Post 49.

As someone who began reading the Song of Ice and Fire series in the early 2000s when I was working at B. Dalton in the Monroeville Mall, I can probably be considered an early adopter; even though three of the books had already been released. I read Feast for Crows in 2005 and Dance with Dragons in 2011 when they were released—and they were already disappointing, having split the characters into two separate tomes. But the first three books of the series are as well written as anything in the genre. There have been many critiques of Game of Thrones, such as Zizek’s critique of it as anti-Revolutionary and anti-feminist. So why another? George R. R. Martin has long said the series is a metaphor for climate change: ‘“The people in Westeros are fighting their individual battles over power and status and wealth. And those are so distracting them that they’re ignoring the threat of ‘winter is coming,’ which has the potential to destroy all of them and to destroy their world.”’

But, as a metaphor for climate change, the Game of Thrones TV series has failed.

Martin suggests, which is reinforced many times in the books and shows, that the real threat are the Others ("White Walkers" in the show), which act for destruction only, are the result of human failings, and are, in many ways, beyond human control. In this way, they are similar to climate change, which is a destructive process, the result of human failings, and in many ways is beyond our control. In season 8, episode 3, The Long Night (metaphorically long, I guess, but only around the same length as a normal night), Arya Stark stabs the Others’ leader, the Night King, ending their threat to humanity. This will obviously not work for climate change, which has no heart to be stabbed.

There are many characters (including Jon Snow and Cersei Lannister) that make good metaphors for traditional warfare, which destroys and displaces millions of lives. Daenerys might represent nuclear war, an destructive practice that only governments and businesses consider good/profitable. And threats of nuclear war are mostly relegated to the 20th Century. In contrast, Arya represents the modern drone strike, which can destroy quickly and unexpectedly; often killing people before they realize death has already happened. But we won’t be saved from climate change by high tech warfare of either sort; Dany's dragons or Arya's assassinations. We won’t be saved from climate change by technological innovation alone. We won't technologize ourselves out of the problem with Valyrian steel or increased plastic use.

So, how will we solve the climate change challenge while also not increasing other ecological crises (crises like water pollution, species collapse, and e-waste)? I recommend relocalizing, decarbonizing, and rerooting.

1. Fundamental relocalization of our economic activities: We cannot keep shipping food, toys, and other consumables around the globe, pretending each shipment doesn’t have fuel and ecological cost. Local economies have suffered while the ethereal “global” economy has thrived (represented by a larger-than-ever stock market). Local economies are where actual human beings make actual livings.
2. Recarbonizing the soil: Our use of fossil fuels during the last two centuries is the root cause of climate change (though an argument for eating less meat can also be made). Much recarbonizing work can be accomplished through farming practices, such as no-till (since tilling releases trapped carbon back into the air). However, everybody lives somewhere, and if we grow plants (plants capture carbon and put them into the soil), gardens for food and beauty, especially using no-till methods (cover cropping, or the Ruth Stout method, or various permaculture designs), we are doing a small part in decarbonizing the soil, while removing some part of our food from global shipping industry.
3. Rerooting our lives: A lot of travel (in the case of my scholarly work, flight for conferences) can be accomplished by car rather than airplane. Jets are not a fuel efficient way to get from here to there. This may mean moving closer to home, wherever that is, to lessen family travel. Rerooting may mean taking vacations that are closer to home. But I also mean more when I suggest we reroot. When we reroot, we connect our lives to our family histories, our community, our local, lived cultures rather than industrial, purchased cultures.

These three activities—relocalizing, recarbonizing, and rerooting—are the revolutionary work those of us living in highly industrialized, modern nations. We are fighting for our survival on Mother Earth; often against the forces of global industries in bed with governments. We cannot make this change on a global scale, because globally no individual, no family, no community matters. Global institutions are just too big to account for the care of one, the small, the local. But we have to wage our fight in countless localities, understanding that we also have webs of hyphae, connecting us to countless other actions to protect specific places. The revolution is not directed from the top by a CEO or emperor, nor by an easily corrupted vanguard.

