The Importance of Place
Who? What? When? Where? Why? …The five “W’s” of our lives. These questions are important discernment tools when trying to figure out which direction in life we should head next, and for the most part I’ve spent my first 28 years prioritizing the questions “who” and “what”: Who are the people I enjoy spending time with and want to surround myself with? Who am I trying to be as a Christian, a son, a brother, a friend, a pastor? What should I eat for breakfast? What kind of work or career do I feel called to, and what does that work require of me? What were we supposed to do for homework again? The early, formative years of our lives depend heavily on our answers to these two questions.
Moving along, the next question—when?—has never held much weight for me. More often than not my answer to this question is, “whenever it happens.” [Maybe that’s why I excel at procrastinating ]. Next up: where? The older I get, the more this one matters to me. Two of the weightier decisions I’ve ever made were in answer to this question: 1) Where should I go to school to learn more about God and how to be a servant of the Church? And 2) Where is God calling me to begin my ministry? I’ve spent years traveling all sorts of places looking for answers to these questions. But of all the random little places I’ve been in this world, there’s one particular place I’ve come to know especially carefully and intimately. I’ll try to describe it to you.
In central Iowa there’s an 11-acre plot of land that sits askew, stretching from the southwest to the northeast. The land sits on top of a small bluff that’s nourished by the Jordan Creek just a mile to the north. And for as long as I can remember, that land has been fertile. In its early years it yielded corn and gave wildlife a place to live and roam. The soil was so rich it nurtured a tree strong enough to grow straight through the middle of an old truck long abandoned in the field. Over the years I’ve known this plot, the land has given life to a lot of other things as well. It’s grown tomatoes and beans and cucumbers and bell peppers that feed the hungry; rabbits and owls and birds of all kinds have made their homes there; and this place has even nurtured the spiritual lives of the people who visit the land weekly. Sometime along the way the municipality assigned this plot an address (4501 Mills Civic Parkway), and the people who built a community there gave the place a name for others to know it by (West Des Moines Christian Church).
Places are important; they matter a lot because they have to do with belonging. And the more we know a place, the more attuned we are to the needs of that land and its people… the more invested we are in caring for its wellness. With familiarity comes affection and sympathy, such that the specific place or places we know most intimately… those are the places we usually end up calling “home.” But so much about our lives nowadays is anti-place. Never in one place too long before moving on to the next activity, we value mobility over placedness. Deep down, though, we know the more important things in our lives are deeply rooted in places. For example, Grandma’s dining room table wasn’t mobile; it was where it was. And every time we drive by that holy place, we remember. You have those places too… the places where you grew up or learned to ride a bike or met your friends or spouse or said “goodbye” to someone you loved. These places of our lives are holy grounds that stir up sacred memories of our belonging, carrying us deeper into the love and life of God.
So here are a couple questions and a call to action to make this whole “five W’s” thing more tangible: What would it look like for us to resist the temptation to go find contentment “somewhere else” and to instead cultivate the spaces we’re in to be worthy of being God’s dwelling place? How can we create spaces that foster togetherness and belonging, and how can we the Church be that kind of place? As much as we’re all craving the freedom of unrestricted mobility again, try knowing and appreciating the place you are right now even deeper. Why? Because God has created and blessed these sacred spaces where we belong to be the sites of our honor and praise.
*For more on the importance of place for our lives of faith, google “Wendell Berry on place/placedness” or “love where you live.”
