dear Matafele Peinam
you are a seven month old sunrise of gummy smiles
you are …
so excited for bananas, hugs and
our morning walks past the lagoon …
I want to tell you about that lagoon …
they say it will gnaw at the shoreline
chew at the roots of your breadfruit trees …
they say you, your daughter
and your granddaughter, too
will wander rootless
with only a passport to call home
dear matafele peinem,
don’t cry
mommy promises you
no one
will come and devour you.1
Imagine a human condition that leaves only a passport for you to call home! Such a visceral sense of homelessness is undoubtedly devastating. Climate justice poet Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner articulates the climate anxiety of the Pacific Islanders through this poignant, poetic piece addressed to her baby daughter, Matafele Peinam.
While reading the lines, we sense the anxiety, a collateral ripple effect of the ecological destruction and climate crisis. The poem depicts how climate anxiety and trauma are being handed down from generation to generation. Beyond attempting a photographic capture of the climate-induced intergenerational trauma, Jetñil-Kijiner courageously shares the uncommon spirit of hope and resilience. The poem is more than a climate anxiety literary work; it embodies solastalgia.
“Solastalgia” is a Latin neologism coined by Glenn Albrecht. The word’s origin is the Latin word sola (as reflected in both “solace” and “desolation”) with a new Latin suffix, algia or “pain,” to complete its meaning. Albrecht defines “solastalgia” as “the pain or distress caused by the ongoing loss of solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory.”2 It is the existential and lived experience of negative environmental change, manifest as an attack on one’s sense of place.
This chronic condition is characterized by a strong feeling of distress and psychological desolation tied to the gradual erosion of identity created by the sense of belonging to a particular loved place and its unwanted negative transformation. Solastalgia is your “homesickness when you are still located within your home environment.”3
Albrecht names many other emotions related to ecological devastations, primarily engendered by his anthropological study in Hunter Valley, Australia, where people were both suffering from imposed place transformation and experiencing powerlessness in the face of environmental injustice perpetrated on them by transnational mining companies and the local government.
During one of my classes at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, I asked the students to read scripture through the lens of solastalgia. It was a time-consuming effort that required ongoing engagement with the text, but it proved thought provoking. This experimental reading through a solastalgic lens falls under the developing area of hermeneutics known as affective ecocriticism.4
Affective ecocriticism helps us articulate and explore the overlooked emotional depths within the biblical text in conversation with our everyday lives during these eco-challenging times. Indeed, reading and preaching from a solastalgic perspective will inspire thoughtful changes in our theological imaginations and ministerial engagements. I invite you to explore reading and preaching with a solastalgic fervor, especially concerning the passion narratives.
Passion narrative through the lens of solastalgia
To preach or read through a solastalgic lens is to embody the grief and resilience found in scriptural narratives. Jesus’ journey toward the cross becomes an archetype of solastalgia—navigation through visceral emotions tied to place, loss, and grief. Three pivotal locations—the Garden of Gethsemane, Golgotha (the Cross), and the Empty Tomb (Resurrection)—serve as settings where solastalgia unfolds.
Gethsemane: The lamentation of loss
In Gethsemane, Jesus’ lament reflects solastalgia’s raw emotional core. His prayer—“Let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39)—is not merely an expression of anxiety but an intimate connection to the impending rupture. This moment epitomizes the solastalgic response: mourning what is being lost while confronting what must be endured.
Golgotha: The marginal space of expulsion
The cross at Golgotha symbolizes a liminal (solastalgic) space of rejection and marginalization. Jesus’ cry “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” (Mark 15:34) reverberates with solastalgic anguish. The crucified body of Jesus is a solastalgic body, as depicted in the Markan narrative, which was at the center of the social memory of first-century Christians. Additionally, the solastalgic body of Jesus became the focal point of preaching (1 Corinthians 1:23) and served as a radical form of early Christian resistance.
At the foot of the cross (John 19:23-27), we witness the formation of a solastalgic community—a collective bound by shared trauma, yet resilient enough to evolve into an alternative community. This community embraces grief as a catalyst for transformation, resisting despair through solidarity.
Empty tomb: Resurrection as healing scarred spaces and bodies
The resurrection appearances are deeply spatial and emotional; they occur in fragmented places and enclosed rooms in Galilee, where disciples convene in traumatic anxiety. The risen Lord’s question “Woman, why are you weeping?” (John 20:13) can be interpreted as a therapeutic response to a solastalgic feeling. Jesus’ scars encounter the solastalgic scars of the disciples (John 20:27), initiating healing through embodied presence. The risen Christ’s greeting—“Peace be with you”—acts as both a sign of redemption / new creation and a call to restore fractured relationships with place and community.
Preaching un(com)promising hope
To read and preach through a solastalgic lens is to embrace complexity—to hold grief and hope in tension while remapping our relationship with creation. It challenges us to rethink spirituality as deep solidarity, inviting us into bold and innovative ways of being that are relational, accountable, and deeply rooted in interbeing.
Unlike nostalgia, solastalgia offers possibilities for reversal through acts of redemption. A solastalgic reading of scripture demands that we live up to the resurrection hope on multiple layers: ecological restoration, cultural preservation, and spiritual renewal. Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner ends her poem to her dear daughter with an un(com)promising hope:
dear matafele peinam,
your eyes are heavy
with drowsy weight
so just close those eyes, baby
and sleep in peace
because we won’t let you down
you’ll see
Notes
- Excerpt from: Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, “Dear Matafele Peinam,” Marshallese Arts Project, The University of Edinburgh, accessed April 6, 2025, https://www.map.llc.ed.ac.uk/creative-writing/dear-matafele-peinem/.
- Glenn Albrecht, Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (New York: Cornell University Press, 2019), 38.
- Albrecht, Earth Emotions, 39.
- Kyle Bladow, and Jennifer Ladino. “Toward an Affective Ecocriticism: Placing Feeling in the Anthropocene,” in Affective Ecocriticism (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 6.