Loving the Dust We Are: Theological Anthropology as Ecospirituality

Abstract

Traditional approaches to the study of theological anthropology often include a subsection on creation, seen as one among several discrete loci for reflection on the human person within the Christian tradition. Such an anthropocentric approach to the study of creation reinforces certain “human separatist” (Clough) or “human exceptionalist” (Webb) tendencies in Christian theology and spirituality. This article draws on recent work in ethology, philosophy, and theology to argue for a renewed understanding of the human person as first a creature among creatures and explores the implications of a turn to human animality and creaturely kinship for Christian spirituality. Thus, this article proposes an alternative perspective on the field of theological anthropology, arguing that study of the human person can be considered a form of ecospirituality when it is done non-anthropocentrically and with an eye toward our intrinsic creatureliness and animality.

1. Introduction

In recent decades, the majority of ecospirituality literature understandably de-centers the human person within the broad landscape of the cosmos so as to renew our vision and conceptualization of the more-than-human world. This world has been deleteriously impacted by the history of rampant anthropocentrism and its adverse behavioral effects. We are invited—exhorted even—to see the world beyond ourselves in order to grow in greater appreciation for nonhuman creatures and other aspects of the created order with which we are inextricably intertwined and existentially dependent (Francis 2015). This is generally good, or even “right and just,” to borrow a phrase from the Roman Catholic eucharistic prayer, but what are we to do when we inevitably and necessarily return our gaze back to humanity? How are we to think about the human person as such or approach the study of humanity from a theological perspective in the wake of a post-critical ecological analysis? Traditionally, within the realm of Christian theological anthropology, the study of “creation” (a subject matter that typically excludes the human) has appeared as a subordinate or even tangential inquiry, usually as one subset of foci among others. Within these classic theological anthropologies, primary attention is given to the human person as created Imago Dei, as graced yet sinful, as participating in the divine history of salvation, and as having some relation to nonhuman “creation” but emphasis is not usually placed on humanity’s primary identity being part of creation. Instead, there is often a tacit, if not overt, assumption that humanity is, in some way, categorically different from nonhuman creatures. Such anthropocentric approaches to the study of creation reinforce certain “human separatist” (Clough 2014) or “human exceptionalist” (Webb 2025) tendencies in Christian theology and spirituality.

This article draws on recent work in ethology, philosophy, and theology to argue for a renewed understanding of the human person as primarily a creature among other creatures and explores the implications of a turn to human animality and creaturely kinship for Christian spirituality. Thus, this article proposes an alternative perspective on the field of theological anthropology, arguing that study of the human person can be considered a form of ecospirituality when it is done non-anthropocentrically and with an eye toward our creaturely capacity for transcendence.

What follows is organized into four parts. First, I outline what I mean by ecospirituality, which is a dynamic and evolving concept within spirituality studies and ecological theology. Second, I argue that a commitment to Christian ecospirituality requires that our exploration of theological anthropology begin with a theology of creation. Here I draw from the wisdom of indigenous Christian theologians, especially George Tinker, to illustrate how understanding the human person begins with creation. Third, I examine the theme of human animality and humanity’s place within the cosmic community of creation and explore several theological implications that follow from a renewed understanding of humanity’s place within the cosmos. And, finally, I close with an invitation to reconceive of our practices of ecospirituality and care for the nonhuman world as less about stewardship and more about embracing the virtue of ecological piety.

