David Huth
This page is an invitation to see connections between practical wisdom as explained by Mary Elizabeth Moore in her "Responding to a Weeping Planet" and nature photography as presented by David Huth in a Cobb Institute blog. Its thesis is very simple. It is that nature photography can be one way of acquiring a special kind of practical wisdom: that of learning from, and being inspired by, other creatures. Click on the boxes below to access Moore's essay and Huth's photography, and to learn more about Moore and Huth,
Practical Wisdom and Nature Photography
In the world of process and relational theology, Mary Elizabeth Moore is a powerful voice for practical wisdom. She is on the Board of Directors of the Cobb Institute for Community and Practice and a leading practical theologian in her own right.
For Moore practical wisdom is the embodied knowledge that arises in human beings and other creatures as they live in their various psychological, social and physical worlds. Yes, human beings enjoy and need practical wisdom, but plants and animals enjoy and need wisdom, too, in order to survive with satisfaction relative to the situations at hand and communicate with one another. We humans are not the only wisdom-creatures on Earth.
As Moore explains, the wisdom of other creatures, like human wisdom, arises through the senses and sensors, intuitive or instinctive impulses, and aesthetic experiences of beauty. A distinctive feature of the process tradition is that all living beings, not humans alone, have subjective experiences and that all living beings are inwardly lured toward satisfying forms of experience that involve emotions, felt contrasts, and various kinds of harmonies. All are lured by possibilities for felt beauty.
In Responding to a Weeping Planet: Practical Theology as a Discipline Called by Crisis, Moore shows how important practical wisdom is for our world in need. We are indeed in a time of crisis and we need to do something. (See, for example, the many kinds of transformations for which the Cobb Institute calls in the slide show below in its Mission statement.) As Moore explains, our human cultivation of such wisdom very much depends on our developing of practice-laden worldviews and theory-laden practices, We need (1) to recognize our embededness in the larger web of life, our responsibilities to one another and other creatures, and and (2) to adopt theory-laded practices that live out this embededness in practical, life giving ways.
To my mind, her essay points out the importance of developing Ecological Civilizations in local settings, as described by the Cobb Institute below. An important part of her essay is her proposal that, in our time of global climate change, we humans need to learn from the practical wisdom of other creatures. Our practical wisdom depends on learning from their practical wisdom. As Moore explains, this kind of practical wisdom begins with our (1) paying attention to other creatures, (2) being curious about who they are and how they operate in the world, (3) imagining the world from their points of view, and (4) developing daily practices that live with the more than human world. In Moore's words: "Four practices that are important to reshaping and deepening practical wisdom for ecological justice: attending, searching, imagining, and communal living and acting."
How, then, might we begin this learning? Of course, it can help to spend time in the physical presence of the more than human world, with a spirit of curiosity and reverence. But it can also unfold, and for many of urban dwellers must unfold, with help from the arts, including photography. Enter the work of David Huth, featured in the Cobb Institute blog for April 2022. In the blog he writes:
For Moore practical wisdom is the embodied knowledge that arises in human beings and other creatures as they live in their various psychological, social and physical worlds. Yes, human beings enjoy and need practical wisdom, but plants and animals enjoy and need wisdom, too, in order to survive with satisfaction relative to the situations at hand and communicate with one another. We humans are not the only wisdom-creatures on Earth.
As Moore explains, the wisdom of other creatures, like human wisdom, arises through the senses and sensors, intuitive or instinctive impulses, and aesthetic experiences of beauty. A distinctive feature of the process tradition is that all living beings, not humans alone, have subjective experiences and that all living beings are inwardly lured toward satisfying forms of experience that involve emotions, felt contrasts, and various kinds of harmonies. All are lured by possibilities for felt beauty.
In Responding to a Weeping Planet: Practical Theology as a Discipline Called by Crisis, Moore shows how important practical wisdom is for our world in need. We are indeed in a time of crisis and we need to do something. (See, for example, the many kinds of transformations for which the Cobb Institute calls in the slide show below in its Mission statement.) As Moore explains, our human cultivation of such wisdom very much depends on our developing of practice-laden worldviews and theory-laden practices, We need (1) to recognize our embededness in the larger web of life, our responsibilities to one another and other creatures, and and (2) to adopt theory-laded practices that live out this embededness in practical, life giving ways.
To my mind, her essay points out the importance of developing Ecological Civilizations in local settings, as described by the Cobb Institute below. An important part of her essay is her proposal that, in our time of global climate change, we humans need to learn from the practical wisdom of other creatures. Our practical wisdom depends on learning from their practical wisdom. As Moore explains, this kind of practical wisdom begins with our (1) paying attention to other creatures, (2) being curious about who they are and how they operate in the world, (3) imagining the world from their points of view, and (4) developing daily practices that live with the more than human world. In Moore's words: "Four practices that are important to reshaping and deepening practical wisdom for ecological justice: attending, searching, imagining, and communal living and acting."
How, then, might we begin this learning? Of course, it can help to spend time in the physical presence of the more than human world, with a spirit of curiosity and reverence. But it can also unfold, and for many of urban dwellers must unfold, with help from the arts, including photography. Enter the work of David Huth, featured in the Cobb Institute blog for April 2022. In the blog he writes:
I can feel myself embedded in the vast surge of living beings, and I have to testify here: it can feel overwhelming, beautiful, and terrifying. Every human system that makes my life possible is collapsing as it strips me out of this embedded mass of life.
