Bible, Badlands, and Blood Glucometers

Bible, Badlands, and Blood Glucometers: The Pneumatology and Ethics

of Eating and Farming

Michael A. Bedar

Some of the ideas in this paper were originally submitted in May 2009 as an assignment

towards a Masterʼs Degree in Spiritual Nutrition at the Culture of Life Institute.

Significantly updated and re-titled, December 2010, for submission as a writing sample to the Admissions Committee for the Doctoral Program at Graduate Theological Union

Michael Bedar - Writing Sample for GTU Doctoral Admission Bible, Badlands, and Blood Glucometers

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ABSTRACT

Trends in Pneumatology appear [1] to be surging towards the unity of divine Spirit and embodied transformation, and increased concern with Spirit and spirituality in the “concrete developments” of “our neighbors” and “ecology.” This opens Pneumatology to its own strengthening via interpretation of secular scientific information. The ability of Spiritual Nutrition—a science concerned with evidencing foodʼs effect on body, mind, spirit and planet as an integrated whole—to inform Pneumatology in new ways is explored. Thus informed, it is postulated that embodied Pneumatology develops an ethics of Pneumatology by virtue of data that suggest that a common normative pneumatological response may be simultaneously mitigative of three faces of world crisis: chronic degenerative disease, cultural extinction, and global environmental crisis. Using medical, ethnographic, and climatological data, Pneumatology is called on to go beyond “green spirituality” and into a “red-green spirituality,” where even global environmental restoration is centered on types of land-based ecology that facilitate localized organic food production where the pneumatological ethic is focused on health inside of the blood-filled tissues of the body itself.

CONTENTS:

I. Introduction: Postulating an Ethics of Pneumatology from Sciences, Unity, and Wisdom

II. Can an ethics of Pneumatology contribute to humanityʼs reaching its health and ecological potential?

III. The First Wing of Pneumatologyʼs Response: Accurately Defining the Crisis

IV. Asian Approaches to the First Wing—Defining the Crisis Accurately

V. The Second Wing of Pneumatologyʼs Response: Once We Frame and Define the Crisis and See Multiple Layers of Evidence for a Solution, Do We Have the Innards to Embrace It?

VI. Data, Doctrine, and Doubt

VII. Prophecy of Human Choice in Cultural Life and Death, Land, and Food

VIII. Case Studies: The Sick, the Healing, and the Teaching: a Comparative Ethics of Pneumatology? IX. Conclusion: From “Green Spirituality” to “Green and Red Spirituality” in Ethics of Pneumatology


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Introduction: Postulating an Ethics of Pneumatology from Sciences, Unity, and Wisdom

The purpose of this paper is to present how emerging trends in Pneumatology imply

ethics, which express in the form of normative environmental and cultural responses to

the chronic degenerative diseases severely effecting the health of diverse cultures. F.

LeRon Shults writes:

The one trend in contemporary Pneumatology that encompasses virtually all of the others…is the trend of Spirit and Spirituality. Broadly speaking the theme of spirituality deals with the ways in which we interpret and attend to the transformation of our relation to God and our neighbours. Most of the general developments – and many of the concrete proposals – in recent Pneumatology are oriented toward or flow out of this concern. For example, the growing interest in and generative use of the theological concept of the divine Spirit among those exploring issues in feminist and liberation theology, ecology, politics, ecumenism and the astonishing expansion of Pentecostalism, are explicitly related to questions of spiritual transformation. (Emphasis added) [1]

“Our neighbours” broadly, must refer at the least to other human beings in the

places where we live; it is left to interpretation whether Shults refers to other

animate and ecological features as well. “Ecology,” according to Raffaelli and

Frid, must be acknowledged, at least in part, as being a science of the way we

sustain our lives and our health in the context of place:

“Understanding the functioning of ecosystems, and how their health and performance can be measured and monitored over time, are of critical importance, since these are linked inextricably with human health. [2]

Given the “inextricable link” between human health and ecosystems, Shultsʼ “concrete

proposals” in current Pneumatology can include learning from science how to more


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ecologically regeneratively relate to place. Can an ethics of Pneumatology emerge

using data on placed-based human-ecology relationships?

Among the plethora of ecological research paradigms forwarded for many different

purposes, including political expediency and profit, what characteristics of the science

and relationship of the human and the ecology would mark a research approach fit as a

testing grounds for an ethics of Pneumatology? This paper postulates that one

approach to the human-ecology relationship that may be justified as a valid context for

an ethics of Pneumatology is the one that emerges when: the ecological agriculture work

of Ho and Ching is superimposed conceptually on the ecologically based human health

work of Cousens et al, and then introduced by Merculieff and Banks into the field in

known socio-cultural group. Ho and Ching report:

Organic, sustainable agriculture that localize food systems has the potential to mitigate nearly thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and save one-sixth of global energy use. [3]

Ho and Chingʼs analysis of the ameliorative impacts of localized, organic, sustainable

agriculture presents the consumer with previously unknown socioeconomic power to

effect the global environment with every food purchase.

The global environmental findings of Ho and Ching that describe localized organic

agriculture for reducing greenhouse emissions may be seen in “inextricable relation” to

certain clinical health research focused on using localized organic food to reverse [24]

type 2 diabetes—a disease which now effects humanity at a frightening rate and effects

up to half the people of some cultural groups within United States and beyond. For

example, in describing the localized, organic food method he has used, Cousens writes:


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Being empowered by the message of the present work to eat organic, whole, live foods...can reverse diabetes. I have yet to find a person, no matter how difficult their economic status, who could not switch over to this…diet and lifestyle. [4]

Dennis Banks, the founder of the American Indian Movement, long known for defending

American Indianʼs land rights (land being historically and spiritually crucial for cultural

life), is quoted in a letter to all regional American Indian Alliances in the United States

that the prevalence of type 2 diabetes in the American Indian community is due to their

eating “the worst diet in the world,” due largely to economic conditions. However Banks,

in the same letter dated January 1, 2010, calls upon American Indians to:

“take a great effort, one which will challenge our own cooking habits…the introduction of simple backyard gardening to grow fresh wholesome foods to eat. If we donʼt change our ways on how we live then the seventh generation will be in peril.”

