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PAPERS

Oil, Earth, Books, and Holy Spirit
Theological Institutions, Libraries, and the 
Role of Environmental Sustainability
Anthony Elia, Bridwell Library at Perkins School of Theology,  
Southern Methodist University

ABSTR AC T: Theological libraries like Bridwell continue to benefit 
from both natural resources and the environment, while needing to 
adapt to the harshness of what nature itself brings.  A holistic vision, 
distilled in the particular climates, topographies, and physical 
geographies of Texas, for example, reflects both the concerns and 
hopes about the general stewardship and sustainability of natural 
resources in our work.  Reflecting on historical legacies will benefit 
our attempts to envision a better future and healthier planet. In 
the last few years, the focus on environmental sustainability has 
grown along with more critical roles in renewable energy. As theo-
logical institutions, then, it will become more pressing to evaluate 
both questions about what our ties are to the past, and what visions 
there are for the future. This paper will examine the ambiguities 
of environmental legacies while discussing what roles theological 
schools and libraries have in strategizing for coming generations.

INTRODUCTION

“The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body,” 
once wrote the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard.  It is a space of 
perceived emptiness that is in fact a nuanced place of meaning, life, 
and natural expression, yet something we as humans constantly 
struggle to understand.  The desert is also a gesture of the global 
landscape, a sibling of our desire for emptiness in the universe, and 
as Baudrillard asserts “also the silence of time.”  It is something that 
I had not considered contending with before coming to a place like 
Dallas or the dry earth of the southern borderlands.

When I first moved to Texas, I knew that it was going to be hot, 
but I didn’t properly understand what that full embrace of nature 
would be, nor the climatic adaptability to which I would have to 
adjust in the extremes of those physical limits.  It is after all a desert 



48  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

landscape that is varied and temperamental, desolate and beauti-
ful, and exceedingly complex in how we human beings have come 
to interact with it.  Over the last three years, I have become increas-
ingly aware of these nuances of nature: of the human encounter with 
and adaptability to the physical space, our curious courtship with 
water and our manipulation of earthworks to acquire, control, and 
harness it, and the particular long-term issues of sustainability in 
such an environment.  These immediate observations are tempered 
and articulated through yet another lens—that of natural resource 
legacies—and have become framed in the historical context of the 
state, and particularly through the roles that our predecessors on 
this land played.  By examining and recognizing these histories and 
the distinctions of our different eras, we may be better tooled to 
assess how we got here, where we are today, and what may be the 
best actions going forward. 

In so doing, I have come to acknowledge that we often arrive in 
a new place blinded by circumstances or preconceived notions.  We 
are conditioned to think and believe ideas that precede us at our 
destinations and these ultimately shape our understandings, even 
while we begin to rethink and evaluate these circumstances based 
on our experiences in that new land.  The present paper seeks to 
consider these perceptions and reconsider the temporal, spatial, 
and custodial relationships that we as human beings have with our 
planet—specifically, on this desert landscape we call Texas.  This is 
an area-specific discussion but should not exclude us from discerning 
how such an example may be more widely applicable, especially as 
we consider the role of theological libraries and institutions within 
the environmental, historical, and ecological systems of our world.  
These points are as easily considered in the Midwest, the East Coast, 
the Pacific Northwest, or elsewhere.  And I hope this will be the case.  

My key approaches to our conversation must rely on a holistic 
vision of nature and the environment—terms I will detail later.  And 
by beginning with the historical precedents to our current moment, 
and most specifically, the precedents that allowed for Bridwell 
Library to be established, survive, and thrive, I believe that this long 
view (Annales School social history) approach may provide us with 
a more articulate, responsible, and useful understanding for us to 
move forward.  In this way, then, the holistic vision of our places of 
work and dwelling, and especially at our own theological institutions, 
will allow us to contend with not simply the historical understand-



Papers  49

ings of our organic and physical surroundings, but the ethical and 
moral implications of those circumstances, and how we negotiate our 
futures.  Through this approach, I hope to a) look at the terminologies 
of our world related to environment and ecology; b) consider our 
organic and holistic nature—that all things from “adam(ah)” (Heb. 
earth/soil/human) to books, oil, water, and more—are related in our 
global ecosystem, even though historically, we as humans and soci-
ety have isolated and categorized the world into antagonistic models 
of “nature” vs. “non-nature”; c) evaluate how history itself has been 
based on ecological principles and environmental conditions; and d) 
recognize that there are three categories of assessment with which 
we need to engage:  1) “environmental exigencies” (physical rela-
tionships among our libraries and the environment and nature); 
2) “natural resources” (including the resources which created the 
library—e.g. oil and livestock—and the natural resources we can use 
in the future); and 3) the “imperative of adaptability”—that only by 
thinking in these ways, can we actually succeed in the sustainability 
of our institutions and libraries.

