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Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” . (Genesis 1:26-28)

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:9-14)

After several years of construction around the Capitol building, in Salem, a couple of exhibits are now completed and open to the public.

On the back Northwest corner of the Capital grounds is a new Vietnam veterans memorial. 

And then on the front side of the building, is a new plaza area directly in front of the entry, with two curvy pathways around the perimeter, which pass by 11 large stones inscribed with quotes from Oregon’s native indigenous leaders. This exhibit is called Oregon Voices.

Both exhibits are beautifully done in the same modernist-art deco style that the building reflects; which mixes clean simple designs with natural materials and green forest plants.

While there is still construction underway on other areas of the Capital grounds, it was so cool to see the progress thus far.

The day that I stopped by there was an especially bright sunshiny day, without a single cloud in the sky. Not usually the kind of weather that I prefer to take pictures in, as it creates pretty harsh lighting. But I felt like the weather perfectly matched the fresh new environment of the capital grounds.

It was fun to see the various people passing through.

Veterans looking at the memorial.

Children playing in the fountain,

Tourists reading the words written on the building, and surrounding structures.

And graduates posing for a picture on the plaza steps.

It was especially refreshing to see people enjoying the ordinary things of life, things that are not controversial or politically charged. And doing them in a place that often has a reputation for stirring up contention rather than spreading love and joy and peace.

As I stopped to take a closer look at the boulders with words etched into them I immediately picked up on a familiar theme that has been forming in my thoughts for some time.

The natural created order, which we often call “The Land” or if we’re thinking really big picture, “The Cosmos” is not just something that we are a part of in a physical or biological kind of way. Certainly, as the Bible tells us, we are created from the dust, and so we are literally drawn from the ground, and the rest of the natural created order around us.  But if we stop there I think we miss out on something incredibly more profound. Both our Judeo-Christian heritage, as well as the indigenous myths of many ancient peoples inform us that we are also inhabited with the “breath of God”, His very Spirit! And as such we have the privilege of not only of a connection with the natural world around us but a special privilege of being God’s unique image bearers in this world and even stewards of the other things that He has created.

This doctrine of Divine order is the foundation upon which all civilizations are built and established, whether they acknowledge it or not.  And we discover when studying ancient civilizations and even those from recent history, that the ones which embrace this Divine calling the most are the ones that tend to thrive the most. Whereas ones that ignore these profound realities of connection with the created natural order and our Creator, tend to become gluttonous, to perpetuate self-serving systems, and eventually self-destruct.

Of course, this is a very simplistic overview of human history, and certainly all of us could benefit from a greater depth of understanding of our past mistakes and the short-sidedness that has allowed such self-destructive tendencies to perpetuate.

But what I’d like to focus on for the rest of this post is the metaphorical imagery within the quotes on these stones, and hopefully express some insights about deeper spiritual realities that draw us not only closer to physical creation but to our Creator and His calling upon us.

In the first stone exhibit, pictured above, the quote says. ” I wonder if this ground has anything to say, I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said.”

According to Google: These words were spoken by Young Chief (also known as We-ah-te-na-tee-ma-nay), a leader of the Cayuse tribe.

He delivered this historic speech in May 1855 during the Walla Walla Treaty Council in Oregon/Washington territory, expressing his deep spiritual connection to the land and his opposition to giving up Indigenous territories.

His exact remarks, as recorded in the minutes of the council, are:

“[T]his land is afraid. I wonder if this ground has anything to say. I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said. I wonder if the ground would come to life… though I hear what this earth says. The earth says, God has placed me here. The earth says that God tells me to take care of the Indians on this earth.”

Now I don’t know what the motivations were for the curators who decided to only quote a portion of this native chiefs statement, but in its fuller context you can see that it wasn’t merely the physical creation, and treatment of the literal land that he was concerned about. He was concerned about God’s intention for that land, and the people dwelling within it.

Apparently Young Chief believed that the indigenous people, already there, were stewarding it as God would have them, and that it would be unjust to be taken away.  I don’t doubt that he had environmental concerns, but the bigger point, the more important point, was that the parties taking land from them we’re not doing so by appealing to Divine authority, but through ignorance, or arrogance, or worse yet greed.

It’s interesting to me that in our day and age people don’t have any trouble personifying creation and imagining that it can speak, but are less concerned with hearing the message that the author of that creation would bring. Perhaps it’s because we don’t like the idea that we ultimately have someone else to answer to, namely God.  Instead we can just pretend to have a conversation with the creation, because we can always pretend that it’s saying something that aligns with our own personal values.

I don’t think Young Chief was pretending to speak for the ground though. Or to invoke an authority that was not really his to claim. His words bear the weight of truth because they invoke a flawless logic, that many of today’s ego-centric philosophies and worldviews have become deaf to. That truth is that God’s created order is always symbiotic, and balanced, and communal. Nothing in the created order is there by mistake, or mere happenstance. It is all there for a reason and an important function, which may often baffle us, but which we come to appreciate when we try to artificially reconstruct God’s design without reference to the way it has always been, and suffer the ramifications of our shortsighted, self-serving interventions.

It is unnatural, and artificial to displace one group of people, and their long time stewardship of a place merely for the benefit of another group of people, particularly who have no experience with stewarding that particular place.  Of course, God created free-willed human beings who do often displace other groups of human beings on the planet, And so our acknowledgment of that reality must also go into the calculations of how God’s created order works. But the point is, anybody who has eyes to see and ears to hear can see when creation is working well, as a symbiotic symphony, and also when it fails to deliver with such harmony, and the common denominator is usually self-serving creatures, whether they be invisible viruses or human tytants, who have little regard for anything but themselves.

What we can reasonably conclude from these situations, both the mutually beneficial ones and parasitical, is that the complex interdependency we see in the natural created order is not only good for the planet, but essential for a thriving humanity as well. 

I think it’s wonderful that our current society does value, for the most part, humanities symbiotic relationship with the natural created order. And that to rape the land and rivers of its essential character is to compromise our own physical future. What I wonder is how long it will take for humanity, on the whole, to learn how to treat each other as well as we do for the land and water and animals.

Walking back to my car, through the beautiful green courtyard, I noticed a sketch pad left sitting upon a bush.  It almost seemed staged, the way it was just sitting there open, for anyone walking by to see. The drawing exposed was of a sad looking man, holding what looked to be an ash urn, and being comforted by a woman.

I looked around to see if there was anyone walking away who might have left it behind. I noticed only a group of young ladies, dressed well and walking with purpose.  It was not likely one of them, I surmised.  But then I noticed the homeless person sitting behind a bush, and I wondered if it might be his.

As I walked by the man I tried to inquire with him about the sketch pad. He did not seem to understand my English speaking though, and seemed uninterested in the information I was trying to convey to him, so I surmised that it was not his either.

Perhaps it was another homeless person’s though, and how fitting it was that I discovered it within this place that seemed to be so ordered and sensitive to environmental concerns.

I took one last look up at the pioneer man, sitting Golden and Regal above his domain. And I wondered if the people who came and conquered this land for themselves and established this cosmopolitan society, in which we now live, ever imagined that after all of the journeying and work and struggle, that ordinary people would still be struggling with the exact same things as them… Unexpected death and loss and disconnection from so much of the world around them.

Some things never change! And that’s okay,… I guess. At least we have our history, and we can try to learn from our past, and strive for a better world.

My prayer for humanity is that we are able to see God’s merciful hand in it all, and realized that the tragic and beautiful world in which we live is not merely a creation of our own whims, but really just a piece in much grander plan to conform us into His Holy and benevolent image.

A people known less for the dramatic change that we bring and more for the grace by which we live together in it.