2. Defining ‘Ecospirituality’

Regarding spirituality as such, the renowned historian of Christian spirituality and mysticism Philip Sheldrake once said, “It appears that spirituality is one of those subjects whose meaning everyone claims to know until they have to define it” (Sheldrake 1995, p. 40). Admittedly, the term “spirituality” is difficult to pin down given the range of uses and applications it receives. However, as spirituality has increasingly become a subject of academic interest and study over the last four decades, more technical definitions have emerged and, while there are certainly internecine debates about what we mean specifically by this or that detail, there is some consensus within the scholarly community about what it is we mean when we talk about spirituality (Perrin 2007; Dreyer and Burrows 2005). One of the primary ways that spirituality as a term, and then later as an increasingly defined category, has come to be understood centers on human experience. While certain practices have been associated with the spiritual life, in a manner not unlike the more historically consistent use of the terms “devotions” or “exercises,” spirituality, generally speaking, presupposes a universal capacity of human personhood; an intrinsic openness to the experience of transcendence, which is generally understood as the encounter with the numinous; or the “more than” in relation to the reductively material, quotidian, and empirical world (Holt 2017; Downey 1997; Rahner 1978). Foundationally, this is an anthropological claim before it is a confessional or doctrinal matter. In this regard, Michael Downey has emphasized that “All human beings are spiritual insofar as all have the capacity to know and be known, to love and be loved, to be free and enable others to be free” (Downey 1997, p. 33). As a foundational characteristic of human personhood, spirituality is, Mary Grey explains, “the lived practice of faith and the living out of a person’s fundamental values: it is how people make sense of self, world and God” (Grey 2012, p. 360).

Grey goes on to note how spirituality, especially within the Christian theological context, includes more than humanity’s particular relationship with the divine. Precisely as fellow creatures, human beings with their capacity for the transcendent are grounded in and related to the rest of creation, which is the foundation of ecospirituality. As Grey explains, “At its simplest, ecospirituality means a recognition that Christian spiritual growth takes place in a much more rooted way, linked with place, with awareness of a relationship with soil and trees, with water and the plant world; but more importantly, with the quality of interaction between the human and the non-human” (Grey 2012, p. 362). Attention to ecospirituality redirects our focus and imagination away from our anthropocentric tendency to regard God as concerned only with the species homo sapiens and toward the fundamental truths of our inherent creatureliness, our interdependence within creation, and the presence of God among and with the more-than-human world.

Put simply, ecospirituality recognizes that humanity is part of and not separate from the rest of creation. During the last decade, the concept of “integral ecology,” which was made popular by Pope Francis in his encyclical letter Laudato Si’ “On Care for our Common Home” (Francis 2015), has helped draw attention to the reality that “everything is connected” and humanity is not some isolated monad of a species, unique and separate from the rest of creation, but instead is bound up with the life and struggle of the rest of the cosmos. One of the ways that the concept of integral ecology functions to help us make sense of ecospirituality is by means of a capacious reckoning with the truth of humanity’s embeddedness within the family of creation. Pope Francis, in Laudato Si’, points to his historical namesake of St. Francis of Assisi as the source of inspiration for recognizing that to reflect authentically on the meaning of humanity requires situating humanity first within the broader community of creation of which we are a part. Francis wrote: “integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human” (Francis 2015, par. 11).

In a striking passage from Laudato Si’, Francis calls the Christian community to recall our inextricable relationship as part of creation: “When we speak of the ‘environment,’ what we really mean is a relationship existing between nature and the society which lives in it. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it” (Francis 2015, par. 139). It is with this renewed sense our creatureliness in mind that Francis returns to the Christian spiritual tradition. He argues that Christian spirituality is essentially also ecospirituality given our deep and inseparable ties with the rest of creation and that to better understand ourselves as human beings, we must embrace a form of ecological conversion that redirects our attention and imagination toward the broader community of creation.

The rich heritage of Christian spirituality, the fruit of twenty centuries of personal and communal experience, has a precious contribution to make to the renewal of humanity … Admittedly, Christians have not always appropriated and developed the spiritual treasures bestowed by God upon the Church, where the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us.