In this movement, Banks has eloquently harmonized Ching and Hoʼs emphasis on

localized organic agriculture for ameliorating global environment impact, with Cousensʼ

approach to reversing type 2 diabetes naturally. We see the exemplification of the

“inextricability” of human health and ecosystems in the American Indian Movement to

reverse diabetes naturally through local gardening in displaced indigenous cultures.

Synthesizing the messages of Ching and Ho, Cousens and his clinical corroborators,

and Banks informs a potentially powerful statement about environmental and human

healing, and more pointedly, about an embodied and ecological approach for an ʻethics

of Pneumatologyʼ appropriate to what Shults has called [1] the main trend in

Pneumatology: the “transformation of our relationship to God and our neighbors…” for

“most recent developments and proposals in Pneumatology…flow out of this


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concern…for the theological concept of the divine Spirit among those exploring issues in

feminism,… ecology…”

Such an ethics of Pneumatology would also be timely to the accelerating degeneration of

health, mirroring that of ecology, today. The rate of type 2 diabetes prevalence across

the United States is rising at 5% per year. Currently, approximately one million new

cases of diabetes are diagnosed per year, and about 2 million new cases of pre-

diabetes, in the United States alone [11]. The cost of diabetes drains the nationʼs

financial resources at a higher rate than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at their peaks,

combined. This, despite many doctors, nutritionists, and clinical researchers in all levels

of practice and teaching who corroborate the evidence that eating a diet of whole,

unprocessed plant-sourced foods is often enough to reverse and prevent type 2 diabetes

(Barnard, Bisci, Campbell, Clement, Cousens, Cromack, Daniels, Engle, Esselstyn,

Fuhrman, Gringeri, Gupta, Haas, Ivker, MacDougal, Nuchovich, Ross [23]).

II. Can an ethics of Pneumatology contribute to humanityʼs reaching its health and ecological potential?

Shults further says:

In Sensing the Spirit (1999) Rebecca Button Prichard points to the ways in which the Holy Spirit fills, surrounds and transforms our five senses – hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling – all of which are “material…” The growing interest in responding to the ecological crisis with a view of the Spirit as the divine force that sustains all forms of life is another example of the impact of this conceptual shift on Pneumatology. We might also have included here… illustrations from liberation theology (e.g., Comblin, 2004), which also treats Pneumatology in ways that…view salvation not only in terms of the rescue of the individual soul but of the


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redemption of persons in community [1].

In the light Pneumatologyʼs role to respond to “ecological crisis” and redeem “persons in

community [1],” reviewing the data presented thus far gives us: first, Banksʼ exhortation

of the American Indian Alliances to garden for the sake of reversing the scourge of type

2 diabetes; second, Ching and Hoʼs realization about localized, organic agricultureʼs

impact on the global environment; third, the American Diabetes Associationʼs conclusion

that type 2 diabetesʼ is growing devastatingly fast; and fourth, Cousens and colleaguesʼ

clinical findings that type 2 diabetes is not inevitable but can be prevented and also

effectively reversed through support in living a healthy lifestyle including a whole and live

plant-sourced food diet.

These data, and Shults statements on trends in Pneumatology, suggest that

Pneumatology has a two-winged response to make to the crisis upon it: The first wing of

the response is Pneumatologyʼs singular ability to frame and accurately define what the

crisis, the issue, of humansʼ relationship to “the divine force that sustains all life [1],”

actually is. The second wing of the response from Pneumatology pertains to spiritually

addressing methods to overcome humanityʼs tendency towards doubt with respect to the

efficacious potential of using organic produce to heal chronic degenerative disease and

global ecological degradation.

III. The First Wing of Pneumatologyʼs Response: Accurately Defining the Crisis

For the first wing of the response—framing accurately defining the crisis accurately—the

author has concern that the term of “ecological,” as in “ecological crisis,” is used in a way

that despite its claimed intention, maintains the “dichotomy between embodied


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experience and spiritual experience.” While “ecological” is more “earthy” than “ghostly,

numinous, and impersonal [14],” it is true that for many people, the ecological is still

rather impersonal! When the crisis is thought of as “ecological” more than “in the body,”

the dichotomy actually remains unresisted and gradually grows wider, despite Comblinʼs

et al liberation theology that views salvation in terms of the “redemption of persons” [5].

Pneumatological trends from Shults—including Pritchardʼs “sensory, earthy,” indwelling

Holy Spirit—point toward there being a more accurate possible description of the crisis

that is occurring in all life.

It is, again, through interpretation of data that the main Pneumatological trend expressed

by Shults can bring into focus an accurate definition of the crisis occurring in life. Banks,

Ho and Ching, and Cousens corroborate one another and show that the localized

organic produce approach to reversing type 2 diabetes naturally also, if applied globally

to its full potential, would reverse the greenhouse gas releases by 30%. Thirty percent

emission reduction by switching agricultural to organic methods, if true, is greater in

impact than any other major, feasible, proposed approach. Further to the point, Ho and

Chingʼs assertion [3] about changing to organic agriculture is more connected with daily

human behavioral choices than any other of the global environmental approach

presented, and addresses the estrangement [4] of cultures from sustainable agriculture

and organic produce that also is causative to type 2 diabetes. In other words, the

synergized data of Ho and Ching [3] and Cousens [4] suggest together that the more

people know how healthy organic produce is for the body, and have the agency, access,

and means to choose it, the less the deleterious impact of agriculture on the global

environment will be. The meaning of these data nudge Pneumatology towards further

embodiment than even any notion of “ecology,” which possesses distance or


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abstraction. Further still, the data compel pneumatologists in the 2010ʼs to interpret the

growing, eating, and propagating of organic food as a divinely inspired way to

simultaneously heal flesh and the planet, “relate to our neighbors,” and dwell in the unity

of “the divine Spirit and embodied transformation.”

