Finding God, Finding Ourselves in Landscape

by Shauna Gill

Calgary and the Alberta Blue Sky

I’ve lived in three divine landscapes within the length of my life. I was born and raised in Calgary, where the summers are mild and a little wild with hailstorms that can shred and flatten a garden in minutes. The winters are long with Chinook breaks that can swing the temperature 30 degrees in an afternoon. Those Chinook winds that come down from the Rocky Mountains can move the temperature from -20 to +10. This can bring incapacitating migraine headaches to some. There is nothing quite like the big Alberta blue sky though. I found my sense of true self under that blue sky whether it was summer or winter. I found my earliest deep connection to God in the Alberta outdoors. I even loved the snow. I’m pretty sure that the muffled sound of my breath inside of the snow forts my brother and I made was a deep draw of my soul to the encapsulating silence of God.

Vancouver and the Coast

I spent the first six years of my married life on the coast in Vancouver. I thought I had died and had woken up in Eden. The lush green rainforest, the ocean and the daffodils in February were life-giving to me. Hiking on the north shore mountains continued to bring me to a deep sense of a loving God with me in those years. How could a human create such beauty? It had to be God. It was the winter rain in the dark that could be soul-sucking, though. I missed the bright, sunny winter of Alberta despite its frigid temperatures.

The Landscape of Family

Vince and I (my first and now late husband of 20 years) went back to Alberta after our first child was born. We wanted most of all the landscape of family. We raised our eventual three children on the outskirts of Calgary. The kids had space to run and play in the trembling aspen forest. A big dog and room to roam among huge bales of hay behind our property was an idyllic landscape for plenty of family connections and memories. I began a hobby of gardening and found the outdoor space still my truest and deepest connection to the divine through creation. Also, through “Re”-creation as I planned and tended my flower gardens.

Loss and the Memory Garden

Despite the fairy tale of our family life, darkness still came, and our landscape became one of confusing loss and grief. My first husband passed in 2006, and I worked out my grief in the soil. I held a big party, and each guest planted something into a memory garden in honour of my late husband. Planting new life in response to loss was healing.

Floods and Higher Ground

I continued to raise my three on the acreage for 4 years, but heavy rains had started to come each June (2005) before my husband’s passing and seemed to come each year thereafter. We started to call it “MonJune.” I recall our home group setting up a bucket brigade in our basement while my husband was sick from chemo in the upstairs bedroom. After he passed, I had three more floods to manage on my own. Cullen Creek Estates had sprung some additional creek dispersions under my home. No place is perfect. I moved myself and my three to the city and onto higher ground. We were closer to the university as well, and that would make our lives less complicated.

Joy in the Garden

I still found my JOY and relationship with God in the garden. Silence, solitude, and mindful work with gratitude for it all. I pared it down to fit my simpler lifestyle. I had “ever-growing in independence” offspring. I pray I was more emotionally available with less land to manage, and I offered them increasing freedoms to choose. Finally, I have landed in the Okanagan with my second husband Dave. It was somewhat of a family decision for us to relocate. As a single mom for 7 years, it was a unique way to launch my three. I left them. I set the two younger ones into a condo for their university years. The older one, having finished university, found his own place and a roommate. Don’t think it didn’t tug hard at my heart.

The Okanagan Landscape

In the Okanagan I have continued to look for and find God in the Garden. We still build into the landscape of family. It is just different now with them coming out to see us. They love it, and we relax into numerous days with one couple at a time as they have each found loves.

Four Clear Seasons

My deepest gratitude for living in this Okanagan landscape is the clearly demarcated seasons. We have four clear seasons. Winter is December through February. Spring is March through May. Summer, of course, is hot and is June through August. The long, leisurely autumn is September through November. It feels leisurely because of my memories from my Alberta youth of trick-or-treating in snow. We still get to play in the snow out here, but only for a month or two. That’s enough, and it is in winter, not autumn.

It All Belongs

As I’ve rolled the idea of landscape around in my heart over this past winter, the broadest message seems to have been that it all belongs. Wherever we find ourselves, there is beauty and challenge. Divine and human. Sunflowers and hail. Cherry blossoms and driving rain. Easy weeding in the sand of the Okanagan and tumble weeds the size of my Volkswagen Golf. A big wide space of both/and—that is GOOD. We are stretched and comforted. We laugh with family and can be lonelier than hell. We rest in the glory of a sunset and step on a prickly pear cactus. The Western bluebirds nest in our homemade birdhouses, and I must watch for snakes when I gather tumbleweeds out of the long grasses.

Waking Up to Beauty

No matter where we find ourselves, God has provided abundant beauty to carry us through the hard realities of life. Jesus reminded us to wake up! To notice! To do what is in front of us and to take times of quiet and rest, friendship, and solitude. I feel like what I write is not new or profound or dramatic. It is the simple reality of wholeness, and it relates to our own souls as well, doesn’t it? I have such goodness within me, and I cannot belie the darkness that can also pervade my soul. I can move to a “better” place, but there is always something that can bring us down, help us grumble, and make us want to run.

The Welcoming Prayer

What a gift that we have learned the welcoming prayer. That we are learning to sit with those things we define as “Dark” and listen to what they say to our hearts. The weather, the cold, the heat, or our habits of fear, jealousy, or shame can make us succumb to negativity and sorrow. Somehow it all belongs. The principalities are all part of it. Those prickly pears. They give us the opportunity to look for the light, share love, and be kind and compassionate towards ourselves and others. It’s not simple, but I do believe it is our Divine Calling.