Revelation 21:1-6 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth;
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no
more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven
from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice
from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell
with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with
them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning
and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.”
Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he
said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the
end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of
life.
The era of wars and destruction and space exploration and innovation and corrupt government was in full swing. Folks were likely hoping for God’s presence with them, hoping that God would take away all the ills created by humanity, hoping that, soon, all would be made new and fresh. They were beginning to understand that what humanity had done to the earth would need to be addressed and changed if God was going to bring them the gift of water. Not just any water, but the water of life.
Life giving water. A new heaven and a new earth. No more pain, suffering or tears. These were the things God revealed when speaking in John’s vision. After the twenty mysterious and often misunderstood preceding chapters, God now revealed the glory of the end of time.
It’s all a matter of perspective…
When I envision a new heaven and a new earth, I don’t have to go far. For me, it is not someplace in the future, but it is a place I can go anytime. I can I feel the presence of God envelop me with security and peace there. It is a memory, yes, but it is also a place where I can still go to feel the Holiness of living and see the beauty of creation. It’s a place I love and where, if God could choose anywhere to lay down and rest among mortals, I think it would be here. It is my heaven on earth.
It’s the space between the bluffs that hug the Mississippi River in Southeastern Minnesota. It’s not as green as the Seattle area, or as majestic as the mountains, or even as beautiful as the barrenness of the Badlands. The ocean doesn’t beat its waves upon the sand, but bald and golden eagles do build their nests in trees high above the river, because the fishing is grand.
The coulee, spelled c-o-u-l-e-e, is home to me. I’ve gone there my whole life, but I’ve never lived there. Handshaw Coulee rests on the west side of the Mississippi, nestled between bluffs. It is the homestead of my great-grandparents. It is where my parents now live.
For nearly as far back as I can remember I have spent time in this place. I vividly remember great grandma Grace shucking peas into her apron one day. But what I most fondly remember are the adventures we would take in the woods, climbing over boulders and fallen trees in the dried up creek beds, tramping in the fields, avoiding both cows and their ‘pies.’ It was magical, as a kid. I hoped a leprechaun would emerge from the hole at the base of a tree or that faeries would flit amongst the birds and one of them would grant me a wish. Wishes of childhood! Even then, I knew I was somewhere special.
Folk stories of Jesse James’ gang hiding the spoils of one of the robberies somewhere in this bluff kept us hoping to find some kind of treasure, so we hunted for it as we meandered along the creek banks, as we climbed into the hills in search of a cave. We never found any of these things, but what we did find, well, that is where this story leads.
As poor farmers who lived at the end of a rugged, rutted road, way back in the early 1900’s, my great grand family, didn’t have much. Their house was simple, their outbuildings worn. I don’t know when they got electricity. I know my dad’s parents met when Grandpa was hanging Western Union telegraph lines in the area.
Building a home near water was important. My great grandparents had a cistern that would draw water from the miles long aquifer that lay 145 feet below the surface. A windmill would pump the water into the 6 to 800 gallon cistern. To have fresh water, they would hand pump water from the cistern and haul it to where it was needed. My dad told me that his dad and uncle once pushed a pipe through the ground from the cistern into the barn so there would be a gravity flow of water available for the animals. Dad said he didn’t think there was running water into the house until sometime in the 1950’s.
When my grandparents married in 1927 they were given a portion of the land to build a home. They had an outdoor hand pump that reached into the same aquifer. When my dad’s mom died when she was 30, my grandpa abandoned the home. The house has since collapsed, but that pump is still operational—and the water is some of the coldest, freshest water I have ever tasted. If I let it touch my teeth, I can get an ice cream headache!
When we were old enough, we kids would wander by the creek, near the creek and sometimes in the creek. It was safer in late summer because most of the spring run-off would have dried up. I was always fascinated by the glittery rocks and kept my nose to the ground in search of something pretty to add to my collection. But there were places on our adventure that would provide a different sort of treasure hunt. Creeks bend and curve and meander through paths eroded through the limestone. At some of the more severe bends we would find a trash heap; the closer to the homestead, the larger the heap.
