Biography
Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo is a writer from Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, whose work has been featured in Christianity Today, Sojourners, Bittersweet Monthly, Geez Magazine, Inheritance, Interfaith America, and more. He is currently pursuing an MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he studies the intersection of race, religion, and ecology.
Paper Abstract
In a world built by whiteness, a regenerative path forward can be found at our feet, and precisely, within the soil. While whiteness operates through the enclosing of humans from land, and thus from one another and other creatures, the underground entanglements of earthworms, mycelial communities, and root networks are working their hardest, and often in collaboration with one another, to enact a reciprocal way-of-living within the earth. Carrying with them the forces of life and death, our critterly kin are moving within the soil to heal our polluted planet, particularly by absorbing dead matter and regenerating it into nutrient-rich soil for the sustenance of the earth and all its dwellers. While these critters are often disregarded as “small” and “insignificant,” this presentation argues that human beings can learn from the unbordered and open-ended reciprocities of non-human critters that work mysteriously in the darkness to transfigure and heal the earth.