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Episode 1: America's Holy Ground
18 Plays1 year ago
Interview with Bruce Barkhauer and Brad Lyons.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to The Table, where we explore the intersection of spirituality, culture, everyday life, and all that that implies. In short, we'll talk about what we want. I'm your host, Kyle Herron.
Meet the Authors: Brad Lyons and Bruce Barkauer
00:00:18
Speaker
And in this, the first episode, we are joined by two wonderful authors, Brad Lyons and Bruce Barkauer.
Exploring Spirituality in Nature
00:00:26
Speaker
They're the co-authors of the inspiring devotional, America's Hold the Ground, 61 Faithful Reflections on Our National Parks. This devotional in this book offers a unique perspective on how we can find sacred moments and the beauty of the world around us. Today, we'll dive in to the inspiration behind this project. We'll talk about Brad and Bruce's favorite parks. Most importantly, we'll explore how connecting with nature can deepen our spiritual lives.
00:00:56
Speaker
So whether you're a seasoned park enthusiast or someone looking to find more meaning in your outdoor adventures, this episode is sure to resonate with you.
Behind the Scenes: Recording Challenges
00:01:07
Speaker
Let's get started.
00:01:11
Speaker
I have a confession to make. This episode was actually recorded in July of 2024. Why did it take so long? Because I found out I have a few learning curves, not the least of which,
00:01:25
Speaker
is learning how to hit record when I'm interviewing somebody. So you'll notice in a moment the abrupt beginning to the conversation I have with Brad and Bruce. Usually when I talk to folks, I ask them to share a table that's been really important in their lives. And I promise you that Brad and Bruce both shared some wonderful stories, but again, I forgot to hit record.
00:01:52
Speaker
So um I promise you in future episodes, you will hear table stories from different folks and just how they shape our lives and and our places where we can have a wonderful conversation, like the one I had with Brad and Bruce. Bruce is the Minister for Faith and Giving for the Christian Church of Sables of Christ, and Brad is the President and Publisher of Chalice Media Group.
00:02:21
Speaker
also affiliated with the Christian Church Disciples of Christ. Earlier this summer, I approached Brad and asked him if he would be my guinea pig, my first ah interviewee for this new podcast. And he graciously obliged and joined with Bruce, and we just had a great conversation. So I'm going to let them introduce themselves, introduce their project,
00:02:47
Speaker
America's Holy Ground, which you can find extensive information about what they're doing at americasholyground dot.com, which I will also post on my website.
Living Faith in Today's World
00:02:56
Speaker
Welcome to thetable dot.com. um So let's join Brad and Bruce as we talk about America's Holy Ground.
00:03:05
Speaker
I've been thinking about what it means to live out my faith in this space and how to live that out in the context of our social climate. And there's so many ways of doing that because I've been using your book basically as a devotional, which is what it was intended for. Years ago, there was there was a video interview of Floyd Red Crow Westerman. He was an actor, Native American activist. And he talked about the spiritual connection to the land and the that you cannot live or survive successfully without having a spiritual connection to it. So when I look at your book, I'm like, well, I know two guys who went out and did
Inspiration and Creation of 'America's Holy Ground'
00:03:49
Speaker
that. So so what was the ah inspiration for going out? Did one of you call the other up and say, hey, you want to go on a road trip? How did this happen? I invited myself over to Bruce's house.
00:04:02
Speaker
True story. Yeah. So back in 2015, I was driving from St. Louis to the mountains of Western North Carolina for an event. I was carpooling with some other folks and I recognized that's a day and a half. um And so that's, that's too long of a drive for especially when you're coming back from that event because it's a very exhausting event. And so Bruce had perhaps intentionally perhaps accidentally said, hey, if you ever want to come by, come by. And I said, hey, you remember how you said that? So I ended up on Bruce's back patio. I think it was Father's Day of 2015, if I remember right. That's correct. Yeah. So I did literally invite myself over. Bruce, I'll let you pick it from there. I had been fortunate enough to receive a Lilly grant for
00:04:52
Speaker
what I'll call pastoral relief, ah time to decompress and get away from the renewal grants ah that Lilly hands out. And the structure of that grant, it was twofold. One was I had been saying for a number of years, it's awfully hard to be spiritual when you're so busy being religious. And I really wanted out of the the pressure cooker of of leading church for a period of time, just for a couple of months to kind of get myself refocused and re-centered.
00:05:29
Speaker
And I was very aware that my earliest imaginings of God beyond what I had learned in Sunday school, having grown up in the church, I was exposed to lots of God talk and in lots of biblical stories. But it was my own encounter in the natural world, of Canadian vacations, which my folks have been taking since before I was born. Our first real awakenings to mystery, our first real awakenings to otherness,
00:05:58
Speaker
Theophany, if you will, but awe happens in the natural world. It certainly was the case for me, and I wanted to reclaim that. In fact, my thesis around my writing for the grant was around rediscovering the awe of God in nature.
00:06:20
Speaker
six so My intent was was very selfish. It was a rather personal venture. My family joined me for some of it, but I went to see things that were big. I went to the Grand Canyon. I went on a whale watch out on the San Juan Islands off the Washington coast. I went to Mammoth Cave. I spent a couple of weeks at the ocean. I started at Niagara Falls, you know, big, awe, wonder.