My question in all of this is what is our present and future role in 
theological libraries, where we recognize the natural historical past, 
the anthropocenic adaption and encounter with the earth, and a future 
of studied beneficence that is sustainable and healthful for generations 
to come?  In short, how do we best move forward in our libraries and 
institutions, as inheritors of a changing world that consumes more 
and more?  (cf. Ramachandra Guha’s How Much Should a Person 
Consume?)

JESUS ON THE DINOSAUR: MEMES, PLANKTON, AND 
PHILANTHROPY

I began my presentation with a cartoon of Jesus riding a dinosaur.  
In this playful exchange was a conversation that tried to play on 
both the common meme abounding on the internet—of Jesus on 
a variety of dinosaurs, usually with some weapon—and the para-
doxical and implicit meanings that could be taken from this repre-
sentation.  My reason for using this was to explain both the meme 
and cultural phenomenon of “Jesus on Dinosaur” imagery, and the 
peculiar stretch of the imagination that mistakenly connects these 
two themes.  As the cartoon describes:



50  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

Dinosaur: I’m so glad the Creationists made us friends.

Jesus: I feel the same.

Dinosaur: But there’s a little irony to it, don’t you think?  Little do 
the Mainlines know how subversive and real this metaphor is!

Jesus: You mean that after all you dinosaurs died, your organic 
matter decayed for millions of years, turned into oil, was sucked up 
from the earth, processed, sold, and through a capitalist system was 
used to profit by businessmen, who then used the cash to build philan-
thropic empires and endow theological schools and libraries dedicated 
to celebrating me eternally?

Of course, Jesus never rode dinosaurs.  And dinosaurs don’t talk.  
The imaginary cartoon is meant to illustrate how the assumptions 
about the world, the history and pre-history of the earth, the radical 
unity of timeless ecologies along geologic epochs, and human appro-
priation of natural resources tie together with beliefs and practices 
in the Christian religion.  Indeed, I first considered using such an 
illustration after visiting Glen Rose, Texas, where the state’s most 
famous dinosaur park and authentic sauropod tracks can be found, 
and where immediately outside of this park is a bona fide Creationist 
Museum.  But even the cheeky long statement by Jesus to the dino-
saur is not accurate: dinosaurs never became oil—the term fossil fuel 
was a misnomer of sorts, designated in the eighteenth century by a 
German chemist named Caspar Neumann (1683-1737).  The connec-
tion to petroleum products and the language used to describe this 
became prominent after 1859 when petroleum (lit. “rock oil”) was 
first commercially produced.  So-called fossil fuels did not come then 
from the organic matter of fifty-million-year-old dead dinosaurs, but 
instead from earlier zoo- and phytoplankton remains.  

The connection here then is between the Mesozoic remnants and 
the human practice of extracting and refining the natural resource 
of oil for commercial use; and specifically, the uniting factor is how 
one Mr. J.S. Bridwell was part of this enterprise—a man who rose 
to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s by drilling and gathering oil, 
acquiring and utilizing land and cattle, and turning significant and 
remarkable profit especially in the mid-twentieth century.  By 1950, 
that relationship made another turn toward demonstrable philan-
thropy and the establishment and endowing of Bridwell Library, 



Papers  51

which would become the preeminent theological library in North 
Texas.  