How would Game of Thrones ended if it were a truer metaphor for climate change? There is some hint of a possibility in Sandor Clegane’s redemption arc, as a farmer, which began in Season 4. After robbing a farmer and his daughter, Clegane returns later with the Brotherhood Without Banners to find the farmer and daughter dead in their now abandoned house. Clegane buries them in the soil. Ultimately, he gives up his sword for a hoe, meets up with some people trying to exist peacefully and locally, and literally makes his life into the solution—working a piece of land for his and his community’s sustenance. But in the show, when this community is slaughtered, Clegane gives up on this solution and returns to war. He becomes again a force for destruction. Clegane's redemption arc failed with his return to a life of vengeance; a point he recognizes in the penultimate episode of the series. But nonviolent ecological revolution is the only solution that could possibly work. Relocalize; recarbonate; reroot. What if, when Jon calls for more conventional warfare, Dany for nuclear Armageddon, and Arya for precision strikes on the enemy, everybody just refused. Every single person. The Others metaphor for climate change may not work so well in the case of the show; because the solution isn’t any type of glorious or inglorious war, but is simple—relocalize, recarbonate, reroot. Leave those people calling for more destruction. Jon, Dany, and Arya’s solutions are all “mad,” to use the show’s word. And when the Jons, Danys, and Aryas of the world come to us, the people standing on soil, with their plans, we must not cooperate. That is, we put our hands in the soil and grow some peas, so we can actually fix the problem here ... now.

DJS

Post 48.

Ecological literacy is both a scientific literacy and a political literacy. Perhaps in a socialist utopia (one that's never existed anywhere but which I guess is still possible) solving climate change, plastic waste, e-waste, species collapse, soil loss, and other abuses of the capitalist way we organized our society, ecological literacy might be a merely scientific literacy. As Albert Einstein wrote in 1949, "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals." But in our capitalist republic, democratic action is needed. It's essential. Paulo Freire, who sadly was not conscienticized to the ecological crises, nevertheless provides a language to be used along the ideas of ecological educational theorists like David Orr, Ivan Illich, and Madhu Suri Prakash.

This week in the news we discovered that our worse fears about capitalist institutions are true. Cloud Peak Energy, one of the largest coal producing corporations, went bankrupt and disclosed years of funding disinformation about climate change. According to the Intercept, they financed the following organizations that deny the scientific consensus on climate change, sowing confusion among American citizens:
Institute of Energy Research
The Center for Consumer Freedom
American Legislative Exchange Council
The Montana Policy Institute
Americans for Prosperity
The Western Caucus Foundation
American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity
Koch Brothers
National Mining Association
American Coal Council
Chris Horner

To be ecologically literate in 2019 means to know the names of the active enemies of knowledge, the disinformation machines controlled by genuinely bad people who want to kill us for an extra buck. Bruno Latour has shown how the wealthiest have taken climate change science seriously, and have given up on a shared planet, hoping rather for the masses to die off as they protect themselves behind high walls and power. These bad actors are working in our society to destroy our planet and human life on earth. Even if Cloud Peak Energy can't afford to pay these named groups and individuals, other well known corporations are funding this poisonous web of climate denialism.

Paulo Freire famously criticized the banking concept of education, where information is stuffed into students (like they're a bank to be deposited into), and recommended rather that education begin with students naming their world and changing their world. We have to do more than fill students with scientific facts. For many people, facts hold little weight against repeated disinformation; especially disinformation funded by such powerful corporations and billionaires. Praxis, in this sense of naming and changing the world, is both reflection and action. In today's world, the ecological crises are among the most ghastly and visible abuses people need to recognize, to name, to be conscious of; and to act to change.

Educational philosopher Madhu Prakash reminds us that we can begin that change, with hope, now. She discusses dandelions, one of my favorite foods: "What education will it take 98 percent of us—stuck indoors in concrete classrooms and offices—to enjoy harvesting our own dandelions for free, instead of paying grocery stores to refrigerate and fly them all the way north from the southern fields of Mexican peasants?" How much of capitalism can we avoid today, now, by relocalizing our sustenance? Its a small step. Broader activism is also needed. Ecosocialist Phil Gasper writes, "participation in mass movements changes the people who are involved in them." The Sunrise Movement. Extinction Rebellion. "Yellow Vest." Standing Stone. Massive political change is needed, and we benefit from participating in movements. But, small steps are also needed. As the bible says, "The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones." Its not an either/or; but a both/and. Everybody eats. Everybody entertains themselves. Everybody musics. We can do whatever we do every day in non-capitalist and less-capitalist ways, even as we recognize and name our worlds, and act to change.

