Stewards of Sacred Land
April 26, 2026
Our Imagine 2030 plan calls us to be stewards of sacred land. How can we care for the lands upon which we gather while also being mindful of the legacy and present day realities of native peoples in this country? Rev. Nic will conclude this three part series with a deeper look at our role as stewards of the earth, healers of broken promises, and holders of visions not yet realized.
Opening Words — “Outside/Inside” by Rev. Laura Bogle
Outside
The flags fly
Down the highway, hanging on to the back of large trucks or the chest of a man.
Outside
There is grabbing and taking
A staking and restaking
Of territory claimed
The roads cut, the oil burned, blockades erected, and walls built
Outside
The borders between us are made visible in noise, colors, ballots.
Signs and signals.
Inside resides
The breath of common ancestors
The child who plays with no thought of malice
The heart tuned toward suffering
The taste of figs ripening in the lingering autumn heat
The sliver of an orange moon low in the evening November sky.
Inside, begins something you might call a prayer
Let us kneel down.
Not to God or nation or ideology
But to what is inside. A feeling, a connection
A welling like the waters at the very beginning of time
Unpolluted and gently flowing.
Sweet and dark and healing.
Let us kneel down to the persistent possibility that the life and love within prevail.
Let us release what is inside outward in beauty, spilling towards each other, until all merges.
Unstoppable well of knowing that we will only ever be saved by one another.
Reading — Exodus 3.1-6
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Reading — “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings” by Joy Harjo
1. SET CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUND RULES:
Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.
Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane.
Make sure the spirits of these lands are respected and treated with goodwill.
The land is a being who remembers everything.
You will have to answer to your children, and their children, and theirs—
The red shimmer of remembering will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.
As I brushed my hair over the hotel sink to get ready I heard:
By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.
Do not parade, pleased with yourself.
You must speak in the language of justice.
Sermon — “Stewards of Sacred Lands” by Rev. Nic Cable
My memory is not the best, but every now and then I try to remember where I have been. It is only when I take the time to remember that I can figure out how I ended up here. And by here I don’t just mean in this space or in this time, I mean in this spacetime, this loving embrace of the When and Where of our existence, inseparable these lovers are from one another, and deeply dependent we are of both. And so I sat this week amidst the memories of space and time and considered where and when I have been and only then did I recall where I was. I have been here before. Not at this time, of course, but in a time not too different than now. And in that realization this week I remembered what I once knew and have at times been guilty of forgetting: I am standing on holy ground.
Some of us might not recall where we were 3,276 days ago. That’s a few more days than our memories typically keep track of. But for many of us, surely not all, back then we were gathered in this sanctuary on a Sunday morning not too different than today, to culminate a 10 day deep-dive into the exciting imagination and wondering of what our shared ministry might look like if you were to call me as your next settled minister. Do some of you remember that day? May 7, 2017? It was a special day certainly, which ended with a resounding affirmation from you the congregation to call me as your minister, followed by my wholehearted yes in response to that call; not to mention or forget that it was a beautiful day that marked the joining of two new members to the congregation, who either by administrative happenstance or perhaps being deeply moved by the special spacetime in which they found themselves that day, said yes, as well, they too said, “yes, these are my people; yes, this is indeed holy ground.” Bonus points if you figure out who those two members who joined that day were?
I keep using this term, holy ground, and well, I can’t seem to shake loose from the phrase this Sunday, or these past couple weeks as we’ve been reflecting on Indigenous Wisdom, Peoples, and Traditions. It was and is a phrase that shaped much of how we met one another, way back then, for those who were part of the congregation on May 7, 2017. On that Sunday, like today, just an hour before you all prepared to meet and cast your votes in consideration of calling me to serve this community, I chose to speak from the same story Chris Kevitt read from this morning. A bold move selecting a passage from the bible, as this is neither my go-to text nor this congregation’s, generally speaking. Yet, there was something in this story that I believed could help us, now 3,276 days ago. And perhaps it still may offer us support and guidance today.
You see, then, as in now, our vision statement at UUCCI is to be a beacon for diverse religious thought and courageous action. You’ve heard me say this vision statement often over the past almost nine years. To be a beacon for diverse religious thought and courageous action. It is a beautiful vision, something big enough, bold enough, and far enough into the future that we could reasonably strive toward together; yet, at the same time, it has never felt, at least to me, to be a vision that was too big, too bold, or too far away that our journey there may be in vain. For those who were there, I’m not sure if you remember what my ultimate conclusion was, what the argument was that I was trying to make in that final hour of discernment before you voted about our future. It was sort of plain sight, in the title of the sermon, do you recall? It was called “The Beacon Beneath Our Feet.”
I argued as I will again this morning that the vision of our congregation is not way out in the future out beyond the horizon, beyond where our eyes can see, but right here already with us; indeed, I believe our vision is just beneath our feet. Like Moses, I believe we are on holy ground; but unlike Moses, I think we already know it as such. After all, Moses was just out there walking Jethro’s sheep—what a good son-in-law?!—with his sandals on. It took a reminder from God in the unexpected and unforgettable burning bush, to learn that he was on holy ground. Some may argue that the ordinary ground became holy, became extraordinary, when the burning bush, when fire and earth coexisted together, but I would say that from our Unitarian Universalist values and from the indigenous traditions we’ve been learning about this month, the ground was and has been holy from the beginning. In other words it wasn’t made holy by God’s presence, but that earth, nature, the land, and all that resides upon it, not to mention the water and air and the life that abounds deep below and high above, is already sacred. If anything, we come to understand we are standing or sitting upon holy ground when we take the time to remember, where and when we are.
