Laudato Si 84-88: Connecting with Our Sacred Space

This evening's entry comes to us from a Reginan,  a dear friend with a wonderful writing ability, Sarah Hanna. In this section, Sarah tackles this  short but  important idea:  Exploring  the message each of us created beings carry within us in harmony with one another (or if you prefer, deepening our sense of  interconnectedness  and Harmony with all creation.)


Sarah is the Engaged Learning Coordinator at Campion College at the University of Regina.  This is just title, but she is also engaged to be married.  In school she studied anthropology and wrote her master's thesis about the Society of Jesus, so she likes to think of herself as a Jesuit-ologist.  She dreams of one day being in the top ten Google results for her own name, but for now you can find her at sarahhanna.ca.


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Our insistence that each human being is an image of God should not make us overlook the fact that each creature has its own purpose. None is superfluous. The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, his boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God. The history of our friendship with God is always linked to particular places which take on an intensely personal meaning; we all remember places, and revisiting those memories does us much good. Anyone who has grown up in the hills or used to sit by the spring to drink, or played outdoors in the neighbourhood square; going back to these places is a chance to recover something of their true selves. (Laudato Si, 84)

One of my many sacred spaces

                                                     


As I write this, there is an apple tree blooming in my backyard.  This afternoon, I sat in my garden, with the bees buzzing peacefully and the soft breeze blowing the heavenly scent of apple blossoms, I surely felt the caress of God. 

And yet, I have also stood at a bus stop in cold deep enough to take the breath away, with the howling wind bringing tears to my eyes.  God must surely get the blame for a Saskatchewan winter if He is to take credit for fresh spring afternoons? 

In this passage, Pope Francis seems to draw our attention to the sacredness of the world not merely in the moments or places when God's presence feels warm and abundant, but in the world as a complete system, in which humans, like other creatures, have their right place.

The Pope has taken criticism for presuming to weigh in on the question of climate change, by some who have felt that it is not the place of a religious and spiritual leader to address matters deemed to be the proper purview of scientists.  On the point of the interconnectedness of living things, scientific insight may lead directly to spiritual reflection.  The earth can be understood as a vast network of systems of energy and matter, in endlessly complex relationships – anyone who remembers trying to puzzle out the nitrogen cycle in biology class has scratched the surface of this idea.  It follows then, that care for the earth entails not only gratitude and care for my garden, but for my neighbour's garden, and indeed for the seemingly empty tundras and deserts that have no hold on my heart at all.

 As I read this section of Laudato Si', I thought about the places that have become sacred to me -  the bike path I used to ride along with my Father, the stretch of prairie road where my best friend and I would go to storm-watch or stargaze – places where I came to know people who love me.  I was struck by broad view this passage seems to suggest: the earth itself, in its fullness is one of these precious sites, because it is the place where we have come to know God.