DJS

Post 47.

The following is a lesson plan for general music teachers using the musics of insects. This will help you fulfill your interdisciplinary hopes for your classroom, improving students' understandings of music and science.

Insects open opportunities for interdisciplinary lessons in the general music class.

The website, Songs of Insects describes the songs and habitats of 90 widespread species. On their “Appreciation and Aesthetics” tab, they describe how insect musics have been important for many Asian cultures, particularly in China and Japan. Here poets and musicians celebrate them. People who live in cities have long taken autumn vacations to the countryside to appreciate particular soundscapes known for their musicality. Insect-sellers became popular by the 16th Century, and keeping singing crickets and katydids as pets provided an opportunity for enjoying their musics throughout the winter. By drawing on the experiences of people who love insect musics in China and Japan, we can add increased cultural understanding to our list of interdisciplines (music, science, culture).

The website goes on to describe Western culture as less refined in the realm of the appreciation of insect musicians. “Certainly, we perceive and enjoy the pulsing choruses of late summer and autumn, but aside from a few outstanding species (such as the Common True Katydid and the Spring and Fall Field Crickets), most of us seem perpetually confused about which insect is making which sound, and we have no established aesthetic that helps us enjoy the beauty and communicate our appreciation to others.” They go on to describe learning to appreciate the musics of insects as part of a “new aesthetic” in the West. They recommend keeping singing insects as pets (suggesting appropriate equipment), give recommends for how to find and watch insect musicians, and, of particular use, is their insect song interactive, which provides song examples for twelve species commonly found in old fields. At the start of the new school year, music teachers and students can go outside to appreciate the autumn insects; and might even capture one to keep as a class pet, who will music throughout the school year--though creating audio recordings with apps such as Voice Recorder (or purchasing soundscape recording equipment) might be easier.

The composer R. Murray Schafer discusses the music of insects in his text, The Soundscape. “The sounds of insects are produced in a surprising number of ways. Some, such as those of the mosquito and the drone bee, result from wing vibrations alone. … Another type of sound produced by some insects is that created by tapping the ground. … Still other insects, such as crickets and certain ants, produce stridulating effects by drawing parts of the anatomy called scrapers across other parts called files. … [and] Among the loudest of insects are the cicadas. They produce sound by means of ridged membranes or tymbals of parchment-like texture, close to the junction of the thorax and abdomen, which are set in motion by a powerful muscle attached to the inner surface; this mechanism produces a series of clicks in the same manner as does a tin lid when pressed by the finger.”

What might a music teacher do at the end of the school year to prepare students to hear and understand the insect musics of late summer? Obviously students can begin by listening to various insects using the Songs of Insects website as a resource. They can identify musical elements contained in each song, which will help cultivate their musical ear for future musical activities. Next, if insect musics are seen as an opportunity for creative improvisation or composition, students can be guided to make instruments, Satis Coleman style. Each instrument might draw on Schafer’s “ways”—creating vibrating wings like a bee, instruments that tap the ground like a termite, scraping like a cricket, and creating a mechanism to produce a series of clicks like a cicada. At the end, students can create an insect composition, a soundscape map that has form, dynamics, and other elements.

Because music can be taught as an eco-literacy, as I discuss in my book, there is a critical element to understanding the musics of insects. For one, we create empathy for non-human beings, who often suffer from human actions. Our lessons can open space for student research of critical social challenges to the survival of diverse species. As a recent Guardian article notes, 30% of insect species are endangered. Scientists degree, insect species loss is a serious global problem. All adults in a democratic republic like the U.S. are called to be ecologically literate, and not just scientists. Understanding the problem of species collapse during our planet's 6th Mass Extinction event is an essential component to education at large, and not just a responsibility for music education.

DJS

Post 46.

