Holy Shit: Lutheran Carnality and Thinking like a Tree

Abstract

This article begins with my experience of a Ponderosa pine and centers on an ecological reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s vision of God and the world as “one reality” in his Ethics. A non-dualistic spirituality embraces aspects of reality Christians typically shun, such as the scatological dimension of our animal lives. I engage these questions through attention to the literal, ethical, socio-economic, and symbolic realities of shit, drawing on the work of Donna Haraway and tracing Martin Luther’s carnal sacramentality as well as his scatological repudiation of capitalism. The article honors Bonhoeffer’s vision of one reality in attempting to think like a tree: to value the holy plant food our bodies produce and to inhabit ritual practices that make such interspecies valuing and shared life possible.