If you’ve ever driven by an old farm you’ve probably noticed a bunch of old cars, implements and run-down buildings. Burning barrels with a wisp of smoke were common back in the day. Garbage was buried, burned or dumped, and food scraps were fed to the animals. To be honest, I don’t know how much rural farming has changed.
All year round my great grand family would dump their trash, glass, tin and aluminum over the edge of the bank. Out of sight, out of mind. Even now, when the winter snows melts from the top of the bluff, the snowmelt rushes down the hill and into the valley. Depending on the winter, and on the speed of the spring melt, the water often floods the banks, carrying whatever is in the path downstream. Glass would shatter along the route. Tin would rust and tear and become jagged and sharp. Fabrics would shred and mildew until the sun would dry and bleach them. Decades of trash, of decay and broken things would wash down the creek, polluting the beauty and mystery of my childhood.
Mine wasn’t the only family living in the coulee, so theirs wasn’t the only trash. Since they lived at the beginning of the gullies, their trash would combine with the neighbor’s trash, tumbling towards Lake Pepin, collecting where the bluff rose again, stopping the larger pieces in the natural spring at the end of the coulee road. It was too dangerous for us to go there as kids.
It was fascinating, as a kid, to find really old bottles or kettles with holes or the curious metal frame from something-but-we-didn’t-know-what that had withstood their journey downstream. Plants would grow around the debris. Jack in the Pulpit, ferns, morel mushrooms, itching ivies, day lilies and wild geraniums would cover the trash heaps, because that is what nature does. It tries to make beautiful what blights it.
When Earth Day began in 1970, I was just a little girl, oblivious to what that meant. Over the next ten or so years, the attitude toward pollution slowly changed. The realization that this planet, created by God, was the only one we had and that we were killing it became, as I remember it, one of the radical calls to community organizing. Then there was the commercial where the Native American Chief looked upon the earth, littered and ugly, and a single tear streamed down his cheek. <Pause> What had we done?
I started to look at the coulee with new eyes. What if we cleaned up 80 years of trash? What could this land become? Would it become the New Earth promised in Revelation? Would we be able to wipe away the tears that we, through living and using this earth, had caused?
Sometime in the 80’s my parents purchased half of the land and I now felt a different kind of relationship and responsibility to it. But I have yet to act. The task of cleaning up acres of area surrounding the creek is daunting to me, and to add insult to injury, people still dump their trash and it still flows with the rushing spring waters downstream.
I’m not sure I understand how the trash in the coulee affects the aquifer or the natural springs in the coulee, or how, as the creeks join with the Mississippi, it affects the whole river downstream, but I know that it is only one coulee of thousands, so I know there is some impact. I’ve traveled along the Mississippi and have seen the negative changes in water quality from Itasca all the way to St. Louis, Missouri. And it isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s pretty stinky. If we expect God to freely give the thirsty among us water from the life-giving spring, we need to help keep the water pure and viable. What we do upstream, matters!
The most beautiful, holy place in my world is littered with rusting metal and broken glass and I am overwhelmed. I am unable to put a coulee clean-up into action, but I can do other things that affect the world I hope my future grandchildren can enjoy. We compost. We have a rain barrel. We recycle more than we throw away. I pick up trash in parking lots and on the street when I see it. These are small things, but impactful. What would happen if many people took a few extra moments to separate their trash or pick up the ugly mess left by another?
I hope that these efforts will make a difference for the future. I don’t think my great grand family had any idea that the ways they got rid of their trash would impact the future generations as much as it did. What is important is that four generations later, we are making efforts to preserve the earth in small and large ways and that what we do today impacts the future. And maybe, in another fifty years, the coulee will still be the holy place where I feel close to God and where God will come to rest among us.
Let us pray. Oh Holy One, You created this world and called it good. You taught Peter that everything you created had value. You revealed to John that the earth would be made new and that You would dwell with humankind. You sent your son, Jesus, to give us the last commandment to love each other as Jesus loved us. Remind us of all these things when we consider the choices we make to, for and in the earth. You loved us enough to create the beauty around us. We praise you! Amen.