One day, when I was in second grade, the former principal of our school came to visit. Now retired, he shepherded all of us onto a school bus and gave our class a narrated tour of our town. He told us about the mills, pointed out the old railroad depots, introduced us to special trees, and described the Native Americans who used to live here. Looking back, I realize what Mr. Bentley shared that day was likely a rich mix of lore and history. Nonetheless, as a wide-eyed 7-year old, I was utterly fascinated. I felt as if I were being let in on a great secret: the world, even the seemingly ordinary place where I lived — its land, the trees, its river, the streets with people’s names attached — all held stories. “Place” was like a different kind of book: it could be read and understood — if only one spoke the language. That day planted a seed in me that has grown as the intriguing, beguiling nature of place.
I recalled this moment just recently as I sat with others after a Sunday morning service to talk about land acknowledgements. You may have read or heard such declarations: a statement that speaks to a current understanding of how the place where we live, play, farm, drive, worship, garden, hunt — in short, live our lives — how this land came to be “ours.” For those of us in the northeast corner of this continent, the path to “ownership” often involves having disregarded the rights, beliefs and life practices of the Indigenous peoples who lived here before those of European ancestry arrived. Land acknowledgements seek to open us up to the fullness of history — the facts as well as promises made and broken, and harm inflicted. The hope is those of us living here now might find ways to make amends and seek to repair deep wounds.
Our conversation was challenging. Many of us carry years of incomplete or mis-information as well as deeply embedded misconceptions and biases. We are unsure about how to open conversations with the descendants of those our ancestors oppressed and even tried to exterminate. It is difficult to imagine what kind of changes we may be called to make as a result of an honest reckoning. Our emotions were varied: eager, somber, uncertain, remorseful, questioning, open.
Rich as our conversation was, I later wondered if we might have overlooked an opportunity: what if this is about more than trying to right past wrongs between humans? What if it’s a call to hear, see and understand what the land — and all the beings that populate it — has to say? To acknowledge “place” has a place at the table, a stake in the outcome? Is there a message to us from the land itself in this “land acknowledgement?”
The predicament we find ourselves in today — the reality of a climate-changed world — did not happen by accident. It is the direct result of how we choose to live on this Earth, the land. If the land were allowed to speak, perhaps we would hear some questions: Do we choose to see ourselves separate from all the other species, or do we opt to embrace our place in the great interdependent web of all existence? Do we view ourselves as superior and “in control,” or do we recognize our dependence and reliance on others? Do we see the abundance of creation as ours to do with what we wish, or are we able to share in the planet’s ecosystems with care and mutuality?
And perhaps these wise questions from the land might lead us to see the land is not actually indifferent to our presence. The humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan writes about “topophilia,” which literally translates as “love of place,” but which Tuan describes as the “two-way relationship between humans and environments.”
Yes, we love places that have meaning to us. Maybe it’s a grove of trees you first met as a wide-eyed child. Or the woods after a snowstorm. Maybe it’s your garden, backyard. But what if those places … love us back? What if we love a stand of trees … and, in ways we have yet to understand, in language we cannot yet hear, the trees love us back? What then? The Sisters of the Earth say “We will only save what we love.” But, might what loves us back … save us?
In this predicament we find ourselves in, a climate-changed world awash with challenges, what we need is more love. Not romantic, or sentimental, love. Not easy or cheap love. But mutual love. The kind of love that that bonds us, one to another, in deep and life-changing ways. The term for this kind of love, an ancient term, is covenant.
Covenant is simply this: “we promise to walk together in love.” Usually we understand covenant as between and among humans. But what if we extended this understanding of covenantal love to the communities around us — both the human and more-than-human? What might be different if we promise to walk together in love with the trees, birds and air? To commit to being there for each other, to stay together even in hard times?
To love, to be loved, to save and be saved in this way doesn’t require international agreements about carbon emissions. It doesn’t rely on scaling up experimental technologies. It doesn’t need committees or specifications or permissions or expertise. It simply asks each and every one of us to risk opening our hearts, to one another and to the place we call home.
The Rev. Alison Cornish is a Unitarian Universalist minister, lives in Shelburne Falls, and currently serves as the Chaplaincy Initiative Coordinator for The BTS Center. Find out more and connect, thebtscenter.org.