IV. Asian Approaches to the First Wing—Defining the Crisis Accurately

On the subject of the simultaneity of treating the flesh and treating the planet as an

ethical expression of Pneumatology, two pertinent points from Asian Indian spiritual

culture are offered. First, a reader with Vedic background may recognize in the healing

of both chronic degenerative disease and ecological degeneration with the same acts of

eating and growing organic produce—which are consistent with the ethics of Shultsʼ

current trends in Pneumatology [1]—the teaching of the Sanskrit term prajnaparadha

(crimes against wisdom) [6] which Cousens has pointed out [4] pertains to reversing type

2 diabetes naturally. Prajna (wisdom) transcends divisions and maintains its essence

across different fields of applying it. Crimes against wisdom therefore are crimes against

wisdom whether they are against the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the body, or the

wisdom of the spirit. Violation of prajna may manifest against nature in the way that the

complex patterns of nature will determine, on any of the planes of body, environment,

psyche, etc. In this sense, wisdom is one—a unity—like the unity of the world and the

Spirit in current Pneumatological trends [1]. A wise being, therefore, is one who chooses

to live in a way that honors wisdom on the bodily, mental, spiritual, and planetary planes.

Expressing this wisdom, in the cases of reversing type 2 diabetes devastation and

ecological devastation, may take the form of local food growing for oneself and to share


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locally; education about the known evidence for healing people and the land, simplifying

distribution and creating other social systems that reduce whole foods prices and

increase distribution, and fostering religious life that emphasizes the opportunity to be

enthusiastically caught up in choosing to live according to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit

on all planes.

As far as spiritual cultivation, Ramana Maharshi was a mystic who spoke allegorically in

a way that some interpret as a riveting indwelling divine Spirit within him [12]:

Thou madst me mad to cure me finally Of madness for this world of fantasy.

Maharshi also spoke the following words [13]:

Of all the restrictive rules, that relating to the taking of sattvic food in moderate quantities is the best; by observing this rule, the sattvic quality of mind will increase, and that will be helpful to Self-inquiry.

Maharshiʼs emphasis on taking moderate quantities of sattvic food (which in India is

generally organically grown, whole, plant-sourced foods) as the “[best] rule” for

developing mental qualities amenable to Self-inquiry illustrates that in Indian culture, too,

the idea exists that the personʼs relationship to the sensuous and the earthy (food) are

equally as important as transcendent consciousness. In the authorʼs opinion, this also

shows that spiritual teachers in different cultures express guidance using their own

vocabulary that is arguably consistent with Pneumatology having an earthy and physical

ethics to be implemented around the farming and eating of whole organic plant-source

foods.


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From Asian cultures, both the concept referred to by the term prajnaparadha, and

remarks on the teachings of Ramana Maharshi serve to help reveal a closest-to-

accurate definition the life crisis that encapsulates skyrocketing diabetes and

preventable, reversible chronic degenerative diseases, global environmental

degradation, and threats that make whole cultures face the specter of their demise within

foreseeable generations. Prajnaparadha teaches that crimes against wisdom are

behaviors contrary to the principle of wisdom. The expression of wisdom may be found

in the harmony of the human body, the coherence of culture, and the global ecological

harmony, or another level of natureʼs interacting systems, but prajna, wisdom itself, is a

principle that pervades and can express in all these expressions, as well as others [6].

Thus, according to prajnaparadha, when wisdom is compromised in any expression it

may, through complex patterns, be revealed in a disturbance in another level of these

interacting systems. Then there is a basis in Vedic thought for the idea that only when

seen as an integrated whole can degenerative disease epidemics, cultural disintegration,

and global systems be restored, by honoring natural wisdom principals in all their

expressions. Mararshi adds a glimpse [13] into how eating and growing localized

organic food constitutes an affecter of spirit embodied in all these levels, and may be

considered the honoring of prajna, or wisdom.

V. The Second Wing of Pneumatologyʼs Response: Once We Frame and Define the Crisis and See Multiple Layers of Evidence for a Solution, Do We Have the Innards to Embrace It?

While the arguments above have shown that an ethics derived from Pneumatology is

capable of ameliorating or eradicating these diseases, human doubt complicates the


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task. Thus, the second task of Pneumatology in responding to the “crisis in all life” is to

encourage the overcoming of doubt. “Doubt” refers to the human skepticism or rejection

that people hold even in the face of a combination of data, time-honored cultural wisdom

practices, and common sense that make an all but irrefutable case for a statementʼs

being true. One example of doubting seen repeatedly, according to personal

communication with culturally embedded field subjects, is the doubt that natural food

possess the power to clear and upgrade the body in a way that allows healing to

happen. This doubt persists even though a preponderance of evidence and sense show

that natural foods do regularly lead to the healing chronic degenerative diseases, from

which humanity has suffered in proportion to its degree of divorce from the experience of

organic farming and food. This doubt is particularly pernicious when it is held by those

with the power to act in a way that is proven effective and ethical, and it causes paralysis

to the effective ethical action.