00:06:47
Speaker
and took lots of pictures. and And when I finished all of that time, et cetera, I realized that there might be something here. I and just thought maybe there's something here for somebody else beside me. and And so when Brad was sitting on my back porch and we were sipping some of Kentucky's finest brown liquid,
00:07:09
Speaker
a buyer patch from right to brad What would you think about a devotion around the national park? Well, it just so happened that during that conversation, I was running a publishing company that had you know a very specific progressive Christian mindset to it. We had this conversation and thought about what could this actually be?
00:07:31
Speaker
I mentioned it to a couple of other members of our team and they were all over it, like the proverbial duck on a June buck. So we initially looked at this thinking, okay, 250 words per entry, there's 60 national parks, okay. ah Black and white photos, we can probably buy a few of those.
00:07:50
Speaker
But what really unleashed this project was the the realization that the National Park Service, being a government agency, many of its photo assets are public domain. And that really opened the gates for us to be able to do something beautiful. And so once we had that realization, we realized, OK, we can do every park, we can do every photos with every one.
00:08:16
Speaker
and we can do this in color. That's when the book really caught fire and in a great way.
Challenges in Publishing and Visits to Parks
00:08:23
Speaker
So Bruce and I started working on this and we we each got a small stipend to go do whatever kind of exploration needed to be done. and I used mine to fly to Los Angeles, rent a car with Courtney, my wife now, and we drove from Los Angeles to Seattle and went to nine national parks on the way, which was, I often say we were griswolding it when you think of you know Clark Griswold looking at Big Ben, shaking his shoulders twice, and on we went. We were we were in Yosemite,
00:08:55
Speaker
during the the big fires back there in, I think, 2017. And we ended up, unknowingly, we were on the front page of USA Today a couple of days later because there was a photographer taking pictures over our shoulder and asked us for our names and hometowns. And all of a sudden, we're like, well, it's a good thing that, you know,
00:09:11
Speaker
We're going to be home pretty soon because now the entire country knows that we're not home. Bruce and I had had kind of done a fantasy draft of all the parks. We knew, okay, which ones have you been to? Which ones have I been to? And so we we did back and forth and drafted the ones we wanted. And then we assigned the ones that we hadn't been to yet. So we knew we each had, you know, 31, actually just 30 at that point parks to write.
00:09:37
Speaker
So, you know, we we would come home, write those things, send them back and forth to each other, and edit each other's work and and keep moving from there. I remember Martin Luther King weekend of 2018 was when we finalized the photos. If you're going to make me look at the National Park Service Photo Archive, okay, fine.
00:09:59
Speaker
What a great way to spend a weekend. we We sent it to press during a government shutdown and that's kind of important to remember because government shutdowns have a way of making weird things happen. So we sent it to press and the government shutdown ended and we learned that they had added another national park, ah Indiana Dunes. And so we're like, do we add this now? Do we wait? So we actually,
00:10:25
Speaker
stopped the process, wrote Indiana Dunes probably in a couple of hours, pulled a single photo, added it, re-did the whole sequencing, retitled it because it now had 61 in the national, in the subtitle. and So we we like to think, although we have nothing to prove this, that we're the first and perhaps only book to be 61 national parks because they and then added number 62 in White Sands a year later during another government shutdown.
00:10:51
Speaker
so that that's we we occupy a very special niche in time when there were only 61 parks, there are 63 now. And so one of the things that we've done is when the two national parks have been added being White Sands and New River Gorge in West Virginia.
00:11:07
Speaker
We wrote up entries on that and we posted it on the website because we had said in the book, if there are new parks, we'll do this. And so that's kind of a fun thing to do is, oh, we got something to write. And so I've been to a couple of other parks since then that I know are there's been legislation proposed, but it hasn't made it through yet. So, you know, there's ah there's a couple of parks that if we ever find out their national parks, we're ready. We got those when we shared some of that out. and I've got to write a few more of them.
00:11:33
Speaker
So that that's the kind of maybe not short version, but the medium sized version of how this book came together. It was a lot of fun. There was there were no tier shed on this project. Absolute blast. So much fun to write.
00:11:48
Speaker
Well, that kind of helps answer one of my questions. That was, did you make it to all the parks? Because I was like, wow, I mean, there's 61 parks. And, you know, in reading through the book, I realized how little I've seen.
The Value of Road Travel and Nature
00:12:05
Speaker
of this country. but As a native Texan, I still have not been to Big Bay or Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I've not been there either. The one I had been to was New River Gorge before it became a park. So I was like, Hey, I can say I've been to that one. yeah I've seen the Grand Canyon. um There was a couple I knew years ago who traveled this country extensively. And I remember asking them, wow, i said you do you do you fly? you know do you how do you How do you get where you' you're going? And they said, oh, no, we we drive. I said, this country is too beautiful to fly right over it.
00:12:47
Speaker
and I wonder if you might you know expand on that in any way, ah to you know just about what what we're missing out when we don't go see these beautiful spaces.
00:13:03
Speaker
yeah As we record this, my parents are, as of the last text I got from my mom about 45 minutes ago, on a jet boat on the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon. And I will not hide that I am insanely jealous. And then tomorrow, they are crossing the border into British Columbia and coming through Banff and Yoho National Parks in Canada.
