Land and Spirit

Today I went out on a walk with Scott Pittullo. Scott is a member of our church, a former trucker and a Vietnam veteran. He is a man who works hard to care for his friends and family. He is also a guy that loves solitude and silence.

Scott likes going walking around on the Clark Ranch north of town, off of Nepasta Hills road, and also off of several little trails made off of the main road. He likes to go out with his camera from the 1930s, a backpack, a pull cart for golfing with a bucket on the bottom that he collects rocks in. He has several different professionally made and handmade instruments for calling animals. The people that own the land where he walks have given him permission to be there, and he comes out quite often.

We started on the walk, and I spotted a deer off to the left checking us out. He watched us a little bit and headed over the next hill. He showed me the rocks he looks for, and tried to find tracks. The cattle had been through there too recently though, and had destroyed any hope of discernable tracks of anything else.

We walked along the dry creek beds, that fill up with water once in while. It made me think of what I head about "wadis" in the holy land, and the Bible stories that happened around them.
Scott said, "To me, this is like my happy hunting ground". Which was interesting, because that phrase to me always spoke about life after death. For Scott, this dry and dusty place is heaven on earth. His sanctuary.

It made me think a lot about something I have been thinking about writing for a long time, the relationship between land, topography, and spirituality. Read the Bible, especially the gospels and the Old Testament, and you will see land and spiritual development intimately related. In the garden of Eden, orginal sin is in someway tied to people's misuse of the land. The people's promise from God is tied with the piece of land God had promised. Jesus' teaching, especially as I have studied in the gospel of Matthew, is often told through parables, and most of these parables are somehow related to people's relationship to the land. Especially farming.

As I think about the land and spiritual development a number of questions come up. Are there some places more spiritual than others? Or is every place full of the presence of God and we need to take time to notice how God can speak to us there? How does where we live effect our spiritual development, or does it have no bearing whatsoever? How does the nature of the land you live in effect development of spritual communities? How we care for and socialize with one another?

And if this relationship between land and spirit is Biblical (I believe it is), then how does this all change in an urban environment? Or is it the same? If it is not the same, what is unique about urban spiritual development in relation to a life lived more intimately connected to the land? I find this set of questions interesting because Paul, in many senses, takes a Scriptures and a Judeo/Christian faith that has been grounded in a more rural and earthy mindset, and through his missionary efforts contextualizes it to an urban life, and an urban/Roman way of thinking. By the time you get to the end of Revelation the images of heaven become less pastoral (lion laying down with the lamb), and become more urban (New Jerusalem/Holy City).

What do you think? I have my thoughts, and could go on for a long time, but I want to hear your thinking on the matter. How do you think a persons life upon and relationship to the land is tied together? Are there places where you find it easier to experience God than others?