In many ways, every photograph I make is a sort of question about how to remain embedded in this incomprehensible ecological panorama.
The best nature photography is an open-ended, questioning process. Field photographers don’t capture animals to bring to our indoor world. Instead we have to go out into their spaces, where they live.
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What I’m trying to do by communicating about nature is provoke wonder as a path to empathy. This is something amazing that humans can do. We can communicate in such a way as to “feel into” (this is empathy’s etymology) the lived experience of other creatures.
So many of our long traditions of language, storytelling, picture-making, and question-asking are undertaken to draw each other into complicated experiences – even experiences of love.
He writes all this in the spirit of practical wisdom developed by Moore. If you would like to see his photography and learn more from him, I encourage you to go to his blog. My point here is that he points out still another dimension of practical wisdom: its inclusion of photography and other arts, digitally presented.
In our time, the physical worlds and the digital worlds overlap, in ways both healthy and unhealthy. We live and move and have our being in ways shaped by images we see on laptops and the food we eat from the farm. We are hybrid creatures, living in virtual worlds and physical worlds simultaneously. Huth illustrates a healthy way that overlap can occur. We look at the images he offers, read his blog, and think just a little differently. Our practical wisdom is expanded a bit, in ways Mary Elizabeth Moore would well understand. As a practical theologian she would further encourage us to develop practices of lifestyle and public advocacy that concretize the images we internalize. Just as there are practice-laden theories, so she would remind us, there are, or should be, practice-laden images, such as those offered by David Huth.
- Jay McDaniel, 4/19/22
In our time, the physical worlds and the digital worlds overlap, in ways both healthy and unhealthy. We live and move and have our being in ways shaped by images we see on laptops and the food we eat from the farm. We are hybrid creatures, living in virtual worlds and physical worlds simultaneously. Huth illustrates a healthy way that overlap can occur. We look at the images he offers, read his blog, and think just a little differently. Our practical wisdom is expanded a bit, in ways Mary Elizabeth Moore would well understand. As a practical theologian she would further encourage us to develop practices of lifestyle and public advocacy that concretize the images we internalize. Just as there are practice-laden theories, so she would remind us, there are, or should be, practice-laden images, such as those offered by David Huth.
- Jay McDaniel, 4/19/22
David Huth
David Huth
Wisdom from Mary Elizabeth Moore
Trees and Grasses and Animals and People are Knowing Creatures
Mary Elizabeth Moore on Practical Wisdom
My working definition of practical wisdom is the embodied, accumulating knowledge and ethical insight that arise from human and creaturely experience of the world and the numinous. Note that I include the experience of both humans and other creatures, thus recognizing that trees and grasses and animals and people are knowing creatures, albeit in diverse ways, and they have capacities to communicate with one another. Further, all beings have multiple ways of relating with the earth—through senses and sensors, fact-gathering, intuitive or instinctive impulses, esthetic experience, and analysis. Both human and earth knowledge accumulate over time, and values are inherent in the knowing, e.g., the value of preserving life. For humans, practical wisdom is never complete, and it is never without ethical influence. It is a way of knowing and being in the world, and is critically important if we are to understand and respond well to the climate crisis.
- Mary Elizabeth Moore, Responding to a Weeping Planet
Learning from Pecans Trees, Wild Strawberries, Maple Trees, and Grasses
Mary Elizabeth Moore on Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass
Kimmerer highlights details that I identify as practical wisdom. She describes the wisdom of pecan trees that have airborne communication systems (via pheromones) to warn other trees against pests and connections, which in turn produce defensive chemicals. Pecan trees are also connected underground via fungi and fungal strands that, based on current evidence, gather the excess carbohydrates from some trees to share with others, thus spreading the bounty and enabling the whole pecan grove to bear pecans at the same time, rather than creating a divide between bearing and non-bearing trees. She sees the communication systems as the ways that trees talk with one another as her ancestors taught her to believe (pp. 11–21, esp. 19–21).
Kimmerer also describes the gifts of wild strawberries and black ash, living interdependently with the Potawatomi people, who gratefully receive nourishment from the strawberries and basket makings from the black ash, while other animals also receive from them and while people care for the plants and trees by careful selection and pruning (pp. 22–32, 141–55). Kimmerer further describes what she learns from maple trees and grasses and how they live mutually with other life forms in their habitats (pp. 63–71, 156–166). For the Potawatomi, primal values are grounded in gratitude and the aliveness of creation, which inspire practices of mutuality and reciprocity for the sake of the living whole.
- Mary Elizabeth Moore, Responding to a Weeping Planet
A community of Practical Theologians who learn from People, Forests, and Deserts
Mary Elizabeth Moore on the future of practical theology
Can you imagine a community of practical theologians who accept responsibility to act with and for the good of our planetary community? We could become a network of scholars and activists who learn from the wisdom of diverse peoples and forests and deserts, seeking together to halt global warming and heal the earth,
- Mary Elizabeth Moore, Responding to a Weeping Planet