00:13:24
Speaker
There are some times I wish I didn't know what my parents were doing, because I know that what they are driving is incredible, and I've not seen it yet, and I want to, and it's beautiful, and it's ugly, and it's breathtaking, and it's weird, and it's gonna run the whole gamut. And that's one of the lovely things about North America. I mean, Canada, Banff is holy ground too. If we ever write an international one, Banff is the first one I write.
00:13:55
Speaker
I spent a lot of time in the backseat of my parents' car driving around the country. We once went to Los Angeles through Seattle. That was from Oklahoma City. That is a long road. We once went to Acadia National Park from Oklahoma City and came back through, I think, Kentucky. We have logged thousands and thousands and thousands of miles in the backseat of that car. And I think back about you know getting out of the car in Yellowstone and smelling the pine and the sulfur and marveling at the Grand Tetons, which are the mountains that we all drew as kids, right?
00:14:25
Speaker
you know, these these these places make it into our our imaginations and into our psyches, whether we know it or not. Well, part of it, too, takes intentionality. It's hard to get off the interstate because we're used to trying to get from point A to point B. But when we drive that way, we miss everything between point A. and I mean, it's not that there are beautiful views on some of our interstates. There are. I have been inspired by the view when when driving down the interstate at times. But but to get off the interstates and and get into the heart of the country You see the the the subtlety of some things that you otherwise would miss, the the beauty and the wonder, and there's ugly. you know There are places where we have terribly scarred the landscape, permanently scarred the landscape.
00:15:17
Speaker
ah there are There are places that it's hard to ever imagine them recovering from the way we have exploited their resources. you And that you know is fairly close to me living in in outside of Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana. you know Eastern Kentucky and mountaintop removal in in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky is ah is pretty devastating to to look upon it and and see the changes it has wrought in the landscape.
00:15:46
Speaker
and the damage it's done that seems irreversible. But there's all these other wonderful, beautiful spots and beautiful people. People who are willing to help you. People who, you know, when you stop for gas and you go in to pay because some of these places still don't have credit card kind of operations if you get far enough off the roads. um We'll tell you what you might miss if you don't go see it intentionally and they're and they're proud of it.
00:16:17
Speaker
ah that that that's there and there are all kinds of little waterfalls and ponds and lakes and small valleys that are filled with was beauty in places we've never heard of.
00:16:31
Speaker
I do want to jump back to where you started, Kyle, with with this tying to the land thing and in our stories.
Spiritual and Historical Ties to the Land
00:16:39
Speaker
The Scripture texts are very clear about our being tied to the earth and Adam from the earth, right, Adama? In the Hebrew is something we sometimes lose in English translation. The serving and protecting the garden for the benefit of both.
00:17:00
Speaker
Right? the The human beings can't flourish without the garden flourishing, but the garden needs the help and tending of the human beings to flourish, right? It's this this symbiotic relationship, this connection to the land that you are right. We cannot deny. And yes, the Native American stories do a beautiful job of that, as Brad and I discovered in our own research in the various places, wonderful stories.
00:17:27
Speaker
ideological stories of of, you know, where did something come from or where did words come from? Interesting, just interesting images and and and wonderful, delightful, imaginative stories that speak to a deeper truth.
00:17:44
Speaker
and And that was one of the joys of writing the book for me. And I think it was for Brad as well is because if it's a park we'd been to, we still did research. We still looked at more than just the date it became a park. We wanted to know about the people who were in that place pre-Columbian times, right? but Before we discovered it. And please note that's air quotes for those of you who are listening.
00:18:14
Speaker
that that knowing those people and how ancient some of the wonders of the land are, how they've been recounted in stories told in places made sacred long before our arrival on this continent.
00:18:29
Speaker
but was a beautiful and wonderful thing and that we've been able to find some of those stories and that they've been held within tribal lore and legacy is really important and we miss something if if we don't listen to those stories. And they as all good stories do, they teach us something about ourselves.
00:18:51
Speaker
right And so that was part of the joy of writing the book and why sometimes it was very hard to get into 250 words, especially for a preacher. guilt yeah I'm glad you you bring this up because one of the things I appreciate about what you did was you give context, some background, and then you know you acknowledge whatever damage we have done, ah the people that were once there before us, and and still find a way to ah help us connect to it in a way that's meaningful. um
00:19:36
Speaker
Yay. I appreciated the way you handled the Virgin Islands, which I did not know was also a national park, you know acknowledging the ah sort of the desecration of the land with ah through the slave trade and and and the, ah I guess, was was it the sugar plantation? Sugar industry, yes.
00:19:58
Speaker
um you know I'm reminded of Wendell Berry's observation that there are no secular and sacred spaces. There are only sacred and desecrated spaces. yeah And we've certainly got our share of desecrated spaces here. and this you know the The great thing about your book is it's intended to go with you. You know like you go in,
00:20:21
Speaker
Before you go in, I like the suggestion, before you go in, read about it. Do some reflection on it before you see the space, and then let it speak to you. Thinking about the the context of some of these parks, yeah know you mentioned Virgin Islands and its scarring. and when you When you understand the history of some of these parks, and when you understand the greater American story that the the landscape bears with it,
00:20:51
Speaker
sometimes you inadvertently find yourself stumbling into history. So I think of when I was driving to Congaree National Park in South Carolina, we were driving up from the coast toward Columbia and we were driving through cotton, cotton country. And, you know, we're seeing white balls all over the place. And there was this haunting revelation, realization of how long this land had been harvested for cotton and the tyrannical systems that had been in place. And ah more than more than any other place I think I've been to since I've kind of had this new awareness around landscape since we started writing this, that stretch just it felt creepy in a lot of ways. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it.
