosystems, but also humans as peoples inhabiting ecosystems, and also the culture that emanates from them, the spiritual ecosystem. So we say: terricidio is the synthesis of genocides, ecocides, and epistemicides . . . So we say: when the land is murdered, sacred places are also killed, along with languages, forms of ceremony, ways of speaking to nature; an alternative way of life in the world is being killed. And that is very serious. People say: why invent a word if the term ecocide already exists? Because ecocide falls short. And it is important to give it the dimension it truly has.^[40]

Likewise, the Brazilian Indigenous leader Ailton Krenak issues a call to awaken from the “zombie humanity” in which a large part of the population lives and proposes to postpone the end of the world, traversing the Anthropocene with love, pleasure, and skill. In a powerful way he tells us:

The times we’re living in are expert at creating absences: sapping the meaning of life from society and the meaning of experience from life. This absence of meaning generates stringent intolerance toward anyone still capable of taking pleasure from simply being alive, from dancing, from singing. There’s still a whole constellation of little groups of people who dance, sing, make it rain. The kind of zombie humanity we’re being asked to join can’t bear so much pleasure, so much fruition in life. So they holler on about the end of the world in the hope of making us give up on our dreams.^[41]

Meanwhile, Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa analyzes the human configuration that has caused the destruction of his people and the Amazon through diseases and genocide. For Kopenawa, the arrival of Westerners in the forest has brought the expansion of toxic fumes (xawara) that cause death and destruction. One of the sharpest criticisms that Kopenawa makes of Westerners—that is, those who have incorporated the premises of capitalism for which the forest is only an economic resource that must generate profits and new investments—is their narrow perception and self-centeredness. This fundamental ignorance about what a forest is and the forces that sustain it will have catastrophic consequences for all peoples of the earth. The concept of the “people of merchandise,” as termed by Kopenawa to describe those who view the forest merely as a resource to be exploited or commodities to be traded, stems from both cognitive and affective shortcomings. Cognitively, it reflects a failure to acknowledge the diverse agencies inherent within the forest. Affectively, it indicates a failure to form connections and foster a care toward the living world.

Environmental destruction for many Indigenous peoples is not solely limited to the harm humanity causes to ecosystems or the irreparable damage to the earth system. It is also a destruction of the spiritual planes that interact with the perceptible world, forces that are not separate from the materiality of the earth. In this way, Kopenawa tells us:

The forest is alive. It can only die if the white people persist in destroying it. If they succeed, the rivers will disappear underground, the soil will crumble, the trees will shrivel up, and the stones will crack in the heat. The dried-up earth will become empty and silent. The xapiri spirits who come down from the mountains to play on their mirrors in the forest will escape far away. Their shaman fathers will no longer be able to call them and make them dance to protect us. They will be powerless to repel the epidemic fumes which devour us. They will no longer be able to hold back the evil beings who will turn the forest to chaos. We will die one after the other, the white people as well as us. All the shamans will finally perish. Then, if none of them survive to hold it up, the sky will fall.^[42]

Words as those by Davi Kopenawa, the various interventions and writings by Ailton Krenak, or the emerging voice of the Movimiento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir (Indigenous Women’s Movement for Good Living) in Argentina are examples of what I call in this article the “reemergence of immanentisms.” All these perspectives respond to the ecological and climate crisis from a spiritual perspective anchored in their own traditions. At the same time, they bring forth a vision and way of relating to the earth that calls upon those who wish to nurture a bond of love and respect with the human and more-than-human world.

In what follows, I present two strategies that I consider relevant to nourish grounding spirituality, of coming down to earth. We have previously considered a possible ontological reconfiguration in the field of spirituality in the face of the Anthropocene, distinguishing two phenomena: the reemergence of Indigenous spiritualities in the contemporary world and the revision of the cosmological dualism in globally reaching traditions. I will focus on the notion of the body-territory (cuerpo-territorio) proposed by ecofeminisms in Latin America. I will subsequently share the work carried out by the Reconectando Foundation (Fundación Reconectando) in Colombia, who integrate a methodology inspired in the Work That Reconnects in the Colombian armed conflict as a strategy to open ourselves to an ecological self where the wounds of war can begin to heal.^[43] I believe that both the centrality of the body in territorial ecofeminisms and the rituals proposed by Reconectando contribute to the development of a contemplative ecology that addresses the challenges of the Anthropocene.