In this very long view of prehistorical and historical record, we 
are able to consider how the holistic vision of the earth is not simply 
how our worlds connect in the present, but how they connect across 
time.  Just as the classical elements of water, earth, wind, and fire 
predominate the cosmologies of major societies around the world 
back into antiquity, so too do these elements play a role in how we 
understand the places we live in today.  The philosopher Manuel 
DeLanda suggests in his classic work A Thousand Years of Non-Linear 
History that rather than be held hostage by the historical markings of 
dates and places, we instead consider interplays of matter and energy 
when looking at the historical frameworks of the world.   While this 
may be oversimplified, it possesses some innovative considerations 
around how we view history through a very different and distinct 
lens.  Can we actually forego the recognition of dates and places?  
Probably not, but I think that we can evaluate the circumstances and 
events of history as these interplays, as instances of energy flow, give-
and-take, and power shifts, such as what happened in eighteenth-
century French history; nineteenth-century British imperial history; 
twentieth-century American history; or twenty-first-century people’s 
history—all as measures of matter in flux.  As for our spaces of power, 
the environment has always been imperative, a key to the victories 
of battle or losses of war, the emergence of states, and the decline of 
monarchy.  Tied into all of this and to the environmental and ecologi-
cal spaces on which we tread as human creators of those histories 
is the very real and very fractious relationship to natural resources, 
the land, and the socio-political imagination—especially in Texas.

TEXAS VS. OTHER PLACES: MOLDING IDEAS

The hope that our annual conference was to take place in the Dallas-
Fort Worth area this year was much anticipated, but ultimately did 
not occur in-person.  Part of my own desire to have this conference in 
the metroplex had been to coordinate how this paper would articulate 
the realities of visiting and being in a place suffering from drought 
and intense heat.  It is one thing to attend an online session about 
environments, ecology, nature, and libraries; it’s another thing to do 
so in person and then have to go out into the blistering sun between 
sessions to meet friends, go for a meal, or find your airport shuttle.  



52  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

If attendees had come in person, many would have flown in to 
DFW or Love Field, looking down upon an earth of empty rivulets, 
dry riverbeds, and a parchment-grey landscape with speckles of 
green in the form of hardy live oaks and craggy boscage.  At the 
airports, you might see some vibrant artificial plantings or mani-
cured coppices, while being choked by the thick hot air of mid-June 
and the encroaching summer winds, dust billows, and a brume of 
humidity—dry heat here is somewhat misleading.  It is not Atlanta or 
the Gulf Coast, but there is enough humidity once you hit 100F that it 
makes things unpleasant.  And on your drive to the conference hotel, 
you might pass through swanky neighborhoods, or more likely, the 
proliferating suburban sprawl, where there are tens of thousands of 
new brick façade homes, with small rectangular lots, and perfectly 
tended pre-made turf lawns dotted with an occasional sapling, held 
up by some guiding wire.  Companies, colleges, and shopping centers 
are adorned with verdant greenswards, luscious gardens, hearty 
tree plantings, rustic fences, artificial streams, creative fountains, 
and occasional statues of mustangs or cattle drives.  So much are 
these decorative details entrancing and distracting that we tend not 
to realize how much of a challenge it is for this many people to adapt 
to such a place, where most organic life would not likely survive, if 
not for advanced technologies.

I can say with confidence, now having traveled nearly to all the 
extremes of the state—from El Paso to Texarkana, Amarillo to Port 
Arthur, Big Bend to Sherman—that there is great diversity in the 
unity of this space, but also great similarity in its complex relation-
ship with water.  The recognition of water and our human societal 
designs on capturing and utilizing it for our survival is also part of 
our understanding of place, just as much as it is part of knowing the 
elements and building blocks of our workplaces, our libraries, and 
our institutions.  This is the holistic reality.  

The vision of the earth, of nature, and of the environment in Texas, 
and especially DFW, is a vision of a particular adaptability that is 
forced by a skyrocketing population, its expansive and fast-paced 
growth, our relationship with water, terrain, rocks, and each other, 
and the pressing extremes of climate—blistering heats and unpre-
dictable freezes.  I have lived all over the world, and yet in Texas, the 
role of nature, the environment, and climate are among the most 
varied and truly untamed I have ever seen.  They are also much 
more obvious, both in the daily observations of how humankind 



Papers  53

has tried to carve out or control the earth here, and in the seasonal 
unpreparedness of our social and political administrative frame-
works—such as our power grid.  

