Maatumisenkirkko:
Three Gestures Toward Being Eaten by the World.
Proskomedia · Synaksis · Anaphora
Maatumisenkirkko (The Church of Decomposition) is a gentle, participatory artwork and community ritual. Finland holds three intertwined lineages of reverence: Orthodox awe, Lutheran humility, and ancient animism. Modern life split spirit from soil; this liturgy stitches them back together. Decomposition isn’t failure; it’s how life feeds life. We rehearse reciprocity, attention, and belonging – on purpose, and with care. We borrow three movements from the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy and place them on the forest floor:Proskomedia (Προσκομιδή) – offering / surrender → kenosis (self-emptying) made biological. Synaksis (Σύναξις) – gathering / listening → apophatic attention (knowing by unknowing). Anaphora (Ἀναφορά) – offering of the self (downward, to earth) → the “lifting up” turned downward: offering to earth’s metabolism.It’s a practice: slow, porous, accessible. A simple nature liturgy anyone can do: offer something, listen together, let yourself belong.Research QuestionHow can the ritual movements of Proskomedia, Synaksis, and Anaphora help rebuild reciprocity, attentiveness, and belonging between humans and nature – weaving Orthodox awe, Lutheran humility, and animist relationality into a Western practice of sacred ecology?
I. Proskomedia: Mitä maa ottaa vastaan
Proskomedia in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is the solemn preparation of bread and wine: an offering made before the full liturgy begins. Spiritually, it is an act of humble surrender: gifts are placed on the altar to be transformed into nourishment for all. Here, that gesture is taken into the forest, into the soil itself. The forest is altar and recipient. Its microbial life and mycelial webs receive what falls, in all its rotting richness.In this ecology of offering, you practice becoming humus – sinking into gravity, losing definition, permitting yourself to be unmade. Drawing on animist and multispecies anthropology, you recognize the forest as an active participant rather than a backdrop, one that consumes and digests without judgment. Artistic practice becomes a ritual of laying down control, allowing materials (and yourself) to compost into something new.Research Question:
How can ritual acts of surrender to decay cultivate a deeper animist attentiveness to the forest as a co-creative presence?
II. Synaksis: Mitä ei voi pyytää
Synaksis, the gathering of the faithful after the eucharist, is less about declaring than receiving together. Here, nature draws close like fog, saturating the senses until the edges blur. Spiritually, it is an invitation into apophatic silence – the sacredness of what cannot, must not, and will not be named.This liturgy of listening is an act of stepping outside language and into a deep-time ecology. Peat bogs breathe centuries into the air; fungi unfurl messages that never translate into words. Within this animist and multispecies terrain, anthropology reveals that meaning is less a matter of speech and more a practice of being-with: an ethic of attention to what is unsayable.Your role is not to interpret but to honor this radical opacity – to acknowledge the forest’s refusal to be rendered legible. In this silent congregation, fog, breath, and rotting wood hold their own ceremony.Research Question:
What does it mean to cultivate sacred listening toward beings and processes that refuse representation?
III. Anaphora: Mitä minä annan itsestäni
In the Christian tradition, the Anaphora is the high prayer of offering – lifting up bread and wine so they may become more than themselves. Here, in late autumn, this gesture is reversed: you are what is offered, released into the dark so that other life may taste you, break you down, integrate you. Spiritually, it is a radical act of self-giving.Ecologically and animistically, this is the moment of re-entry into forest metabolism. Microbes, fungi, and the great mycelial webs already know you; your body is becoming substrate, your breath damp, your boundaries porous. Anthropology reminds you that most cultures have understood this return – humans as a vital feast for soil, spirit, and multispecies kin – long before extraction and enclosure obscured these relations.In this dark intimacy, you embrace trans-corporeality: that constant exchange where nothing lives alone and every self is a gathering of countless others. The world consumes you, and you live on through its networks.Research Question:
How can we practice becoming food – entering reciprocal, embodied relations with natural life that collapse the distance between self and world?
The three gestures form a small circle of return:
Offer → Listen → Belong.They can be done in a single afternoon or over a lifetime.
No altar but the ground.
No hymn but breath.
No congregation but whoever is present.A practice of resting deeply enough to be eaten,
and trusting that the world knows what to do with what you leave behind.
Proskomedia · Synaksis · Anaphora
I. Proskomedia (Προσκομιδή) – Mitä maa ottaa vastaanGesture: Offering, laying down, surrender
Element: Soil / Gravity / Fruitfall
Theme: Letting the self fall apart. Becoming edible.In the old liturgy, bread and wine were offered before the ritual began. Here, the forest itself becomes the altar – a place that transforms all things through decay. You join that process by offering something small: a piece of fruit, a leaf, a word, a breath. The point is not sacrifice but participation. The forest receives without judgment, digests without haste.Practice
1. Go somewhere with living ground (e.g. forest, field, yard.)
2. Offer something that can safely return to the soil: a crust, a petal, a piece of bark, a thought you no longer need.
3. Place it down gently. Touch the earth and say: “May what I release become nourishment.”
4. Stay a few minutes, watching gravity take over. Walk away without looking back.Why it matters
This gesture re-teaches surrender: letting yourself and your materials become part of something larger.