Nutritional or orthomolecular psychiatry suggest that one of the sources of this type of

dysfunctional human doubt seems to be the human organismʼs tendency to be more

doubtful when it is depressed. Depression is triggered when the cellular biochemical

status of the body is low in electricity. This state of physiology itself is reversible with

lifestyle factors including but not limited to the taking in of natural, organic food,

sustainably and regeneratively grown [6].

Another way that humans reduce dysfunctional doubt, clarify the available choicesʼ

likelihood of success, and make the healing processes more salient and clear, targets a

particular class of people who are typically more physiologically depressed and isolated

from othersʼ positive healing influences. This way is visiting the sick. Visiting the sick

skillfully is a spiritually challenging task for which religions have developed significant


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guidelines [16]. Is doubt inevitable in the sick where even examples of successful

healing seem far away, and the sickʼs own biochemical mood blockers exclude

consideration of possibilities to the positive? If paralyzing doubt in the sick were

inevitable, would it have been possible for Deuteronomy 30:19 to so inspire those who

made the stark life choices that saved their lives? No, the clear life choices by some

people and groups show that such doubt can be overcome, at least some of the time.

What cultural norm generates the doubt that does exist, and how can it addressed? The

author asserts that some doubts are caused by what Grau [20] calls “science fictions”

that “do infuse popular culture and thus our lives with a heavy dose of what Donna

Haraway has called ʻsecular technoscientific salvation stories full of promiseʼ” in the

absence of an alternate narrative that is infused with the embodied, spiritual, and earthy

concerns of “the redemption of communities of people” that is emerging in

Pneumatology.

From the Sensing the Spirit (11) to Spell of the Sensuous (9), academics are hinting,

pointing, and telling us of an indwelling force laying dormant, and sometimes activated,

in our innards, but until preventable agricultural and food-related diseases are removed

from humanity, is humanity hearing the message, and are we, in dysfunction, doubting

it? In a body of work beginning with Spiritual Nutrition (eds in 1982 and 2005), and

continuing in There Is A Cure for Diabetes (2008), Cousens is intriguing for not only for

providing one of the several national clinical studies on organic, whole live foods as a

nutritional force for reversing type 2 diabetes, but also for birthing the articulation of the

field of Spiritual Nutrition [4]. Two of the subject interests of Spiritual Nutrition are the

effects of food on the body, mind, spirit, and planet at the scale of an integrated whole of

the person; and also an insertion point of Nutrition Science into pursuits often seen as


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Theological and Pneumatological, including spiritual cultivation, personal and social

liberation, peacemaking, and more.

In Spiritual Nutrition, Cousens offers a normative guideline called the “Six Foundations

for Spiritual Life” which start with a way of eating, and which he points out from his direct

experience as a physician and a spiritual teacher, are not rules from any tradition but are

ways that peopleʼs behavior seem to unfold as they simply allow themselves to cease to

resist the divine Spirit [5]. The tone of the work of Cousens, while extensively cited, is

primarily one of Cousensʼ speaking from his direct experiences as a physician and

spiritual teacher. The “Six Foundations,” an abridged fashion, proceed:

1. Dietary purity guidelines advising towards whole, unprocessed, live plant-sourced only foods

2. Practices that hone the breath and body 3. Service and charity 4. Inspiration and guidance 5. Silence 6. Transmission of grace

The Six Foundations in Spiritual Nutrition are listed here as a contribution from a

physician and spiritual teacher who offers normative guidelines relating food and other

areas of spiritual life to knowledge of divine Spirit. It is beyond the scope of this paper to

analyze or test these foundations in any way other than to acknowledge them as an area

for Pneumatology and its ethics to explore further. For the present paper, Cousensʼ Six

Foundations of Spiritual Life describe, perhaps, an ʻFDA Food Guidelines Pyramid, for

the Soul,ʼ so to speak. Validated by both the teacherʼs knowledge of divine Spirit and

the researcherʼs analysis of how natural, local organic live foods provide for the

reversing of type 2 diabetes and chronic degenerative disease in a way that also is

ecologically regenerative, the Six Foundations add a kind of ʻmechanicsʼ and ʻguide for


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the fleshʼ to the way people might embrace an ethics that comes from Pneumatology.

As a subject for future research, Cousensʼ work may potentially be of interest to

Theology as agriculture, food, and healing continue to emerge as topics in a

Pneumatology based on embodied experience.

VI. Data, Doctrine, and Doubt

A major role of an ethics of Pneumatology, after correctly defining the crisis faced, is to

overcome doubt—an historical opponent to ethics—an address the crisis in all life by

converting data into information for doctrine. Herein lies the dysfunctional problem of

doubt. On the one hand, humanity continues to see rapid increase in diabetes

prevalence and environmental pollution beyond the planetʼs ability to remain in

ecological balance, resulting in vanishing bees, acid rain, erosion, soil demineralization,

toxic smog, record climate instability, etc. On the other hand, the evidence presented in

the first half of this paper suggested that through a change to growing and eating local

organic food, the majority of people diagnosed with type 2 diabetes would be able to

reverse it [4]. Also, prevention of chronic degenerative diseases including type 2

diabetes would soar, and 30% less greenhouse gases would be emitted. Therefore, the

reason(s) for humanityʼs currently not yet committing itself to going to localized, organic

agriculture and whole foods diet en mass is one or more of the following: doubt that the

change will work to achieve the stated goals, causing an insufficiency of motivation; lack

of skill or knowing how to make these changes; lack of asking the question of how can

we solve these problems (ignorance); social forces aligned against these changes [22];

and possibly other reasons not mentioned.


