God’s Temple, by Katie Owings

Glancing around my spot, at the small piece of the woods that had become dear to me over the past few weeks, I spotted evidence of Fall’s arrival. The woods seemed more still this week. I wondered if the animals had already begun to abandon the area in favor of warmer climates and I yearned to join them on their mission to outrun winter. I laid back on my rock and stared up at the canopy of red, orange, yellow, and green above my head. The calmness I had grown used to feeling while visiting my spot in the woods each week began to seep into my bones. I began to think about Dr. Jenkins’ closing question from last class. He had asked us to consider what had happened when we put God into a house.

I believe that building churches to contain God created a disconnect between God’s people and his creation. We lost sight of our calling to be stewards that watch over all of the land and the creatures of the earth and sky. When describing the recent behaviors of Christians, since we put God into a building, Wendell Berry says “the evangelist has walked beside the conqueror and the merchant, too often blandly assuming that their causes were the same” since the time of Columbus. There has been such an emphasis on separating church and state that we have forgotten to consider our faith when addressing everyday issues, such as our current environmental crisis.

I was raised to be Catholic but there were many times throughout my life that I have struggled with my faith in God and in the church. Wendell Berry eloquently described the role religion has played in my life when he said “we were born to it; we began to learn about it before we became conscious; it is, whatever we think of it, an intimate belonging of our being.” There were many times throughout my life when I have struggled to feel close to God within a church and failed. I learned at an early age that I did not feel close to God within the four walls of my stuffy, dim church.

I have always felt closest to God when I am outdoors. I can feel the presence of God as I sit on the beach in the evening and I stare out at the ocean that seems infinite. I am filled with awe at God’s creation as I lay on the picnic table at my shore house (away from communities that produce light pollution) and stare up at millions of stars. Although I did not always have faith in the church, in these moments I realized my belief in God was still an integral part of my being. Wendell Berry explains this phenomena of experiencing God in nature by saying “this is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders.” Learning about the complexity of all of these wonders in my chemistry and biology courses reinforced my belief in God.

I also believe that God is present in each of us. I was raised to believe that God resides in all of us and therefore we have to treat our bodies as God’s temples. Each week in church the priest blesses the Eucharist, which is holy wine and bread that symbolize the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Then each member comes up to eat the bread, drink the wine, and be blessed. This ritual of literally welcoming God to reside within each member of the church always brought me comfort, even when I was younger and struggled to understand the tradition and what it meant to me. Sitting in the woods, I was struck by the contrast between the holy Eucharist I welcome into my body and the toxins I have been passively allowing to enter the body I was supposed to be treating as God’s dwelling place.

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