Nonviolent. Peace begins by with making peace with oneself—and it expands beyond the self to the family, community, classroom, non-human animals living in our neighborhoods, and ultimately to the planet. But peace needs to initiate in the self. Global peace is impossible without self-peace, first. We don’t plant the weeds of war in our gardens of peace. Cultivating a peaceful classroom seems impossible without initially cultivating self-peace. Internal hierarchies and psychological self-war emerge as the initial barrier—a challenging barrier to cultivating nonviolent ecological revolution through music teaching practice. And so, meditation becomes essential. A daily practice of slowing down and reconnecting--a practice of silence—can improve our ability to cultivate nonviolent classrooms. Not only does silence help us prepare for making music, but also silence helps us listen compassionately to the noise our students bring to the classroom. By hearing their pain, and helping them make sense of and resolve it, we can begin to teach music. First things first.

Ecological. Ecology (except when the term is misused by scholars spending too much time in an institution and too little in a park) has always referred to those relationships between humans, non-human animals, and geographical places. Rachel Carson called ecology “the web of life” in her seminal ecological critique, Silent Spring, and I’ve never heard a better, simpler definition. Life is an interconnected web, and to the extent that musicking happens it happens along the strands of that web. Connecting life to life. When we commit sincerely to ecological teaching, we commit to supporting the web of life in its fullness—the relationships between the humans and non-human animals in our classrooms; the relationships between the students and soil, air, water, and food; the relationships between diverse local musics; the relationships between ourselves and our ancestors, our history. Ecology doesn’t mean just anything. It means home—it refers to familial relationships. And we are sisters with the sun and moon, brothers with bugs and birds. An ecological music education, then, is ecological in its fullest sense, where the soundscapes and diverse range of human-made musics are all part of pedagogy. Where generations of the students’ ancestors’ musics are a cornerstone of curriculum. Not abstract generalizables bought from global capitalist corporations. Local.

Revolution. After we have learned nonviolence and ecology, we’re ready to effectively notice and enact revolution. We understand just how our violent, anti-ecological (individualist) system dissects people from their due peace and ecological being. And then that same system teaches children that violence, competition, individualism, and uprootedness are “natural” or even good. It teaches them that their parents (and ancestors) are yahoos, and that learning happens in institutional walls. Schools are a wasteful system creating material waste—generalizables, often plastic, bought from global capitalist corporations—and human waste—labeling some students as graduates and others as failures, musicians and non-musicians. The unjust hierarchies, paralleling those in the economics of capitalism, are taught. Educated. But, normatively speaking, we are peaceful, ecological beings. Homo sapiens have thrived and musicked for 200,000 years without making the planet unlivable. It is only in the last 200 that we have begun consuming and destroying at a global scale. It is only been 200 years since the start of the industrial revolution. Two-hundred years of a new market system called capitalism or, more recently, neoliberalism. But the response to global capitalism is local action. Nonviolent action (where many generations of communists went wrong). Ecological action (where many activists go wrong). The roots of our society, in 2019, are ill. Sick from injustices. Injustice upon in justice as the Global North destroys the Global South, the bourgeoisie destroys the workers, and humans destroy nature. I hold that the roots of all injustices—racial, gendered, ablenormative, urbanormative, etc.—are healed through peace and ecology. Nonviolent ecological revolution.

DJS

Post 45.

It seems obvious that capitalism is the root cause of the ecological crises. Its factories delivering products around the globe; products that end up in the ocean as plastic waste. Its suburbs. Its food. Its musics. But there are also roots to capitalism, and these can be found in the last 10,000 years or so of city-building. Urbanization. Ecological disasters connected to city-building had previously been on a smaller scale though. When Sumer used up the natural resources surrounding the city, the people dispersed, returning to sustainable, smaller, rural communities, especially pastoral activities. The region couldn’t support as large a human population; but those smaller groups still musicked. They still lived and died full, human lives. Later the Greek and then Roman empires represented a larger scale of conquest and destruction. When Rome collapsed due to loss of soil,  climate change and resultant pandemic diseases, the area of destruction was much larger than earlier cities; but smaller than the urbanized "developed" world today.

Sustainable, local agricultural cultures took over where the Western Roman Empire had collapsed. And soil gradually was tended, cared for, and rebuilt by generations of peasants. Real people, living sustainable, place-infused lives. Its funny that this is the era many call the "Dark Ages," even though technological advancement continued and the small continent’s ecosystems were placed back into balance. Civilization progressed even while human systems remained small and viable. However, during the last 800 years or so, European civilization has become synonymous with increased urbanization and marketization, which has been increasingly exported globally. The capitalist era, beginning with the Industrial Revolution (which continues today), has been colonial, even where colonial apparatuses are hidden in flowery words (like "Information Age," as if information as defined doesn't require plastic industrial goods) and good intentions (often the result of Western "rights" exported through global NGOs to the non-Western world).