00:21:37
Speaker
I think going back to to talking about the the history that we don't know and what you learn as you explore these places. I think in the in the context of American culture right now, there is this movement from one side of of culture to to ah put a sugar glaze on everything and not look at the hard aspects of what we've done to each other and to ourselves.
00:22:03
Speaker
And that's a nice way of putting it, I think. I think that as we look at, you know what what do as we learn about our country, and I think this goes beyond the national parks that we think about, but if we think about the larger national park service, all 400, and I think there's about 430 give or take units right now, you the national park service truly is a steward of our history and our culture for better and for worse.
00:22:30
Speaker
um And so as much as I love the national parks, I love some of the smaller units too. ah Not even two weeks ago, we were driving to Colorado for vacation and we had spare time as we were coming across Kansas. And on a lark, we stopped at Brown versus Board of Education National Historic Park.
00:22:49
Speaker
thinking we wouldn't you know we go in to see what it's about, get back on the road. Well, an hour and 15 minutes later, we had a much better picture of what all had happened there and you know why why they chose the Topeka School District to serve in as as the antagonist in that lawsuit.
00:23:06
Speaker
they They could have gone anywhere, but they chose to go for what the park ranger described as the Cadillac of segregated schools, because if we can prove it in Topeka, we can prove it in Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi. um those are You think about things like strategy. Can you tell which entry I'm going to write next, Bruce? You think about how this all comes together. I live in St. Louis and I'm 13 miles from Gateway Arch National Park. But one of the features of of that park is a statue of Fred Scott.
00:23:35
Speaker
the enslaved person who was who sued for his freedom when his owner moved to a free state. And the Supreme Court said, no, it didn't work that way. um And so, you know, that's another step in that historical narrative that these 430 units in their various ways ah weave together in some interesting ways. And that's one of the things that kind of scares me about this revisionist history is we're hiding these stories.
00:24:04
Speaker
and trying not to teach these things. And that that's not a good way for us to run a country that is going to be one that's united or it's growing or healthy.
Reflections on History and Personal Growth
00:24:18
Speaker
These are tough times. two It deprives us of the opportunity to learn from our history.
00:24:27
Speaker
It's, it's, it's an abomination to whitewash it. I'll start there. That's, we can, we can begin there. Don't miss those words. and That's, that's the way authoritarian nationalistic countries tend to run, right? Is that our history is the best history because we wrote it.
00:24:49
Speaker
ah And it's not usually the history we lived. it's the it's the It's the redacted history that makes us the heroes of every story and the good guys in every scenario. And therefore we can do no wrong and therefore everyone else is wrong, et cetera. and We don't need to explore beyond just my offering that as a problem. It it certainly is. and And one of the concerns I have is that While we are given dominion over the natural world, according to Genesis, we'll throw this back into a scriptural context, what the heck, that dominion does not mean mindless exploitation in the mind of the Hebrew author of the abundance, or better said, sufficiency that the earth provides to sustain all of its inhabitants, both human and non-human,
00:25:40
Speaker
um depends on stewardship, so there isn't mindless exploitation. It depends on the flow of resources, so they don't get stopped up in the 1% and the 5%, and therefore we have people who don't have health care, don't have access to clean water, don't have shelter and housing, etc. There's theological work we can do around this.
00:26:04
Speaker
that that's probably important for us to think about. But the other thing is you don't have to arrive at the same conclusions that Brad and I have. right There are a couple things about the book that that I appreciate, and Brad is responsible for for the biggest one, which is the questions that follow at the end of each essay. That was Brad's format, that we would each come up with questions to ask it the that were open, that you could draw your own conclusions from.
00:26:33
Speaker
ah so you can enter into the experience you can own your response to it and you can decide what if anything you want to do about that some of the questions are more thought provoking than others and that's okay so some are meant to to have you sit with them for a while and maybe be uncomfortable that's okay. and We don't expect that your experience of the park will be the same as ours.
00:26:57
Speaker
because these these do impact us all differently because of the nature of who we are as humans. But we want you to take something away from the encounter that has the potential for a transformational seed, if you will. if it It has the potential through the spiritual discipline of prayer and reflection to motivate you to to encounter the world,
00:27:25
Speaker
or other people or whatever differently to to make open that possibility. And I think that's that's a beauty of the way in which Brad as a publisher laid this out. It was a great gift to to us, I think, and to those who read it. The other thing that fascinates me as I read the book and I have, you know, other people have commented on it, it's very hard to tell. We only know because we wrote them who wrote which one.
00:27:52
Speaker
And I'm beginning to forget sometimes. It's really kind of interesting to us, to me in particular, that while we are very different people, we're almost a generation apart, certainly i more than a half a generation apart in age.
00:28:08
Speaker
that that our voice is very similar. And I approach it as a theologian, and and Brad approaches it as as a publisher and a journalist, really. Yeah. and that That despite those weird differences, if you were to line it out on paper, it would look a little weird. How did we come up? I mean, the only one we wrote together was the 61st. And we wrote it on on the on the phone.