So let us remember. Let us consider where and when we are. This week about 40 or so of you and others from the community spent some of your Earth Day’s here on these grounds remembering that these are indeed grounds worthy of care and stewardship. Some have never forgotten and hold true to this beautiful reality, but others, including myself were given the opportunity to slow down and look around to see that we are indeed stewards of sacred land. If you have time today go out and walk the grounds to see the amazing work that the so-called weed wrangle produced. Clearing invasive specious, trimming and cutting back, and opening up the nature so that we can better embrace our place within the family things, in this interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Dean Schertz and Donna Stanley have even begun the gentle and compassionate clearing of a new path through the north section of the grounds. I can’t wait to see how that path invites new ways of journeying and learning and remembering as a community where and when we are.
Beyond the holy ground phrase, I’ve been focused on today and back in our origin story of shared ministry, there is another phrase that my sermon title is raising up in our shared awareness. Stewards of Sacred Land. Do you know where this phrase comes from, Stewards of Sacred Land? It is from our Imagine 2030 plan that was developed over 15 months of intentional effort of dozens and dozens of people who aimed at articulating where we were headed in the coming five years. One of the strategic objectives in this plan is about our vitality and growth as a congregation, which includes aspirations regarding how we relate to our sacred resources or sources of value and we could say the sacred. This includes our community, the gifts you each bring by your presence, your engagement, your shared shaping of this space, and of course the space itself, both in here in this gathering space, and out there on the grounds of our shared community. In the Imagine 2030 document which I encourage everyone to read or read again, this is the statement that was adopted by the congregation to guide our path in the years ahead:
Stewards of Sacred Land:
The lands upon which we gather are not only special because they serve our UU community, interfaith partners, and other stakeholders, but also because we are called to be good stewards of the earth. We commit to caring and providing the resources necessary for preserving and enhancing our shared sacred home.
So this is the language that can help shape our vision of being and becoming evermore a beacon for diverse religious thought and courageous action. How then will we get there, or rather how will we recognize and realize where we already are and what resides beneath, beside, and before us? I think one path would be turning to indigenous peoples for wisdom, for guidance. For who has been better stewards of sacred lands than those who saw land not as that which is to be owned and possessed, but to be stewarded and cared for? Joy Harjo served as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022. A member of the Muscogee Nation, she is own of the most well known modern poets whose words often speak to indigenous and non-native communities alike. In her poem, “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings,” which is also the name of a beautiful collection of poems, she offers some encouragement to set ground rules for conflict resolution. Notice that there is a natural tension or conflict that aches for resolution in how we relate not only to one another as human beings, but to the land and nature itself. I wonder how we would care for these lands upon which we reside here in Western Bartholomew County if we considered her invitation to “Recognize whose lands these are on which we stand.” She says don’t go looking at the county records office for an answer, but that we should “Ask the deer, turtle, and the crane” and that we must learn to listen because “By listening we will understand who we are in this holy realm of words.” What a beautiful charge! To listen. And in our listening, to remember. To remember when and where we are. Joy Harjo writes that it is good and right to care for these lands with respect and good will because “The land is a being who remembers everything” but that in the “the red shimmer of remembering—I love that, “the read shimmer of remembering”—will compel you up the night to walk the perimeter of truth for understanding.” I get chills with this invitation to walk the perimeter of truth and understanding. Picture that movement around truth and understanding, around the sacred meaning of our lives in space and time, in this spacetime, that we can experience this space in this time as a rediscovery of what was already here, already holy, already sacred, we just needed to remember. Remember and then practice in a way it is harder to forget.
Finally, I want to offer a thought about the challenge of moving in and out of this remembering that we are on sacred land and that we are stewards of sacred land. As we strive to be a beacon for diverse religious thought and courageous action, I believe it is critical that we not come to think of that beacon, that light, just like the light of our chalice, or of the burning bush for that matter, as being singular in nature. It is easier to think of it that way, of course. One chalice, one light, one beacon, one vision. But singularity is a slippery slope, and if we strive for it as such, we run the risk of blurring into right and wrong, us and them, in or out. We run the risk of shifting into not pluralism, but creedalism, where we see the one vision we strive to realize—to be a beacon for diverse religious thought and courageous action—as the one and only vision, the one and only way, the only truth, and the only life. Said differently, thinking that our community or burning bush is singular, we run the risk of working to be not a beacon, but the beacon, and in that hubris we may come to, as Joy Harjo admonishes us not to, “parade, pleased with [ourselves].” Instead we can, I believe come to recognize that any beacon, any fire, and sacred love we come across in this life are reflections of their component parts. The light is a reflection of multiplicity, of the sacred multitudes within, that the flame requires earth and air, fire and spirit, to spark and stay lit. Moses recognized this awesome unexpected and unforgettable sight and it led to his journey of justice out of the oppression of pharaoh’s bondage. Indigenous traditions teach us that the land is alive and will not forget and so may we not forget and come to separate ourselves off from it, deciding where we begin and end where that lesser world begins and ends. No, we are called to be stewards of sacred land and in so doing we come to care for not only the land, but that which resides upon it. Not just the air, but that which flies above us, not just the waters, but that which dives within it. And so too we will come to see that the great divide of us and them, of that which is inside and that which is outside is also an illusion of our creation. The work of the internal life is the work of the external life. It is not separate, but interconnected, interdependent.
So may we live in such a way that that boundary, this boundary, that boundary, all boundaries are turned into sacred easements of our call to stewardship. For so we have been called, to steward one another and all that is our life. And as we steward the common good, from here onward, may not only our own days be glad, but may all experience the joy and peace of this precious life we have to share.
May it be so. Amen.