While I have had these thoughts about the state over the last few 
years, it does not become more obvious until I leave the state, when 
I make observations of adaptability, construction, and harnessing of 
the natural environment.  There are dams in New York, Pennsylva-
nia, and North Carolina, yet they are surrounded by trees and moist 
earth, and there are mountains abounding with dense green cover.  
Water is abundant and visible, it rains more frequently, and people 
are cultivating more bountiful gardens.  The physical environment 
projects different meanings to those who live in a place, as well as 
to those who experience and understand it from afar.  Though it 
may not matter much to many people, the aesthetics of space do in 
fact have an impact on the way we live and interact with our envi-
ronments (think: would you rather be at the beach, in the mountains, 
or in your office?).  Spaces and places matter and unduly affect not 
just our perceptions, but also our feelings, behaviors, and ability to 
perform work and daily activities.  

As we try to better understand our environments, those which 
are experienced as dramatically different from where we came from 
or to where we’ve gone will be understood, identified, and recalled 
in markedly different ways.  Texas, therefore, stands out as a place 
that on the quotidian level is experienced by the human relationship 
between dry climate and the necessity of water for our sustenance—
not a quality you would generally think about or consider in New 
York, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina.  Environmentally, though, 
the second distinction of Texas is of its natural resources—its natu-
ral gas and oil reserves.  Though water is certainly more precious 
and necessary for human life, oil and gas are highly useful—some 
would say not just useful, but necessary—for our ability to operate 
the world as it is currently set up: reliant on fossil fuels.  Thus, the 
relationship we hold with the land is one of a communal relationship 
with the environment through the specific needs of natural resources, 
like water, gas, and oil.    

Yet, our recognition of these two key resources is just the begin-
ning, because even if we estimate this as part of the makeup of our 
worlds, we must take that additional step, recognizing that we are 
living now and forever in an organic and holistic environment that 
encapsulates us within a geochemical and geothermal space.  Even 



54  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

in the antique pronouncements of from dust we came and to dust 
we shall return, the notion of our physio-chemical relationship to 
the earth must be acknowledged in how we understand not just the 
resources that founded our libraries, but also those resources that 
created all the elements that comprise the very library buildings 
themselves—the clay for the bricks, the mortar, the wood and metal 
frames, the ancient rock materials of slate or composite stone that 
cover the roof, and the piping that ushers around clear liquids, oils, 
and sludge.  Just as important, and certainly even of more interest 
to our staff and patrons, are the books themselves—bought with 
and supported by the monies and endowments founded in oil and 
cattle profits, and created from sheep skins, vellum, and paper, made 
from pulp, from ground tree scraps, mixed together and glued into 
something viable.  Those trees came from the earth somewhere, 
gaining nutrients from variegated soils that were torn up, ground, 
and circulated over millions of years, themselves settled above in a 
violent atmosphere that covered hundreds of feet of ground and earth, 
protecting those ancient phytoplankton deposits, now oil and gas.  

Every place on earth is different—the genetics of the earth, the 
soil, the humus of antiquity that was made by the Big Bang or the 
gods or the Eternal Creator are all unique.  That is the long history 
of the environment and humankind.  How we reconcile our distinc-
tions and categories with this fluid mixing of the untamed universe 
is the challenge, but also the reality of knowing that we are all part 
of the same physical, psychological, and spiritual ecosystem.

TERMS TO CONTEND WITH

There is a mighty lexicon when discussing the environment.  Terms 
like ecology, deep ecology, environmental history, ecosystem, and 
environmentalism among others have long histories and meanings 
associated with them, and at times are misunderstood by the general 
public.  Before diving deeper into the terrain of this paper though, 
it will be useful to provide the very basic definitions for how to deal 
with these issues and concerns.  Thus, it will help guide us and shep-
herd a sincere consideration of what those of the last century worked 
on and believed in contrasted with those of today, who often and 
easily mark the past with criticism and lament.  Additionally, this 
will help us recognize the paradoxical nature of persons living in the 
last century with how they viewed their work and how we view ours 



Papers  55

in their long legacies for us today.  The contemporary moralization 
that often comes with discussing fossil fuels, for example, and specifi-
cally petroleum, problematizes the history of those who benefited 
from oil at some point in history, as well as those who contend with 
and benefit from it today.   This is neither to condemn nor to praise 
oil consumption, but to recognize the complex nature of long-view 
histories, the roles of people in those histories, and how we may best 
articulate those circumstances and move forward into the future. 