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Doubt in the ability of these changesʼ to achieve their goals is the most theologically

salient to address. It is the authorʼs feeling that ignorance, lack of know-how, and social

forces all are influenced by the movement from doubt to certainty in a group of people of

a necessary size. Understandings of doubt in relationship to data is seen in both the

Torah in the case of the spiesʼ responses to Caleb about the inhabitants of Canaan

(Numbers 13:31-33) and the Gospel as in the case of Thomasʼ unwillingness to believe

in Jesusʼ resurrection (John 20:25). Diabetes and ecology today offer a present

opportunity for humanity to engage in the study of how to adopt appropriate beliefs,

learning from these biblical scenarios, prajna (wisdom), and this paperʼs exploration of

the ethics that comes from bodily and earthy trends in pneumatology.

In Numbers 13: 31-33, concisely and not addressing the invasion and war aspects of the

passage, the spies of the Israelites going ahead to see what was in Canaan, reported

giants inhabiting Canaan and making it far too frightful to enter. This was the spies'

report, despite previous successes when seemingly up against too much opposition. As

it turned out, it was by blowing trumpets around Jericho that the first city in Canaan was

entered. The blowing of trumpets to bring down the walls of Jericho has been

considered by Christian, Jewish and other sects an example of the power of the Holy

Spirit.

In the case of John 20:25, Thomas doubted the other disciples who said they saw the

resurrected Jesus, which Thomas had not been present to see. Thus, according to

doctrine or tradition, Thomas doubted the very Holy Spirit itself, which was so real to the

other disciples.


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Pneumatologyʼs opportunity here today with the scourges of degenerative human health

threatening whole cultures, and degenerative environmental health, is, one, to “spy

clearly,” that is, to not lose the very simply doable act of establishing local, organic,

sustainable farming to heal diabetes because it seems to small in the face of the “climate

crisis.” Two, Pneumatologyʼs role is to “redeem Thomas” and be present for the

embodiment of the divine Spirit. Jesus reconciled separation between the divine Spirit

and the earth and flesh itself. Pneumatologically, all that is required for healing by spirit

is in earth and flesh already. If the local organic farms re-nourished with balanced whole

food nutrition, evidence [4] suggest that out of the current incidence of people with type 2

diabetes (250 million people [11]), over 150 million of these people would reverse it. If

this were to occur, what hundreds of nutritionists and clinicians say today [4] would be

broadly known with little doubt. This would result in a healthier world population, and

would convert a lot of chemical fertilizer and pesticide-based industrial farming into

localized, sustainable, organic farming. On the level of culture and the experience of the

sensuous, the massive difference environmentally will be made by the global effect of

250 million people and their communities, in soul and body, actually coming into

proximity of creationʼs topsoils, seeds, and shoots.

A role, then, of an ethics of Pneumatology today, which can prove very healing and

sustaining as we have shown in the above cases, is to teach the overcoming of doubt, in

general, that exists for no reason in the evidence, but for the simple reason that most

people doubt for no reason, but this is not the way it has to be. Caleb and the Spies,

and Jesus and Thomas, teach this idea from scripture. People are given the chance to

experience the sensuous as sacred and healing, and find a grounded trust, everyday.

Pneumatology and its ethics postulated herein are equipped to teach the overcoming of


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doubt, by prioritizing the oneness of the sensuous and the rational. Just as the sensuous

without the rational can mislead, so have we been misled by under-inclusion of the

sensual in comparison to the economistʼs logic in two many spheres, particularly

farming, food, and health.

VII. Prophecy of Human Choice and Dynamism in Cultural Life, Death, Land and Food

When survival of a definite cultural identity is perceived to be at stake, it may not be

surprising if the culture intensified its spiritual emphasis on healing and sought to further

empower the emphasis by anchoring healing as service to the divine or the fulfillment of

prophecy. A phenomena more fascinating, however, would be the in-context, cross

fertilizing of multiple displaced indigenous or diasporic religious cultures, around a

certain expression of prophecy, and cross-cultural sharing of identify with the prophecyʼs

implications. For example, Cousens uses the quotation of the Mosaic prophecy as an

Inspirational and instructional reference in There Is A Cure for Diabetes:

“I have set before you life and death and a blessing and a curse. You must choose life in order that you and your children shall live.” - Deuteronomy 30:19

Personal communication with several people of the American Indian, African American

Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and New Age faiths who are healing their type 2 diabetes

reveal that they all, too, appreciate the meaning in this prophecy as they heal. S.

Sensenig of Appalachian State University, in theologicalmusingsblog.com, offers that in

theology, two qualities of prophecy can be defined: forthtelling the thought of the divine,


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and foretelling of the unfolding of events [8]. The thought of the divine in Deuteronomy

30:19 is to express what the deity has done, and the choice that it is upon the people to

make. The human power in that choice is expansive, as is life and death itself. This

prophecy does not draw a distinction between ecological life and individual life, which

support the argument above that an ethics of Pneumatology defines the approach to

healing humans and the planet as actually one approach rooted in processes and arts

[12] of farming and food sovereignty. Deut. 30:19 is also set in a literary context of in

which environmental drought and agricultural famine, along with human suffering, is set

up as a possible outcome of human choices. Self-evidently, the current generation in the

natural healing of diabetes is not the generation who heard these words spoken at the

time of the Book of Deuteronomy, nor is it their children. Furthermore, the word,

“healing” does not occur in the selection. The people [17,18,19] drawn to this biblical

injunction for healing identify with its starkness of contrasted choices between life and

death, from having seen their mortal lives almost be lost to a defeat within their own

body, and yet be given a new chance at life through their returning to the land and its

authentic produce. Therefore Deut. 30:19ʼs prophecy speaks so closely to their own

personal story of individual and cultural restoration that it has literally brought

Deuteronomyʼs words alive.

