Bristlecone Firesides

In this special BONUS EPISODE of Bristlecone Firesides, Madison and Abbey shoot the shiz while drinking kombucha and eating old Halloween candy. They ask each other questions about embarrassing stories and the birth of their Earthiness. Madison discourses about the greatness of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Studio Ghibli while Abbey confesses the video games her mom didn’t know she played. While there is plenty of silliness throughout, it wouldn’t be Bristlecone Firesides without a discussion about spiritual practice and environmental issues. So to close the episode, Abbey and Madison talk about their relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Mormonism at large.

*apologies for the clunks and boings on the microphone. Madison still doesn’t know how to remove background noise.

Today’s guests around the Fireside are Kristen Rogers-Iverson and Tiffany Ivins Spence. They are among the co-leads of the LDS Earth Stewardship Salt Lake City Chapter. Kristen is the author of Interwoven: Junipers and the Web of Being and Tiffany runs Living Zenith, the first net-zero commercial building company in Utah, with her husband.

Kristen and Tiffany join Madison (Abbey sadly had a scheduling conflict)  to discuss the topic of Stewardship. This idea is central to what exactly our responsibility is to Creation and how we act as stewards going forward. So it is crucial we understand it well. What exactly is the nature of our relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants? How are we to act in accordance with this relationship? And are there new and better ways to understand familiar stories that can aid us in confronting the challenges of Climate Change, ecosystem collapse, and the Anthropocene?

Links:

Interwoven: Junipers and the Web of Being by Kristen Rogers-Iverson

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Man’s Dominion by Hugh Nibley

Mekong River Delta Pollutions

Music by Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com)

Madison and Abbey sit down with former professor and current friend, George Handley. George is one of the leading Latter-day Saint environmental voices today. He is the author of many books including Learning to Like Life: A Tribute to Lowell Bennion and The Hope of Nature: Our Care for God’s Creation. They discuss the history and development of an Environmental Ethos within the Latter-day Saint community — beginning with Joseph Smith and his transcendentalist contemporaries, tracking through Brigham Young and mid-century Mormonism, to finish on the recent bloom of environmental thought within the Latter-day Saint community.

Links:

The Hope of Nature by George Handley

Learning to Like Life by George Handley

Cougar in Slate Cayon

Music by Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com

Madison and Abbey sit down with ecologist and friend, Jared Meek, to discuss more specifically how Mormonism and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are disconnected from the Land, the Earth, and the World. Can the modern ecological crisis be blamed, as Lynn White suggests, on Christianity? Can White’s criticisms be fairly leveled at Mormonism? As well, Jared, Abbey, and Madison explore how we might re-ground Mormon culture and our personal and communal spiritual practices in the stuff of the Earth.

“Your religion is not the church [you belong] to but the cosmos [you] live inside of.”

— GK Chesterton

Links:

The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis by Lynn White

Can LDS Theology Solve Our Ecological Crisis by Jared Meek

Music by Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com)

In this debut episode, Madison and Abbey give a brief history of why they started Bristlecone Firesides. They discuss disconnection from the Earth and the tragedy of living decontextualized. And more to the point, they discuss the spiritual impacts of living in the culture of disconnection and how we can subvert those impacts through At-One-Ment and regaining a connection to the Earth.

*Forgive the audio quality in this first episode. True to form, Madison is good with dirt, but bad with technology.

**Corrected Aldo Leopold Quote because Madison’s memory is bad: “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

Books and Links:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry

Let Them Eat Dirt by B. Brett Finlay, PhD and Marie-Claire Arrieta, PhD

Catch the Trailer if you missed it

Music by Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com)