By the Way: Writing-on-Stone a sacred place to leave a mark on us

By Medicine Hat News on August 18, 2018.

We camped at Writing-on-Stone last month after being told by numerous people what a wonderful place it is — and we were not disappointed. The camping was great, the weather was hot and the setting in the badlands was stunning.

One of the mornings we took the guided tour to see the rock art in the archeological preserve. Our tour guide clearly loved her job. And frankly, without her, I would have missed many of the details — the people and their clothes, the different animals, even a car — and how they date the images based on what they depict.

She also emphasized the area as a sacred space to the Blackfoot people — a spiritual place of vision quests and encounters with the Creator — not just in the past, but also in the present. The art is more than pictures in stone — they are seen as gifts in a place of spiritual depth.

As I reflected on this sense of sacred space, it made me ponder the great number of initials and names that have been carved into the rocks over the years, often right over top of these Indigenous pictures, and even after parts of the park have been accessible only by guided tour for decades. On our last morning hike, we came across some fresh graffiti, with the pointed rock used to carve the names still lying right underneath.

It makes me wonder if we’ve lost this sense of sacred space. We say things like “God is everywhere” and “I don’t need to go to church to worship God.” And it’s not that those things aren’t true: God is everywhere, and church buildings don’t have a monopoly of the places where God can be encountered. But, we can’t be everywhere, we can only be in particular places, and so God will encounter us in particular places, too.

Deep down we know that place is important. It’s why we have this drive to carve our initials in the rock (and at Writing-on-Stone we shouldn’t). We want to make our mark, and show we’ve been there. Or how we always have our phones out, ready to take pictures everywhere we go. Somehow we feel like we have to capture the sense of the place — and taking that selfie shows we’ve been there.

The Celtic Christian spiritual tradition speaks of “thin places” — specific places where the line between heaven and earth, between God and humans, between eternity and now, seems to be closer: where the presence of God seems to break through more easily. Maybe it’s fair to think of Writing-on-Stone as one of those “thin places”; one of many sacred spaces that are there not for us to visit and leave our mark, but for them, and for God through them, to leave a mark on us.

Rev. Jeff Decelle is pastor at Unity Lutheran Church.

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