Body-Territory

One of the characteristics of the Anthropocene is its impact on our bodies. The Anthropocene is experienced in every breath with its record-level 420 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; it is found in the microplastics in our bloodstreams, runs through us in the agrochemicals from fields sprayed with DDT insecticide, extends into a monoculture, and is banishing from the earth our companion species in the evolutionary journey. The Anthropocene invades our skin through every pore. I find it extremely important to address the body in the Anthropocene and consider the potential it may have for contemplative and spiritual practices. Confronting the body, on the one hand, with the ecological crisis and the conditions of habitability imposed by the Anthropocene, and on the other hand, with the way spirituality and contemplative practices have understood it, allows us to approach the sensory dimension of the Anthropocene and, at the same time, the capacity of spiritual practices to respond to it. The body is the primary site of social and spiritual belonging, a place of vulnerability where we recognize our interdependence. As ecophilosopher David Abram puts it:

Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. This landscape of shadowed voices, these feathered bodies and antlers and tumbling streams—these breathing shapes are our family, the beings with whom we are engaged, with whom we struggle and suffer and celebrate. For the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus upon.^[44]

I suggest that, to delve into a terrestrial spirituality and contemplative ecology that acknowledges the challenges posed by the Anthropocene, there is a need to reassess our understanding of somatic experience. In this sense, the work carried out by the ecofeminisms of the South serves as an example that can inspire the understanding of the body in a spiritual perspective.^[45]

The concept of body-territory proposed by ecofeminisms in Latin America seeks to foster an openness of the self to more-than-human entities. In this way, the body is experienced as open to multiple relationships or, better, as a process of composition that does not close in on itself but remains open. In this sense, the constitution of a broader identity than the encapsulated self, where the body itself expands in directions beyond the ego, is indispensable for establishing appropriate relationships that allow the flourishing of individual and collective life. This is expressed by the Qom Indigenous leader Timoteo Francia:

How could humans claim to be the owners of the land if their lives are much shorter than the life of the land? The indigenous person reverses possession and sees himself as belonging to the land rather than it belonging to him. Indigenous peoples have a historical and spiritual connection to the land. The lands and territories constitute the regions with which we are identified in history and without which we cannot develop or survive according to our patterns.^[46]

The notion of body-territory highlights the interdependencies between human communities and nonhuman beings, emphasizing the relational way in which ontologies and practices are constructed. This relational understanding recognizes the web of life composed of lakes, mountains, minerals, animals, humans, and other forces. As Millán puts it:

When we say we are cuerpo territorio, it’s not poetry, it’s truth. The territory inhabits us. The territory has an extremely complex, vast spiritual ecosystem with a diversity of different sources that inhabits our bodies. And then we are what the territory decides. And there, the anthropocentric logic falls apart. And there is no way to explain it from the rationalist structures of this civilizational matrix. We would always fall short: if we were environmentalists, we fall short, if we were feminists, we fall short . . . we are talking about restoring the feminine force of the earth, of the spirits of the earth, to the entire social, political, cultural, biological order even.^[47]

The body-territory is a situated experience in the earth, a situated knowledge, as we are reminded by feminism, where rootedness is fundamental. It is about identifying with this river, this lake, this mountain, this plant, this place with which I am inseparably connected and upon which I depend materially and spiritually. In rootedness, a composition involving the social and the natural is present in a continuum that also defines boundaries. Rootedness involves the body itself and its historical-social becoming, a place where, according to Indigenous leader Lorena Cabnal, wounds are displayed but so are the power and joy of life. In her words:

And although there are several elements of community feminism, one of the elements that is very important for us is to talk about the recovery and defense of the body-land territory because for us, in the bodies . . . the multiple oppressions of the patriarchal system, colonialism, racism, misogyny, lesbophobia have been built. And so, it is on these bodies where all the effects of these systems of oppression reside. But it is also in these bodies where the vital energy to emancipate ourselves resides. It is where the energy of rebellion, transgression, resistance, eroticism as vital energy also resides. And I feel that being born in this time cycle calls us to have struggles but also involve the healing of these bodies that have had multiple oppressions.^[48]