(Francis 2015, par. 216)

This insight echoes the work of Douglas Christie in his 2013 book The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, where he explains: “To argue for a ‘spiritual ecology’ means, rather, acknowledging that ecological understanding ought to be set within the widest possible framework, and include not only the effort to understand how organisms interact with their environment, but also how these ecological networks shape and are shaped by human culture and thought, including human emotion, reason, imagination, and yes, soul” (Christie 2013, p. 5). This call to embrace an ever-more-capacious framework for thinking of the transcendent and material, the human and nonhuman alike, is at the heart of authentic ecospirituality. Jay McDaniel likewise summarizes well the meaning of ecospirituality, anticipating the case for an “integral ecology” by Francis and the call for “spiritual ecology” by Christie when, in 1990, he wrote that ecospirituality “is shaped by a distinctive way of thinking and feeling: one that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all things, the intrinsic value of all life, the continuity of human with nonhuman life, and the compassion of God for all life” (McDaniel 1990, p. 182).

In light of these developing insights about the meaning and application of ecospirituality, I want to turn now to consider how we might renew our understanding of theological anthropology by beginning with analyses of creation. When we consider the more-than-human world as the context within and from which the human person emerges, it becomes clear that the proper approach to theological study of humanity must always be an ecospiritual approach.

3. Humanity Begins with Creation

For centuries, many in the Christian community have advanced views that can rightly be described as both anthropocentric (placing the human species at the center of the universe) and anthropomonic (belief that God is solely and exclusively concerned with humanity). The concept of anthropocentrism is well known, and its deleterious implications have been widely identified, including by the late Pope Francis (see Francis 2015). However, anthropomonism is a lesser-known term that is described by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew as “the exclusive emphasis on and isolation of humanity at the expense and detriment of the natural environment” when it comes to salvation and the relationship of God to creation (Bartholomew 2003, p. 19). As David Clough has observed, this hermeneutical approach to the place of the human person both within the broader context of creation and within the unfolding of salvation history pushes nonhuman creatures to the peripheries and occasions a disproportionate and underserved elevation of humanity over the rest of creation (Clough 2014, pp. xix and passim). This kind of presupposition results in a distorted sense of importance and dominance, which relegates nonhuman creatures to a position of mere utility for our benefit, and then we humans convince ourselves that “We are the best. We are the pinnacle of God’s creation. We, and we alone, are created in God’s own image and likeness. And, perhaps most important, we are not like other creatures” (Horan 2019a, pp. 1–2). Elizabeth A. Johnson has observed that Christians have, as a result of this anthropocentric and anthropomonic worldview, periodically suffered from a demented perspective about the place of humanity within the broader community of creation. We have too often forgotten our inherent kinship with the rest of the created world and disregarded our intrinsic and irrefutable creatureliness. She writes, “looking back over the whole two thousand years of Christian tradition, however, leads to a surprise, namely, that such amnesia about the cosmic world has not always been the case” (Johnson 2000, p. 4).

Retrieving this sense of humanity’s intrinsic creatureliness and cosmic interdependence shifts theological reflection from an exclusionary and solipsistic examination of our species in anthropocentric and anthropomonic registers toward more inclusive frames that reflect reality as it actually is and has been. Recently, some theologians have proposed a new approach to considering the human person, beginning first with the embedded place of our species within the broader community of creation (e.g., Johnson 2014; Horan 2018, 2019a). Relatedly, several contemporary philosophers and theologians have likewise turned their attention to the relationship between human and nonhuman animals (Meyer 2018; Horan 2019b; and Calarco 2020). As we will see in the Section 4, approaching theological anthropology with a deeper appreciation for human animality positions the project of theological anthropology closer to an exercise of ecospirituality.

One source of helpful theological insight can be found in the writings of the indigenous scholars who have consistently drawn attention to this forgotten wisdom of humanity’s inherent creatureliness in the contemporary Euro-American contexts that Johnson described. The theologian George Tinker, a member of the Osage Nation, has been a leading voice in American Indian liberation theology and the history of Euro-American colonization, genocide, and Christianity (Tinker 1992, 1993, 2004, 2008). Decades ago, Tinker made the point that much of the Judeo-Christian reading of the Genesis accounts of creation has resulted in “creation” being “objectified as something quite apart from human beings and to which humans relate from the outside” (Tinker 1997, p. 90). Like Johnson, Tinker has called for Christian theologians to remember the “forgotten” truth of humanity’s creatureliness, exhorting us to consider the human community as first and foremost one part of the broader community of creation. Drawing on the Lakota phrase mitakuye oyasin, which, as Tinker explains, translates as “a prayer ‘for all my relations,’” he calls our attention to the meaningfulness of resituating our species within a cosmic frame.

