God's Country

The ancient ones believed the Grand Canyon was the womb of the Earth from which people emerged. I refer to the Ancestral Pueblos, an ancient culture of Native Americans who settled in the American Southwest around 1,400 years ago. Ranging from the canyonlands of Arizona and Utah over the Rocky Mountains to the Colorado Plateau, these groups thrived in demanding environments by building their houses inside the cliff walls, strategically chosen to take advantage of the winter sun and summer shade.

Inside the cliff dwellings, the Ancestral Pueblos built houses six to eight feet high off of level ground.  They also dug a kiva, essentially a circular basement used for ceremonial get-togethers. The kivas often had roofs, and ladders were used to descend into the underground chamber.  Inside, they lit fires, and the smoke would filter through ventilation in the ceiling.  Kivas undoubtedly had practical purposes like staying warm during the winter and staying cool during the summer, but the kivas were also symbolic. A sipapu, a hole much like a belly-button on the floor, represented a portal to the underworld.  The Grand Canyon, then, could be interpreted as the kiva of the Earth.

The Ancestral Pueblos left no written record, so it is only possible to catch glimpses of their lives through archaeological finds.  Little is known of their religion except through comparisons with the Ancestral Pueblos’ modern counterparts.  Pueblos pray to kachinas, spirits in charge of nature’s forces, and their beliefs are centered on harmony between humankind and the health of the Earth.

For an American living in a predominately Christian nation, it is common to label an awe-inspiring, vast land as “God’s country.”  When I hike into the Grand Canyon, however, I see the absence of God.  Instead, I see a different kind of faith.

I don’t know much about geology, so I have to believe the experts. Over a billion years ago, volcanic islands collided with the North American continent, and magma seeped through the cracks of the Earth’s crust.  This process formed the base layer of the canyon——a pinkish granite. Then a shallow and muddy sea filled North America from western Montana to the Great Lakes, and a green layer of shale was formed.  Around 280 million years ago came the sandstone enriched with iron, which gives the land a red hue. The Colorado River weaseled its way through the cliffs and eroded the rocks during an ongoing process that began a few million years ago.

If the ages of these rocks are believed to be true, the Bible’s estimation of the world’s birthday is refuted. I don’t believe in the Bible or in any god, but I don’t think that challenging a sacred tradition should be taboo. I recognize that I am uninformed, both in geology and spirituality, but I have a choice as to whom I believe:  a priest or an archaeologist.  I have no way of fully understanding how geologists can pinpoint dates of rock formations and trace their evolution through continental and tectonic changes unless I become an expert.  Until then, belief in their findings remains a faith.

 

If the oldest rock in the Grand Canyon is over a billion years old and the Bible claims that God created the world six thousand years ago, it is a contradiction to say that the Grand Canyon is God’s country. How you wrestle with that conundrum is an internal debate, but I am more concerned with another matter. Many Native American religions pay deep homage to the natural world.  Natives worshiped the sun and danced for rain.  On the other hand, the dominant Christian image has little to do with Earth but mostly of heaven.  In comparison to Native American beliefs, Christianity makes Earth seem like an afterthought. 

I was raised as a Catholic, but, like most Americans, I watched football more frequently than I attended church. Religion was never thoroughly discussed at family get-togethers; it was only a tradition of beliefs that were never stated and never questioned.  Every few weekends my mother would take me and my brothers to church, and I would bring my Gameboy and play Pokemon while the priest delivered his sermon. I don’t remember any of the sermons, only the constant exercise of standing and getting down on my knees.  My family, like most in America I would assume, half-assed churchgoing so that we could cover our asses during the final day of judgment.

This acceptance of infrequency sparked me to abandon my religion. I saw my immediate relatives using religion in two ways: when it was convenient for them to ease pain or to incite fear.  And all of it dealt with the admission into heaven and the avoidance of hell.  If someone died, they consoled themselves with the belief that they’re “in a better place,” namely, heaven, which is a much less depressing notion than to believe that the dead are conscienceless worm-food decomposing in expensive boxes under the soil.

 

In order to reach this executive suite in some obscure location I assumed to be beyond the clouds, a dutiful Catholic was expected to follow a set of rules:  pledge allegiance to Jesus, don’t cheat on your wife or borrow your neighbor’s lawn mower without returning it.  Any alternative would result in burning in an eternal fire.  I could hardly stand taking showers with sunburned skin, so, of course, I wanted to avoid that horrific future.  With these rules, however, there is a catch:  if you break one, you can still get into heaven if you confess your sins.

 

This loophole shredded any credibility I held in what I already believed to be a fallible institution.  The role of my behavior seem less significant than the thoughts in my head. Should a well-behaved atheist be denied admission before a murderous believer who said he was sorry?  There is so much focus on how to conduct myself strictly for the afterlife, but what about my current life, the only one I know with certainty exists?  And what about my relation to the planet and my devotion to the betterment of my species?

I’m not saying there is no god, but the one I’ve been presented with surely prefers his own paradise over the sphere of rock upon which he claims the ground is cursed.  In Genesis, the earth is associated with submitting to sinful behavior compared to the Ancestral Pueblos’ beliefs that the earth is sacred and nature is benevolent. So then, how does one rectify the disparity between these connotations?  And how does one deal with the understandings of the natural world and a religion with histories and dates that contradict modern discoveries? 

Is it possible to convince oneself of separate, competing beliefs?  Can one believe in plate tectonics, erosion, and the metamorphosis of rocks and still leave room for a credible god?  Or must one believe that all those things are god:  that god is not a man with a conscience who created the canyon but god is a creating force?  In other words, god would be the faceless and formless force behind continents colliding and rivers eroding the cliffs.  That seems less of a Christian god and more of a Native American spirit. 

  

When you gape at the enormity of the Grand Canyon and proclaim it as God’s country, consider how convoluted that thought is. One could interpret that statement in several ways that don't necessarily mesh. Ancestral Pueblos believed this to be a sacred place, the Earth’s kiva, while Christians may believe this to be a wonder of god’s creation.  Others, including myself, believe in the age of the rocks and a billion year process that is ongoing.  All of these beliefs attempt to fill a void in a past that, in the present moment, can only be imagined.