Last week in church the speaker talked about the work of Farm Church (in Durham, North Carolina) a congregation committed to planting, harvesting and addressing food insecurity in the community. The presentation was informative but also inspirational, as it challenged us to see the ground beneath our feet as sacred space.
This resonated with my commitment to nurture the gift of awe and wonder. Not just the visible creation but every moment. Life itself is sacred.
This is how I look through my lens when taking photographs, and the lens of my writing as an observer too. I think this is one reason I find trash in public spaces so offensive: it’s not littering so much as it is desecration of sacred ground.
We were created of and for this good Earth. I have no idea what eternity is going to look like or how God will reconstitute our physical bodies, but I do know that I was imagined, designed, created and then born into this planet. This place is home — and by design.
God’s intention for me is sacred; the dust from which I was formed — and will return — is sacred too; anywhere that I stand, in proper relation to God, is sacred ground.
Our guest speaker shared a quirky story of a Florida lawyer and preacher (Elvy E. Callaway) who came to believe that a tract of land on the Apalachicola River — just west of Tallahassee — was in fact the original Garden of Eden, and that Noah built his ark from locally sourced gopher trees. But instead of making fun of his claims, or disparaging the man’s theology and scholarship, she resonated with and respected his deep sense of the sacred.
Fact is, all of creation is sacred ground, and everything that makes up our lives is evidence of the holy.
This is a theology that reminds me that here, sipping coffee and writing in this old house we have come to love, I am in the presence of God.
My own Garden of Eden.
— DEREK
