“Land acknowledgment is about listening. It is about remembering. It is about rejecting invisibility. It’s about acknowledging the voice of creation, a voice that will continue to speak whether we listen or not. And if we are learning anything in America in the 21st century, it’s that restoration and healing are desperately needed. We need to begin asking what that might look like.” -Kaitlin Curtice, Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God

The land I walk these days, the land featured in the photo above, is the land walked by the Coahuiltecan, the Sana, the Tonkawa and the Jumanos peoples, according to the Land Acknowledgment website, https://native-land.ca/. If you haven’t tried it before, you enter your city or zip code to begin learning about the people who lived, and perhaps still live, where you live now.

Teilhard de Chardin writes that we live steeped in burning layers of the divine, that the moment we learn to “harness the energies of love,” we will have discovered fire for the second time in the history of the world.

I wonder about the power of remembering and honoring the layers of stories, the wisdom that is granted when we listen to all voices, especially those who have been oppressed.

As I look at the images above, I see the sun’s rays like reins of love offered to the young Loblolly pines. Their response? To receive, to grow, and in this moment, to shine like burning bushes.

Between us, always,

Holy fire kindles stories.

Solidarity