A Local Perspective
Re-membering ourselves to place
Dear Readers. As a place-based eco-chaplain, my work is often focused on the local landscape of my life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So, while it may not be possible to resonate with the particulars of this writing, I do carry some hope that your own “place” of residence may offer similar opportunities of consideration.
“Here, and now! No matter how set apart, lost or beyond-love this place may appear, the Source of our Breath abides here, too.” Lauren Van Ham
At the risk of creating some tension, I have to admit, when I heard this quote, I thought of Tulsa. Situated within the northeastern section of the state of Oklahoma, we can recognize what it means to be set apart, lost or beyond-love if we are honest enough to look things squarely in the eye.
We sit geographically in the midst of fly-over country, and as a result carry less clout than we often aspire to. We are as red as it comes in the political landscape and tied to the Bible Belt with ancient cosmologies and religious perspectives. And, historically, well, we have had more than our share of being beyond love...reflect with me here on the 1921 Race Massacre or the theft of land allotments from the indigenous peoples relocated here through the horrors of the Trail of Tears. And, our land has suffered too. Oil booms and river degradation are just a couple of examples of the ways we've forgotten that we must live in relationship with the land as well as each other.
Yet, Wendell Berry said once “There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.”
At the risk of sounding like a preacher, (Sorry, can't help it, I've been trained for that!) we have ability to decide to be different than we've been. We are at a pivot point of choice. As the institutions and systems that have held power for so long are disintegrating and failing, we have a well spring of opportunities to build a different way of living together. We can turn the historical, ecological and broken human relationships of our place into something that allows all of us to thrive.
As much desecration as we've created, the Source of our Breath lives here among us too... in the local context, in the particular of all that we take for granted. You can see it on a broader scale, as we live on a planet that sustains the existence of billions of people, and still manages to show us beauty and feeds us every day. That same sacred presence is what claims us on the local level with each new dawn and holds us throughout the night. It is what breathes life into our being and sustains us with endless examples of what it means to live in reciprocal care for each other. We are connected to a web of life that is a place of belonging. Now is the time to re-member ourselves to it.
I'm looking forward to sharing these stories of re-membering with you. Stories of the cosmic connections that science is revealing, of the ancient tethers to our ancestors that live within our bones and the never-ending presence of love that permeates it all. In kinship love and with more to come.