Conversation Point

In This Moment

Sanctuary

Land is at a premium. Even Oprah is buying up property because, as she says, "God isn't making anymore." At the beginning of our nation's history, land ownership was one of the determining factors of whether or not you could vote in general elections. Not incidentally, the Western European concept of being able to lay claim to portions of the earth as one's own, completely contradictory to indigenous North American people's belief that the earth was a gift to all that could not be owned, got the United States government into many pointless wars with its own people. Land is a personal issue, a community issue, and has been for much longer than any of us can remember or research. Not surprisingly, the Bible speaks of land as promised, as flowing with milk and honey, as paradise itself.

While part of the Wisconsin paradise was reclaimed this past week, another part of the land that appeared to be promised to a congregation in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, is about to be snatched away as evidence of a new belief that projected consumerism and its societal benefits is reason enough to usurp private property in the name of eminent domain.

The Ridges, a wildlife refuge on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, successfully negotiated for two years to reclaim a section of adjacent land to be able to expand its unique state natural area. In a quote from the Door County Advocate, "The land is vital to us," said Paul Sagen, a member of The Ridges board of directors and head of its research committee. " The parcel is in our immediate watershed area, and is critically important to the protection of The Ridges ecosystem. Protecting it is a big step toward maintaining the high water quality we enjoy in our wetlands." Guarding what God has given them in natural beauty and resources, the people of this Northeastern Wisconsin county have also preserved a natural sanctuary, a place that evokes a peaceful and creative spirit with which generations to come will also commune.

Meanwhile, a different sort of scenario is playing itself out in the shadow of a recent, highly unpopular United States Supreme Court ruling. In a New York Times interview, the Rev. Roosevelt Gildon, pastor of the Centennial Baptist Church of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, noted that, "The Lord didn't send me here to build a mini-mall." City officials beg to differ. Sand Springs is moving ahead with a redevelopment plan to make way for The Home depot and other retail stores. Tax revenue is needed for city services, and the mayor and many others see this as the way to achieve their goal. This past summer's Supreme Court ruling approved condemnation of private property in New London, Connecticut, for resale to other private interests for what the Court called, "public purpose," supports Sand Springs in its endeavors toward progress. Pastor Gildon's church is smack in the middle of the future shopping area, so his congregation's options are limited: sell their land at an amount that will not be sufficient to relocate, or be forced off by virtue of eminent domain.

My questions are simple: How many shopping malls do we really need? How many more opportunities will we have to preserve the earth's gift to nurture and support us as God intended at creation? How much stuff do we really need, balanced against the desire to live on land in which beauty and grace still reside? Why does our government still not understand that stealing land from its own people is wrong?

My understanding of these question, and their answers, rests on part of a song from Moses and the Israelites to God: "You brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your own possession, the place, O Lord, that you made your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, that your hands have established (Exodus 14:17)." The earth has been given to us, both as a richly beautiful home, and as a sanctuary, a place for worship of the Giver. These two concepts cannot be separated or uprooted from our faithful use of the land. Simply put, we are each as a generation only holding this land in trust for the next, and as an historical people, we are only renting. How much do we want to jeopardize our security deposit?

Until next time, God's blessings.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 1:16 PM