Martha: Landscape of the Sacred 1

Sacredness is all around us if we look. Unlike the Europeans the Native Americans developed a close relationship with the land they lived on that the Europeans had lost a long time ago. They no longer saw the land as a sacred space but as an object to use or abuse, or even a threat to be eliminated. The Native peoples didn’t look on the land that way, to them it was their life, and all living things held spirit within, and were in some ways a connection to the Great SPIRIT. The more power and danger associated with a place, the more sacred it would become. It was understood that Spirits went where man couldn’t, and because of this nature wasn’t something to be conquered, but respected and embraced. There was fear, but it was the same kind of fear that made people tremble before GOD. What they saw in these places was the face of a parent who upheld them, but would destroy them if they weren’t careful. It didn’t mean they should destroy it though, we didn’t learn that then, we still haven’t learned it, and unless we do soon we won’t. There are few places left that we haven’t touched or destroyed, and the ones we haven’t are either protected, or they are unreachable. But they’re disappearing. And very few of them are completely untouched by man’s advances.