Ecology is the study of relations of organisms in their surround-
ings; Environmental History is the study of how the natural world 
and humans interact with and affect each other; Environmentalism 
is action-based practices and movements of protecting the environ-
ment; Deep Ecology is the belief that places human life in equiva-
lence with all other parts of our global ecosystem; Ecosystems are 
communities of interacting organisms and their environments; Envi-
ronmental Justice is the fair treatment of all peoples with respect to 
design, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws; 
and Environmental Racism is where these laws ignore or harm 
groups based on race.  While each of these terms is unique, they are 
also very much connected in their indebtedness to how we as human 
beings exist and operate within our world.  Each expression presses 
us to distinct moments or frequencies of behavior, action, and reac-
tion, such that our best option in understanding these relationships 
is to recognize their interconnectivity, and the power of communities.  

Now that we have these terms in front of us, how do they fit into 
this discussion about the considerations of fossil fuels, about the 
legacy of those natural resources, and what we might do with the 
present consideration?  To do this, we will begin with Mr. J.S. Bridwell 
himself and the complex view of how we understand and evaluate 
history from afar.

JOSEPH STERLING BRIDWELL: OILMAN, SOIL INNOVATOR, 
ENVIRONMENTALIST?

The first description of Joseph Sterling Bridwell, if one were asked to 
describe him, would be oilman, cattleman, and philanthropist, but 
very unlikely environmentalist.  Yet, within the conundrum that we 
face today, a common assumption that those employed or engaged in 
the fossil fuel industry are inherently against environmental conser-
vation, action, and preservation is not completely true; nor was it 



56  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

true before the bruhahas of the late 1970s and 1980s, when the global 
warming and climate change debates became simultaneously overtly 
and covertly political.  Mr. Bridwell would certainly not recognize 
such dualities today, nor the mutually exclusive arguments that you 
must be against environmental conservation if you deal in oil.  

For his sake, Mr. Bridwell was a remarkable practitioner of both 
the old-fashioned arts of business and the entrenched nature of 
regional politics: land acquisition, mineral rights, cattle raising, and 
oil drilling.  He was also very much concerned with soil conservation 
and started a contest among farmers and ranchers related to culti-
vation.  He believed that cigarette smoking was bad for a person’s 
health and the environment and even instituted an annual smok-
ing cessation program for his employees, which garnered a $50 
bonus in the early 1950s for those who quit for a year.  He also was 
very much concerned with child and human welfare, setting up an 
orphanage in Waco.  And of course, he established and endowed the 
Bridwell Library. Though his actions describe the work of an envi-
ronmentalist—though perhaps not of the ilk of a Muir or Burrows—
Mr. Bridwell maintained a steady vision and ideology that you need 
to tend to your land, in order for it to be beneficial to your crops, to 
your animals, to your families, and to yourself.  

NATURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN CONTEXT

“As soon as we label something as ‘natural,’ we attach to it the 
powerful implication that any change from its current state would 
degrade and damage the way it is ‘supposed’ to be.” ―William 
Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

The dry and unforgiving climate of North Texas was both a chal-
lenge and opportunity to the early non-Indigenous residents of the 
region.  Those who came to settle on farms and tracts of land in the 
early twentieth century found space to do work with land and live-
stock, but also oil—the key ingredient to the successes of many Texas 
business folk.  A century later, we are talking about the so-called Cali-
fornization (or Californication) of the state, which can be defined in 
any number of ways, but primarily as the influx of California resi-
dents, with an assumption that with those transplants will also come 
their values, taxes, laws, and regulations—which predominate on 
the left (sometimes it is even seen as a form of cultural imperialism).  
I would add to this a somewhat different definition, which would 



Papers  57

include some expression of Texas becoming more like California 
in its long battles over water rights and use, adaptability to natu-
ral environments and how we as human actors on earth are being 
better stewards of the land we tread, but also fulfilling the consum-
erist tendency to overbuild and overpopulate spaces that might not 
necessarily be able to handle the expansive growth of a place that is 
not intended for such densities of human settlement.  