Next month I’m talking about Marx’s concept of species being at the International Symposium for the Philosophy of Music Education. There has been an interesting conversation on Marx, non-human animals, and sustainability in the most recent issues of Monthly Review, a well-known socialist magazine. It began with two critiques by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Christian Stache of earlier scholarship; and Ted Benton’s (one of the primary scholars being critiqued) response.

In Benton’s 1993 “Natural Relations,” he portrays Marxist scholars as floating between the humanist impulse and the materialist impulse; both of which are apparent in Marx's evolving thought. Critical theory distinctly emphasized Marx’s humanist side. Lukáks, Bloch, Gramsci, Benjamin, Marcuse, Fromm, Lefebvre, Freire, Fanon, Peter McLaren have all been described as Marxist Humanists, and are all highly used in critical scholarship today. Benton’s critique seems relevant. He writes in Monthly Review, “their humanism came at the neglect of the naturalist and materialist underpinning of classical historical Marxism.”

Of particular interest to me is Benton’s discussion of “the contested concept,” species being, which I use to underpin my most recent paper on compostable culture. Humans are historical beings who transform nature, including their own nature, to fulfill needs. Species being is what has been alienated in capitalism. Humans are distinct from non-human animals by our sense of history. Humans are historical beings. Benton critiques readings of Marx’s species being that render action with “no room for a more contemplative, curious, noninterventionist love of nature for its own sake.” Marx, indeed, writes about aesthetic and spiritual needs for nature. But Benton suggests Marx didn't emphasize non-human animal needs enough. Benton suggests that we need a strong love of nature if we are going to effectively struggle against capitalism's destruction of nature. Stache emphasizes that Marx recognized the needs of non-human animals, as well as humans. Using Marx, he recommends ending capitalist social relations “by a rational design of these relations that considers the needs of animals and the reproductive requirements of nature. This includes the self-realization of humans as natural and social beings enabled by their special species character, their species being.” What does human character, as natural and social beings, mean for music education philosophy? We seem to have emphasized the social and neglected the natural. If we are going to assert meaningful change, we need to emphasize our humanity as both social and natural.

For music educators, the ongoing species being conversation should help us direct our attentions to the roots of the ecological crises we need to confront. Capitalism. What people are--our species being and the social situation we exist in--matters for how we teach and learn music. Our social relations under capitalism are destructive to human autonomy and thriving, and also, just as important, to non-human animal thriving, to the survival of specific ecosystems, and for the ability of our shared home, our planet, to sustain the lives of large mammals like ourselves. We need to explore solutions that involve, through music, different, sustainable relations. We need what music educator Charlene Morton called, a teaching practice "for all my relations."

DJS

Post 44.

My first 2019 summer read was Ilia Delio’s 2003 monograph “A Franciscan View of Creation.” Delio is a Franciscan sister and scholar who draws on scientific and theological traditions, especially using Franciscan thinkers and the Jesuit author Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Why review this book? It may seem very specific for a music education blog, reviewing a book about Franciscan theology, which is one strain of thought within Christianity, which is one religion among many that music educators hold. A body of scholarship has argued that teaching has a spiritual (as well as an intellectual and an emotional) element. Parker Palmer suggests:
 
“We need to open a new frontier in our exploration of good teaching: the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. To chart that landscape fully, three important paths must be taken—intellectual, emotional, and spiritual—and none can be ignored. Reduce teaching to intellect and it becomes a cold abstraction; reduce it to emotions and it becomes narcissistic; reduce it to the spiritual and it loses its anchor to the world.”  
 
Good teaching, then, is a spiritual practice. As a teacher who grew up Catholic, teaching for ecological literacy, then, compels me to self-interrogate my religious impulses. To look deeply at my understandings of the material world and my place in it. For me—and for many teachers who are Catholic—that can involve looking at the tradition I belong to. My life beyond being a teacher. Similarly, teachers hoping to sustain a practice of eco-literacy who belong to other faith traditions, and those atheists and agnostics too, might benefit from analyzing the roots of their own assumption. As a general statement for this post, then, theology can be understood as intellectually noticing the taken-for-granted in the religious (relegare; connected ligaments) sphere. Philosophy can be seen as a method for theology, much as philosophy provides a method for understanding other spheres (scientific method, sociological theory, etc.). Teachers are religious beings; and we can understand our practices better by understanding our religious impulses, even when we don't teach "religion" specifically.
 
