religious traditions structure time to point to such supernatural connections. In earlier Christian cultures, people told (and literally tolled) God’s time with Angelus bells, which provided a religious frame for the day by calling people to prayer morning, noon, and night. In contemporary Islamic cultures, people orient themselves toward Mecca and pray at appointed times. All over the world, people are called to recognize the holy at traditional times in everyday life. But when bells ring at American colleges today, few students turn to prayer or contemplation. Sacred time used to be a moment for people to consider how to “redeem the time”—how to make ordinary time extraordinary, luminous with possibilities for good. Calls to prayer and holidays made time for people to listen to the sacred, and to apply the wisdom of holiness to their everyday lives. Although many religious Americans—and some college students—still take time for prayer and church services, we often see these rituals as perfunctory obligations, rather than as an opportunity to imagine a better world. For most college students, Sunday is just the second day of the weekend. On campus, it’s the day to recover from Saturday’s bacchanalian rituals and—in the evening—to start reading for next week’s classes. But it could be different.10
We could break out of our commonsense construction of time to discover new connections between past and future, nature and culture. Alarmed by the presentism and parochialism of America’s culture of time, we could begin timely conversations that would help us reshape our personal and cultural perspectives on how to live sustainably for all time. Such a movement to consider time—the past, the present, the future, the natural, and the sacred—in its entirety, could literally save all time.
Shit Happens: The Call of Nature
In the morning, after the alarm sounds, nature calls. The bladder and bowels fill and send nerve signals to the brain, saying, “Do something!” It’s one of the few times in a day that Joe and Jo College are conscious of nature’s influence on their lives. So college students creak out of bed, shuffle into the bathroom, and relieve themselves. Flushing the toilet, we put nature behind us, and we don’t think much of it. But the toilet is a place where the body’s plumbing meets the plumbing of culture and nature, so it’s a rich ecological niche.
Nature’s Free Lunch: Ecosystem Services
| Provisioning | Making stuff so people can make do. |
|---|---|
| Sunshine | Nature’s furnace and lighting system—good for tanning, but also for photosynthesis: the conversion of sunbeams to food. |
| Plants | Nature’s alchemists, converting sunshine to food (and spices and pharmaceuticals) by a process of photosynthesis, which also releases oxygen—a substance that is handy for our breathing. They also generate other useful materials (cotton, wood, etc.) and energy. |
| Animals | Nature’s meatpacking plants, converting plants—some of which humans can’t digest—into protein. |
| Rain, snow, etc. | Nature’s cleanser, soft drink, and liquid recreation—also habitat for aquatic plants and animals, and a necessity for land-based flora and fauna, too. |
| Oceans | Nature’s primary habitat—from phytoplankton to fish to great blue whales. Source of most of the seafood we eat. |
| Rivers | Nature’s highways and a flowing source of hydropower. |
| Prairies, forests, wetlands | Manufacturer of biomass and biodiversity, with topsoil as a biologically beneficial by-product. |
| Topsoil | Keeps plants from falling over and nourishes them. |
| Forests | Provide food, lumber, and oxygen, limiting erosion and runoff. |
| Metals | For making stuff, including cars and computers and beer cans. |
| Air | Makes breathing easier—also flying. |
| Everything | Cycling (and recycling) of nutrients in system. |
| Regulating | Keeping biotic systems in control. |
| Atmosphere | Nature’s screen (from ultraviolet rays). |
| Plants | Nature’s carbon catchers, sequestering carbon dioxide and partially regulating the climate. |
| Decomposition | Nature’s waste management, reducing the amount of garbage and shit we live in by breaking down organic wastes. |
| Trees and other plants | Nature’s air quality control, removing pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter from the air. |
| Trees | One of nature’s sunscreens, shading people and buildings, and saving energy. |
| Clouds | Another natural sunscreen, and an evaporative part of the water cycle. |
| Predators | Nature’s pesticide and its population control. |
| Wetlands | Nature’s water filter, purifying water going to groundwater. |
| Wind | Nature’s coolant, conveyor belt for weather systems, and seed-dispersal system. |
| Polar regions | Nature’s air conditioner. |
| Wetlands, plant cover | Nature’s flood control, protecting coastal areas from storm surges. |
| Everything | Catalyst for curiosity, source of science. |
| Most everything | Stimulant for aesthetic appreciation and expression. |
| Landscapes | Nature’s art museum and people’s playgrounds. |
| Moon | Nature’s romancer and tide pull. |
| Stars | Intimations of infinity, invitation to astrologers. |
| Animals | Totems for tribes, individuals, and sports teams. |
| Ecological design | A baseline for biomimicry and human cultures. |
| Ecosystems | Ecotourism. |
| Birds | Birding. |
| Flowers | Beauty in the wild and in the home. |
