Ray’s Religious Upbringing and its Connections with the Natural World in Georgia

Ray’s Religious Upbringing and its Connections with the Natural World in Georgia

In her book “ecology of a Cracker childhood,” Ray shares her experience and life while she was living with her parents in Georgia (Ray, 1999, p. 4). She shares with her readers the fundamental values that played a role in shaping her into who she is today. She ascertains that she acquired the fundamental values after her parents imparted the same in her at her infant stage. The book vividly portrays the challenges that Ray’s parents found themselves, but they still stood to be steadfast as they knew how they wanted to bring up their kids. One standing thing that remains prevalent in the entire book is the religious values of Ray’s parents (Ray, 1999, p. 116). Ray was brought up in a family that attached a lot of value to the church as well as the doctrines and the word of the church. Both her father and mother continued to encourage Ray to understand and respect the word of the Bible and to attend the church. However, the appreciation of ray was never any embedded in the religion (Ray, 1999, p. 118). Despite having an understanding of the importance of spirituality, she failed to comprehend what that meant in her life. In fact, ray never had any feeling of connection with religion even from the beginning. However, Ray learned the interconnection between the forest and the church. She claimed that both the church and the forest brought a sense and feeling of peace as they helped in removing thoughts. Ray’s work is strongly revolving around her strong attachment and love for nature, especially the landscape of the southern regions of Georgia. After being brought up on a junkyard in Baxley, she even had some thoughts of opening her own memoir inspired by the statement that her homeland is “about as ugly as a place gets” (Ray, 1999, p. 13).  This inspires her to champion the preservation of the ecology of Georgia’s southern forest.

It is evident from the beginning that Ray had a strong attachment and love for nature, which began with the pitcher plant. The plant made her have much love for rain and made her welcome drizzles as well as looking forward to downpours (Ray, 1999, p. 128). The pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant, enhance her understanding and appreciation of the fact that predation was an essential part of nature (Ray, 1999, p. 128).  Ray claimed that her abiding hopes for nature were that everyone should take care of it and that people need to pay respect to it, to grant it rights, and to live a sustainable life in the heartbreaking and beautiful planet that we all live in. Ray’s strong love and attachment to nature relieved her of weird thought and brought a sense of comfort in her life, something she claimed she could as well get from religion. This interconnection between the sense of comfort that she found to be common in both religion and nature is what made Ray have a strong inclination towards nature and opted that everyone could help her take care of nature as it has a lot of meaning to life.

Furthermore, Ray’s love for nature can be traced back from the time she was in high school, and especially when she first came across environmentalism in her first year at their school. She claimed to have seen environmentalism in action for the first time. This was when Ray was passing by their Biology building and came across a hand-lettered sign that was hanging on a tree. The tree seemed to have had high chances of being cut. She noted that the letter read, “woodman, spare that tree, for in my youth it shaded me. And I’ll protect it now” (Ray, 1999, p. 263). The writings reminded her of George Pope Morris’s poem. She admitted that despite the fact that the poem advocated for the protection of the tree, she had never come across an individual who literally put it into practice. Ray had a strong love for nature, and the writings triggered her love for nature and hence the need for protecting nature. The writings further inspired and reminded her of the significance of the trees and hence the need to protect them.

Ray further ascertains that her strong attachment and love for nature was founded and inspired by her fifth-grade teacher of science, Lucia Godfrey (Ray, 1999, p. 211). She claimed that Lucia was a beautiful woman who was characterized by a sense of strong love for science and nature. Ray argued that her name, Lucia, meant light when to her, the light was shining in her future, granting her directions and goals (Ray, 1999, p. 213). Her teacher would spare some time and walk with Ray though the pine forest while showing her various species of female and male pine trees. Janisse Ray would always find herself sitting in the front rows in Lucia’s classes while absorbing and synthesizing every single bit of word concerning cells, evolution, pollination, survival, and adaptation. All these concepts were new to Ray and significantly led to the excitement of her imaginations (Ray, 1999, p. 214). Rays maintained that she got to learn from her science classes that nature would not ridicule anyone but was already available when one needs any gift, a sort of beauty; nature would always be waiting for you, and all that a person needs to do is to notice (Ray, 1999, p. 213). The encouragement and inspirations that Ray got from her science teacher further enhance her love for nature, something she viewed as very fascinating and refreshing.

The tour with the science teacher at the pine forest sparked Ray’s interest in ecological conservation, especially when she realized that the forest was a habitat for God’s creatures. This comes into action when Ray first saw a woodpecker, a bird that has a close connection to the pine forest. She realized through her teacher that the bird was listed as being endangered in the 1970s and maintained to decline (Ray, 1999, p. 152). According to her teacher, the woodpecker has three levels of needs: trees for nesting and roasting, a forest for foraging, and a conducive landscape for its interactions with members of the clan. Despite all the basic needs for the bird, ray realized that the bird was a strong victim of the demolition of the pine forest.

It is the significance of forest to lives that made Ray enhance and promote the preservation of the pine forest. She advocated for the management of the forest by selective tree harvesting and tree replanting. Ray argued that corporations whose focus was to generate money have to start by placing the focus of the significance of plant and wildlife conservation in the forest. Her motivation for ecological conservation even intensified when Neel took her to a pristine longleaf forest to show her the look and feel of untouched forest. Most of the trees were over two hundred years old (Ray, 1999, p. 252). This made Ray have a strong concern for the impact of the increasing population as well as its demand for the wood, a drive that made her advocate for the conservation of the pine forest.

Conclusively, the books the “ecology of a Cracker Childhood” portrays a lot of Ray’s background concerning her upbringing as well as her love for nature. Ray comes from a family that is strongly inclined in Christianity. However, she finds herself more inclined toward nature than religion. She feels that both religion and nature bring some sense of peace and hence helps in removing thoughts. Her love for nature makes her advocate for practices that are geared towards conservation of the pine forest, an environment that she feels much significance to life.

References

Ray, J. (1999). Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (1st ed., p. 310). Milkweed Editions.