The Week of August 22nd, 2021
“Why People Don’t Like Change” sermon series
Sermon Noodles on “The Wild Indigenous One”
Sermon Noodles for the week of August 22nd
We are in a series of sermons on “change” and looking at the “True Self” and “False Self” of Ephesians 4:22-24, where the Apostle Paul writes that we have “learned how to put on the True Self” and learned to “put off the False S elf.” Using Bill Plotkin’s nature-based map of the human psyche to describe the territory of the True and False Self, we are exploring the spiritual growth through the archetypal lens of The Nurturing Generative Adult (North), The Wild Indigenous One (South), The Innocent/Sage (East), and The Muse (West).
This week we look at the “Wild Indigenous One” archetype of the South. The South facet is “that dimension of our innate wholeness deliriously in love with our enthralling, sacred, and animate world” (Wild Mind 51). The “Wild One” is the part of us that loves to explore the landscape, jump in puddles, hug, dance, and stand in awe of rainbows. “When in the consciousness of our Wild Self, we’re sometimes so at home in our world, so in love with Earthly creation, so fully present to our moment and place that, in an ecstatic rapture, we lose awareness of all obligations.” (Wild Mind 52)
Read Colossians 1:15-17
Notice who this passage is speaking about. This passage is one of the major reasons Christians think of God as a trinity even though the word trinity isn’t in the Bible. Notice what exactly is created? Whom is holding everything together?
This is why the early church called the natural world “the first body of Christ” and the “first incarnation.” The Earth/universe is the first incarnation of God, Jesus is the second.
So when we go for a hike in the great outdoors, is it any wonder we feel renewed? We are walking out into the first incarnation of God, in which Christ holds it all together. Is it any wonder that when we go camping, golfing, fishing, go out into the back yard or even just look outside at the sun or the stars we feel better?
The Wild One is also informed by the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures like Job 12:7-8. My major point: why weren’t we taught about the True Self? Passages like Colossians 1 or Job 12?The reason is because this kind of life that is rooted in wonder and innocence and lives rooted in the Earth is the most not just suppressed but oppressed in western culture, especially in the church.
Bill Plotkin:
It is precisely this sense of belonging and kinship (with the Earth) . . . That would render impossible the Western and Westernized cultures we now live in, which, despite our aspirations to the contrary, are largely ecocidal, genocidal, dog-eat-dog, materialistic, unjust, defensive, imperialistic—in short isolated and isolating . . . By cultivating the Wild Indigenous One in ourselves and in our children, we’ll go along way toward forging new cultures that are not only life sustaining but also life enhancing. (Wild Mind 53)
Devotional Guide
1. What is your favorite outdoor activity? Take a moment and write a paragraph or two about what you love so much about the activity. Pay special attention to how it makes you feel in your body.
2. Read Genesis 2:15. Notice the word “work,” which in Hebrew is “abad” (aw-bad). Interestingly the word means “serve” just as much if not more as it means “work.” How does this change your understanding of the verse and our relationship as human beings with the natural world?
3. Respond to this quote from Bill Plotkin in his book, Wild Mind (pages 55-56): “From the perspective and experience of the Wild Indigenous One, we are enchanted in two ways. First, the South Self is utterly moved by, deeply touched by, the things of this world . . . when we’re alive in our South facet, all that we do, even “work” becomes play. The world fills us with wonder and awe. We’re also enchanted in a second, reciprocal sense: The things of this world are allured by us and to us!”