Moving on to a new place

The very first post I wrote concerned what might give a certain location--Wooster, Izmir, Mokattam--its particular sense of place. Here I am thinking about that again, partly because of all the moves various Hamptons are making in August and partly because of the annotating I am doing for my new First Year Seminar course topic, which will examine the notion of freedom through the eyes of prisoners both political and criminal.

I have just reread Wilderness and Razor Wire: A Naturalist's Observations from Prison by Ken Lamberton, our last text of the course. He chronicles many of his 12 years in prison for a sex offense (as a teacher he ran off with one of his 14 year old students--his wife stood by him and helped him discover and atone for his tragic flaw/offense). Using the actual desert wilderness he observes through the prison yard fences, he explores his own internal wilderness and applies nature's lessons (those built in by nature's God) to human predicaments (his own in particular). Place becomes an important theme in the process, for of course he hates his actual brutal place but having been there has been his literal and metaphoric salvation.

Allow me a couple of quotes from near the end of this powerful little book. "But I wonder how many better places there are [than prisons] to set aside time to engage with nature. How many better places there are to allow nature to change some viewpoints, viewpoints like the significance of weeds, for instance" (145). And..."My cell is dark beyond the glow of my reading lamp. The air smells like dust, like canyoncountry, like wilderness. To the eighteenth-century romantic, wilderness had to arouse awe. William Cronon writes, 'In the theories of Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, William Gilpin, and others, sublime landscapes were those rare places on earth where one had more chance than elsewhere to glimpse the face of God.' My mood brightens. Along with being cold and windy and depressing, this place also inspires me. Here, I have met with God" (148). And finally, "As I approach the end of my sentence, I think more and more about what horizons my life will possess without all this razor wire...I love this state [Arizona, where he thinks his family will move from], its drive-by desert and sky islands, those regions beyond the fences. I wasn't born here, but Wendell Berry says being native simply means knowing where one is. I know where I am. I have become part of this place" (218).

Those of us in the IVCF family often speak about Cedar Campus, IV's student training camp in the upper peninsula of Michigan, as a place where "students meet God." All of the Hamptons have at various points in time, that's for sure. But now we must find God in a library, in a lab, in new friends and ministry opportunities. We will because God is there waiting to meet them (us). Right now this has not yet become reality....Jenny is not yet settled in her new apartment, new office (which had to be closed for this week because someone spilled mercury as they were cleaing it out for her), new college, new job. It hasn't helped that her car has broken down twice since her move, necessitating purchasing a new one sooner than she had wanted. But Aug 24, the first day W&J's new physics prof teaches her first class, is coming soon. We load Ellen's "new" car and a rented van tonight to take her tomorrow to UNC and her new grad school career. New people, new ideas, unsettling yet exciting. "Dear Lord, help each of them find their places, where they will meet you in many surprising ways of growth, in their new places. May they become part of those places. Amen."