Sacred Space -- Connecticut Column on the Environment - January, 2005

What is it about certain places?  Most of us can name somewhere special.  We certainly set aside some indoor spaces as sacred.  We Episcopalians call them churches.  We set aside certain outside spaces too.  We call them parks, national forests or nature preserves. The green in Guilford is one such place, and I live right across the street, next door to one of those indoor spaces, Christ Church.

That outdoor space I know so well comprises just under eight acres.  The green is a roughly an extended rectangle bounded by town streets, surrounded by stores, churches and a few residences like mine.  Mostly lawn and trees, with one large sward of grass centered around a Civil War statue, it is crisscrossed by a network of straight paths.

I have the joy of seeing life unfold out there.  I have taken my dog for walks in every season, at all times of the day or night and in every sort of weather.  I have seen the green clothed with clover blossoms, and frozen by the north wind.  I have seen it overrun by a thousand people and empty but for me.  I have seen trees fall and new ones planted.  Slowly, without being much aware of the process, the green has become more than just a place.  It has become a presence.

In his book, Landscapes of the Sacred, Belden Lane notes that just as the Greeks had two words for time, chronos (the mere ticking away of the seconds) and kairos (moments filled with meaning, from which our word crisis derives), so they had two words for space.  The mundane equivalent was topos, meaning just a point in space like any other.  The kairos/crisis match was choros.  This is the word from which choreography comes.  Choros describes space where something is going on, more than the sum of its parts.

To put it another way, you see topos space, and your vision stops with that.  Choros space is different, you don’t just see it, you encounter it; it becomes a lens through which to see something beyond. 

At first I saw the Guilford green merely as a place to walk my dog.  Anywhere from once to six times a day I clipped the old knotted blue leash on to Sophie, our family’s twelve year old retriever-setter mix, and we walked across the street.  Over time the power of the green’s presence overcame my habitual preoccupations.  I began to notice the color of the grass at different hours of the day, the calls of birds, the rushing of squirrels, the points of the wind, the slope of the ground, the shapes of the clouds and the angle of the sun.  Precisely because I followed the same paths over and over and over again I became acutely aware of how they were different every time.  Topos had become choros.

Words of description and reaction began to form in my mind. I started to write them down.  At first I would grab scrap paper and sit for ten minutes scribbling, but the pile of papers grew into notebooks, then text files.

The green had become that choros lens through which to see what I had not seen before.  It opened my eyes to the history of the town, to the 400 year old religious impulses that led to its founding, to the Native American culture that had once lived around it.  But the lens has led me deeper still.  How did this space come to be at all?  What is its story? 

I had learned much of the human story behind the green, but I was drawn to finding out how this flat piece of earth came to be here in the first place?  What was the birthing process behind such a place of delight? 

Theologians have begun to talk about the “common creation story” we share with the planet.  We are made of the same stuff as the trees, the grass and the soil.  To learn the green’s creation story is to come closer to understanding our own. 

In Stones can Speak, scientists xxxxxx strive to help us grasp the geological epochs that came and went to create our Connecticut.  Describing aggregations of years difficult to conceive, but still possible to measure, they tell us of continents torn apart and moving, seams in the earth blasting open, great seas flowing in, and massive rock layers sinking.  Over hundreds of millions of years, the pieces that make up Earth’s surface moved again and again.  The rock beneath the green once crept from the Equator north. The refining fires, breaking pressures and dissolving waters created by the rise and fall of three Himalayan ranges gave it its penultimate shape.  Then, nearly in human memory, the glaciers came and went, scooping out the rock beneath and laying down sandy piles among the remains.  The green’s soil sits in a shallow bowl like a serving of smooth porridge. 

Larry Rasmussen suggests that we humans have become autistic in relationship with Earth.  We live within its atmosphere, are made of its chemicals, cannot exist without what grows upon it, and yet somehow we believe we are separate from it.  Encountering Earth in a small way, allowing topos to become choros by seeing, then noticing and then searching through the lens of one little place, leads us closer to a righteous relationship with the roots of our physical being, God’s Creation, the work proclaimed as very good.

I receive a daily gift when I walk on the Guilford green. I know that my story and its story are one.  We all can make that move from the flat experience of topos to the dancing recognition that choros space will bring.  In fact, every reader of these words probably has some sense already of what I am trying to convey: that opening to another world that true observation of our surroundings can suddenly bring.  The odd thing is, of course, that the “other world” we begin to see is the one in which we truly live. 

