Dear Friends,
It’s late August, but as someone whose spent her whole life in the Northeast, it doesn’t quite feel like back to school season yet. Instead, almost exactly a year ago, I was still running around at Vacation Bible School, the return to classrooms still a little further off. It was with special delight, then, that when I looked at this week’s lectionary, I found a story that reminded me of one of my favorite long-ago VBS adventures - God speaking to Moses from the burning bush.
At the time, I was a high schooler leading the first thru fifth grade lesson rotations at a classic VBS - an out of the box, week long curriculum. Except when you combine my childhood Lutheran church’s nonexistent budget and my then-boundless energy, you got a lot of chaos and some kind of sorry looking props, including my paper towel tube and cellophane fire, which housed an MP3 player and speakers that looked like… well, stuffed penguins. It was 2006! This is what it was like.
Maybe some of you who have been around the VBS circuit a long time remember this (I can’t tell you if this was Group or Concordia, but it was one of them!), but in a burst of transitional technology enthusiasm, the developers had given us a voiceover of God speaking from the burning bush. And so, I marched my pack of children outside, had them take off their shoes - “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” - and started telling the story. Then I pressed play on the Voice of God.
“Wow, who was that speaking from the burning bush?” I asked.
“The penguins!” came back a chorus of little voices.
Face meet palm. This was just one of the many occasions in which a VBS lesson went at least a little awry, as anything involving kids is wont do, but it remains one of my favorites, from my early days in the classroom. Clearly the answer would have been to make them all cover their eyes. Moses was afraid to look at God, after all.
I had a few years in the VBS classroom under my belt by then, so we forged on appropriately, but as powerful as that moment when God declares “I AM WHO I AM” is, or how the bush could burn and yet not be consumed, I think it’s worth considering that earlier moment, when God orders Moses to remove his sandals, a little more closely.
When we said goodbye to our church intern in the midst of the pandemic, five of us -the intern & his mother, our priest, our senior warden, and myself, masked and in the garden he led us in planting - he invited us to take off our shoes as we stood on holy ground. And it was. Every inch of ground is holy. Not just where Moses stood at Horeb or the places we gather for worship, but all of it. My backyard is holy and the sidewalk in front of your apartment and that perfect field full of flowers and the silt at the bottom of the river. It’s all holy. And we understand it to be holy in different ways, ways that are shaped by our familiarity with it - putting our feet into the sand or hurriedly pounding the pavement in the cities. The ground supports our stories, but it has its own.
One way those of us in North America specifically can pay attention to the sacred nature of the ground and its history is by learning about the practice of Land Acknowledgements. Land Acknowledgements ask us to consider who the indigenous populations are that were displaced so that we might be there today. Often there are several overlapping groups. In places where indigenous groups were ultimately resettled, it’s important to look at those patterns of movement. Not just who, but why and how?
Canadian groups have been particularly active in making land acknowledgments and education an integral part of addressing a painful history (this guide by Native Land is a great tool for older kids), but it’s something we can all do in our personal lives - and something that we shouldn’t just do to feel good about ourselves. Rather, we must again return to Moses. This is holy land and most of us are guests, even when we think we’ve put down roots. We should treat the land with care, and we should learn what made it holy to other people. We should remember that those other people are holy, too, and treat them that way.
And, of course, we should play in the dirt. At a time when we’ve still got to keep our distance from others, spending some time in a garden - even if it’s just some containers on a window sill - may be one of the best ways to stay connected.
If you’re looking for other ways to go deeper, for now I commend to you:
Diane Stortz’s I AM Devotional - God has a lot of names, and we can use all of them in worship
I love a good hymn, but connections can come from all kinds of music, including some of my favorite folk hymns. “Swimming To The Other Side” by Emma’s Revolution, which both calls us to seek wisdom and to honor the places we walk, seems as fitting a tune as any for this moment. (They’re also very popular with UU congregations!)
Stay safe, Take off your sandals, & Play in the dirt - and don’t forget, theological education is for everyone! (Rowan Williams says so.) The cats and I will catch you all here next week, or join us on Twitter or Facebook. Til then,
A. Bird