Decomposition is generosity made visible.Invitation to notice:
How your body softens when you release control.
How the ground breathes with what falls into it.
How the line between “offering” and “being offered” starts to blur.
------Readings for those interested
Books:
Miller, E. P. (2002). The Vegetative Soul: From Philosophy of Nature to Subjectivity in the Feminine.
Wohlleben, P. (2016). The Hidden Life of Trees.
Tsing, A. L. (2015). The Mushroom at the End of the World.
Journal Articles:
Braidotti, R. (2003). “Becoming Woman: Or Sexual Difference Revisited.” Theory, Culture & Society, 20(3), 43–64.
Drury, L. (2022). “What’s in a Name? Somatics and the Historical Revisionism of Thomas Hanna.” Dance Research Journal, 54(1), 6–29.
Gil, J. (2006). “Paradoxical Body.” TDR: The Drama Review, 50(4), 21–35.
Grosz, E. (2012). “Deleuze, Ruyer and Becoming-Brain: The Music of Life’s Temporality.” Parrhesia, 15, 1–13.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (1981). “Thinking in Movement.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 39(4), 399–407.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2014). “Thinking in Movement: Response to Erin Manning.” Body & Society, 20(3–4), 198–207.
Trappes, R. (2019). “Evaluating Elizabeth Grosz’s Biological Turn.” Hypatia, 34(4), 736–754.
Holmes, S. W. (2023). “Racialized Bodily Grammar: A Case Study of White Fragility in the Embodied Discourse of Somatic Practice.” Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 15(2), 193–211.
Hustak, C. & Myers, N. (2012). “Involutionary Momentum: Affective Ecologies and the Sciences of Plant/Insect Encounter.”
II. Synaksis (Σύναξις) – Mitä ei voi pyytääGesture: Listening, silence, fermentation
Element: Fog / Spores / Rot
Theme: Undoing speech. Honoring what will not be made clear.Synaksis means gathering — not of words, but of presence.
This gesture is about listening without needing to understand.
Fog, moss, and the hum of rot are your congregation.
Meaning dissolves, and what remains is belonging.PracticeGo outside when the world feels still — dawn, dusk, rain, or fog.Stand or sit.Close your eyes and listen until the edges blur.When your mind names what it hears — “bird,” “wind,” “drip” — quietly say:“I don’t need to know.”After five or ten minutes, leave in silence.Why it matters
This is an act of reverence for what refuses to explain itself.
Silence isn’t emptiness; it’s full of other lives continuing.Invitation to notice:How the urge to name things feels in your body.How the forest sounds when you stop interpreting.Whether silence feels lonely or alive.
------Readings for those interested
Books:
Keller, C. (2014). Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement.
Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass.
Neimanis, A. (2017). Bodies of Water.Journal Articles:
Arlander, A. (2019). “Resting with Pines in Nida – Attempts at Performing with Plants.”
Neimanis, A. (2015). “No Representation Without Colonisation?”
Tsing, A. L. (2012). “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species.”
Kohn, E. (2007). “How Dogs Dream.”
Muñoz, J. E. (2009). “Ephemera as Evidence.”
Povinelli, E. A. (2014). “Geontologies of the Otherwise.”
MacLure, M. (2013). “Researching Without Representation?”
Nikolić, M. & Radulovic, N. (2018). “Aesthetics of Inhuman Touch.”
Spatz, B. (2019). “Notes for Decolonizing Embodiment.”
III. Anaphora (Ἀναφορά) – Mitä minä annan itsestäniGesture: Ingestion, intimacy, mutual permeability
Element: Breath / Darkness / Warmth
Theme: You are no longer observer. You are the feast.In the Christian liturgy, Anaphora is the lifting up.
Here, the gesture turns downward: we offer ourselves to the metabolism of the world.
It’s an act of belonging, not sacrifice.
Your breath feeds the air; your warmth feeds the soil.PracticeSit or lie on the ground.Feel your body’s weight.Take one slow breath in and one slow breath out. Imagine that exhale feeding what’s around you.Whisper:“May I be part of this.”Stay for a few minutes. Let insects crawl if they do. When you rise, notice how the earth keeps no record except an impression that fades.Why it matters
This is not about disappearance, but participation.
The self is not lost — it’s composted into life itself.Invitation to notice:The exchange between your warmth and the cool ground.The subtle relief of being unimportant.How breathing feels when it’s shared with everything else.
------Readings for those interested
Books:
Kohn, E. (2013). How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human.
Gins, M. & Arakawa. (2002). Architectural Body.
Bell, C. (1997). Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions.Journal Articles:
Manning, E. (2014). “Wondering the World Directly – Or, How Movement Outruns the Subject.”
Gil, J. (2006). “Paradoxical Body.”
Price, M. (2015). “The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain.”
Vásquez-Rosati, A. (2017). “Body Awareness to Recognize Feelings.”
De Vos, R. (2023). “Protection and Reflection: The Ambiguities of Trans-Corporeality.”