3.82
We can be drawn so strongly into the intensity of a tree or stone that we overflow in response. This can be called a religious or spiritual experience, an experience of the sacred — terms that don’t quite capture it. We turn towards—we praise—this particular tree, this particular stone.
‘Isn’t that nature worship?’ – This objection often relies on the nature/spirit binary. As I’ve emphasized, the prismatic panoply isn’t exactly comprised of beings or kinds of substance, and isn’t ‘over and above’ or ‘behind’ phenomena.
In a sense, spirits are with beings, around beings, localized: a being has a spirit. And yet, strictly speaking, gods, spirits, and ghosts aren’t beings. They’re ways of being: a resonating and communicating between beings.
Reverence is a reasonable response.