A Reflection for the First Monday after Earth Day
Yesterday I attended the morning program of the Free Congregation at the historic Park Hall in Sauk City, built by German Freethinkers in 1852.  Their theme of reflection for the day was on "God and the Land - What spiritual value does the Land offer?"

The service was lovely, with poems shared about the sun and the sea and delicate pieces like old love letters played on the piano, but when it came time for the reflection, the Speaker seemed to struggle a bit.  I imagine he has been walking with his thoughts on this topic for so long and so closely that it made it challenging for him to communicate his complex inner ideas in a way that allowed those of us listening to clearly follow his line of thinking. 

He spent a great bit of time talking about how our human way of loving one another, of creating boundary lines of love and sacrifice around those people we choose to define as our family, is necessary and needed, but even if we have this sort of love, if it is placed into a backdrop of barren and desolate landscapes, our worlds will have no meaning.  We will be lonely and we will wonder what is the point of all of this isolated joy and suffering.  We will not become spiritually complete.

To be spiritually complete, he argues, we need to have a connection to the land.  It is only when we realize that chemically we are made of the same exact things as the earth, that we will find ourselves blending in and spreading out in a much larger way.  When we see ourselves as not on the earth, but a part of the earth it will change how we walk through our days.

He maintains the key here is acceptance of suffering.  As a farmer by day he proclaims to have a lot of experience with pain and death.  "I kill things all the time.  I pull weeds out of my fields.  I know that the most fertile soil is only possible through the death of something else.  Suffering and pain are as much as essential part of life as joy is.  All living things, from plants to people, need suffering to be complete.  If we find ways to regularly connect to the Land we will learn to understand all of this."

Lost in thought on the drive home I passed a newly constructed church featuring a large white sign board.  The moveable letters read, "Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died for you."

God knew long before the Speaker at Park Hall that the most fertile soil is only possible through the life and death of someone else.
   
Thoughts of a deeply-grounded spirituality lie waiting to be turned over.

- Jody