How did this population, starting from a diagnosis of a condition whose understanding is

often confined to a question of medical pharmacology, or alternately mystical healing,

come to be drawn to—and act upon—a life-and-death, multigenerational prophecy?

How do they make their interpretation of this prophetic idea important enough in their

lives that it becomes the keystone of their individual and cultural healing? While, of

course, cultures are pervaded with messages pertaining to humansʼ responsibility for


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their own choices and the ethical merit of living in a health-promoting way in accordance

with their own cultural spiritual history, in the diabetes healeesʼ cases, dramatic life and

health circumstances and rapid change in willingness to believe, may be cueing more

acute strains of inspiration by this prophetic message than in other people. The social

and psychological dynamics of these questions currently remain unanswered.

One way that religion connects with the sick is through the visits of chaplains and others

to the sick. It is reasonable that visits to the sick may also be one channels of

communication by which trends in Theology in general, and in Pneumatology and its

ethics in specific, might reach the sick person and their family. Already, this paper has

shown that when finding themselves sick, certain people have experienced the prophecy

of Deuteronomy 30:19 coming alive for them and portray the choices that they have for

their restoration in stark contrasts of normative action in farming and food. However, it is

almost too obvious this particular expression of a postulated ethics of Pneumatology is

not the only model currently active in guidelines for visiting the sick. Presence,

sympathy, and other such qualities of value to bring to visit the sick. Indeed, in “Visiting

the Sick or Afflicted: Guidelines from Judaism [16],” Hana Matt provides resources for

visiting the sick, including these from The Encyclopedia of Judaism:

(1) Your intention and focus, kavanah, while visiting the sick is to “Uphold and restore his/her soul.” (Hebrew Ethical Wills) (3) (2) It is important for the sick person to know that s/he isnʼt left to suffer alone in his/her hours of suffering and weakness. (Talmud, Berakhot 5b) (3) The most important aspect of the visit is the Prayer for the Sick which the visitor has to recite for the sick person: “Those who visit the sick must pray for their recovery.” (Rema to Shulhan Arukh, YD 335:4)


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From these guidelines, we see that while the tradition for visiting the sick does certainly

involve presence and empathy, the guidelines go beyond static presence to dynamic

spiritual activities on the part of the visitor, such as “focusing on the upholding and

restoration of the soul” of the sick,” and “praying for his/her recovery.” A task for a

future paper then is to trace, through Jewish, Christian, and other religionsʼ guidelines

around communicating with the sick, the presence of a dynamism towards “the [sickʼs]

soulʼs restoration.” It would be interesting to see by what paths such a tracing may

returns to spirituality by which where all beings are enlivened by divine Spirit. If such a

tracing connects visiting the sick strongly to Pneumatology, then given the trends in

Pneumatology today of sensuality, embodiment, and earthiness, that tracing may

present an impetus to add more normative guidance to the sick regarding localized,

sustainable, organic food and farming, for their healing and restoration [16] alone if not

for the global environmental effects [3].

VIII Case Studies: The Sick, the Healing, and the Teaching: a Comparative Ethics of Pneumatology?The author spent 21 days with Kuuyux Larry Merculieff, an esteemed spiritual

“Messenger” of the Aleut Nation, when Merculieff was a participant in the Reversing

Type 2 Diabetes Naturally Program (RDN Program) at the Tree of Life. Merculieff has

held many positions, including Commissioner of the Alaska Department of Commerce

and Economic Development, and has received the Environmental Excellence Award

from the Alaska Forum on the Environment for his lifetime achievements. The following

excerpt of a personal interview with Merculieff [17] indicates the depth of what appears

Merculieffʼs understanding, in his own words, of what this paper has been discussing in


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terms of the appropriate use of data on what heals in the normative ethics of

Pneumatology.

In my lifetime, I have been to over 200 funerals, and a lot of them have do to things like high blood pressure, hypertension, strokes, and heart attacks. These are complications from diabetes. The fact is that most of the people who died from these didn't know that they had type 2 diabetes. But these are totally preventable, and—having just experienced the profound reversal of my high blood sugar and a return to a diet like our natural life ways—I am here as a witness to that.

The prophecies talk about these particular times when Mother Earth is waking up from a great deep sleep. As she does, her vibration goes up. For those who cannot maintain, in their bodies, a mirror of what Mother Earth is doing, and wake up themselves, they're not going to be here very long. The process that I've gone through here at the Tree of Life clearly increases your body's vibration, and this is really important during these times.

Also, the elders say that we cannot give the world anything that we don't have ourselves, and so if we're here to try to restore our cultures, restore our way of life, restore our communities back to health, and restore our Mother Earth back to health, then we have got to start with ourselves, and that's what the elders say."

Merculieff states what his body did, i.e. “having…experienced profound reversal of high

blood sugar,” (the data). He observed and by all indications appears to have considered

carefully what happened in light of his spirituality, and then he made statements towards

what it means to his spirituality (doctrine) that this data was observed in his body.

Though the outcome was not something that he previously knew or believed could

happen, even while experiencing his own symptoms and the death of 200 of his

acquaintances, he appears to now have absorbed it into his belief system. Doubt was

something he recognized would be an obstacle to other people in his culture, and from a

place of apparent real care and calling to share, he explicitly states that he is now “here

as a witness to [the preventability and reversibility] of high blood sugar”…through


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“return[ing] to a diet like [his cultureʼs] natural life ways.” Some other of Merculieffʼs

statements are deeply rooted in a cultural cosmology, or better, geology, which

essentially connects the “Mother Earth” with the individualʼs and communityʼs heath.