This brings us to the very terms “nature” and “environment” 
themselves.  Nature, curiously enough, comes from the same word 
in Latin for “born” or “birth,” which is to say that the earth, the world, 
and the planet were at some point “born” out of the universe.  There-
fore, nature is that closest contact with the origins of life.  (Interest-
ingly, nation comes from the same root related to birth, and has a 
similar organic quality of the nation arising from the elemental 
soils of the earth).  Nature is generally defined as “the collective 
phenomena of the physical world, including plants, animals, the 
landscape, and other features of the earth, as opposed to humans 
and human creations;” this definition is a version from one of the 
Oxford dictionaries.  But this may be where part of the problem 
for us lies, because if we consider the thoughts and words of the 
historian William Cronon, whose quote I have shared at the start 
of this section, nature should not be differentiated from the human.  
Cronon’s contribution to the contemporary philosophy of nature is 
that in the modern world, nature has come to be split apart from 
the human world, likely since the Industrial Revolution, and only 
in our renewed thinking, can we readjust to assume and recognize 
that nature includes people, cities, industry, and the ingenuity of the 
human mind.  Perhaps it is that “nature” has become so enmeshed 
with the ideas of pristineness or wilderness as counterpoints to or 
distinctions from that which has been “touched” by people, that it’s 
almost irretrievable to think otherwise.  The need to reclaim this 
older vision of a holistic universe, the one which Cronon posits for 
us, is a true reclamation of nature as “the entirety of our world.”

The term environment is often described as “the surrounding or 
conditions in which a person, animal, or plant lives and operates.”  
Another definition, similar yet distinct, is “the natural world, as a 
whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by 
human activity.”  These both possess points of origin and contact: 
the origin of the organism, whether human or animal or plant; and 
then some recognition of a relationship in a surrounding.  The term 



58  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

has been around for centuries, coming originally from an Old French 
word meaning “to encircle.”  But in the contemporary sense of ecolog-
ical and environmental relationships, it is generally understood to 
have been first used by a German scholar and founder of biosemi-
otics (“how people perceive themselves and symbols in the world 
around them”) named Jacob UexKüll (1864-1944).  Understanding 
these terms and their contexts is integral to recognizing the spatial, 
physical, and mental projections we have around the very terms 
in question, and the way that we process information and interact 
with these very surroundings.  We must consider the particularities 
of this holistic universe, down to the elemental structures that make 
up the planet and how they fit into the diversification of both ideas 
and objects.  And for us, these ideas and objects make up our librar-
ies, theological schools, and greater institutions.    

ENVIRONMENTS AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Now that we have determined that nature and environment have 
both specific and somewhat ambiguous parameters, let us turn to the 
nuances around how these have played out in a place like Bridwell 
Library, as well as how we may better understand the construction 
of the library and its contents in relation to that holistic model.  

The physical library is essential.  As I noted, we often say that 
“the library is the people,” but I would almost certainly be sure that 
not a single colleague in our workspaces would say “okay, sure, I’ll 
go out and work on the grass!  I don’t need an office.”  Of course not.  
While it may be true that our workers, staff, and employees generally 
speaking are what constitutes our labor force and communities, we 
have to work somewhere.  Our buildings are all distinct, unique, and 
regularly in need of repair.  All buildings need attention and mainte-
nance.  In order to best understand our libraries and collections, we 
need then to start with the buildings, and how the composite make-
up of these places impact the institutions themselves.  

What kind of building is it?  New or old?  Is it adaptable?  Should it 
be torn down, replaced, rebuilt?  Who owns the building?  Is it stand-
alone or part of another complex system?  What are the deferred 
maintenance issues?  Who is aware of them?  Who is not?  How does 
this affect people in the building?  And how do the problems of the 
building—its air-handling and HVAC issues; its leaks and plumbing 
concerns; its structural inadequacies and outdated internet, Wi-Fi, 



Papers  59

and wiring—affect the people in those buildings? What about how 
environments in library spaces affect patrons negatively or posi-
tively?  Or elements of nature like floods, heat, or cold affect the 
materials in a collection, the IT infrastructure, or the building itself?  
I write these things at the very same time the world is fixated on a 
Florida high rise that collapsed last month due to the very issues of 
deferred maintenance, toxic management, and poor communication.  
Who says that cannot happen in our workplaces?