As such it is inclusive not only of the immediate or even extended family, but of the whole of a tribe or nation, of all nations of two-leggeds in the world, and particularly of all the nations of other than two-leggeds: the four-leggeds, the winged, and the living, that is, moving-things. It is this interrelatedness that best captures what might symbolize for Indian peoples what Euro-American peoples would call creation. More to the point, it is this understanding of interrelatedness, of balance and mutual respect among the different species of the world, that characterized what we might call Indian peoples’ greatest gift to Euro-Americans and to the Euro-American understanding of creation at this time of ecological crisis in the world.

(Tinker 1997, p. 91)

Elsewhere, Tinker emphasizes that his distinctive perspective as a theologian of North American indigenous descent always situates theological reflection within the context of a “spirituality that is rooted first of all in creation” (Tinker 1992, p. 320). He argues that theologies of creation are not some subfield or mere esoteric discipline or research interest among others for theologians to take or leave, but the very foundation, centerpiece, and starting point for all Christian theological reflection, which includes theological reflection on humanity.

Tinker also observes that a lot of contemporary Euro-American theological consideration of the Gospel proclamation about the in-breaking of the reign of God (basileia tou theou) has focused on temporal concerns, such as asking: “When is the kingdom going to appear?” (Tinker 1992, p. 320). However, Tinker affirms that many communities of Native American Christians are more interested in exploring questions related to the reign of God in spatial terms, asking instead questions like: “Where is the kingdom going to appear?” In this regard, the shift from the temporal to the spatial prioritizes the material world, which is entirely God’s creation. With this in mind, one can then return to the gospel proclamation of God’s reign in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ with a renewed sense of divine proximity, not just to individual human persons or the human species generally, but to all creation. Put another way, we can see better that the where of the reign of God is here and now, in this created world, of which we are but one part and member. As Tinker notes, there needs to be a shift from a strict anthropocentric consideration of time and individual sense of God’s salvific work in human history toward a greater sense of inclusive appreciation for divine grace operative throughout the whole of creation (Tinker 1992).

A shift in this way of seeing the world and our place as one species of creatures within it has some practical implications, including the potential for renewing our understanding of our obligations to the rest of the cosmic community. Tinker explains:

If we imagine ourselves as fellow createds, mere participants in the whole of creation, functioning out of respect for and reciprocity with all of creation, then our relationships with each other as two-leggeds must also be grounded in respect and reciprocity. As fellow createds, acknowledging God’s hegemony over all, there can no longer be any rationale for exploitation and oppression. The desire for or even the perceived necessity for exerting social, political, economic or spiritual control over each other must give way to mutual respect, not just for individuals but for our culturally integrous communities … If we believe we are relatives of this world, then we must live together differently than we have.

(Tinker 1992, pp. 321–22)

One of the great gifts that Euro-American Christians can receive from scholars of indigenous descent is a pathway toward remembering what the Western Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution accelerated in terms of forgetting: that we are creation too. In fact, any starting point for considering the human person or humanity in general without recourse to a theology of creation or the broader cosmic community is likely to further reinscribe the anthropocentric and anthropomonic frameworks that have contributed to our own alienation from the rest of creation and the Creator. In this sense, an authentic theological anthropology must always also begin with theology of creation, and therefore, such reflection on the human person from within the Christian theological tradition can rightly be viewed as a form of ecospirituality. It is ecospirituality in the “rooted” sense that Mary Grey observed in the passage quoted earlier (Grey 2012, p. 362). And the study of the human person in this register can also be viewed as an ecospiritual practice because it is an intentional action designed to deepen our sense of relationship to self, other, and God.

