Riven: A Mysticism of Place in Times of Grief

This essay argues that the climate crisis demands a lamentation rooted in the material reality of place rather than escapist romanticism. Drawing on Christian mystics Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and John of the Cross, alongside contemporary writers Robert Macfarlane and Annie Dillard, it proposes that their capacity to hold paradoxical truths in real bodies and time offers spiritual practices for confronting ecocide. These figures are presented as poets of apocatastasis, postulants of apophatic energy, and epistemologies of integration, moving beyond metaphor to engage the life-force of particular places.

Study at a glance

Abstract

What does a particular place and its unique yet integrated life-force do for our lamentation amid ecocide? Do we suppose that nature mourns for us? Restores us to full resurrection? I avoid either/or solutions as at best a misplaced romantic optimism and at worst escapism enabling capitalist exploitation. Rather, I draw upon Christian mystics Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and John of the Cross alongside contemporary nonfiction authors Robert Macfarlane and Annie Dillard to move us beyond metaphor into the material. Masters of holding complicated paradoxical truths in real bodies and time, they wake the dying and entice us into spiritual practices as poets of apocatastasis, postulants of apophatic energy, and epistemologies of integration.