On the other side of the environment question is the consider-
ation of natural resources.  Yes, we look at environment in terms of 
how nature both sustains and deteriorates our spaces, but there is 
also the fundamental requirement to analyze what can be brought 
forward to prevent and correct those deteriorations, to give more life 
and guidance to those undergirding assets that are meant to preserve 
and empower our institutions.  This means recognizing the histori-
cal precedents and legacies of fossil fuels, while also looking toward 
renewable energy, in water, wind, geothermal, and nuclear power.  
How do our institutions score when looking at their track records of 
more environmentally friendly investments? Is this transparent or 
hidden; and should institutions invest more in these kinds of proj-
ects?  Can libraries be not just “more green” but seek to have more 
integrative spaces that capture CO2 and generate oxygen?  Can they 
recycle materials to create furniture or art rather than having thou-
sands of plastic bottles, building byproduct, or old tech equipment 
go back into landfills, or worse, the oceans?  Can there be better ways 
to capture CO2 and eliminate other aspects of the carbon-producing 
cycle?  These are not new questions, but they are questions for us to 
consider in our own circumstances.

TOWARD ADAPTABILITY

In this grand scheme of a singular universe that is made up of multi-
plicity and diversity, there are many ways to evaluate the process 
of nature and environment, and specifically of natural resources.  
But even with these options, perhaps the most important step in 
this process is adaptability.  For even if you have all the necessary 
components that will allow you to undertake a viable plan around 
recognizing and implementing issues of environment and natural 
resources, your project shall only be average.  The key ingredient to 
exceptional success and a move toward better accountability and 



60  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

implementation will actually be adaptability.  Adaptability is “the 
quality of being able to adjust to new conditions,” or “the capacity 
to be modified for a new use or purpose.”  The point here is that we 
must be more and more flexible—though, not to the point where 
our flexibility inhibits us and makes us lackluster and without any 
concentrated focus.  

Bridwell, for example, has been gradually moving toward a place 
of adaptability—through technological changes and roles in how 
we approach the processes and management of the library.  During 
a recent renovation, we had various meetings dealing with light-
ing, and saw many lightbulbs transition to LED; furniture, rugs, and 
equipment have been procured from vendors and factories that 
make their materials from recycled plastics and fibers; motion-
sensor lighting, fountains, and paper towel dispensers are now the 
norm; and biochemical testing on ancient objects to determine dating 
has also found a place in our library.  And though we have not yet 
implemented it, there have been discussions about dehumidification 
systems and recycling of water; other forms of recycling local plas-
tics for artistic and corporate use; and the most innovative idea of 
them all—the development of a soy-based ink for traditional printing 
presses, in order to eliminate toxic fumes from off-gassing print runs.  

We must adapt, or else we will not be able to succeed, in the 
sense that we will not be able to survive in such a harsh environ-
ment.  Adaptability is a word laden with compromise and negotiation, 
though it is required in order for us to find a place in the grander 
scheme of our daily work, exercise routines, and meal planning.  
The environment and nature are less likely to yield to our demands 
than we are to theirs.  But this is fundamental to how we envision 
things—our spaces, our environments, nature, and even the idea of 
landscapes.  I spoke about the long view of history at the start of this 
paper, and how that provides a different framework for our themes 
today.  I recently noted in an essay how SMU likely didn’t have cars 
or a parking lot in 1920—five years after Ford built a plant here.  
But I was wrong and discovered from our university archivist Joan 
Gosnell not just that SMU had cars and a parking lot in 1920, but 
that there were scores of cars here in 1920 (she even showed me 
a century-old photograph of this!)—far more than I had imagined.  
Additionally, those cars parked all across the gravelly roads in front 
of Dallas Hall.  



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The point of this is about our adaptability.  It is about our 
penchants and behaviors that demand our points of view change, 
even slightly, in order for something to grow and develop for the 
better.  In the case of our 1920 example with those cars and park-
ing lots in front of Dallas Hall, it was about early twentieth-century 
adaptability.  For us today, that adaptability is far more complex, not 
fully articulated, and something that will easily succumb to alternat-
ing and conflicting narratives.  Yet it is still there and requires us to 
look closely at things that are new and burgeoning, like technology, 
smart buildings, and automated landscapes where underneath the 
magnificent greenspaces run cables, wires, and another universe of 
twenty-first-century connectivity.