Faith and the Environment

January 2004 Column on the Environment and Faith in the Connecticut Diocesan Newspaper

What does church have to do with the environment?

A few months ago there were some irate letters to Good News suggesting strongly that concerns about the earth have no place in the work of the church.  Given the lack of involvement by the church in this area historically, it is perhaps not surprising that some faithful people might view efforts by their fellow Christians to bring issues about pollution, global warming and alternative energy into parish and diocesan conversations to be merely trendy or worse, to be pushing some form of ideological agenda.

While in some ways the environmental agenda is new territory for the church, in other ways it resonates deeply with our roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  In the first chapter of Genesis, as God finishes the work of Creation, God declares it, “very good.”    Just as you would not lightly destroy, or harm in any way, a piece of art or furniture created by a parent or grandparent, it would seem that we should be equally hesitant to harm this earth, God’s handiwork.  In Genesis, God declares that we humans should have “dominion” over the creatures of the earth.  We get to rule, we are told.  The New Interpreter’s Bible points out, however, that “a study of the [Hebrew] verb [for] have dominion reveals that it must be understood in terms of care-giving, even nurturing, not exploitation.  As the image of God, human beings should relate to the nonhuman as God relates to them.”  At the beginning of our Biblical story is a call to protect, not abuse the natural world.  The environmental movement has documented many, many ways in which we are not living up to this call, and has alerted us to ways to bring about change, to begin to live up to our God-given roles as nurturers of the earth and its creatures. 

Another roadblock for some Christians has been the sense that this earth is not truly our home.  “We are strangers in a strange land;” we live but for awhile in this veil of tears, and our real place is in the kingdom of heaven.  This attitude has been reinforced throughout the history of Christian theology and may have its roots in Greek philosophy where the truly real was in another world.  However, Christ came in the flesh, earth stuff, and we proclaim a resurrection of the body.  The earth itself may not be divine, but the divine is in it.  Many Christians believe that what we do on this earth has an impact on what happens to us eternally.  It is becoming increasingly clear that one thing we are doing on this earth is making a big mess, and that is no metaphor.

The messes we make do not land equally, though, which brings up another reason why the voice of the church needs to be heard.  Environmental degradation tends to fall most heavily on the people with the least power to prevent it. We literally dump our garbage on the poor of the world.  Those of us who are lucky enough or wealthy enough to live in places where waste is not burned and trash not deposited can easily forget that there are millions of people whose air and water are turned into poison by our waste.  This is fundamentally unjust, and justice has been one call of our tradition going back to the Hebrew prophets.

The church’s voice has come late to this conversation, but we belong there.  As time moves forward the voices of people of faith will become stronger, more influential, and, by the grace of God, will bring about real change.

Christmas Letter to St. John's, Waterbury, December 2010

Christmas Letter to the people of St. John’s, Waterbury,

December 2010

Dear Members and friends of St. John’s:

On a long wall in the science building of my childrens’ high school, passersby see a series of pictures.  First, a map of the universe shows many galaxies, with our Milky Way marked by an arrow.  Then follows a picture of our galaxy itself and our sun’s place in it, then a schematic of our solar system, then an image of Earth, then a view of the Western hemisphere, then North America, then New England, then Connecticut, then the town, then the school itself.  The science faculty want everyone who passes that wall to know we belong not only to our immediate world, but to the universe.

The Christmas Eve Gospel proclaims a similar message.

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

These words encompass the universe of Jesus’ time, and they spiral in like the pictures on the school wall:  Rome, Syria, Judea, Bethlehem, a manger, a child.

Luke wanted us to know just what sort of world greeted the child Jesus; a place ruled by a despot whose orders from a far away capitol set in motion a descending series of commands, finally compelling a carpenter and his pregnant wife to travel to a place of little refuge.

But Luke wants us to know something else as well.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them…

Suddenly, as if that opening universe picture on the school wall moved straight to the school building itself, traversing everything in between in a nanosecond, God’s own messengers come right to the local Bethlehem scene.  They proclaim with power that the one being born is the one in charge, God’s very self, as helpless as he seems, as contrary to appearances as it looks.  The emperor did not start this series of events unfolding, God did.  Rome then, or Washington, or Moscow or Beijing now may seem to be in the driver’s seat, but a more powerful force runs the universe, and ultimately, we are citizens of that realm guided by love and justice.

We celebrate love’s arrival this Christmas Eve and the Creator’s presence with us every Sunday.  Join us so our voices may rise up the way the angels’ song came down from so very far to change to world forever.

