I have a friend who fell in love with a piece of land. It's the sort of space that is commonly called “wasteland.” Very close to the centre of Manchester, there’s a strip between the river and the canal. It’s a space marked by an industrial past: old docks, concrete ruins and twisted metal. It's somewhat fenced about, but not quite enough to keep out morning dog-walkers and nighttime drinkers and such. It’s properly wild. Far wilder than any park, or farmed field. Thriving amid the ruins there’s all manner of plantlife, bird life and more besides.
Of course, my friend takes great exception to that label: “wasteland.” To consider it theologically, or prayerfully, it’s a strange term. What does it mean for those two words to fuse together? What is wasteland? In whose eyes is it a waste? For whose purposes? The concept of waste is always relative to someone’s purposes. Something is “waste,” when it is not of use for the particular thing someone is doing. Land is “wasteland” to the city builder if it is not a road or a pavement or a building or a park. It’s sat there, inanimate, waiting to be developed. In short, land is wasteland if humans are not doing something with it.
But doesn’t land have its own things to do? Do those things not matter? Do the different parts of the body of the earth not all have their function? It’s not wasteland to the Kingfisher, or the Heron, or the Sandpiper, or the Graeb. It's not wasteland to the bramble and brush and the grasses and the trees of all kinds. It’s not a wasteland to the people who spend time there.
In fact, land left to itself does something of pivotal material value. It’s so important that in the lore of Moses, land was to be left alone one year in every seven. In the end, creation is a web of relations, and we rely absolutely on the soil for everything we eat (plants, or animals that eat plants). We are, afterall, made of the soil. Land left be is allowed to thrive in bio-diversity, which generates rich soil. Is it waste, because it doesn’t stir that cauldron of abstraction we call “capital”?
Quite often, those places we call “wastelands” are marked by some recent history of human use. Something was built and abandoned or ruined. Somewhere was cleared for some purpose, but then left hanging. Some industrial skeletal remains rust from past exploits. But is the land a waste? Is anything God creates, waste? Is any place unloved? Perhaps some of our designs and fancies are wasted. But not the land where we waste them. The land rests and recovers.
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Beautifully articulated David. Thank you for drawing attention to my beloved place, and framing it so wonderfully in the context of the importance of all places. We are, indeed, all soil, and all wonderfully interwoven with everything it hosts and grows 💚