The walls of Maxey Auditorium echoed with the spiritual musings of David James Duncan, who gave a lecture entitled “The Wild Without, and the Wild Within: toward a spirituality that serves the living world” on Wednesday, Feb. 23.

Stuart Coordinator of Religious and Spiritual Life Adam Kirtley, who first requested that Duncan speak at Whitman, said that the talk would appeal to a wide variety of beliefs. According to Kirtley, 40 percent of incoming first-years at Whitman claim a religious preference, while 70 percent of 2010’s graduating class said that spirituality was of above average importance to them. Kirtley said that Duncan’s talk would address the gap between the two figures, or the difference between religiosity and spirituality.

“I hope that the talk will serve to provide a vocabulary to think about and talk about the big questions in our search for meaning and purpose,” said Kirtley.

An important theme in the talk was environmentalism. Duncan spoke of natural themes in spirituality, discussing the meaning of pantheistic values which assign life to natural objects.

“Nature has a necessary role in everything,” he said.

Duncan also addressed the commonality of spiritual experience, drawing from many literary and religious figures and often illustrating points through stories. One such story was of a college student who found spiritual meaning in her Hindi class.

Kirtley found this role of being a student to be an important theme, saying that spiritual questions “define the very essence of what it means to be a student, indeed, what it means to be a human being.”

Duncan hoped that students would leave with the desire to be aware of spiritual insights that would lead them to find fulfilling work.

“Developing an ear for those little spiritual whispers may be as important as developing an ear for singing in key when you’re playing music,” said Duncan.