Recently, I’ve been reading two beautiful books. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and Rooted by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Both of them talk about the natural world in a way that feels reverent and deeply relational. They describe rivers, plants, stones, animals: not as objects but as beings with presence, awareness, and meaning.
Not mystical in a fantasy sense.
But relational.
Alive with spirit.
And as I read, I felt this familiar echo stirring inside me: like something I had once known was waking up again.
Because what they were describing, this sense that creation is aware and responsive, reminded me of what my dad taught me growing up.
He used to tell me that before anything else existed.... before spirits, before the physical world..
there were intelligences. Eternal. Uncreated. Aware.
Doctrine & Covenants 93 teaches that intelligence “was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” And D&C 88 speaks of that same light, that intelligence, filling the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and the souls of humankind.
So when my dad talked about God’s power, he didn’t describe it like magic. Not a cosmic wand waving over the universe. He’d say something like:
“When God commands the elements, they move because they know Him. They love Him. They honor Him. So they respond.”
And that way of seeing the world changes everything.
The Red Sea didn’t part because God forced it to.
It parted because even water knows His voice.
Mountains haven’t moved because God dominated them.
They moved because the very particles within them recognized Him: and trusted.
So when I’m reading these earth-reverent books... this language of animacy, of the world being alive with meaning...it doesn’t feel foreign.
It feels like…
“Oh. I’ve heard this before.”
Just in a different language.
It feels like two sacred traditions standing side-by-side saying:
Creation is not a machine.
Creation is a relationship.
And when you believe that everything is made of eternal intelligence, everything lit from within by light..
Then rocks aren’t “just rocks.” Trees aren’t “just trees.” The Earth isn’t an object.
The world becomes a sanctuary.
And I think that’s why my spirit resonates so deeply with earth-based, feminine, relational ways of honoring God.
It’s recognition.
Remembering.
Because if the elements respond to God out of love: then obedience itself isn’t mechanical.
It’s not fear-based.
It’s relational.
It’s responding to the voice you know.
And when I sit with that, when I think about a universe full of intelligences who honor God because they love Them, something softens inside me. Something homesick inside me exhales.
And I find myself longing not for control…
but for connection.
Not to dominate the world…
but to belong to it in a sacred way.
And I imagine God....not as a distant ruler commanding lifeless matter...but as a deeply relational Creator, moving through a universe alive with awareness, love, and trust.
A God who teaches through wind.
And healing through soil.
And comfort through the quiet standing of trees.
A God whose love is the language every intelligence already speaks.
And so maybe…
all the ways my heart longs for grounded, feminine, earth-honoring spirituality
aren’t signs that I’m wandering
Maybe they are signs that I am remembering:
That the universe is relational.
That creation is love-based.
That everything responds to God because everything knows Them.
And so do I.
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