“One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search – which did not and could not end until the continent was finally laid upon in an orgy of gold seeking in the middle of the 19th century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves – no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken ant hill. In our own time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.”
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
Somehow, after six months of the most grueling summer in the South’s recorded history, a weather system rolled in last week that delivered one forty-degree day, paired with a dense layer of fog and that delicate, almost whimsical, sort of misty precipitation that dances in the atmosphere like fairy dust. This is the exact kind of weather that transports me from my present place, in the heart of Louisiana, to my former home in the outskirts of Boston, about 1600 miles away. And because I am the person that I am, and also because I appreciate this kind of weather and what it does for me, I rushed outside to greet it, staring up at the hazy atmosphere with a grin and a response, “hello, New England, it has been too long since I’ve seen you, old friend.”
If you are new here, then you might not know that I talk to all sorts of things that don’t necessarily listen and that cannot talk back. For whatever reason these one-sided conversations are just something about me that I can’t quite quit, and to be honest I don’t really want to. This is, as the slang of yesteryear would put it, just how I happen to roll.
All that aside, I can’t help but wonder about the way this sort of movement from where I am now, to where I once was, occurs. Isn’t it odd how our senses have the power to bring us back to people and places in our past? Like the cackle of a fire in the heart of the woods, or the sound of a screen door slamming, or the smell of fresh cut grass on a summer afternoon. Why is that, exactly? How does it work? And what is it for?
Even as I ask these questions, I know that I know the answer, and yet at the exact same time, I still don’t quite know. Which is true of so many things that I like to rattle around in my thinker.
One thing that I do know is that I carry a certain sort of longing for New England in my bones that I don’t expect to ever fully fade away. It’s a grief of sorts, but also a remembering that I think is an essential link between me and a deeper, inward, connection to home.
To be clear, I never actually intended to leave home in the first place. At least not really. In fact the first conversation that Brad and I had about his move to Louisiana involved me declaring that our relationship was a no-go because I was never going to leave the city of Boston, let alone the North East. In part because as far as I was concerned New England wasn’t just where I was from, it was who I was. To leave, I knew, would be to fracture myself in a way that I understood at the time, but also didn’t. But I did eventually agree to come here for a period of time, three years or so, until Brad could be transferred back again, and I could return to my city home.
Which meant that for a long time I lived in this place and interacted with the people here, unintentionally. Though I inhabited this physical space, I did so in a way that stood outside of it looking in, as a distant and detached observer rather than someone who had made the decision to dwell in it. And so, I didn’t set out to know this place or these people, or to understand it or them, or to let any part of it infiltrate my pre-existing sense of self which remained untethered, and autonomous from this physical location. In short, I was a tourist here, rather than a transplant.
What’s interesting about this is that if a seedbearing plant is never removed from its container and set it in the ground where its roots can take up residence in the soil and begin to spread out and absorb the nutrients around it, it will never bear as much fruit as it was designed to and it will be stunted in its growth. If you’ve ever waited too long to plant a potted vegetable or flower and its become root bound, then you know what I mean. Eventually the roots of that little plant will circle the pot so many times that it will run out of soil and space, and in time, if you don’t put it in the ground, it will die. Sure, you can kick the can down the road and buy yourself a little bit of time and increased productivity through fertilization and irrigation, but neither of these responses reflect the original intention or natural disposition of that plant. Which is that it belongs in the ground.
I think the same is true of people. We are meant to belong to our place. In part because of what belonging to a place does to us, and also because of what our displacement does to both people and the planet.
Here are a few things that I think about often in relationship to this:
One of the elements of Christian theology that has been used to destroy the planet and abuse its animals is the presumption that we are tourists here. That we are just passing through on our way to heaven elsewhere. Which then leaves us blind to, unaware of, or unconcerned with our lack of knowledge and care for this place. I gave a sermon on this last Christmas you can read the manuscript of here: Creation Care & Christmas .
I also wonder if our memory of what was once, has the power to reroot us, and to reconnect us with the soil of this existence, so that we might rediscover the groundedness, nourishment, fruitfulness, and vitality that God intends for us here and how. Which is a vision of human flourishing that in these isolated, sanitized containers of our modern existence we cannot and will not, ever know.
But what does it look like to intend to be in a particular place? What are the elements that are most essential to any such intention? How does someone who has been uprooted, reroot themselves again? And does this require us to resist being displaced? By jobs or people? Or is it more about how we live in any particular place, while we are there?
What do you think?
And what has been your experience with being placed or displaced in this lifetime?
I didn’t intend to write this particular post on this particular topic, I just sat down this morning and this is what came out, so there you have it. I think this is because I spent every working hour of this week polishing a chapter in a manuscript that is about people belonging to a place, and apparently that level of focus continued right into today’s post without me quite noticing it. It is also because of the work that I put towards that chapter that I didn’t have the time that usually have for this newsletter, and for that I apologize. But the thing is that this manuscript and the message it holds, is so very dear to me, and I trust that if you are here reading alongside me today, and that have reached the bottom of this page, then in time, it will be dear to you too.
Thank you for reading, friends. I am so grateful to be here batting the ideas around with each on of you. What a gift.