As the ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood asserts, spirituality seen from ecofeminisms does not seek the totalization of a certain holistic or expanded self;^[49] rather, it is about generating an expanded communication where one goes beyond the self to encounter an other in absolute freedom and with intact agency. Therefore, the body-territory does not seek a kind of undifferentiated identification, characteristic of certain “new age” understandings. Territorial ecofeminisms remind us that the body-territory does not aim for a spiritual identification detached from the political and social realms, nor does it seek a unification where all dissent disappears. The territory is the body itself because one depends on her for the reproduction of life. The body-territory is the place of vital and affective interdependencies that intertwine us with a community composed of humans and nonhumans. Thus, territorial ecofeminisms confront, through this concept, projects like the numerous extractivisms that seek to dismantle the interdependencies that create life.^[50]

I believe that this distinction is crucial to not forget the political project that can emerge from the critique of an autonomous self that is explicit in the concept of cuerpo-territorio. The ontological perspective of the body-territory opposes a system that in Latin America turns landscapes into sacrifice zones destined to satisfy the consumption of rich countries, something that Millán denounces as terricidio. I agree with Argentine philosophers Andrea Torrano and Gabriela Balcarce for whom the cuerpo-territorio constitutes a way of “being with” in the face of the devastation of the Anthropocene.^[51] This proposal should be conceived as a figuration of the future and not just a remnant of the past.

Radical Listening

One feature of the self-centered and enclosed identity that is central to anthropocentrism has to do with the inability to consider real communication with those whom our naturalistic ontology has described as nonhuman, nonsentient, or without language.^[52] Bruno Latour stated that neglect was among the main features characterizing the modernizing front, one of the primary causes he identifies for the ecological crisis and the ruins of the Anthropocene. Thus, Latour says, “Deprived of any autonomous agency, after having served as a playground for human ingenuity, materiality is ultimately accused of being unfit to accommodate the ideal. The Moderns are irreligious only in this: they neglect materiality.”^[53] Similarly, Baptiste Morizot considers that the ecological crisis is also a crisis of sensitivity and perception in which most of the living world has been silenced to our senses:

As a result, we consider living beings, essentially, as a backdrop, as a reserve of resources available for production, as a place of return to origins, or as a support for emotional and symbolic projection . . . The fall of the living world outside the realm of collective and political attention, outside the realm of what is important, is the inaugural act of the crisis of sensitivity.^[54]

A relationship with other-than-humans that acknowledges our interdependence implies a gesture of recognition opposed to the neglect or inattention diagnosed by Latour and Morizot. What we consider mute and incapable of vital activity or agency is usually declared a mere resource, as is the case today with so-called natural resources and multiple extractivisms. In contrast, in some Amerindian philosophies, the notion of humanity and its traits (sociability, language, communication, ethics) is a shared condition for all entities in the world. Humanity and its ability to have a perspective, within what some anthropologists have called Amerindian perspectivism, establish a foundational continuity among the entities of the world that enables communication beyond what modern Western civilization declares human.^[55] While Western modernity and its naturalistic ontology restrict communication, agency, and perspective to the human (indeed, only to certain humans), Amerindian worlds understand a much broader sphere in which other-than-humans participate. As Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro puts it:

Many peoples of the New World (probably all) share a conception according to which the world is composed of a multiplicity of points of view: all existing entities are centers of intentionality that apprehend other existents according to their respective characteristics and capacities.^[56]

Faced with the environment as a backdrop that silences the living world, as criticized by Morizot, and against the negligence denounced by Latour typical of modernity, Amerindian societies demand an ethics and politics that extend beyond the human sphere:

But Amerindians think that there are many more societies (and therefore also humans) between heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy and anthropology. What we call “environment” is for them a society of societies, an international arena, a cosmopoliteia. There is, therefore, no absolute difference in status between society and environment, as if the first were the “subject,” the second the “object.” Every object is another subject, and is more than one.^[57]

In this view, everything has the potential to have a perspective. Therefore, Amerindian worlds require care and etiquettes, a diplomacy beyond what we usually consider “social” or “political.” In these worlds, creating communication and dialogue strategies, enacted in the form of prayers, payments, or simply asking permission when entering a territory, is indispensable for the subsistence and flourishing of any community.

