Every Step Is Home: Spiritual Geography from Appalachia to Alaska (Lori Erickson) -- Review
EVERY STEP IS HOME: Spiritual geography from Appalachia to Alaska. By Lori Erickson. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2023. 211 pages.
When I travel, I've been known to
visit churches, especially cathedrals, to such an extent that my spouse will
complain when I want to visit another church. Perhaps the reason I want to do
this has more to do with the spiritual dimensions of these sites than the
architecture and aesthetics involved. Though, as a church historian, many of
these sites have historical interest. At least that’s my rationale for wanting
to visit such sites. We all have reasons for choosing the sites we visit when
we travel. We may even have an interest in the spiritual dimensions of such
sites. They do not have to be churches or other religious buildings such as
mosques, synagogues, and Temples, for them to have spiritual dimensions. They
could be volcanoes or lights in the sky. What is often needed for the traveler
to appreciate the spiritual dimensions of a site is a guide, someone who has a
special interest in spiritual journeys.
The author of Every Step Is
Home: A Spiritual Geography from Appalachia to Alaska, Lori Erickson, is
just the person to help readers discern and discover the spiritual dimensions
of geography, especially those sites that lie beyond the usual religious buildings
(the ones I like to visit). Erickson is by profession a travel writer who has a
special interest in spiritual journeys. Every Step Is Home is the second
book by Erickson that I read and reviewed. I previously reviewed her book Near the Exit: Travels with the Not-So-Grim Reaper (Westminster John Knox Press,
2019). In that rather intriguing book, Erickson invites the reader to join her on
a journey to places where death is lifted up in some way, and which helped her
come to grips with death. While Erickson is a deacon in the Episcopal Church
and thus a committed Christian, she has what one might call esoteric spiritual
interests that take her beyond those cathedrals that I love visiting. What is
true for Near the Exit, which took her to places as far-flung as the
pyramids of Giza and encounters with the Māori of New Zealand, this book stays
closer to home. This time the focus is not on sites necessarily connected with
death.
The subtitle of Every Step Is
Home reveals the context for this conversation about spiritual journeys. In
this book, we encounter "A Spiritual Geography from Appalachia to
Alaska." Most of the journeys and encounters described in this book
occurred either during the COVID pandemic, which made travel challenging, or
shortly thereafter.
In her Prologue, which focuses on a
set of effigy mounds in her own Iowa backyard, Erickson confesses that as “a travel
writer who specializes in holy places, I’m embarrassed to say that for most of
my life I’ve ignored this spiritual treasure in my own backyard” (p. 1). That
spiritual treasure would be "The Marching Bears of Iowa," a set of
effigy mounds standing on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. One needn’t
be a travel writer focusing on spiritual things to ignore or miss what is close
at hand. Perhaps it’s something like a pandemic that limits travel to take
stock of what is close at hand. As for the spiritual dimensions of these
mounds, which failed to catch her attention until COVID forced her to connect
with spaces close to home, she discovered that the Marching Bears, which form
part of the Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, bears signal that “the spiritual
path calls for subtlety and discernment.” That is, “just as it’s easy to
overlook these mounds, it’s easy to miss the sacred that threads through all of
life” (p. 2). She speaks of having a restless spirit that causes her to feel
like organized Christianity, an entity she doesn’t wish to leave behind, can
feel “like a room with its windows shut” (p. 2). For that reason, she seeks to
explore those places like ancient effigy mounds that speak of spiritual things,
even if they’re not rooted in her own Christian faith.
Keeping in mind that just as she
began work on this book the COVID pandemic hit, curtailing her ability to
travel, the focus on sites in the United States, which she could reach with the
camper that she and her husband Bob used for traveling, made it possible to get
to places that are rather out of the way, places like Chaco Canyon in a remote
part of New Mexico. There are places described here that did require other
forms of travel. These include a visit to Alaska to view the Northern Lights,
as well as a trip to Hawaii so they could visit sites connected with Pele
(volcanoes).
Much of the book centers on sites
such as the Effigies of Iowa, the buildings constructed by an ancient people in
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico with an apparent interest in astronomy, and the effigy
mounds in Ohio, including the Serpent Mound, all of which have spiritual
components. There are also reflections on trees that emerged from a visit to
the Redwoods in California (the Redwoods are quite magnificent, so I can understand
how they might have spiritual significance), as well as a reflection about the
spiritual dimensions of water, as revealed in hot springs in the mountains of
Oregon (I found this interesting since I grew up in Oregon, and while I know of
the geothermal potential found there, I did not know that so many hot springs
existed In Oregon that might have spiritual significance). We visit a cave in
Tennessee, which contains a variety of ancient drawings and etchings that date
to a period extending from 900 to 1600 CE. You might ask why we should be interested
in such places as a dark cave with ancient drawings. Erickson answers this
question, writing that "being in the cave made me realize how almost all
of my most significant spiritual experiences have had a physical trigger."
Then she piques my interest when she adds that "stepping inside a
cathedral, for example, and being overwhelmed by the echoing interior space."
She then mentions other spiritual triggers such as standing at the edge of a
canyon and “watching the light play across its peaks and valleys,” or “walking
on a beach and hearing the waves crash rhythmically” (p. 125). She also speaks
of animals, such as the Buffalo (Bison) of South Dakota. A visit to Custer
State Park, and a Buffalo Roundup, allows her to explore how animals figure in
spirituality. That is true even in Christianity, which has more echoes than we
might imagine. Remember that Jesus is often referred to as the Lamb of God and
the Holy Spirit is symbolized by a dove.
While I still love my cathedrals,
which have a very Christian expression of spirituality, Erickson's book Every Step Is Home serves as an invitation to open ourselves to those physical
triggers, that invite us to dive deeper into the ways of the Spirit. Most of
the sites, perhaps all of them discussed here do not have specific Christian
connections. But can we not learn to experience deep spirituality from our
encounters with nature and the creations of ancient peoples, especially here in
the United States/North America? Native American spirituality has much to teach
us, especially when it comes to valuing the wisdom offered by nature.
Nevertheless, Erickson writes that on their departure from Chaco Canyon, knowing
that it was unlikely they would return due to the remoteness of the place, she
reflected on the fact that “some places you visit but shouldn’t remain, because
they’re part of your path but not your destination.” Here is an important word
for us about that organized religion that exists for us— “maybe that’s why we
need our local churches and synagogues and mosques, the places where we put
down spiritual roots. A kind of alchemy can occur there too, transformations
created by ordinary human interactions, of having to put up with people who
irritate you and be with them when they’re dying of meeting budgets and
cleaning floors and all the other details that go into sustaining a community
of faith” (p. 200).
There is wisdom in this concluding word of Every Step Is Home.
Pilgrimages take us to places where we experience the divine, and yet they
generally are not places we stay. Ultimately, we return to those spiritual places
that serve as our spiritual homes, homes that generally have institutional
dimensions. Both the pilgrimage and the home are necessary. It’s often the pilgrimages
to cathedrals and a grove of trees that can help us keep that spiritual
balance. As she notes in her closing sentence: “Just keep your heart open and
the spirit will appear” (p. 201). With the guidance offered here, we can open ourselves to the Spirit as we explore sites near and far, some of which Erickson has revealed to us.
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