Let the Earth Be Our Sanctuary

This summer, we’ll gather once again in the garden—beneath the sky, among the trees, with birdsong as our choir and sunlight as our stained glass.

There are the obvious reasons, of course. We live in Calgary, where summer feels like a gift we unwrap one warm day at a time. When the snow finally melts and the blossoms unfurl, it seems only right to follow the Spirit outdoors. And sometimes, even the most beautiful sanctuary—ours included—can feel a little heavy, a little too still. A shift in scenery invites a shift in spirit.

But more than convenience or aesthetics, there’s a deeper invitation here—one rooted in a theology that sees God not as separate from creation but revealed through it.

There’s a concept called pantheism, the idea that the Divine is not only in everything, but is everything. That God is not just found in nature but woven into it—the breath in the wind, the pulse of the earth, the shimmer on the river’s surface. It’s not a belief in a distant, sky-bound deity, but in a Holy Presence that saturates the soil and hums in the honeybee.

And then there’s Wild Church—an actual movement, with communities around the world (and yes, even here in Calgary). They meet in forests, on mountaintops, in city parks and open fields. No buildings. No pews. Just the wild, raw holiness of the natural world. They believe that creation itself is a sacred text, and that the earth can teach us to pray—not always in words, but in wonder.

Our summer worship isn’t officially a Wild Church gathering. But in spirit, it leans that way. We’re choosing to worship with our feet in the grass and the sky overhead—not as a novelty, but as a reminder: God is not confined to one place, one people, or one way of showing up.

Yes, I feel the Divine in our sanctuary. In the warmth of community. In the quiet after prayer. In the beauty of a hymn echoing off wood and stone. But outdoors? Outdoors I remember that the Spirit is untamed. That God is not always orderly or predictable or contained. That sometimes, the closest I come to holy awe is not in liturgy, but in the way the light filters through a tree or a breeze interrupts the silence with its own kind of blessing.

So this summer, let the earth be our sanctuary.

Let the garden be our gathering place.

Let the sky remind us how wide God’s love is.

And let us worship—not just under creation, but with it.