I will say more about ecospirituality practices in the Section 5 of this essay, but first I want to focus on the importance of renewing our sense of human animality as one concrete manifestation of what a theological anthropology conceived as ecospirituality might look like.

4. Human Animality and the Cosmic Community of Creation

Writing from the field of philosophical anthropology, Matthew Calarco observes that the project of studying the human person from the perspective of philosophical inquiry “takes as its charge the exploration of what constitutes human nature and human uniqueness” (Calarco 2020, p. 7). Like its disciplinary sibling of theological anthropology, the philosophical approach too often conflates an effort to better understand the human person with the need to defend absolute lines of demarcation and binary structures for understanding human difference and superiority over other creatures. Calarco continued: “The general goal for researchers in this field is thus to determine an ‘anthropological difference’ that sharply distinguishes human beings from other entities—and from other animals in particular, for it is along the human/animal axis that the most profound challenges to human uniqueness have been raised” (Calarco 2020, p. 7). This manner of thinking and the worldview it engenders arises from what Calarco calls “anthropocentric logic,” which “posits that there must at some point be a sharp ontological rupture along certain axes wherein the human in its unique form emerges. Often, this rupture is attributed to capacities such as mind or language, or sometimes to a cluster of emergent traits … that grant human beings their unique mode of existence” (Calarco 2020, p. 19). To engage in theological anthropology as a form of ecospirituality requires an alternative starting point and set of presuppositions. Instead of operating with an apodictic claim about human uniqueness and a strict human/nonhuman animal divide, what if we began our inquiry into a Christian theological understanding of the human person from a starting point of humanity’s own animality? This follows from the Section 3 that beckons humanity to see itself as part of creation, for to grasp the true meaning of personhood requires that one embrace humanity’s animality, which is to say that we are creatures alongside and in some way like nonhuman animals.

Within the Christian community, we have become so accustomed to viewing ourselves as a species entirely separate from the animate world around us and masters over everything nonhuman as well, that it is often viewed as deeply offensive to state in any way that human beings are animals (e.g., see Meyer 2018, pp. 1–14; and Ingold 1994). And yet, this resistance to the truth of our own animality is the result of our socialized and deeply internalized anthropocentric logic. One way to overcome this resistance is to adopt another hermeneutical approach to understanding ourselves in relationship with the more-than-human world. Here I am thinking of the “alternative ontological perspective” that Matthew Calarco calls “indistinction,” which is “a concept that indicates the ways in which the traditional distinction between human and animal has collapsed, leaving the registers of human beings and animals in a profound state of indiscernibility” (Calarco 2020, p. 5). As Calarco rightly notes, “the traditional search for an anthropological difference is no longer a tenable project for a variety of empirical, ontological, and normative reasons” (Calarco 2020, p. 27). Therefore, according to the perspective of indistinction rather than of anthropocentric distinction, our approach to understanding the human person must be one that takes the whole community of creation into consideration from the outset. This approach can be an extraordinarily liberating strategy, which frees theologians and philosophers from the shackles of false separatism (Clough 2014) and opens up new trajectories for thinking the human alongside and among the rest of the creaturely community rather than artificially asserting a human exceptionalism (Webb 2025). Calarco explains:

If we no longer insist that the human serve as the measure for ontological standing, value, or significance, then the questions of whether human beings are unique or whether animals are “like us” recede into the background. This gesture of abeyance allows us, in turn, to adopt a different posture—one that places human beings squarely among animals and other planetary and cosmic kin. From this less arrogant perspective, we can begin to catch sight of the myriad ways in which “we” might be and become “like them”.