That suggests some coherence between his cultural frame and that of the ethics of

Pneumatology regarding the divine Spirit indwelling in the body, the earth, and the

redemption of communities. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to comparatively

interpret all the possible patterns within Merculieffʼs theology with the ethics of

Pneumatology that have been discussed throughout this paper so far; however for future

research it may be asked how might an ethnographer record, analyze, and present the

entire section and all its references to challenging concepts (e.g. “Mother Earth is waking

from a great deep sleep,” “her vibration goes up,” etc), and take into consideration the

intersubjectivity among “the elders,” the present generation, and the future generations?

Dennis Banks is currently entering the third phase—that of healing—in a 40-year span of

spirituality-inspired work for sovereignty and rights through the American Indian

Movement (AIM). The first phase was the Longest Walk I, a mobilization and awareness

raising activity for the First Nationsʼ religious and social rights. The second phase was

the Longest Walk II, a renewal of demonstrating AIMʼs goals for the next generation.

The 2011 Longest Walk is currently set to be focus on the reversal of diabetes naturally

while also regenerating the earth itself through backyard composting and gardening,

showing the clear cultural, ecological, and because the earth is sacred to this culture,

religious meaning of healing. In the following letter, Dennis Banks writes about the

Longest Walk III – 2011.


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The letter is included almost in its entirety for a very specific reason: Banks, a spiritual

man who has worked as a leader for American Indian social movements all his life,

writes an utterly personal and embodied letter to the all the American Indian Alliances in

the United States, and publishes it in every regional Pow-Pow Calendar of which many

thousands are printed. It is difficult to conceive of the Banks of 1968, or even the Banks

of 2008, devoting a whole letter at the front of the national Calendar to his own bodily

physicality as an AIM movement. Yet writing a letter to organize the Longest Walk III

from the point of view of his bodily health—not as a goodbye address or a request for

healing prayers—but as a catalyst for a movement to heal the culture profoundly from

the soil and the body up. In a revealing moment of elder wisdom and, the author

asserts, ethical pneumatological clarity, Banks writes in extreme intimacy of the sinews

of his own bodily healing to describe how the Spirit is moving him to move his people to

restoration:

January 1, 2010:

“The Birth of the Long Walk to Reverse Diabetes 2011”

On May 8, 2009, I was diagnosed as a diabetic; after 75 years, diabetes finally overcame my body and the doctor recommended insulin shots for me. My sugar reading was 305. Since that day I have learned a great deal. After being released from the hospital in Arizona, I changed my diet, and within 4-5 days my sugar reading was at 105. I continued on the whole raw vegetable diet for the next 35 days. During this time, I began to walk ½ mile a day, then a mile, then 2-4 miles, and at the present time I am walking 5 miles daily. My sugar reading is constantly between 95 and 130, free of insulin and medications.

Last year when the Longest Walk 2 ended, I said I wasnʼt going to do anymore walks, at least organizing them. However, I began to think. If a walk to make persons aware of the whole issue of how diabetes is disempowering, dispiriting, and ruining the wellness of Americans, young, middle aged, and senior citizens (Native Americans are among the highest incidences of diabetes of all ethnic groups in America, and amputation surgery is common in our communities), and I now know from experience that diabetes can be prevented and reversed, then it is time


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we walk, and say, “Shift from the most processed diet in the world to our natural diet.” When surgery is the only option given to us, when our people are going blind because of diabetes, when our children are becoming obese at 7, 8, or 9 years old, then it is time to reverse this diabetes epidemic and seek other alternatives.

This Long Walk will address these concerns and raise the possibility of the massive reversing of diabetes and heart disease. To do it within the next 3 generations will take a great effort that will challenge us to know our traditions, to address our habitual and convenient use of processed foods and drinks we bring into our homes. It will require us to focus on what our children eat, our daily walking and running, and the introduction of simple backyard gardening to grow fresh wholesome foods to eat.

If we donʼt change our ways of how we live, then the eternally greatest value, the Seventh Generation, will be in peril. This walk is extremely critical, and it is why we must set out to preserve our old culture and bring back the relationship with the world and with food, the lifestyles of our ancestors.

LET US BEGIN!!!

Dennis J. Banks

By anyoneʼs reading, scholarly or otherwise, though Merculieff and Banks are in different

tribes, they are speaking in recognizably similar (though not identical) terms as to

cultural interpretations and spiritual meanings of their health, belief, and lifestyle shifts.

The intergenerational wellbeing of the people, and the wellbeing of the Earth itself are

what are at stake in the peopleʼs healing. Merculieff and Banks clearly portray the

important role of healing in sustaining the very existence of religious ways. One refers to

the words of elders and the other refers to the children yet unconceived, both in a caring,

arguably prophetic tone. To the extent that either or both their sage insights about

healing as united with regenerating the Earth via cultivating the soil locally—which

mirrors this paperʼs advancement of an ethics of Pneumatology—are listened to and

heeded in action by their peoples, the Greek myth in which Cassandra the prophetessʼ

warnings are ignored, will be redeemed [21].


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As India and China change, they have already rapidly shot to the top two spots,

respectively, in the world in number of people with diabetes. It remains for a future

investigation to explore how an ethics of Pneumatology can become contextualized in

Indian or Chinese culture to the point where it inspires localized sustainable organic

agriculture and diet change that ameliorates both the countryʼs type 2 diabetes incidence

and the greenhouse gas emissions. Contacts that the author may help establish in this

fieldwork include Dr. Kan Nip Wing in his center in Borneo, Indonesia, which is a

common spiritual and healing retreat for metropolitan Chinese; Anandi Trans in Auroville,

India; and Alice Wu, a spiritual and healing guide in Tapei, Taiwan. All three are trained

or influenced by the healing and religion work of Gabriel Cousens, M.D., D.D.

