A Power No One Can Own
The Ludwig family has just returned from a long road trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was our first time there, and though I am steadfastly a “beach person”, not usually wooed by mountains and forest, I will admit that I was absolutely dazzled by Yellowstone. It was unlike anything I have ever seen before, and I was as amazed as my children were by the plumes of steam that burst forth from nooks and crannies in the rocks, the rainbow-colored pools of mineral water, and the incredible animals that roam free and unhindered across the wild landscape. It was truly a natural marvel, and it is perhaps simplest to describe our family’s adventure in one word: wow.
We are certainly not the first people to be “wowed” by Yellowstone, and this thread of wonder seems to extend throughout its history. On our trip we learned that the Indigenous Peoples of the area regarded Yellowstone as a sacred place, one which offered abundant natural resources and held deep spiritual significance. Even in the 1800s, when the region began to be explored by white settlers, there was some sort of recognition that Yellowstone was a land apart, a place that could not be corralled or conquered. In an era of rabid westward expansion, when pioneers were hungry for new lands to dominate and own, it was a revolutionary idea that Yellowstone should be, in the words of geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden, “as free as the air or water”. There was a collective sense that Yellowstone, somehow, was beyond our powers to tame, and it was made a National Park in 1872, when the leaders of the time agreed: this is a place so wonderous and mighty that no one can own it.
This fascinating history made me think of our God, the creator of Yellowstone, one who is even more powerful and untamable than the park itself. Every towering geyser, every sparkling pool, every howling grey wolf in Yellowstone is a tangible expression of the wildness of God; and yet while humankind recognized that no one could possibly lay claim to a place as prodigious as Yellowstone, we have spent centuries arguing about who gets to lay claim to God. The splintered Christian church is full of denominations and traditions that are sure that God is only theirs, that His truth is confined within their walls, “owned” by their church alone. We want to limit He who is limitless, to possess He who is unpossessable, and make him ours.
How silly it would be to try to own one of the grizzly bears of Yellowstone, with his thick, shaggy fur, long black claws, and his wild, fierce mouth, and to claim him as “mine”. And yet we do this with God all the time. I, in my identity as a Catholic woman, am susceptible to unconsciously thinking of God as a Catholic God, as if he belongs exclusively to my church, as if Catholicism has the trademark and sole rights to the One True God. But God, like Yellowstone, belongs to none of us and all of us, within the Christian church and indeed, beyond it. God is so much bigger than our capacity to contain him.
Yellowstone, too, is a park so grand (3,471 square miles!) that is has five public entrances, and millions of people from all over the world descend upon those five entrances every year to experience the enchantment of being inside Yellowstone National Park. I wonder how our relationship with God might shift and reorient if we could imagine him to be as large and expansive as Yellowstone; if we could envision a God with many entrances and many paths to walk, and no one right way to explore and fall in love with the beauty that we find there.
I feel sure that, like our Yellowstone trip, that would be an adventure worth taking.
