You Need a Place
For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. – Theodor Adorno
Every person needs a place, and everyone needs to live in a landscape. In order to know
who we truly are, we must be grounded in an understanding of our spiritual placement:
our heritage, traditions, and geography.
What places represent wholeness and holiness in your life? The places where you find it easiest to connect with God, to pray, and to hear God’s voice?
What are the coordinates of your holy ground? The intonations of your holy space?
Every plant grows in two opposite directions at the same time: downward, more
rooted and bound, clinging to the ground; but also upward, more free and open,
swaying in the breeze.
All storytelling emerges from two fundamental experiences: the state of being rooted to a particular place, and the act of traveling. There are two kinds of stories to tell: moving in stories and moving on stories. Moving in stories are stories with roots: home-sweet-home books about sanctuary, security and solitude.
Moving on stories are stories with wings: blue-highways books about pilgrimages, on-the-road-again restlessness, homesickness. There is a major homecoming component that sometimes makes it more about a ‘home’ place than even the storytelling of moving in.
Much of contemporary spirituality is placeless and homeless with no sense of place (location, grounding). Our specious species has turned this planet into a consumer hell lined and linked with shopping malls, drive-thrus and big-box megastores.
Inhabiting our place involves living out three questions…
Can you find your place?
Can you live in place?
Can you speak our place?
Journal Questions:
Do you have any ‘homecoming rituals’? What are they? What meaning is attached to them?
What’s the difference between a moving in and a moving on story? Are you better at living one or the other? Which one? Why?
Much of the conflict in our world is about place…the lack of or desire for. Why do you think that is?
Is the church part of your place? Why or why not.