Landscape Indigeneity - A Reflection from Rev. Dave Bell

Fall rain fell overnight. Water ponded across the pasture. She rose, walked hesitantly, sniffed the ground, and lay down again. She had been tentative since early light when I arrived to work the fenceline. She’d left the herd sometime last night to give birth in privacy. This was her third, and she knew it would be easier for her calf to know mama if it were only the two of them attending the birth. As long as I kept my distance, I shouldn’t be a bother.

Waterdrops upon grass glistened as the sun rose. A tree shadowed the pasture’s northeastern corner. Moving to the shadow, she folded her legs and lay down. Time and again, the amnionic sac protruded then vanished. She rested her head on the grass. The ground held and comforted her.  Clouds watched. Rolling to her side, the amnionic sac protruded again; this time, two hooves became visible. Grass leaned in and caressed her face. Ponded water waits. Lifting her head, she pushed, and the calf’s muzzle appeared. Another push and the calf’s head appeared within the amnionic sac. She rests. Creation goes silent, marveling at the almost born. With an exhale, the shoulders clear the vulva, and before another breath is taken, the calf is birthed. The ordinary, though, becomes extraordinary for the calf remains enclosed within the amnionic sac — a “veiled” birth in human terms. The sun breaches the treetops, amnionic fluid becomes radiant, and the calf moves about within the sac — awe wraps the separate yet wombed. Then, the calf stretches and the sac ruptures.

Amnionic fluid gushes from the sac. I expect amnionic ponding alongside the ponded water. Instead, I am surprised as the earth immediately opens and the amnionic fluid vanishes. Hungry to return home, fluid flows down grass stems, into the dirt, slipping alongside grass roots until root hairs are found. The hairs recognize their kin and absorb the fluid into the roots, beginning the birth process once again. 

The amnionic sac, now matted upon the calf, glints sunlight. A giddiness settles me on vertigo haunches. Spirit, not of flesh nor matter, is of interstellar boundarylessness as calf, grass, water, root, soil, light, sky, and mamma become one, singular and communal. Creation’s amnion is what the old people spoke of being “known before the womb.” The ageless essence of animate earth and ancestral reciprocity fills the ponded pasture. Natural spirits hold awe as mama stands and licks her calf with rough tongue. Stimulated, ancient life is rebirthed as the calf breathes her first unwombed breath. Mama moos a newborn coo.

The landscape is theology. Not a religious theory, system, opinion, or purpose-driven theology, but a theology of place, connection, siblingship, relation, ordinary, and ancestors: of the common. Landscape whispers theology as we walk a rabbit trail or when backwash surf shifts beach sand below our feet, or when our eye catches the sun bending off a downtown building.  The mystical becomes palpable when landscape, creation, and amnion boundaries fade.

When we imagine beyond ourselves, beyond any construct that prioritizes humanity, our interior unveils creation’s amnion. The unveiling allows our bodies to recognize systems, and their institutions have walled us from our indigeneity; in turn, we can begin to discern that our natural, unstructured being of birth remains wholly within creation’s womb. Here, within the amnion, the indigenous invites our siblingship. For throughout landscape’s breadth there is nothing like us: mountain or prairie, oak tree, river, cow or elk, vole, wolf, cloud or galaxy, moon, star, sea urchin or pelican, barn owl, finch, or nit. Landscape theology of indigeneity binds the natural, sacred, profane, and mundane. And we are natural wonders of that transcendent siblingship.

Much might be said of Native American Heritage Month. From the creational and theological, this is a time to remember our natural organic siblingship. To live with the genuineness of indigeneity; of being ever wombed; of being ever intimate; of being ever alive, of being ever reshaped. To know creation’s fullness lives in the morrow of your bones is to live the exquisite sacrament of a newborn calf.

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Rev. Dave Bell is a DSF/PSR graduate (M.Div./1999) and serves as Minister for Indigenous Justice: Center of Indigenous Ministries (DOC).