(Calarco 2020, p. 31)

In his more recent work, Calarco has proposed constructive avenues for exploring what this perspective might look like according to what he calls the “three ethologies,” which include the mental, social, and environmental (Calarco 2024). The “mental ethology” is the domain of imagination and perception, which requires us to address internalized anthropocentrism in order to transform “our own sense of self” that arises from “sustained attention to the subjective lives of animals” (Calarco 2024, p. 11). The “social ethology” involves reconceiving community and social relations beyond our anthropocentric and exclusionary structures of intra-species relating. Calarco invites us to consider what our place within a cosmic community of creatures might look like in practice, illustrating his framework with anecdotal examples of “reconfigurations of sociality” within an urban context between human and nonhuman animal species (Calarco 2024, pp. 41–70). And by “environmental ethology” Calarco means thinking through how ecology and land (as understood and expressed by Indigenous scholars in particular) serve as the shared context for the lives of all creatures, human and nonhuman animals alike, and how environmental degradation, global climate change, and other ecological dangers threaten all life (Calarco 2024, pp. 12–13).

Of particular interest to us here is how Calarco concludes his study of the three ethologies, offering what can be read as a significant proposal for ecospirituality. He draws on the work of Pierre Hadot (Hadot 1995) to develop an ideal he calls “syn-theoria, or seeing-with others,” which involves “learning to see-with animals [as] essential to transforming subjective, social, and environmental relations” (Calarco 2024, p. 108). Calarco argues that attending to the domains of the three ethologies he describes contributes to the transformation of our “subjective, social, and environmental relations” (Calarco 2024, p. 108). This notion of syn-theoria invites a spiritual renewal, calling humans to see the world anew and alongside or with our fellow creatures. The condition of the possibility for this renewed vision is the fundamental animality and creaturehood shared among all in the cosmic community of creation. The effort exhibited by humans to ignore or forget our animality and ontological status as creatures has hindered our ability to “perceive the deep and persistent structures of being” and “the very nature and causes of things” (Calarco 2024, p. 110). Put in the discourse of Christian spirituality, syn-theoria is a form of contemplation, of beholding the world in such a way as to see it and its community of inhabitants as it is (and as the Creator sees and relates to it). This portion of an ecospirituality journey encourages a renewed sense of our own corporeality, materiality, animality, and creaturehood. Embracing practices of syn-theoria with our animal and creaturely kin opens not only the horizon of respect for and recognition of nonhuman animal agency and individuation, but also a deeper and more grounded sense of ourselves. As Calarco explains, this way of seeing-with and beholding “can be seen as a response to the event of animals, to the ways animals exceed our conceptual frames and expectations and thereby call us to ways of thinking and living that challenge traditional modes of thought and life (Calarco 2024, p. 113).

We can summarize the return to our human animality and recollection of our particular place within the cosmic community of creation as a spiritual journey to love the dust that we are. The concept of being composed of “dust” is affirmed by both the ancient wisdom of the second chapter in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Torah as well as in the revelatory insights of evolutionary biology (Horan 2019a, pp. 37–43 and 53–86). From the quanta that compose everything in the universe to our elemental and molecular makeup to our shared mammalian characteristics to our participation in the life cycle that, like all other creatures, will conclude with our death and decomposition, every aspect of our actual reality challenges us to live more humbly as fragile, finite, and interdependent creatures. Though particular, we are in so many ways not that different from the other creatures with whom we share this “common home” we call the planet Earth (Francis 2015). And this shift in worldview and outlook, of understanding ourselves and our nonhuman creaturely neighbors differently, invites not only a renewed sense of the starting point and work of theological anthropology, but it also opens new paths for us to rethink our spiritual and ethical practices.