00:28:36
Speaker
yeah because I was sitting in my recliner. that was I didn and did all the work. You know, we ah we, we imagine what the theme and what that might look like together is the only one we did together. And, sweet but the voice is remarkably similar to me anyway, as I read what we've come up with, and I hope that that
00:29:04
Speaker
adds a dimension to it as well. The people, oh, this is what Bruce thought or this is what Brad thought that it it's more cohesive than that. Bruce, you remember the theme of the one that we co-wrote of Indiana Dunes? Remind me. Compromise. Compromise. That's that's right. That's exactly right.
00:29:26
Speaker
ah mean It makes sense. yeah it It came together far easily far more easily than you might and expect from that summary. You both hit on so some issues that i would I hoped would maybe naturally come out of this conversation. and that Those are like the narratives that we tell.
00:29:52
Speaker
about the land in which we live. And I appreciate you grounding it, Bruce, in such a theological and biblical way. Because as as a Christian, a person of faith, that that matters to to many of us. And I think there are a lot of folks who so also Christian that might not and understand dominion in the same way that that you've expressed here. And that's a challenge ah for us is, you know, going forward as we continue to hopefully try and take care of these spaces. There is a movement to to shrink
00:30:32
Speaker
some of our national monuments and to open up our natural wonders for things that will forever scar the landscape in the name of commerce, ah who profit to be very honest. It's not because we can't find these things other places. And I think that's something Americans, but but I wonder if they would feel differently if they went and saw these spaces.
00:31:02
Speaker
and When they come away thinking, I don't think we want to touch this. Can we leave it alone? you know and And I think that's going back to what I brought up in the beginning. If you don't have that connection, you don't know. You might not even care. That's deeply concerning to me as both a person of faith and as an American.
00:31:27
Speaker
This isn't the first time we've had these conversations. The national parks were born out of these conversations. you know when When the transcontinental railroads, plural, were being built after the Civil War, was almost simultaneous when when we were discovering these places like Yellowstone and Glacier and Crater Lake had some special value to them. and so the In the early stages of those national those earliest national parks, there was this outright tension and disagreement about how should we develop these things.
00:31:58
Speaker
And even as the parks were developed, people like Fred Harvey and others found ways to make them commercially viable ventures yeah in in terms of lodging and and hotels, ah you know meat restaurants, et cetera, those those types of things. And souvenir shops popped up, and all of that sort of goes with it. But it's nicely agreed we weren't going to pick on souvenir shops. Well, but one of the things I love about taking the Blue Ridge Parkway is that none of that stuff is available on the road itself. You have to get off the road. It runs right through very large cities like Asheville, North Carolina, you know, but you wouldn't know when you're driving on the Parkway that that city is there, right? And so there's no gas stations and there's no Chachki shops and there's no burger joints until, you know, if you're driving but to the west, you you get to this this place called Gatlinburg.
00:32:54
Speaker
And everything that wanted to live along those 400 miles of road is stacked up and waiting for you in triplicate.
00:33:04
Speaker
Right outside Great Smoky Mountain National Park. you You bet. Right outside the park. You go right back into the park and you're back in that nature again. I know you said when you published this book, it was 2019. The first one was 2018. I'm sorry. No, you're right. It's 19. You're right. nineteen Continue. my i all government shut down And then one year later, not even a year later.
Impact of the Pandemic and Future Works
00:33:28
Speaker
Nobody can go anywhere. You couldn't even take the book with you. That must have been kind of frustrating for a moment. Here we got this great book, beautiful book, and um now we can't we can't send anybody out to to use it.
00:33:44
Speaker
One of the fun things that happened, though, was that we started hearing from ministers who had bought the book who were using it as a part of a summer preaching series nice relating to the fact that people couldn't go to these places, but they they were springboards for theological conversations that made for good preaching.
00:34:06
Speaker
and we received several. I know, Brad, I'm sure you did. I got lots of notes from preachers who, hey, we're going to preach on these parks in your book, you know, for six weeks in the summer. We're still getting those. Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
So that was fun. I mean, that was, so it did get utilized that way. I had people, friends of mine who bought the book, who had planned to go on vacation, et cetera, couldn't go, but they they traveled vicariously through the pages of our book and made them, in some cases, make sure that when things got open again, that those were places they wanted to go to. yeah Yeah. America's sacred sites is the second book and it launched in March of 2020. Not that anybody wants to think back to that time. That was that was unfortunate in so many ways. But one of the things that we did do both as authors and also as a publishing house was to point out this is a way to get out vicariously. um Now sacred sites I think has been dented by that extremely challenging launch time.
00:35:11
Speaker
but we continue to figure out ways to continue to to share its message out there, get get it in front of folks. Yeah, Holy Ground with the national parks is clearly the flagship, but sacred sites does a lot of of of interesting stuff too and and gets more historical than natural. as As a kid that used to read history books during church, this this this was low hanging fruit for me.
00:35:35
Speaker
yeah It's been fun to write and trying to find one for each state became more challenging than we thought when we got to the Northeast. Yeah, where there's only one or two per state sometimes. We're just glad that Joe Biden got got the one pass for Delaware because otherwise we were going to have to like just you know fudge and say, Washington DC is close enough. Yeah.
