Back to the Garden

To live in a place is to be keenly aware of the presence of absences. What makes a place a place, and not just a somewhere, are the particularities of the lives of that place and the stories those lives imply. To live in a place requires the development of a gentle love for that place. That the love must be gentle is required by the notion that love does not demand or consume its objects. This love is an entering into the presence of a place and its creatures - a sort of awareness that grows with time and attention. Over the time that is necessary to attune that attention to a place, there will inevitably be losses that, while real, do not make the place lesser, but rather fill that place with the memory of their presence. The gully that marks the beginning of the Snake Creek watershed that crosses our place is not made lesser by the absence of water from it in the late summer. Rather, it stands as a testament to the absence of water that came in the spring and will return again next s...

There is a form of religion that attempts to assert power over the natural world by condemning it. Reveling in a denial of the created order, the clerics of this unnatural religion preach a heavenly righteousness that is defined more by the earthliness it denies than the heavenliness it affirms. This religion is well known to us. It is present in the hideous architecture of our churches, in the guilt-driven sermons of our clergy, and in the clear and certain Christian morality that is preached as an alternative to faith. This religion is accepted and celebrated trans-denominationally, yet it is that same religion that was so victoriously defeated by our holy Fathers in the great ecumenical councils of the Nicene age. Gnosticism is as alive today as it was in the time of the Apostles, in the time of Athanasius, and throughout the life of the church.  Gnosticism comes in many forms and has been more or less developed throughout history, but what is so pernicious about it is that ...