The Land Speaks

 In recent weeks, I have been watching these videos on YouTube about these nasty creatures called HOA Karens.  The word "Karen" is used to describe a nasty, opinionated, entitled upper-class White woman who insults and belittles others.  She is that person who yells for the manager over a penny's difference in a pack of gum, the woman who also sends things back at a restaurant, and when you put a person like this in leadership, they tend to become totalitarian tyrants.  The HOA culture is like a fetid sewer which richly cultivates this type of person, much like the garbage on a Baltimore street encourages large rats.  These stories on YouTube, which may or may not be based on real events, personify the entitled, evil "Karens" who threaten old ladies for the wrong color irises, veterans for flying American flags, and violate the personhood of disabled people as "inferior."  Some of these stories, in all honestly, make me want to string these evil demons in female skin up and flog them until all the blood drains from their pathetic bodies, and they are honestly addictive to watch.  However, one of these stories got my attention and I wanted to reflect on it because something about that particular story resonated.  Let me first give a summary of the story, and then I will share my thoughts on it.

In the story, a man has a farm with a fertile corn field, and a nearby HOA "Karen" was trying to assert authority she legally didn't have over the man's farm, which had been part of his family for several generations. The farmer was resolute in standing his ground, and then one of Karen's goons used a stolen hoe and killed the man's dog, which got a reaction - the farmer broke the man's nose.  After burying the dog in the cornfield, the "Karen" came back trying to impose her will she didn't technically have, and the guy got his justice.  She entered the cornfield, and he set fire to it and it did its damage.  Then, when she came out and tried to still assert herself, she fell on some strategically-placed stakes soaked in honey, and in addition to maiming her legs, she found herself in the middle of a volatile fire ant nest, and the ants were all over her.  When she tried to pitifully beg for mercy, he stepped on her hand, and that did it.  He left her there wallowing, and somehow she made it to a hospital.  By that time she had also lost her marbles, as the impact of the experience caused her to have a mental collapse she never recovered from.  Her goon, the one who killed the dog, came back another night and was going to settle the score, but he ended up disappearing into the field as well.  In time, Karen was seen wandering around without shoes and in a hospital gown, and she would come to the cornfield and have conversations with invisible entities who were not even there - the farmer let her do that and never interfered until eventually she faded away completely.  At the time of the corn harvest, the man's field ended up producing abundantly, and despite the fact certain people attempted to destroy the field, it ended up being a bountiful harvest, and the message the farmer had was simple - the land doesn't forget. There is a lot packed into this, so let's talk about it.

One of the first things to understand is that this should not be read as a form of pantheism or anything - no one is worshipping the earth or anything.  Pantheism is a demonic belief that all is God and God is all, and God is viewed as the same as creation.  That idea is a part of both animistic paganism as well as Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.  It was also one basis for the occultic worldview of the Nazis, and that view was traced with them to the volkisch occultism of people like Guido von List and Lanz von Liebenfels.  In that context, it also became a basis of racism.  The aforementioned story has nothing to do with any of that, but it does acknowledge however that there is a connection between someone and their roots, and we Appalachians call that "sense of place."  So, is there a Christian foundation to any of this?  Let's discuss that for a moment.

One important thing about the Thomistic theological/philosophical tradition is that it emphasizes two things.  First, the role of supernatural grace and what it does.  Secondly, there is a theology of God's creation of the earth and mankind which is a foundational basis for my own Biblical Creationist theological position as well as my scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design.  Essentially, this would be called the "Two Books" idea of God's creation - God authored two "books," one being a written Revelation contained in Scripture (or rhema) and the second being Nature itself.  The way these two things relate to each other is integral to a Christocentric understanding of faith - Revelation perfects Nature, and Nature confirms and authenticates the truth of Revelation.  It is also part of the whole idea of the Laws of Sufficient Causality and of Noncontradiction - to summarize those, the first states that everything has an ultimate source, while the second says that something cannot be and not be at the same time.  Based on that, we conclude rightly that everything is created by God, so it is a gift and blessing to us and even he called it good.  This is why oftentimes among Fundamentalist and Charismatic Protestants it is disturbing because they adopt a quasi-gnostic understanding of creation whether they intend to or not.  Phrases such as "in the natural" are spit almost with contempt by their preachers regarding even human emotions, and in all honesty when I was a Pentecostal that never made sense.  Again, the Law of Noncontradiction - nothing cannot both be and not be at the same time.  Therefore, calling God's creation "evil" or anything else derogatory is then basically calling God evil, and perhaps people who get off on those quasi-gnostic tangents need to really think about the implications of what they say.  God and his creation are distinct from each other, but God also did create the heavens and the earth, and everything in them, so we should consider them a blessing to us and treat them accordingly.  In this story of the farmer and the evil "Karen," I got the sense of that, as his assertion that "the land speaks" also goes along with Biblical passages such as Isaiah 55:12 ("The trees of the field shall clap their hands") and Luke 19:40 ("And I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the rocks will cry out"), and in a more somber tone, there is the account of Cain's murder of Abel in Genesis, where God flatly told Cain that the ground was crying out in judgment because Abel's blood was spilled on it.  In that case, the Genesis account goes along with this story of the farmer on YouTube - the blood cries out for justice for a soul whose life was stolen by an evil one.  All creation therefore, as Aquinas and Bonaventure both correctly noted in their "two books" example, bears witness to God both in celebration but also in judgment.  That is why this story grabbed my attention.