00:35:56
Speaker
I haven't haven't seen the Holy Sacred Sights yet, but I would imagine, I i don't know the list, but i've I've probably been to more of those than the parks. you know When I was a kid, parent yeah my parents took me, you know we saw Yorktown and ah Jamestown, so we we did a lot of that sort of touring when I was younger. Something as an educator, I'm a full-time educator as I think you know, Brad,
00:36:24
Speaker
that something like this can give me is a background on, say, like a park like Denali. ah We read the book every year, Into the Wild. Jack London. Oh, no, no, that's not Jack London. that is It's Jack Krakow. That's right, Krakow. My apologies, Krakow. And I think at the time, it was still, was it named Mount McKinley? Or are they changed it by, is am I correct?
00:36:50
Speaker
Bruce, that's your account. I'm looking it up. I'm trying to remember what year it happened. It was during the Obama administration. There was some resistance to it, especially from the delegation from Ohio in the government, which might not surprise you since McKinley was a Buckeye state favorite son. But, but eventually I think due to more inaction than action on a piece of legislation, it reverted back to that part. Now I have slept since I wrote that. So I apologize.
00:37:21
Speaker
The name change was in 2015, so Into the Wild definitely preceded that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one thing. And I, you know, I try i try to find ways to insert some of these little nuggets of information but so that the revisionists don't win the day. And I tell them that, you know, yeah it went back to its indigenous name. And and that's appropriate. I mean, it definite why rename something as the conqueror, the colonists, what have you, and allow it to to be named what what it was originally. And it's just little things like that that that I find useful for this you know for this book for me personally. It goes beyond the spiritual element. Yeah, I look forward to the renaming or the un-naming of Devil's Tower National Monument.
00:38:11
Speaker
and I don't know about this. Yeah. So Devil's Tower has been sacred space for many tribes of the Northern Plains for centuries. And Devil's Tower is obviously the the name that has been assigned to it by the white settlers that have come through. And so the in sacred sites, we detail several of the different names by which that particular monolith goes. And there has been Consistent drumbeat to get it changed and obviously it hasn't happened yet, but that's one of those areas where the National Park Service I think could take the lead on this if they were ever to decide that they wanted to spend some political capital to make that happen. But it is a terribly sacred split space to the people who who who have been going there for centuries when you walk around it.
00:38:56
Speaker
but particularly if you're there during the summertime, you'll notice prayer bundles tied to the trees around the base. It is the most overtly spiritual place I've visited. That's a National Park Service unit. I drove through Wyoming at one point, and this is a prime example of not getting off the road yeah it's definite road. I saw the signs, but I was trying to get to Montana and I regret not getting off the road to see Devil's, well, Devil's. You can call it Devil's Town for now. Because I can't pronounce the other names, but I look forward to learning them in. I regret i regret not not doing that. You know, there was.
00:39:37
Speaker
And I didn't take the opportunity. Yeah, it's interesting. you know ohio In the mounds, the sacred mounds of the of the people who lived here 1100 years ago, bear the name of a doctor who owned the land. Hopewell.
00:39:53
Speaker
um rather than the name associated with ah with the culture and the people who lived in Central Ohio where these these mounds were created. they They are a spectacular and fascinating thing too to study because you realize that the artifacts that have been found there stretch from Florida to Colorado in terms of belonging to different tribes, et cetera.
00:40:21
Speaker
that that it it what like Tuzigoot in Arizona but was a cultural melding spot where different tribes of these ancient cultures met and traded goods and and no doubt traded stories and culture and ways of doing things.
00:40:44
Speaker
but The burial mounds ah in in central Ohio are one of those and they have they have really suffered by the ignorance of people. They've been plowed under for farm fields and yeah you know they just and they were very sacred space to to early peoples in this nation who preceded us by a thousand years. yeah I've given me a lot of great narrative about our park system.
00:41:12
Speaker
and stories that I just and was ignorant about. I'm wondering, have you been able to get... your your work into not just church settings, but also classrooms. Have you ever heard of a teacher say, hey, ah I used some of your work with my students or I know there's that fine line of, you know, something spiritual ah in the classroom, unless we're Oklahoma, I guess, but, you know. That's my home state. Those are my. We have had challenges from a publishing standpoint.
00:41:47
Speaker
but from from bookstores trying to figure out where to shelve this. there's i will I'll try not to get too nerdy here. there' There's a system called BISAC. Bookstores figure out where to shelve things. And so, the BISACs on both of these books are both tourism related and spiritually related. um But I think it's the spiritual one that's listed first because when I have found it in the wild, I have found it in religious sections. Part of that is because I have been told by the folks who make those connections on our behalf that if it has scripture, it's going to land in the religious setting. so that And that makes sense. the The wildest place it has been spotted was Haleakala National Park in Hawaii in the bookstore. It just so happened that our marketing director was on her honeymoon and saw the book there. It was very weird to get a text message from her while she was on her honeymoon. And then I looked at it, I was like, holy smokes.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the religious connections are challenging on that, but I think the stories that are in this can be extracted safely. That's not the word I would choose to use on the fly, but there are those kinds of resources that you can pull from. There are great stories about interesting people in all of these books and about the ecosystems and about who has been there in the history.
00:43:06
Speaker
and you know Really, the spiritual part of each entry and in America's Holy Ground is the introductory scripture and maybe the last 100 words. each Each of the larger entries is about 750 words. The smaller ones are about 250 words. So, we keep them we keep it pretty tight on the religious side.
