Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia: Exploring the Spirit of the Pacific Northwest [Paperback]

 

 

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Do you have a feeling you're becoming more spiritual than religious? Is a sense of agnosticism creeping into your soul, accompanied by a growing disenchantment with "organized religion"? Are you beginning to realize Aboriginal wisdom may have been preferable to Caucasian expediencies? Are you starting to think globally before acting locally? Are you ruminating upon the idea that Earth may actually be our nearest Mother? Are you about to believe the hope of world peace deserves more than a sleepy nod? Did you graduate from college? Do you live in British Columbia, Washington, or Oregon? If you said yes to most of these questions, you may be a Cascadian!

Upon reading Douglas Todd's Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, I realized for the first time, that I am also becoming a Cascadian. As this book's editor, Todd has gathered the essays of fifteen writers of varied backgrounds, but all sharing something of the Cascadian ideal. He has organized them to form four topics: "Cascadian Religion, Spirituality and Values," "Cascadian History," "Cascadian Nature," and "Cascadian Culture." To be sure, these writers share overlapping views that, together, provide a concept of all that sets Cascadia apart from the rest of the world. I find it fascinating--even inspiring and energizing.

As a retired sociology instructor, I found Mark Wexler's model interesting. It could have come from the mind of Talcott Parsons, had he been living today. It took a while to analyze it, but the longer I studied it, the more I recognized its logic.

Of course, I don't entirely fit the Cascadian model. But that's just a sign of my independent thinking, which, ironically, is a component of the model itself. I suspect, for example, that where there's the fire of spirituality, there must also be the smoke of religion. I imagine we are all agnostics, living in various states of affirmation or denial. Even atheists, I reckon, are agnostics somewhere deep down inside themselves. And as for the spiritual in the secular, I think it's the other way around. Most of Cascadian Christendom--whatever is left of it--is secular while sporting a spiritual façade.

Gail Wells, author of "Nature-Based Spirituality in Cascadia: Prospects and Pitfalls," wisely discusses Cascadian hazards such as a "radical emphasis on the self" with its "radical individualism," its ahistorical tendencies, a "preoccupation with wilderness" that "enables us to deny our roles as consumers and material creatures," a moral absolutism that can overrule compromise, an anti-scientific bias, and the possibility of nature-based spirituality becoming a shallow fad.

I couldn't agree entirely with Andrew Grenville's green map concept of Cascadian spirituality and values. There's no place for a marijuana mountain in my Cascadia. It reminds me of the hippies who seemed to think the numbing and killing of brain cells was a mark of intelligent behavior.

But Eli Bliss Enns touched my heart. I believe Aboriginal wisdom transcends every inch of development, urbanization, manufacturing, consumerism, and materialism (with consequential environmental destruction) that the "pioneers" thought was oh so smart and superior. It is a great tragedy that the "pioneers" failed to listen to the Native Americans. Our "pioneers" thought it was more appropriate to kill the Natives' buffalo, if not them, and then greedily to grab excessive tons of salmon, the Aboriginal source of nourishment and means of survival.

Sallie McFague's essay, "Toward a New Cascadian Civil Religion of Nature," presents an appropriate theology for all of us--whether we live in or out of Cascadia. Her analysis of a "first nature" and "second nature" is insightful. "The individual in the machine" versus "bodies living within the body of the Earth" is provocative. It's much in line with my own thinking: I interpret "human" to mean "the soil that thinks." We are children of Mother Earth.

Eleanor Stebner's essay, "Let Salmon be Salmon: The International Peace Arch as Symbol and Challenge," captured my heart. I live in Blaine, and my home is only one block south of Peace Arch State Park. I wanted Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to become the sister city of "Blaine the Peace Arch City." Interest in the idea grew, twenty sympathizers became the Blaine Peace Alliance, and one evening we asked our city council to approve the sister city dream. After all, Pugwash has been promoting peace for fifty years. Well, we scared the city council half to death, and all because Pugwash affiliated itself with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. That, the council concluded, was "political!" Our proposal was roundly defeated, and the Blaine Peace Alliance disbanded. So, not everyone in Washington state is a Cascadian. I'm greatly pleased Stebner noted my Pugwash proposal, and now the word will be spreading all over Cascadia, and beyond. I like to think the proposal will eventually be approved.

Cascadia: The Elusive Utopia, complete with beautiful photos, is a wonderful book. It's a book for thinkers, and I highly recommend it. More than that, I hope it will move every reader to wholesome action and accomplishment.

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