It is not occultic, or pantheistic therefore to respect nature and its sanctity - it was created by God, and the earth itself bears witness of many things.  So, the story of this farmer illustrates that although we often brush things aside or ignore them, nature sees it, and in time what is concealed in the darkness will be brought to light if we do evil to someone by violating their God-given liberty or disrespecting them.  Think of nature as a silent witness to the work of humankind - people can easily deceive each other, but nature is not capable of deceit because it is what it is - it is there, and in many cases it holds a legacy for us.  A family home for instance is more than just a house cobbled together with brick, wood, and glass - it is home and there is a fundamental connection a person has to where they come from.  In Appalachian culture, we call that "sense of place," and it is what binds generations together as well as providing roots, identity, and other things to the person who was born there.  While this can easily be taken out of context, it is fundamental to the human experience and is how God made us.   There are two ways though that it can be misused, and I will get into those now.

The land stores negative experiences as well as positive, and I am thinking back to the movie Forrest Gump now because there is a very poignant example of this.   Forrest's love, Jenny, comes back to stay with him for a short time, and while Forrest is on the proverbial cloud nine, one day when he and Jenny were walking they come upon the old house her family lived in.  As a child, Jenny had been abused by her dad (or stepdad - I don't recall which he was in the film) and it caused her to have serious emotional scars.  When she saw that house - by now it was long abandoned and was in a bad state - it triggered things in her and she responded by releasing pent-up rage at that house by throwing rocks at it.  Not everyone has a positive experience regarding "sense of place," and that is part of the picture as well - sometimes we even have to face that in order to heal and grow.  Those who inflicted the misery corrupted the hearts of their victims in that regard, often doing irreparable damage.  What had the potential of a pleasant memory becomes a nightmare, and Jenny's old house in that movie illustrated that well. In this case it wasn't Jenny who caused the bad memory, but her abusive father.  Abusive and selfish people can corrupt things so easily, and they even misuse a home to create a negative memory for an innocent victim like a child.  The second example though is even worse, and it was once turned into a political system.

A part of the Nazi platform in Germany during the years leading up to the Third Reich was something called Blut und Boden, or "blood and soil." When I was doing work on this for my dissertation, I found out this was part of the whole volkisch mentality fostered by the precursors of National Socialism, and it was brought into National Socialism from Walther Darre (1895-1953), who was Hitler's Minister of Agriculture during the Third Reich.  Darre based this on his reading of the racist author Hans Gunther, who in turn digested it from his readings of Malthus, Galton, and Gobineau, who in turn co-opted it from the occultism with its pantheistic view of the land and German blood being one and the same.  I devoted a lot of space in my dissertation to this idea, because it was pivotal in understanding some of the more evil aspects of Nazism as it related to "purification" of both the land and the genetic identity of the fictional "Aryan" race many of them dreamed up in their delusional minds.  In this context, the land becomes a god in itself, and because the genetics of a certain race are believed by people who hold this view to come from "the soil," then both the blood inside a person and the soil they stand on are seen as one and the same.  This doesn't affirm God's gift of creation, but rather corrupts it by confusing the Creator with the creation, and the end product of that is never good - it results in the genocide of millions. This corrupted view must be rejected, especially by Christians.  Although our home and where we come from are something we hold as a precious thing, it should never be exalted to the point that the land becomes deity, nor should any type of ethnocentrism result from it.  That is why a proper understanding of "sense of place" is integral to having a healthy mind and spirit. 

The ultimate idea of this, however, is actually quite simple.  God created everything we see, and because of that, it should be respected and taken care of.  God gave man a special place of dominion over the earth, but with that comes the awesome responsibility of being a wise steward without exploiting the earth or making it into a deity in itself.  Rather, we take care of what God entrusts us with by maybe cleaning up the litter and pollution we create (the city of Baltimore where I live now would do well learning this) and by protecting and preserving what we have been given against those who would seek to do harm.  The farmer in the story did just that, and he treated the land like an old friend which could show its own expression.  While the land is not a living organism in itself, our care of it determines how we are rewarded.  If we really take care of it, we reap the benefits of it.  If we don't, then it causes more damage that can impact generations.  And, that starts with our own homes.  However, lest you think this is some sort of "global warming" screed, let me clarify that fast now.

The whole "climate change" and "global warming" spiels that have become a pervasive part of public discourse are quite honestly disturbing - they are not disturbing because they are true, but rather the opposite.  These agendas are driven by individuals who want to control, to dominate, and to micromanage everyone based on a utopian delusion that exists only in their own minds.  While many of the proponents of this lie - Gates, Soros, Schwab, and their buddies - are wealthy beyond the imaginations of most normal people, they are also devoid of any sense of decency and do not have the common good in mind.  They see this "global warming" hysteria as a way to make lots of extra money and exert control over things, and in doing so they are dangerous.  None of them believe in "global warming" either because they know it is a false narrative, but they use and manipulate it to exert their own control over others, and that is what is scary.  There is very little difference, for instance, in the ultimate agendas of people like Klaus Schwab and George Soros and the early Nazis, as when one reads what they are proposing it sounds eerily similar.  Both Schwab and Soros were known Nazi collaborators when they were younger, and both of them have nefarious ideas which would make even Lanz von Liebenfels flinch.  Like the abusive parent who scars their child's memory of home, these oligarchs misinterpret and manipulate a true respect for nature with an agenda, and their agenda is NOT God's way or will.  That is why it should be rejected as well. 

If God has blessed you with a home of your own, cherish it and treat it with respect.  If you do, it will reap many benefits that even your descendants will be blessed.  But, never make the extremes of conflating land with God, or never let anyone damage or destroy land either - protect it and be the steward over it God called you to be.  In doing so, we have true "sense of place," and that says more than volumes could communicate. 

Thank you for letting me share again this week, and hope to see you again soon.