IX. Conclusion: From Green to Green-and-Red Spirituality in Ethics of Pneumatology

In trending to the unity of divine Spirit and embodied transformation, Pneumatologyʼs

concern with Spirit and Spirituality in the “concrete developments” of “our neighbors,”

“ecology,” and “spiritual transformation” is surging [1], opening. By the empirical nature

of these concerns, Pneumatology is open to and strengthened by information from

secular scientific data. One current scientific field that can inform Pneumatology in new

ways is Spiritual Nutrition, which itself is a science concerned with building bridges

between the flesh and the divine via empirical evidence on the effect of food—its source,

purity, quality, preparation, etc.—at the scale of the body, mind, spirit, and planet being

an integrated whole. Informed in this paradigm, embodied Pneumatology moves to what

is postulated as an ethical Pneumatology through climatological, medical, and


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ethnographic data showing potential global environmental crisis amelioration through

switching to more local, organic, sustainable farming; through data showing that type 2

diabetes has been reversed in hundreds of people through eating a diet of organic, local,

and sustainably grown produce; and through the personal expressions of members and

leaders in cultures recognizing the importance of this spiritual-physical healing to the

survival, viability, and sovereignty of these cultures.

The arguments presented herein call on Pneumatology to go beyond “green spirituality”

and into a “red-green spirituality,” where even global environmental restoration is

centered on land-based ecology that facilitates localized organic food production where

the pneumatological ethic focuses on the red blood-filled tissues of the body itself. The

name “red-green spirituality” while referring to the body itself as an ecological organism,

alludes by the term “red” to survival, health and socio-cultural advancement of

indigenous peoples, and all peoples who derive our incarnate lives which Spirit animates

from the earth.


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REFERENCES 1. Shults, F. Leron, “Current Trends in Pneumatology,” Nordic Systematic Theology Conference: “Spirit and Spirituality,” Copenhagen, Denmark: 4-7 January 2007 2. Ecosystem Ecology: A New Synthesis. By David G. Raffaelli, Christopher L. J. Frid, Cambridge University Press, 2010 3. Ho, Mae-Wan, and Ching, Lim Li, Institute for Science in Society Report, January 2008 4. Cousens, Gabriel, There Is A Cure for Diabetes, Random House, 2008, and Personal Communication. 5. Cousens says in personal communication that in founding the field of Spiritual Nutrition, he is only articulating for modernity what he learned both from his own mentors such as Paavo Aerola, and from his interpretations of the Torah to be published as Torah as a Guide to Enlightenment. 6. Cousens, Gabriel, Spiritual Nutrition, Random House, 2005, p. 13 7. Cousens, Gabriel, Spiritual Nutrition, Random House, 2005, p. 112 8. Comblin, Jose, The Holy Spirit and Liberation, Comblin, Orbis Books 2004. 9. Abram, David: Spell of the Sensuous, Vintage; Vintage Books Ed edition, 2007. 10. Steven Sensenig, “A Biblical Definition and View of Prophecy” theologicalmusingsblog.com 11. “Global Burden of Diabetes, 1995–2025: Prevalence, numerical estimates, and projections,” Hilary King, MD, DSc; Ronald E. Aubert, PhD; William H. Herman, MD, MPH

12. Maharshi, Ramana, “Five Hymns,” Translated from the Original Sanskrit. 13. The Teachings of Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharshi in His Own Words, Edited by Arthur Osborne, 6th E. 1993. 14. Pritchard, Rebecca Button, Sensing the Spirit, Chalice Press, 1999, Pp 2-5, 32, 60. Pritchard uses the phrase, “ghostly, numinous, and impersonal” to contrast the Spiritʼs contemporary earthy conceptions with the less embodied trends of describing the Spirit in other places and periods. 15. The Art of Farming: 3rd Annual Conference for Innovative Solutions for Sustainable Mainstream Agriculture, May 11-12, 2010, Brussels, Belgium 16. Matt, Hana, “Visiting the Sick and Afflicted,” Chaplaincy Institute Newsletter, May, 2009


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17. Interview with Kuuyux Larry Merculieff, Aleut Nation Messenger, at the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center, Patagonia, Arizona, December 2007 18. Banks, Dennis, President of the American Indian Movement, in open letter to nationwide American Indian Alliances, January 1, 2010. 19. Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days, Documentary Film, Perlmutter, Lyons, Mader, Ortner, Ortner, and Bedar, 2009. 20. Grau, Marion, "ʼRedeeming the bodyʼ in late Western capitalism: pondering salvation and artificial intelligence.” Journal of Women and Religion, January 01, 2002. 21. Homer, Iliad 22. Social forces that may be aligned against changes towards localized organic food production and whole foods diet en mass include industries supporting short term profit-maximizing strategies, profit-favoring government subsidies undercutting fair competition with organically grown and whole foods produce, lack of research into ways to continue organic food integrity to standards and quality while reducing costs; absence of education about the health effects of the foods people consume, the divorce between people and the history of their lands and their foods, and other forces. 23. Personal Communication with Barnard, Neal M.D., Bisci, Fred Ph.D., Campbell, T. Colin, Ph.D., Clement, Brian, N.D., Cromack, George DC, Cousens, Gabriel M.D., Daniels, Jennifer, M.D., Engle, Dan MD, Esselstyn, Caldwell M.D, Fuhrman, Joel, M.D., and Gringeri, Richard, D.C., Gupta, Sandeep M.D., Haas, Elson, M.D., Ivker, Robert, D.O., MacDougal, John M.D., Nuchovich, Daniel, M.D., and Ross, Helen, M.D. 24. Cousens defines clinically reversing type 2 diabetes naturally as being in the normal fasting blood sugar range of 70 to 99 without medication or insulin for three consecutive months.

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