La Querencia

Last weekend, Lesley and I had the privilege of wandering around Yosemite National Park for the best part of two days. What an absolutely amazing place! The crowds were not as bad as we had feared, though there were hundreds of people in the park. We entered from the East on the Tioga pass, and were simply stunned by the scenery. However, when we reached the Yosemite valley it rendered us (almost) speechless. Without actually being there, it's difficult to appreciate the sheer immensity of the cliffs towering above. Looking down on the valley, from the tunnel viewing area, the trees obscured the cars and the campsites. No wonder John Muir was enthralled by Yosemite, and spent so much of his life striving to protect it.

I bought a small book of Ansel Adams' prints, and saw some of his original photographs in the small gallery that bears his name. Included in the book Yosemite is a quote from Adams, taken from Charlotte Mauk's book of selected writings Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada. Adams writes: "That first impression of the Valley - white water, azaleas, cool fir caverns, tall pines and stolid oaks, cliffs rising to undreamed-of heights, the poignant sounds and smells of the Sierra, the whirling flourish of the stage stop at Camp Curry with its bewildering activities of porters, tourists, desk clerks, and mountain jays, and the dark green-bright mood of our tent - was a culmination of experience so intense as to be almost painful. From that day in 1916, my life has been colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra."

Then, in his introduction to the book of photographs, Michael L. Fischer, quotes Barry Lopez on the Spanish concept of la querencia. This is, he says, "a place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one's strength of character is drawn." Fischer goes on to describe Yosemite as Adams' la querencia, a place of strength and of connection to the infinite.

It struck me that this is exactly what the Church is called to be - a place of strength and security, where we can be inspired to serve purposes beyond ourselves, where we see ourselves as small yet far from insignficant, a place where God bends down to touch our souls with eternity.

Interestingly, when speaking of the need to defend Yosemite, Fischer quotes the father of American environmentalism, John Muir, who was of Scottish Presbyterian stock. "National Parks have always been subject to attack by despoiling gain-seekers and mischief-makers of every degree from Satan to Senators, eagerly to make everything immediately and selfishly commercial. Thus, long ago a few enterprising merchants utilized the Jerusalem temple as a place of business instead of a place of prayer... ".

Defending the sanctity of the Church is no less noble a task than protecting the wilderness of the Sierras. If the gathering of God's people is to be la querencia for a new generation, it must have less to do with the pursuit of personal esteem, and much more to do with sitting, silently, in awe and wonder at our God.