Rituals at the End of a World

If the Anthropocene carries with it a crisis of sensibility, as argued by Morizot and Latour, then healing in the Anthropocene is not just about learning to live within planetary boundaries or evading the catastrophic consequences of crossing ecological tipping points. On the one hand, this healing gesture requires a philosophical understanding that recognizes a certain continuity in which humanity does not separate radically from other entities in the world due to some special faculty. Human exceptionalism, which claims a radically different interiority, constitutes an obstacle that needs to be overcome. The gesture of “coming down to earth” and a contemplative ecology that responds appropriately to the Anthropocene demands from various spiritual narratives a recognition of kinship, as we have just observed in our discussion of the body-territory.

On the other hand, practices and rituals are needed to broaden our communication with nonhuman entities, allowing us to attend to and nurture consideration and care for the beings around us. This is what Brazilian theologian Cláudio Carvalhaes calls “rituals of attention”:

What is at stake here is the need to pay attention. I propose the best way to pay attention is through rituals, which are privileged ways of paying attention to emergencies and what emerges. Through the language of words, rituals give us a new grammar of attention and of the body. Rituals are technologies of connections, invented protocols of relations, diplomatic forms of respect, expanders of horizons, offers of wonders and ways of love.^[58]

Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh taught us that one of the most important things we can do with our practice is to listen to the cry of the earth. This is also emphasized by Carvalhaes, who believes we need to create rituals that embrace the collapse we are facing to transform our present for a habitable future. Following this, I will share my experience in what I believe to be one of the most profound rituals of grief in which I have participated, one in which we were invited to a radical listening to the human and more-than-human world. In early February 2023, I took part in a Reconectando laboratory in southern Colombia. The participants included local leaders from the region, consisting of victims and former combatants, representatives from national peace movements, and six individuals from other Latin American countries, namely Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

In Colombia, where the pain from various forms of violence is so vivid and deeply ingrained in the common psyche, what can an approach like Joanna Macy’s the Work That Reconnects offer? In the words of Helena ter Ellen, the initiator of deep ecology workshops in Colombia and cofounder of Reconectando:

We are convinced that this work has even more meaning in countries such as Colombia and others where armed conflicts have devastated the landscape, both external and internal. The aim is both to prepare for the uncertain future we all face on our vulnerable Earth, and at the same time to heal the wounds of war, visible and invisible—wounds on which this work can shed light and begin to heal.^[59]

Reconectando was established in 2018 under that name as one of the official allies of the Truth Commission within the framework of the 2016 Peace Agreement between the now-defunct FARC guerrillas and the Colombian state. Reconectando aims to support the Truth Commission’s efforts in the search for truth, coexistence, and nonrepetition of the conflict in the territories. However, Reconectando’s roots go back further, as the initiative began in 2014 with deep ecology and peacebuilding workshops, facilitated over five years (2014–2018) by initiator Helena ter Ellen and a Colombian team. From the beginning, the intention was to bring together victims, community leaders, and people from more privileged sectors to generate “improbable dialogues” in a society that is extremely fragmented and traumatized.

Since 2018, the initiative has become rooted with the start of the Truth Commission, and it has since been named Reconectando: Truth and Reconciliation Laboratories in the Womb of Mother Earth (Reconectando: Laboratorios de Verdad y Reconcialización en el Vientre de la Madre Tierra). The team seeks to bring together victims of the conflict and former combatants from all sides, as well as individuals from diverse sectors and ethnicities—social and environmental leaders, artists, businesspeople, academics, and journalists, among others—to live a transformative five-day experience in lush natural environments in various regions of the country.

One of the key questions in Reconectando’s work is: How would reconnecting our fractured bond with the earth help heal the wounds of war in Colombia? To approach this question, it is necessary to consider one of the most powerful intuitions that emerged in the work of Reconectando: What the war broke was not only the ties between humans but also what connected the affected communities to the earth. In this sense, what needs healing is not only human memory but also the memory of the earth and the bond that connects humanity with her.^[60]

As mentioned in the Truth Commission Report, this intuition assumes crucial importance for Colombia, as it considers nature itself a subject of suffering.^[61] For many individuals, particularly those residing in rural areas where the conflict was—and continues to be—most violent, the war represented a profound disruption in their multifaceted relationships with their territory. It severely impacted the very fabric of life and the relational identity of their communities. We remembered this during the ritual reading of some testimonies from the Truth Commission Report, an activity where we opened up and honored the pain of the earth:

For indigenous and ancestral peoples, violence is a reflection of the disconnection of human beings from nature, from the real world of Mother Earth, from all the components that exist in the universe. What we call violence today is detaching from the umbilical cord of Mother Earth and losing knowledge of her codes. If we also consider it as a suffering body, we should ask ourselves where its pain is located. How can we listen to it? Who testifies to it: a river, a tree, a gnome, a cricket?^[62]

Reconectando creates a ritual space for this wound to open. In this sense, we are reconfigured by the voices that tell the pain, both human and more-than-human. This pain is heard and, in the Colombian context, deeply touches us due to its permanence and intensity. This ritual space creates the possible conditions for us to find our medicine for the wound, as Hector Aristizabal, one of the cofounders of Reconectando, reminds us.^[63]

In the Colombian case, where the war unfolded with greater cruelty in the mountains, fields, and forests, how did the earth witness the murder of her children, humans, animals, rivers, and forests? How does she bear witness to her own destruction? But I also wonder, how do we open ourselves to the legacy of such cruelty? How does the contemplative gaze delve into and intimately connect with this suffering? I think this step is crucial for any contemplative ecology or spiritual narrative that faces the Anthropocene: It is urgent to listen and contemplate the landscape in its beauty and wild power but also in its pain. We urgently need to hear the cry of the earth, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us.^[64] This is a necessary step if we want our practice to avoid the spiritual materialism and narcissistic self-satisfaction that permeates the realm of spirituality today. We need to do it together. Hence, I believe that rituals that encourage us to explore the earth’s grief are pivotal in acknowledging the profound ecological suffering that impacts our existence on this planet. In Reconectando, the ritual reading of the Truth Commission Report creates the conditions for the wound to open and healing to happen. Attention rituals, as promoted by Reconectando, help participants cultivate presence, deepen emotional awareness, and become attuned to the interconnection between personal, social, and ecological suffering. In the context of Colombia’s history of violence and war, these rituals also provide a collective container for grief, allowing participants to hold space for mourning—both for human lives and for the wounded earth—and to begin processes of restoration.

Listening to the wounds of the land and coming to terms with our disconnection from the earth becomes, in this sense, political, or rather cosmopolitical. It becomes a tool that transforms our anthropocentric understanding and the prevailing negligence of the living world. It allows us to pay attention to the voices that inhabit the territories, voices whose bodies have been marginalized and sacrificed in the name of progress. Thus, the Truth Commission Report proposes:

Nature is another victim that must be heard, an opportunity we afforded ourselves with the peoples of the Amazon, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The result is a connective tissue of stories that challenge us with experiences that may initially seem distant but later confirm that nature is a part of our daily lives and our affections, even if we forget it, even if we try to deny it. In these narratives, the intimate becomes political, and from there, the world is redefined and resisted with the “weapons of the weak.” It is from the small gestures of life that its universality unfolds.^[65]

Conclusion

The distinctions presented in this article help to better understand what is meant when referring to the possible emergence of terrestrial spiritualities impacted by the Anthropocene. The reemergence of Indigenous narratives—paradigmatically represented by Kopenawa, Krenak, Millán, and various Indigenous spiritual leaders—is one of them. The categories that emerge from their unique worldviews, such as “people of merchandise,” “zombie humanity,” and “terricidio,” are crucial for comprehending and situating the anthropos in reference to the term “Anthropocene.”^[66] These narratives not only denounce but also put forward alternative ways of life to reshape a new human, more-than-human, cosmic constellation. This constellation seeks to either postpone the Anthropocene or navigate through it, aiming for a novel geo-spiritual-ontological composition that fosters greater harmony.

On the other hand, in certain sectors of globally reaching spiritual traditions, terrestrial spiritualities emerge when there is a recognition of the need to reassess certain postulates, particularly their anthropocentrism, the neglect of the more-than-human world, and the attitude of rupture and contempt toward the earth. These characteristics are linked to the cosmological dualism previously discussed. In this sense, it is possible to recognize in these traditions the emergence of examples that seek to creatively update their doctrines and practices, either by reexamining within the tradition itself the resources that allow them to interpret themselves as earth-connected traditions or by directly imparting new meanings to the concepts and practices that constitute them. In this way, the reemergence of soteriological frameworks and novel practices within these traditions can be perceived, thereby updating the call to come down to earth.

