Place by Loretta Goddard

Place

Lord, I sit here outside in the cool of the morning feeling the humid dawn breath.  Your birds serenade all around me.  The crickets add a layer too.  Could it be that this orchestral song resets us—and when we’re not present to it—to the garden—we become malnourished and depleted?  Silence was not—is not—the default of the garden: frogs, cicadas, birds, low and high; all fill the air with sounds.  Are these as important to us, to our regeneration, to our nourishment, as air and water and food?  To have the light of the rising sun awaken me instead of the alarm and sudden flip of an incandescent bulb—or worse, a fluorescent?  The sun feels right—it fits much better.  In whatever ways we’ve lost Eden and it is here, available for recapture (as your Kingdom “is at hand”), let me find it.  Let me be found walking in the Garden, not hiding in the bushes.  Amen.

Wendell Berry does not use the word environment.  He says, “It’s an abstraction.  It separates the organism from its place, and there is no such place.”  Then, what does he say? “I name an actual place.” (Garden and Gun, Aug/Sept 2011, "Southern Masters: Wendell Berry" by Erik Reece)

Eden:  That is our place.

Heaven:  That is our place.

Earth, before the fall:  That was our place.

The Kingdom of God:  That is our place.

God placed us originally in Eden.  It was our place.  After we sinned as humankind, we were put out of Eden; asked to leave our place.  We no longer fit.  We are told there is a place for us on the other side of death’s crossing; that will be our eternal place.

But, we are given help and hope that there is a place for us here on earth.  It cannot be bought or traveled to by plane or hiked to or paddled to.  But it is the place where the human organism belongs.  Our input—from our senses, from others, from knowledge—is distorted until we are found there.  We cannot put ourselves there by ourselves.  It is not a region of solitary confinement.   

It is a community gathering where one breathes the breath of God.  Here in this realm we find what is “Real”, we find Eden.  What gets us back there?  What unites us with Reality?  As Evelyn Underhill defines it: “Mysticism is the art of union with Reality” (Practical Mysticism): what is that “art”?

Some clues lie in the dossier of Eden’s architect.  For those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to hear, for those willing to taste and see God, for those who will dare to feel the mighty, rushing Wind, for those who will smell the breath of Life—

… “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature.  And then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” (Genesis 2:7,8)

“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”  (Genesis 2:15)

Our place was called Eden.  Our place was a garden—set in beauty.  We were formed from earth’s elements but the elements did not enliven us.  Our breath—our life—is not part of the dust.  It is other.

Our native task is to work the garden—to tend beauty—to cultivate, farm and landscape.

“Then the Lord said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” (Genesis 2:18)

We were not intended to be alone or solitary.  We were intended to be in family—to be in a “helping” relationship—a give and take: a sharing: a participating together.

“And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:25)  Shame is not our original place.  

Then it happened—sin entered—the land was cursed—work became difficult—even childbirth became painful.

And we were put out of our garden—separated from our place:

…“therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.  He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:23, 24)
 

Our place was a place where God walked with us—we heard his footsteps, he came to talk with us. (Gen. 3:8)

Our place was to be with God—to be with him in fellowship with him.

How can we recapture that presence, that fellowship, that place?

Pray without ceasing; Believe and you will be saved; Ask, seek, knock; Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together; Obey my commandments; Abide in me—let my words abide in you; Draw near to God, resist the Devil; Confess your sins, repent, accept Christ; Wait for the Spirit to come upon you—he will lead you into truth; Be filled with the Spirit:  Here is our place—It is under the shadow of his wings!