From the Franciscan perspective, “Creation is a mystery,” and the relational ideas of Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus offer a coherent line of thinking about our relationship with creation as created creatures. Delio begins with a series of questions: “What is our fundamental relationship to nature? What is our role with regard to domination ‘over’ creation? What stance should we assume with regard to the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves? What is the meaning of Christian life in an evolutionary world?” It has long been noted that the roots of the ecological crises have been religious, and the solutions must be religious.
 
Unlike university educated theologians of his era, Francis of Assisi provided a non-Neoplatonist conception of the sensual world and God. Francis saw God as incarnated in creation through Jesus, “[Francis] realized that the suffering of humanity and all creation could only be lifted up through solidarity in love.” All of creation, then, is “good,” as it is labeled in the beginning of Genesis.” Francis saw the entirety of the cosmos (“sun, moon, stars, fire and water”) as related—becoming Brother sun, Sister moon, etc. In fact, the word “piety” means “blood-related,” as in being part of a family. At the start of the Franciscan tradition, God’s kingdom is not to be found in a distant future so much as in the here and now.
 
In contrast, Francis's disciple Bonaventure was educated at the University of Paris, perhaps the best university of the era. Bonaventure talks about creation “like a beautiful song that flows in the most excellent harmonies. It is a song that God freely desires to sing into the vast spaces of the universe.” The universe exists, for Bonaventure, because God desires to create it. Out of love. It is a free act that “is like a cosmic symphony,” with an order that is intelligible. All of creation is oriented toward its telos (its ultimate aim), which is God. Building on Francis, the order Bonaventure observes is relational. The triune God is essentially relationship (Father, Son, Spirit), and all created things (humans, animals, rocks, stars) are related to the Trinity—everything is “dynamic and relational.” Creation is the “art of God,” and mirrors God. “We are created to read the book of creation so that we may know the Author of Life. The world is a sign and is meant to lead humans to what it signifies, namely, the infinite Trinity of dynamic, eternal and self-diffusive love.” We are persons to the extent that we are instruments for otherness (“‘per-sonare’ … to ‘sound through’”). But "sin" is our separation from other creations. It is best to be in good relations with our brothers and sisters. Love as a relationship is the intention of creation.
 
John Duns Scotus began his theory with the idea that God is absolutely free. Nothing in creation is necessary; all is a gift. “Scotus maintains that God became human out of love (rather than because of human sin) because God wanted to express God’s self in a creature who would be a masterpiece and who would love God perfectly in return. … Christ is the first in God’s intention to love.” Christ, then, is not an abstract; but incarnate embracing the whole of creation. Scotus viewed creation as a “cosmic hymn,” with “each and every thing reveal[ing] God’s beauty as a whole.” Chardin drew heavily from Scotus’s doctrine to suggest that Christ literally fills the universe. All of creation is evolving toward an Omega Point. Scotus provided a basis for evolutionary and material conceptualizations of Christ within the universe. This is what Thomas Berry called “the universe story,” making the ecological implications explicit.
 
Delio summarizes the Franciscan tradition under five themes:

1. The goodness of creation
2. The integral relationship between Christ and creation
3. The sacramentality of creation
4. The integral relationship between the human and the non-human aspects of creation
5. The universe as a divine milieu with Christ as center

 
To conclude, following Delio’s analysis, music educators need to recognize how we are interconnected with all of creation (not just other humans). We can no longer separate ourselves from non-human beings and natural processes. We must be creatures of place, sharing our place sustainably with all other creatures. The sin of hubris has led to ecological crises, including climate change and the waste crisis. Music educators need to realize the intrinsic value of non-human musics. Music educators need to recognize the goodness of diversity, including biological diversity. Music educators need to provide opportunities for their students to have meaningful contact with nature’s musics. Go outdoors! People need conversion, especially where our “sin” (of perceived separateness from nature) leads to waste and ecological destruction. Environmental justice is the natural conclusion of Franciscan thought.

DJS