It is essential to observe the political-ontological emergences that reveal the potential configuration of a terrestrial spirituality. However, it is not enough. That is why I propose the need to make visible practices and rituals that assist us in this process. The attention to the body advocated by Southern feminisms and Indigenous movements reminds us of the sensitive place where the Anthropocene impacts us and brings down to earth the abstract realm in which certain statements about the ecological crisis can fall. The attention and care given to the body by Southern ecofeminisms are far from the narcissism that pervades the field of new spiritualities, such as certain manifestations of neoliberal yoga or the mindfulness movement.^[67]

The body-territory is a call to expand our notion of the body to include in our sensory space those nonhuman entities on which we depend and to whom we are indebted. Likewise, the body-territory highlights the political commitment of somatic materiality, as it is enunciated from places threatened by various extractivisms and maldevelopment projects. Finally, I consider that the radical listening that distances Indigenous worldviews from the Western modernization project is decisive for understanding new spiritual stories and contemplative ecologies that allow us to come down to earth. This radical listening was explored in the ritual space created by Reconectando in the landscape of Colombia.

Reconectando is a prime example of the emergence of earth-based spiritualities in which various elements of this article are combined. On the one hand, being based on the Work That Reconnects, developed by Buddhist teacher and activist Joanna Macy, it includes the renewal of certain aspects of the Buddhist tradition, particularly a novel interpretation of the notions of interdependence and no-self. In this context, both concepts are not merely philosophical but are embodied through collective grief practices, where shared sorrow becomes a gateway to recognizing our nonseparation from others and the living earth. On the other hand, the ritual dimension presents influences from various Indigenous traditions, which are explored through a radical listening to the nonhuman world. I see Reconectando as a creative act in response to the pain of war and Mother Earth, where the distinctions presented in this article are precisely nuanced and transgressed. The attention rituals promoted by Reconectando are an example of processes of hybridization and spiritual imagination that connect us to the earth and can also be seen as a display of creativity in the face of the Anthropocene. These rituals remind us of the desire to flourish alongside others (not just humans) and places us again within the web of life.

To conclude, I would like to share some words that I wrote during the Council of All Beings in the last day of the Reconectando laboratory. In this exploration, I sat with the rocks and communicated with the moss. I began to speak with her; I began to sing to her. Gradually, we established a dialogue in which a part of me started to become the moss. The awareness that, at some point in our four-and-a-half-billion-year history as beings of this earth, we were moss, helped me overcome the obstacles of common sense that deem identification with the nonhuman world impossible. At this time I wrote:

I love the rock. I love the sun. I love being cool. I love the breeze; I love the cracks between worlds. I love the tenderness of beings who know how to care for me. Ants walk gently on my steppes. I like it when you sing to me. I adore the fall of leaves and the freshness. I like passivity, I like that contact with the abiotic, the rock, the mineral world. Water droplets caress my skin. The dew in the cold mornings reflects multiple worlds. The pain of this changing land. Heat, a lot of heat. I don’t know if I will stay on the rocks or if my existence will be another ephemeral point in the life of the earth. There are places where I have seen rivers dry up. Perhaps, like so many others, I have to say goodbye, bid farewell to the rock that I love so much. I would like my memory to be kept, but you don’t need to uproot me. Learn to take care of me. Dear human, I will give you water, offer you a bed on which you will gaze at the sky, explore other worlds, other forms, and you will return to me, a mantle of earth, grateful to lie here. Lie down on me, from time to time, to watch the dance of the leaves. It’s the way the wind confirms your place in the family of things. Learn from the rocks as I have done for millions of years. Stay still from time to time. Learn to listen to your ancestors. And listen to the rivers flow, reach the sea, and rest.^[68]

