Today is the twentieth day of A Grounded Lent, this forty day spiritual exploration to find God more deeply in the world. The first half of these reflections have celebrated God in nature. Now, we turn to the built world of human geography — looking for the God who dwells in neighborly habitation with us.
Since this is the halfway point of Lent, I’ve opened up today’s meditation to everyone in the paid and free communities.
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As always, I am grateful for every one of you here at The Cottage.
GROUNDED QUOTE
Roots, home, neighborhood, and community—these are the geographies of our lives, the places where God dwells. (p. 131)
SCRIPTURE
How lovely are your dwelling places, O LORD of hosts!
— Psalms 84:1
REFLECTION
I’ve long been fascinated by architectures and structures, the ways in which we frame meaning and create habitations for our deepest longings. (I frequently wonder why I didn’t become an architect!) In high school, my daughter took a course entitled “Human Geography” and I found the subject matter so interesting that I read her entire textbook. The course linked social sciences to physical landscapes and explored the interrelationship between human community and geography. It fascinated me and made me consider spirituality and landscapes, how human community, our sense of the divine, and geography are of a piece. Indeed, human community and nature are like a mobius strip. For me, that mobius strip is a symbol of grace, of the divine presence that is the spiritual geography of our lives.
PRAYER
God, you who are always present in creation and in community, help us to see the spiritual geography of mercy and compassion that holds nature and neighbor as we live our daily lives. Open our eyes to the sacred of the ordinary, the holiness of your dwelling with us.
In the news: There are many issues regarding housing and housing justice. Here’s a story from NPR about “housing remorse” that includes the most recent statistics on race and homeownership in the United States. While we look at the theology of habitation, let’s keep in mind homelessness, home insecurity, and economic exploitation undermine God’s concern for a people who dwell safely at home.
INSPIRATION
Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses.
And he answered and said:
Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.
For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top?
— Kahlil Gibran
We mourn the broken things, chair legs
wrenched from their seats, chipped plates,
the threadbare clothes. We work the magic
of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes.
We save what we can, melt small pieces
of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones
for soup. Beating rugs against the house,
we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading
across the yard. . . .
— Natasha Trethewey, “Housekeeping” from Domestic Work (if you don’t know Trethewey’s work, you should! Read about her HERE)
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell,
A little house, whose humble roof
Is weather-proof:
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft, and dry;
Where Thou my chamber for to ward
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate,
Both void of state;
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by th' poor,
Who thither come and freely get
Good words, or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall
And kitchen's small;
A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipp'd, unflead;
Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar
Make me a fire,
Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it.
— Robert Herrick (b.1591), from “A Thanksgiving to God, for his House”
Thank you for the awareness of Natasha Trethewey! Powerful poetry. I read her poem on miscegenation. So striking given the recent Supreme Court nominee and the horrid questioning of her. The blatant racism has been disgusting.