Our adaptability in recognizing space, nature, and environment is 
all part of this vision and proposal.  We must adapt to be better stew-
ards and caretakers of our planet, and this will likely only happen if 
we have this mental construction that the entire world is connected 
and part of something intertwined and pulsing, alive.  In this way 
too, we will need to consider the world, but begin with what we see 
before us: the local—because that is easiest to recognize, respond 
to, and engage with.

EMPIRES OF GRASS AND GREEN

In this greater holism, of which I have spoken, there is one final 
consideration in the adaptability, that is both a recognition and a 
caveat.  In these many acts of adaptability, we find that our human 
actions can make us live, work, survive, and thrive in such ways 
that are beneficial to our own sustainability.  But what about the 
cases where we push those limits of adaptability into the absurd?  
By this I mean the circumstances where a tree dies and because 
that tree was so large, aesthetically beautiful, and incredibly expen-
sive, it must be replaced.  Stories like this abound at SMU—there 
are no official histories, save a few anecdotal pronouncements—
about how the adaptability of nature has been so incredibly intense, 
even aggressive, that the acts of adaptability themselves became 
incredible.  The most famous, of course, have been the replanting of 
the massive live oak some years ago, at a cost of six figures; or the 
dead tree near a wedding venue on campus that needed to be spray 
painted with green paint so as not to “ruin the landscape” views for 
the nuptial photographs.  I didn’t believe this story until one of my 



62  AT L A 202 1 PROCEEDINGS

staff presented me with a keychain that had one of the offending 
leaves, replete with green spray paint on it, set inside some sort of 
clear acrylic.  

The absurd comes in many shapes and sizes.  The notions of the 
manicured lawn play into ideas about landscapes—ideas themselves 
which have changed since the eighteenth century and the provisions 
around what a space means.  Spaces that were again “untamed by 
humankind” were willed into existence as wildernesses or pris-
tine nature.  With the rise of empires, nations, and the formalized 
structures of the state came the development of new ideas about 
landscapes, especially as they were tied to gardens.  Official, state, 
or government sponsored botanical gardens were objects of the 
social and political gaze.  They are articulations of space and place, 
which are delineated by a crafted vision of landscape architects, 
stone craftsmen, water engineers, and a host of other specialists.  
Their structures of demarcation lay down lines similar to boundar-
ies and borders of modern countries—this is our land, that is yours!  
Within those boundaries we imagine particular patterns of space, 
movement, and behavior that are distinct from their surround-
ings—within the university they act one way; without the univer-
sity they act another.  The roads that line the university campus are 
lined with austere buildings of Georgian or Edwardian brick, and 
driveways lead in particular fashion either to facilitate or hamper 
traffic patterns.  Walkways lead near waterworks and displays of 
perennials and annuals.  The structure of the university is one of 
order, compliance, distinction, even while it is meant to foster and 
facilitate free thinking, just as the structure of the state (and particu-
larly a democracy) is to set order, compliance, and distinction, while 
allowing its citizens some level of “freedom.”  But that is not always 
the case, of course.  

This is not all to say that the construction of gardens in the late 
Renaissance, Early Modern, or Enlightenment eras of Europe all 
have their natural evolution in the structures of American liberal 
arts colleges, but there is something vital and true in this asser-
tion.  It is more important that we acknowledge that our world is 
still very holistic, organic, and connected, but that all the trappings 
of power, where the rise of financial instruments and wealth, the 
emergence and evolution of the state, and all those institutions that 
are extensions of or belonging to the nation as a total unit have 
come to create, delimit, and establish lines of hermeneutical space: 



Papers  63

landscapes, courtyards, gardens, boulevards, lawns, planted trees, 
and the architectural renditions of the human mind.  Yes, the divi-
sions of space are implemented by the very definition of “architect,” 
from the Greek “chief” and “builder, fabricator.”  That job has been 
handed down from the gods to the king, from the king to the nation 
and state, and now to the people.  Divisions and artificial categories 
will always exist, but perhaps now is the time that a democratized 
vision of the world, including our theological libraries and institu-
tions, will finally acknowledge the nuances our entire world—nature 
and environment—that are both organic and comprehensive.  