00:43:25
Speaker
I mean, we were really lucky last summer to be invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institute in New York, the the well-known, geez, I have a hard time describing it. Bruce, how would you describe the Chautauqua? Well, the Chautauqua Institute's been a center for um learning and cultural expression, both of the arts and and a great regard for for being a community that is continually learning, originally started by Methodists, to help equip their Sunday school teachers to better teach ah the Scriptures and the stories, um but has become, of course, ah a fairly elite ah community in Western New York that
00:44:12
Speaker
a number of churches, like our denomination, the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, have houses there that make it affordable for you to go and spend a week in ah encountering one of the many great themes that Chautauqua lays out for their summers, ah that that have sub-themes that are expressed all through the week and in music, literature, the arts.
00:44:36
Speaker
but also religion. Also, real they do not shy away from their religious roots at all. In fact, the Chautauqua really kind of officially starts each week on Sunday morning in worship. um There's a preacher, a headlining preacher for the week each week who preaches every day. There's a worship service at nine o'clock every morning, or 9.30. And they're the the notable, notable names over the years. so but But in the summer of 22, we were lucky enough to see National Parks Week on this schedule. And so we wrote up, remind me if I'm right on this, Bruce, we wrote up a short proposal, sent it in, and they were like, go on. And we were we were lucky to be selected to be among the four presenters in the religion track on National Parks.
00:45:26
Speaker
And so we were the Tuesday afternoon presentation and we got to meet three other presenters with a remarkable diversity i of that. I'm i'm remembering in particular Michael, whose last name I forget, but he was helping to start a new national park-like site tied to the Hadatsa, Arikara, and Mandan tribal nations in northern or in western North Dakota. Fascinating story, fascinating culture to hear about. And and i I may be the first person to ever say, I can't wait to go to North Dakota to see that. So we it was a really interesting, diverse group that we got to to meet with, to talk with, to change stories with.
00:46:11
Speaker
and And it helps, preparing that presentation helped Bruce and me reopen things in a lot of ways. And I almost feel like we wrote a third book in the process of doing that because we really piled on a lot more theology and history and interpretation than we had done in the original books. I was wondering,
00:46:33
Speaker
of the parks, particularly particularly the ones that aren't as known, is the one that surprised you the most. North Cascades National Park in Washington is a real stunner. It's way low on the list. It's hard to get to. It's in the corner of the corner. I mean, it's it's two and a half, three hours from Seattle, I think.
00:46:57
Speaker
And so and everyone is is attracted to Olympic and to Mount Rainier. But we were lucky that we we knew we were going to get to North Cascades anyway. And we drove in. It was a beautiful day. We stood out in the river and I was like, OK, this is a cool valley. We like this. We kept driving and we drove up an overpass and we went all the way through the park and turned around and came back. What we had missed was when we hit this overlook and It is called Diablo Lake. It is not a lake of the devil, but Diablo Lake is this shade of turquoise that is unbelievable. We just stood there for 10, 15 minutes, just a gawk at what we were seeing. And then we knew what we were doing the rest of the day. We went down to that lake and we just stood on the on the shoreline. We didn't you know plan to get wet that day, but we just stood there for an hour, just soaking it all in. So national North Cascades is one of my favorites. Really surprised the heck out of me.
00:47:54
Speaker
Bruce? I have several favorites, some of which are the bigger parks. But parts of the bigger parks folks don't always get to. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is a remarkable place. It only gets 10% of the visitors that the South Rim gets. And it's a very different experience. It's 1,100 feet higher in elevation. And there there are species of plant and and animal that are found no place else.
00:48:22
Speaker
ah than in this little corner of the world. and and it's it's The perspective because of the elevation is different. I have tried three times unsuccessfully. Once I'd had the wrong vehicle and twice forest fires, I am hopeful that before I die, I will still get out to Point Sublime, which is 26 miles away from the lodge on the North Rim going west on on barely passable road to to experience that. I've seen pictures of it that others who've made that journey have ah shown me. and And I can remember asking one of the rangers about it, and I was blocked by a forest fire that year that couldn't get through. And I said, so what's it like?
00:49:08
Speaker
And this was really helpful. He thought for a minute and he said, it's sublime. but sometimes I happen to really like Olympic Park because of the great diversity that is entailed within the park. You have a temperate rainforest ah with waterfalls and trout streams, etc. You have some the beginning of some high a desert on the far eastern end and then it goes down along the the ocean shoreline.
00:49:40
Speaker
And the ocean down there has a tendency to spit out logs, you know, of like the size of whole trees, like they're toothpicks. The surf can get pretty wild down there, but if you get there at the right time, and I happened to hit the time right when I was there, I could get out into the tide pools and, you know, these multicolored starfish and other things that were, and and so different, this ocean scape, so different from the temperate rainforest.
00:50:09
Speaker
Right? ah With these trees that have been been growing since Columbus but theoretically discovered America, right? When he when he accidentally found America.
00:50:20
Speaker
And so different from Hurricane Ridge at 10,000 feet. where That's right. Hurricane Ridge. Yeah. And you look out over the the Olympic range and the glacial pack on the mountains. I mean, it is it is a remarkable, remarkable place. and The Olympic is crazy. I almost got run over by a black-tailed deer there. I was standing on what was clearly an animal trail.
00:50:44
Speaker
taking pictures and this deer, I could see it, it was a young buck, came it was quite a distance away, kept running, it was on the path I was on, kept running, kept running. If I had not stepped off the path, I believe it would have flattened me and left me there.
