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A Land meditation that wakened my soul
Sarah Loose, from ELCA Oregon synod’s ‘Disaster Relief and Environmental Resiliency’ invited our Young Adult participants meeting at Creator on Sunday 2/12 to experience a land meditation, walking the land around Creator with questions to consider. What an unexpected journey unfurled in my soul during those 20-25 minutes…. revealing my profound and complex relationship with the land around Creator. Tears started flowing immediately, realizing the intimate memories and connections I have with this land, now deeply imprinted on me: 20+ years of Day Camp games and ‘water day’ activities in the big field, Youth hiding Easter eggs for kids to find for so many of those same years, Paul & Toni’s Sunday school garden plots adjacent to the playground, years of Thursday yoga nights in the fellowship hall w/spectacular sunset views of Mt Hood framed by rows of vibrantly colored trees on either side, wonderings about purchasing the red barn on the land adjacent to our big field, now just a gravel lot awaiting potential construction, former youth Ryan Musser’s labyrinth scout project and Pastor Ray’s deeply meaningful frosty-cold candle-lit labyrinth walk one advent evening…and recent wonderings by some of us as we learned about an organization providing garden space for immigrants (https://outgrowinghunger.org/)… looking for churches willing to share their land… but finding no time to share this vision, as a different proposal surfaced quickly -and with our overarching capitalist lens brought about a vote to sell a portion of the land where the labyrinth lies -to calm our financial fears. Although the sale fell through, the energy it garnered flattened the longing of some of us for sharing our unfolding realization that our land (like most US land) was stolen from the indigenous tribes, in our case the Clackamas and Kalapooya people, and claimed by white settlers -Creator’s land by a man named James Howe- who have built generational wealth from land sales while indigenous families were excluded from owning the land their ancestors had lived on for 10-14,000 years…. and now having survived many iterations of genocide still ask for their land back today. I have to wonder what stewarding the land means for us? For the past 35 years, this land around Creator has nonjudgmentally held and nurtured our community, supporting our youth adventures and spiritual wonderings. The strong trees lining the lower parking lot stand by watching and providing nourishing oxygen, and shade through sun’s intensity. They display brilliant color in the fall, welcome songbirds in the spring, guard and sometimes block the basketballs at the nearby hoop. I can’t help but wonder what they think, what wisdom we could gain by listening and learning from them? How can we acknowledge and nurture this important relationship with Creator’s land? I am so grateful it was brought to my soul’s attention. (Thank you Sarah!) After sharing this experience with the Young Adults through tears of deep gratitude and deep loss, I feel renewed imagination for wondering how we best share love and relationship with and on this land? Perhaps you’d like to join me? Salaam / Shalom /Paz, Debi |