May your Christmas be joyous,

The Rev. Norman M. MacLeod

Interim Rector

From the Interim - March 2011 Newsletter, St. John's, Waterbury, CT

As I write these words, snow flurries fall through the mid-February twilight sky outside my St. John’s office window.  They disappear, joining the masses of snow collected, frozen, thawed and frozen again on the roofs, grounds and paths of the church. The cold, snow and ice cover the earth. 

Driving along, I can see on the roadside layers of snow like geological strata, laid down over weeks like sedimentary rock settles over eons.  It feels as if it might be eons before this snow melts and white gives way to green.

This has been a winter to remember.  The last one like it I recall came in the mid-nineties, starting with a delightful snowfall on Christmas Eve, but then hitting us every Wednesday, it seemed, with a new storm.  By spring, we were more than ready for the warmth. 

When you read these words, spring will be mere weeks away and Lent will be right around the corner.  Lent means spring.  This is not just coincidence.  The very word “Lent” derives from the Anglo-Saxon word for spring, which for the intensely pious world of medieval Christendom, was a season dominated by the fasting requirements of the church.  The season of fasting dominated the season of new growth, taking its ancient name for itself.

This year, saying, “Lent means spring,” feels wonderful.  Storms may come and cold may persist for awhile, but the days will grow longer and warmer.  The hard crust surrounding us will disappear.

The hard crust around our hearts may take longer to thaw.  Not all of us, all the time, find ourselves with frozen hearts, but one of the persistent ways through which we fall into sin – that is, separate ourselves from the love of God – is through hardness of heart.  We do not allow ourselves to see, to empathize with, the pain, or the joy, of others.  We do not allow the warmth of God’s love to melt the ice around our hearts and souls.  One reason I think people have found this winter so oppressive is that it somehow reminds us of our own coldness toward God, our fellow human beings, and creation itself.  The ice makes us feel that nothing can release us from the grip of winter, within or without.

Let Lent this year turn you more toward the light of God’s love, as expressed through the love of those around you, the rhythms of the life of faith and the wonder of life returning to the earth.  Winter is a metaphor for death, spring for resurrection.

Use the weekdays, Sundays and rituals of Lent to come alive within.  Repentance means to turn.  Turn to the light, let your heart be free of cold.  Turn to Christ, whose death and resurrection overcame every barrier. Turn to the light God offers in every season.

The initial purpose of this blog is to share my reflections from parish newsletters over the years.  The following was published in the January, 2010 issue of The Prophet, the monthly newsletter of St. James Episcopal Church, Keene, NH.

Just east of Rt. 9 in Stoddard, the Stone Arch Bridge spans the Contoocook River.  On my trips to Concord, I usually pass by it with a quick glance.  In early December, for the first time I pulled off the road into the small parking area by the stream.  The water roiled under the two spans, the river swollen from new rain.

The bridge, older than St. James’ 150 year old stone structure, stands above the rushing waters, held together by gravity alone.  No mortar binds stone to stone.  Each was chosen or cut to fit so that in lying beside, above or below its neighbor, the entire structure could stand without further help.  Gravity, that force we associate with things falling down, has here enabled the bridge to stand for more than 600 seasons, resisting frost and flood.

The writer Brian Swimme has likened the universe-wide power of gravity to the power of love.  In the larger cosmos, gravity is not so much about falling as attracting.  Objects in space are drawn to each other, as people on earth are drawn to each other.

The community of St. James, like the stones of that double arched bridge, are drawn to each other by a force beyond ourselves.  We are each of us individuals, and yet we are together, and together we can remain strong in the face of many challenges.

What do we call this shared power in our Christian tradition?  We have many names: love, faith, hope, gratitude, joy, or service, to name a few.  Here I will call it the power of Baptism. We tend to think of Baptism, when we consider it at all, as an event.  Someone baptized you, perhaps a long time ago.  But let us think of Baptism not as an event, but as a force.  When that minister said to you, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” and brought a stream of water onto your head, God propelled you out from that place with the power to connect.

We gather together through the power of our shared Baptism.  We serve together, pray together, learn together, live and die together through this power which binds us and makes us strong, but also leaves us free.

On Sunday, January 10, we will celebrate the power birthed through the Baptism of Jesus, streaming forward from that moment to this, binding all those who believe in him together, leaving us free to be who we are as beloved children of God, yet bound to each other in love and service.