00:51:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's the diversity of the park that's so impressive to me. You guys give me an hour of your time almost and I appreciate that. I was wondering like what's next?
Legacy and Future Projects
00:51:15
Speaker
but Because it doesn't sound like this is a complete project. it's not You're not finished yet. So. Yeah. So when I was at Brown versus Board of Education, not even two weeks ago, I i texted Bruce a picture of the front and said, I've been thinking about that social justice devotional again.
00:51:30
Speaker
we We've kicked this one around and yeah there's a lot to it. I think if you try to do a social justice devotional in the United States, it has to reach beyond National Park Service units, which is a blessing and a curse because it means you have to, it means you're going to miss places and that's the hard part. And what what kind of makes the cut and what doesn't. So like the the lynching museum in Alabama, that you got to have that. The national museum in Memphis, you got to have that.
00:51:58
Speaker
Where do you draw the line on something like the Pulse nightclub in Florida on LGBT? I mean, you've got Stonewall, which is now a National Park Service unit, but where do you draw those lines? Where do you draw the lines on things like and colonial imperialism?
00:52:16
Speaker
You know, that's all over the place. you you You find places in Arizona, you find the same places at Plymouth Rock. So that's one that's going to require probably longer than a lunch at a Cracker Barrel Bruce to figure out how we're going to do that one. That's what I committed to this. I think I i would be surprised if you don't see something come from us on this topic in the future. I'm i'm getting ready to retire, which is going to give me the privilege of time. And and I just.
00:52:49
Speaker
I also have a desire, I have a heart to write about this yeah and and want to go explore some places I've not been to that retirement will afford me the opportunity to go to say to my wife, let's get in the car and let's go here.
00:53:06
Speaker
And honest the push so so I I do think we're going to do that. But working with Brad has just been a joy. Likewise. it is It's been delightful. And and i if someone is blessed by what we've done, if somebody gets a new insight, somebody discovers something about either themselves or the country they didn't know or our history, then that that's a win for me.
00:53:30
Speaker
that that that's That's a great thing. and And I hope that folks do get something from what we've contributed. But I really wrote the book for my kids. This is their legacy and that they're tied to this and that there's a spiritual dimension to themselves that they need not to ignore, that is expressed in many ways in the land in which we live. And and my hope is that the kids eventually will to get decide they want to go to many of these places and see them for themselves and wonder for themselves ah and be grateful
00:54:09
Speaker
you know i'm I'm wearing, you can't see it because it's an audio podcast, but I'm wearing my Teddy Roosevelt shirt today that's from the National Park Service in Buffalo where he was sworn into the presidency.
00:54:23
Speaker
And it was Roosevelt you know who really had a ah ah commanding presence and vision for what this preservation and stewardship of land could mean. He wasn't perfect. His policies weren't perfect. There are parts about his presidency that make me uncomfortable. But but we have much to celebrate in his wisdom to see the beauty and wonder of these spaces and set them aside so that all of us could have the opportunity to see them and not just pictures of what they once looked like before we decided to develop them. Well, one thing that's been driving me a great deal is you know trying to raise a six-year-old in a divided climate where there's a lot of tension, where education is
00:55:12
Speaker
a ah being undermined the the way we've taken care of the land or not taking care of it is is troubling. you know I've tried to spend a lot of time with him to talk about creation. you know We have a nice backyard with a lot of trees and anything that I can get my hands on that will help me teach him. you know I appreciate your reason for writing the book because it sort of resonates with me and what I think about day in and day out now.
00:55:43
Speaker
how do I raise a child now in a world so so that he'll be compassionate and loving and care not only for people, but the land on which we live. And I think this is one fantastic way to, my plan is to take him to the parks and I'll have my book read with me.
00:56:01
Speaker
yeah so be sure to get a National Parks pass Passport book and stamp all those things. Yeah, I was gonna say, um I imagine your passport is probably fully stamped, right? and Oh, you know, I didn't come around to that until just a few years ago. So there's a lot of I got a lot of ground to make up. I also look forward to finding my younger daughter's passport one of these days.
00:56:23
Speaker
We're on book number two, but yeah the the National Park Service has such a great um programs for kids um that one of those things that you should research before you go if you have the opportunity and and see what you can do to to make the most of those opportunities. just like yeah you you not Not all of us are are well equipped to teach a six-year-old, ah but somebody there is. and if you If you find the right program, you've you've hit the jackpot. They have a junior ranger program and all kinds of things that are ways to help kids get involved and understand and experience at a level they can appreciate of the wonder and majesty of these places. um And one other thing I love about the National Park Service is we're discovering they don't take themselves too seriously. I love the t-shirts that they've been putting out lately.
00:57:15
Speaker
My my older younger son has one that a younger son is you know is almost 40, but it's a picture of a buffalo and says, don't pet the furry cows.
00:57:30
Speaker
ah We didn't include that wisdom in the book, but it is definitely true. Yeah. Well, we didn't really get into your other book, which is America's Sacred Sites. America's Sacred Sites. 50 Faithful Reflections on our National Monuments and Historic Landmarks. Which you can find both copies on americasholyground.com, correct? That's right. Or wherever you buy books. Wherever you buy books. You've got a lot of great resources on your website, so thanks I encourage folks to to visit. um I really appreciate your time today. Our pleasure.
00:58:20
Speaker
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