5. Conclusions: Striving to Be More Pious Creatures

Reconceiving theological anthropology as a form of ecospirituality necessarily results in some practical implications. Among these is how we think and talk about our human relationship to the nonhuman world as it concerns care for the rest of creation in an age of ecological crisis. In closing this essay, I want to propose a simple practice that follows from what has been discussed above; namely, to shift away from conceptualizing human persons as “stewards” of creation and instead embrace the ancient virtue of pietas to frame our understanding of the obligation we have to care for our creaturely kin and the rest of the world. Whereas stewardship, which admittedly has significant roots in the tradition of Christian scripture, is largely an occupational concept—one can be a good or bad steward, but one is always a hired party somewhat removed from that which one assists or serves—the notion of pietas originates from the familiar duty one has toward relatives. While the English word “piety” traces its etymological source to the Latin pietas, the original word does not bear the overtly religious, devotional, or sense of veneration that its contemporary usage suggests (Méhat et al. 1986). In the ancient Roman context, pietas was understood primarily in filial terms as a civic virtue relating to the care of one’s parents, and secondarily, to other family members, the dead, and deities (Heid 2011).

In the Middle Ages, the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure (d. 1274) developed this Roman concept into a theological category to describe the exemplary way that St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) related to nonhuman creatures, especially animals. While Francis’s love for creation is widely recognized and celebrated, the radicality of his theological worldview and ecospiritual contributions are often underappreciated. But this was not the case for Bonaventure, who saw how Francis related to his nonhuman animal neighbors as members of his own family. This is seen most explicitly in Francis’s prayer The Canticle of the Creatures, in which he provides a familial title to each element of creation he addresses (Brother Sun, Sister Wind, Mother Earth). Bonaventure dedicates an entire chapter in his Legenda Maior or “Life of St. Francis” to illustrating and then unpacking the theological significance of Francis’s distinctive ecospiritual hermeneutic (Horan 2018, pp. 166–70). Bonaventure built on his earlier work in the treatise Collationes de Septem Donis Spiritus Sancti, in which he examines each of the seven classic gifts of the Holy Spirit, and where he considers the theological and spiritual significance of the gift of piety (Bonaventure 2008). When applied to Francis of Assisi, the concept of pietas serves as both a descriptor and a normative practice. As a descriptor, Francis’s way of being in the world reflects that of an authentically “pious” member of the family of creation. He recognized and appreciated the manifold ways the rest of creation attended to his bodily needs and, in keeping with the Roman civic virtue valence of pietas, returned the support through acts of attention, generosity, respect, and care. For Francis, this was something that flowed from his understanding of his identity as a human person in relationship to other humans and nonhuman creatures.

As a normative practice, Francis’s model of being a truly “pious” relative to the more-than-human world challenges Christian spiritual seekers to rethink their place in the cosmic order of things and act accordingly. Yes, we human beings have a responsibility to “care” for the rest of creation, but according to the virtue of pietas we are not to do so like some hired stewards who enter into the caring relationship as the result of some transaction, whether human or divine. Instead, we are meant to “care” for the rest of creation as it always already cares for us: cleaning the air we breathe, providing sustenance and nourishment through food and drink, offering its physical material for our shelters and clothes, in addition to so many other ways.

Adopting a spirituality of pietas can be a substantive way to put into practice much of what has been discussed in this essay. When we think about the human person and our place in relationship to the more-than-human world, we ought to begin with a renewed sense of our fundamental creatureliness and animality, which binds us to the rest of creation as interdependent kin. This conscious effort is a form of ecospirituality when we intentionally renew our thinking and action, learning to “see with” (syn-theoria) our nonhuman creaturely neighbors. This invites us into a deeper understanding not only of their worlds and worldviews, but also our own sense of self and being-in-the-world. A turn to pietas is a call for us to care for creation not stemming from an external obligation or responsibility, but from an internal or even intrinsic familial duty, as one would care for a family member. The tenor of pietas as the operative paradigm in our caring for nonhuman creatures is one that also respects the agency, particularly of each creature, regardless of how like or unlike it may be to humanity. The renewal of this ancient virtue as an ecospiritual practice can help us to love the dust we are while also celebrating the diversity of creatures in this world, and to recognize each creature’s inherent and a priori relationship to the Creator independent of human mediation (Horan 2018, pp. 169–70). Most importantly, such a way of thinking and acting directs our efforts to care for all creatures as fellow members in the one community of creation.