A former dean at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School, Sallie McFague calls Christians down to earth. In a readable and available style, alive with concrete imagery and autobiographical material, McFague crafts a Christian spirituality centered on nature as the focus and locus of our encounter with the divine. She helps us see all life as created in the image of God. Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1(4) 1. Super, Natural Christians 5(21) Supernatural vs. Super, Natural Christians 5(4) Christian Nature Spirituality 9(17) Spirituality 10(2) Christian 12(4) Nature 16(10) 2. Consider the Lilies of the Field: How Should Christians Love Nature? 26(19) Paying Attention 26(4) Two Ways of Seeing the World 30(2) The Arrogant Eye vs. the Loving Eye 32(4) The Subject-Subjects Model 36(3) Care or Rights? 39(2) Map or Hike? 41(4) 3. Christians and Nature: Past and Present 45(22) Is Nature like Us? 46(3) Medieval vs. Ecological Relationality 49(4) The Medieval Picture 53(6) The Present: Our Loss of Nature 59(8) 4. The Arrogant Eye: Knowing Nature as Object 67(24) Nature: Landscape or Maze? 67(4) Knowledge: The Eye of the Mind 71(7) Sight as Mirror of Nature 71(3) Sight as Light of Reason: Plato and Descartes 74(4) Nature: The Mirror of the Mind 78(13) Perspective, the Nude, and Landscape Sight 78(4) The Eye of the Camera: Scopophilia 82(6) Dualism and the Arrogant Eye 88(3) 5. The Loving Eye: Knowing Nature as Subject 91(27) In Touch with the Others: A Radical Suggestion 91(6) Our Primary Sense: Touch 93(2) Constructing the Subject-Subjects Model 95(2) Being and Knowing: The Ecological Model 97(10) Some Preliminary Reflections 97(3) A Case Study: Buber's I-Thou 100(3) Marks of the Ecological Model 103(4) The Subject-Subjects Model and Nature 107(5) The Loving Eye 112(6) 6. Down to Earth: Close Encounters with the Natural World 118(32) Do Touch: Experience, Place, Wildness 120(9) Nature Writing: Mediating the Second Naivete 129(8) Passing Over to the Other: The Nature of Nature Writing 129(5) Science and Aesthetics: Two Ways to Educate the Loving Eye 134(3) Geography vs. Autobiography: Three Examples of Nature Writing 137(10) Sharon Butala 137(3) Sue Hubbell 140(3) Annie Dillard 143(4) Halting the Extinction of Experience 147(3) 7. Caring for the Others 150(26) The Ecological Model and the Community of Care 152(12) An Ethic of Care 153(2) Care and Justice 155(3) Case Studies in Care: Wilderness or Garden? 158(4) Care and the Social Self 162(2) The Ecological Model and Christian Spirituality 164(12) Extending Christian Love to Nature 164(4) Deepening the Subject-Subjects Model 168(4) Horizontal Christian Sacramentalism 172(4) Epilogue 176(3) Notes 179(26) Index 205