Wandering with Mindful Wonderment

Abstract

This article extends and shares practices inspired by Simon and Salter’s (2019) “Transmaterial Worlding: Beyond Human Systems.” This article argues that there is a need for wandering, and finding or creating diverse transmaterial worlding and practices that transcend Western binaries and hierarchical thinking in order to foster dreams of ecological civilisations. The article shares ways to seek sacred spaces within a pluriverse of worldviews by embracing an eco-relational mindset informed by non-anthropocentric Western, Eastern, Indigenous, and other process wisdom traditions, as well as science. The narrative and storied intention is to engage mindful wonderment and wander within an enmeshed, entangled, “naturalcultural” eco-relational worlding story by playfully integrating transmaterial worlding into an alternative gyrovague lineage connected to Ionian, Chinese, and Indigenous wisdom pointing to possibilities for ecological civilizations. The diverse process wisdom streams are connected to contemporary eco-relational practices, like lifescaping action research, eco-participatory forest walking, and mutual aid efforts. The lifescaping action research section summarises how diverse international co-researchers developed relationships with specific trees in their countries. The eco-relational forest walking practice activities deepen human-to-human and human to the more-than-human connection. Specific eco-relational practices include reciting loving kindness mettas, practicing chi kung (standing like a tree), reciting poetry to trees, and community building that extends beyond the forest walking practices into support for protests, actions resisting the fascist drift in the USA, and hope for emerging ecological civilisations.