Notes

1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Summary for Policymakers.” ↑
2. For “climate of change,” see Chakrabarty, “Climate of History.” For “end times,” see Danowski and Viveiros de Castro, Ends of the World. ↑
3. For Literature, see Robinson, Ministry for the Future; for Anthropology, see Tsing, Mushroom at the End; and for Social Sciences and Philosophy, see Latour, Facing Gaia. ↑
4. Deane-Drummond et al., Religion in the Anthropocene. ↑
5. For “matters of care,” see Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care. ↑
6. Viveiros de Castro, “On Models and Examples.” ↑
7. Millán, “No más terricidio”. ↑
8. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 100. ↑
9. Regarding the term weychafe, Moira Millan herself says: “Weychafe comes from Weychan, which means to fight. Some translate weychafe as warrior, but in reality, it’s not accurate because the Mapuche nation was not expansionist or dedicated to warfare; instead, it defended itself. Weychan is the legitimate process of self-defense . . . I am a Weychafe, defender of life, guardian of the Mapu, not a leader. We are born with a diversity of forces that awaken in us . . . In my case, I was born with the Newen of Weychafe, that force within drives me to try to safeguard the life of the territories and, of course, also that of my people.” Millán, “No más terricidio.” All translations from Spanish included in this article are my own unless otherwise noted. ↑
10. Zalasiewicz et al., “When Did the Anthropocene Begin?,” 196–203. ↑
11. Davies, Birth of the Anthropocene, 2. ↑
12. Rockström et al., “Safe Operating Space for Humanity,”  472–475. ↑
13. Crist, Abundant Earth. ↑
14. Hamilton, “Anthropocene as Rupture,” 93–106. ↑
15. Latour, We Have Never Been. ↑
16. Stengers, In Catastrophic Times. ↑
17. Steffen et al., “Trajectory of the Anthropocene,” 81–98. ↑
18. Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture. ↑
19. Anzaldúa, Borderlands / La Frontera. ↑
20. Anzaldúa, Light in the Dark / Luz en lo Oscuro. ↑
21. See Nhat Hanh, The Sun My Heart (Parallax Press, 1988); and Carvalhaes, How Do We Become. ↑
22. I draw inspiration from the Brazilian theologian Cláudio Carvalhaes and his concept of “emergence.” However, by using the term “reemergence,” I aim to underscore the idea that these traditions were never absent. For Carvalhaes: “Emergencies and emergences are both sounds to be attentive: both are calling us to respond, to get crossed, and be entangled. While emergencies are in front of our eyes, emergences are forces of the land coded with a knowledge most of us do not know, for we do not live daily with the land. Emergences are expectations already breathing within our systems, and they move in latent forms until they bring forth that which alters and revives the forms of life and new subjectivities previously shattered under the infinity of traces of colonialism. These emergences never died and are still alive in the stories and knowledges of people and the land, carrying the seeds of what we have always been—those seeds that are still there and are waiting to spring forth once again. Most emergences are still to be realized in the knowledges we do not often go to learn, such as the knowledges of the land and those who live as custodians of the earth.” Carvalhaes, How Do We Become, 89. ↑
23. I take the notion of “example” elaborated by the Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: “Models are, by definition, simplifications of reality, but they can be used to understand it (models as heuristics) or be imposed upon it (models as norms) in order to browbeat reality, so to speak, into obeying them . . . Examples, on the other hand, are ideas (techniques, institutions, etc.) that work as enticements to do something ‘differently alike’ the inspiring example, which is itself always a version or transformation of yet another example, just as myths are but versions of one another with no original model or template. Examples are borrowed horizontally—they diffuse—while models are imposed vertically—they emanate. Models give orders and enforce order; examples give cues, inspiring inventions and subversions.” Viveiros de Castro, “On Models and Examples,” S301. ↑
24. Jaspers, Origin and Goal. ↑
25. Taylor, “What Was the Axial Age?,” 35. ↑
26. Strathern, Unearthly Powers. ↑
27. Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 6. ↑
28. “There was never any Axial Age in a sense of an epoch that people at the time . . . understood as such. It is a profound etic and abstract heuristic, then, which seeks to capture the common ground shared by the visionary attempts of thinkers in these regions to overcome a disturbing destabilization of traditional thought patterns, including the immanentist form of religiosity.” Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 21. ↑
29. Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 27–45. ↑
30. Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 47–81. ↑
31. Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 24. ↑
32. “The vision of transcendentalism set out in the previous section looks like no religious tradition that has ever been lived out in practice. That is because such traditions are always unstable syntheses of transcendentalist and immanentist forms. It is important to recognise that, in one sense, this is so from their very inception, as a matter of their core conceptual arrangements. It is no less important to grasp that it is also a matter of history, as the transcendentalist traditions are forced to gradually make peace with the structures of mundane reality in order to thrive and survive. Every single defining feature of transcendentalism was subject to reversal, contradiction, and subsumption.” Strathern, Unearthly Powers, 81. ↑
33. Loy, Ecodharma, 58. ↑
34. My point is further exemplified in the following quote from the American Buddhist monk Bhikkhu Bodhi: “Dependent origination does not signify a joyous celebration of the interconnectedness of all things but a precise articulation of the conditional pattern in dependence upon which suffering arises and ceases. In the same text, the Buddha declares that he discovered the path to enlightenment only when he found the way to bring dependent origination to an end. It was thus the realization of the cessation of dependent origination, and not merely the discovery of its origination aspect, that precipitated the Buddha’s enlightenment.” Bodhi, In the Buddha’s Words, 47. ↑
35. Nhat Hanh, Zen and the Art; Macy, World as Lover; and Dalai Lama, Ecology, Ethics, and Interdependence. ↑
36. Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism. ↑
37. Edelglass, “Ecological Self,” 430. ↑
38. Carvalhaes, How Do We Become, 69. ↑
39. For “democracy of voices,” see Adeney Thomas, ed., Altered Earth. For “Greenhouse Earth,” see Steffen et al., “Trajectories of the Earth,” 8252–8259. ↑
40. Millán, “El terricidio debe ser.”  ↑
41. Krenak, Ideas to Postpone, 17. ↑
42. Kopenawa and Albert, Falling Sky, 10. ↑
43. Macy and Brown, Coming Back to Life. ↑
44. Abram, Spell of the Sensuous, 9. ↑
45. Svampa, “Feminismos ecoterritoriales.” ↑
46. Francia and Tola, Filosofía qom. ↑
47. Millán, “El terricidio debe ser.” ↑
48. Cabnal, “La sanación.” ↑
49. Plumwood, Environmental Culture. ↑
50. Extractivism refers to an economic and political model centered on the large-scale extraction of natural resources, often for export, with limited processing or benefit for local populations. The concept has been extensively developed in Latin America, particularly by Argentine sociologist Maristella Svampa in her book Debates latinoamericanos: Indianismo, desarrollo, dependencia y populismo, where she links extractivism to neo-colonial dynamics, socio-environmental conflicts, and the dispossession of Indigenous and rural communities. ↑
51. Torrano and Balcarce, “Aportes desde los feminismos.” ↑
52. Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture. ↑
53. Latour, Facing Gaia, 211. ↑
54. Morizot, Maneras de estar vivos, 19. ↑
55. Viveiros de Castro, Relative Native. ↑
56. Viveiros de Castro, Metafísicas caníbales, 33. ↑
57. Viveiros de Castro, Ends of the World, 69. ↑
58. Carvalhaes, How Do We Become, 84. ↑
59. Ellen, “Re-Conectando in the Wounded Land,” 139. ↑
60. The war referred to here is the decades-long internal armed conflict in Colombia (ca. 1964–2016), primarily involving the Colombian state, leftist guerrilla groups like the FARC, and paramilitary forces. The conflict was rooted in issues of land inequality, political exclusion, and social injustice, and it resulted in widespread violence, displacement, and deep ruptures within both communities and their environments. ↑
61. Informe Final Comisión de la Verdad, “Cuando los pájaros no cantaban,” 3. ↑
62. “Cuando los pájaros no cantaban,” 125. ↑
63. Héctor Aristizábal, comment during Reconectando laboratory, Putumayo, July 2023. ↑
64. “What we most need to do is to hear within us the sound of the earth crying.” Thich Nhat Hanh, “Bells of Mindfulness,” 65. ↑
65. “Cuando los pájaros no cantaban,” 14. ↑
66. Kopenawa and Albert, Falling Sky; Krenak, Ideas to Postpone; Millán, “No más terricidio.” ↑
67. Carrete and King, Selling Spirituality. ↑
68. Author’s own writing, composed during Reconectando laboratory, Putumayo, July 2023. ↑

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