Practicing Multispecies Relationality

By Cody Sanders 

Many faith communities are now quite attentive to the ecological emergency embroiling the planet. “Creation care” is now a regular topic of conversation in many churches and denominations. But mitigating disaster and practicing care for creation fall short of cultivating relationality with the wider web of life that is necessary if we have any hope of extricating ourselves from a human supremacist theologies and philosophies that have led us down this path of climate collapse and ecological devastation. 

   As I wrote about in last month’s CET half-issue dedicated to ecological theology and ethics, I recently theorized a concept I termed, “ecopneumastalgia,” to describe our longing for these lost relationships with spiritually alive earth others. (Eco designates the ecological setting. Pneuma is the Greek word for “breath” or “spirit” used throughout the New Testament pointing us toward that inspiritedness of an ecological web of life. Algia is a Greek word for “pain,” and can also denote something more like “longing” or “yearning” in the way it is used in the term “nostalgia”). We are missing critical relationships to beings in an inspirited ecological world that leaves us bereft of the solidarity with the wider web of life, with whom our fates are abound up in the current crises of care and collapse. 

   In this second half-issue dedicated to the subject, I wanted to suggest a few of practices that may help us cultivate experiences of deeper relationality with the wider web of life that may be helpful to you or your communities. 

Landscapes of Belonging

   A few years ago, I got tired of all of the opening questions we ask of people when they are introducing themselves to one another in a group. So, I began asking this question: Describe a specific landscape that you feel a sense of belonging to? Or, put another way, describe a landscape that feels like “home” to you, whether or not you live there anymore. 

   The first time I asked this question to a group of international students in a university chaplaincy setting, the result was magical. We heard about mountains and forests and bodies of water all over the world that students felt a sense of belonging to. Many of them were separated by thousands of miles from these “landscapes of belonging,” as I’ve come to call them. Not that the landscape belonged to them but that they belonged to that specific land. 

   I still remember the vivid detail one student provided of the Acacia trees in his home in sub-Saharan Africa. Another time, with a seminary class, a student narrated his entire call story with specific events and relationships that occurred at different points alone one river that ran through his home state. I’ve heard stories of landscapes that held people in care amid crises in their lives, and landscapes of deep spiritual connection. 

   It is still sometimes a challenge to invite people beyond a simple statement of “appreciation” for the beauty of a particular place. We are not often invited to think of ourselves as belonging to a place and all the geological, vegetal, creaturely beings that inhabit that landscape alongside us. But if you think about it, I imagine you can conjure an image in your mind of – if not simply look out the window to see – a landscape of belonging that brings to your body a sense of being at rest within an ecological web enfolding you. 

Worship and Pray with Earth Others

    Too much of our praying and worshipping life involves only other human beings. Most often, it is when we are sitting in church praying alongside one another in the pews, singing hymns and listening to instrumental music of praise to God. All of this is perfectly fine, but scripture is replete with images of the ecological web of life – mountains and bodies of water and even the celestial bodies – praising God alongside humanity. (Psalms 19 and 148 are two of my favorite examples from the psalter.) 

   We too often understand these passages as poetic metaphor, rather than seeing the inspired eco-imagination of the psalmists and other writers of scripture coming through in these texts. We don’t imagine the writers are speaking in metaphor when they portray humans as worshipping God. Why should not take seriously the image of ecological earth others as also imbued with a connection to the Divine, ways of praising the Holy that humans can join alongside, and knowledge of God that humans can learn from? 

   Try reading the psalms outdoors alongside the ecological kin, pausing to listen for their contributions to the praise of God. Take prayer walks around the neighborhood of your church but, instead of praying for only the human neighbors, pray for (and with) the trees and the creeks and the fields and the animals that are active all around you. Celebrate communion on the banquet table of the earth as portrayed in Matthew 14’s feeing of the more-than-5,000, where the words “took, blessed, broke, gave, ate, all” indicates that this wild feast of grace is just as much a eucharistic text as the later scene of the Last Supper. 

Cultivating Multispecies Relationships

   Finally, make some intentional time each week to work on your relationships with beings in your ecological web. Any relationship takes time and intention to cultivate, and our relationships with the wider web of life are no exception. 

   Take a moment, wherever you are, to look around you, to notice what you see.

   Try to ignoring the humans around you in order to look up and around and down at what you don’t normally notice about the other-than-human around you. Trees, grass, birds flying overhead, squirrels running by you.

   Feel the wind blowing. Notice the sun or the moon or the stars above. See and feel the rocks and soil underfoot. 

   If you pass by this way often, you may want to choose one being in the more-than-human world that surrounds in this place with whom to build an intentional relationship in the coming weeks and months.

   When you’ve chosen the partner in this human and more-than-human relational bond – whether a tree, a group of animals, a body of water, a large stone, etc. – spend time with this more-than-human being. It may be no more than 5 minutes that you build into your day once or twice a week on the way to class, or work, or running errands, but become intentional about this time.

   As odd as it may feel at first, talk to this more-than-human part of your life. Communicate with it by touch if you can. 

   And the hardest part of this, or any, relationship: listen. You may not know how to really listen to a tree or a rock or a bird yet. But try it and see what you learn – about your ecological companion, about the world, about relationship, about care, about yourself, even about God.

Cody J. Sanders is associate professor of congregational and community care leadership at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN, an ordained Baptist minister, and a member of the CET board. He has written a number of books, including, Spiritual Care First Aid: An All-Hands Approach for Church and Community (Fortress, 2025). 

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