more from Wendell Berry

Last week, Wendell Berry delivered a speech to the National Endowment for the Humanities. All who have ears can give it a listen by watching the video here.

I'm cautiously heartened that Wendell Berry's work is lately getting attention. The fact that he gave this speech at an event put on by our federal government, and the fact that he was chosen to write the forward to Prince Charles's book about feeding the planet sustainably means that more people will hear his thoughts.  And we need to hear what Mr. Berry's been prescribing for the last 40 years; from the way we eat, to the way we pattern our weeks, to the way we raise our kids, to how we think about where we live. It is ancient wisdom, wearing (semi-)modern lenses, and spoken in a Kentucky accent.

I was struck in listening to the speech, how consistent Mr. Berry's message has been throughout his career. The book that put him on the map, and the one that first captured my thoughts, is a collection of essays called The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Much of what he said in his speech last week is a reworking of the same themes he developed in that book, which was publishing in 1977.

Below are some excerpts from the book that grabbed my attention right away; they struck me as both startlingly different from anything I'd heard before, and startlingly true.

Here is his first paragraph:
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search – which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves – no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken anthill. In our own time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.

A few paragraphs later, he goes on:
If there is any law that has been consistenly operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become "redskins" - that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation. The colonists who drove off the Indians came to be intolerably exploited by their imperial governments. And that alien imperialism was thrown off only to be succeeded by a domestic version of the same thing; the class of independent small farmers who fought the war of independence has been exploited by, and recruited into, the industrial society until by now it is almost extinct. 

How to Be a Rich Christian (To Remind Myself)

I. Jesus said that it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of god.  So if you can avoid it, do.

II. If you can’t avoid it, accept it. Don't buy the nonsense that we're "'middle class." It is the global economy that has made us rich, so it is by global standards that we must compare ourselves.

III. When you make your budget, do it with a picture of a poor child propped up next to your spreadsheet. Keep that picture in your wallet. Make every big, out-of-the-ordinary purchase after you look at her desperate eyes.

IV. Give, give, give. Understand that it's not your money. The Old Testament is full of reminders that all that is is God's. Jesus told one rich man to give everything he had, just to enter into Jesus' kingdom. The early Christians, who were ready to be martyred, gave all they had. We, too, should be known by our giving. Give far beyond the traditional 10 percent, and to multiple recipients. Offer to God even the money in your savings or retirement accounts. If you don't have cash, give your time, give your space, give your thoughts.

V. Know the names and stories of many poor people. Always be owed something. When someone you forgot you knew comes up and tells you they'll be paying back that money you forgot you lent, you're on to something. 

VI. Do not compare yourself to other rich people. Keep in mind that anyone who appeals to the "standard of living" is trying to assuage their own discontentment with riches, which runs directly against the teaching of Christ and Paul.

VII. Remember: In our country, rich and poor used to live together. Sometimes on neighboring farms, other times within the same small town, other times on the same plantation. It was impossible for the rich to forget the poor existed. Now, it requires significant effort for us to remember them. Living isolated from the poor, a man forgets what it's like have a hungry family next door, to his own peril.

VIII. Read yourself into the parables as villain, or the warned. Watch how Jesus describes the hearts of the rich. Don't beat yourself up, just be warned and live accordingly.

IX. Understand this: The human mind is fickle. We can only think about what's in front of us. If the poor are not in front of us regularly, we will forget about them. After we've forgotten about them, after years surrounded by so much wealth, we as a people will forget how loving our neighbors and loving the poor were often one and the same. Reverse this trend in your own life wherever you can.

X. Read books and stories written by the poor. Read about their lives. Pick up news magazines and watch documentaries.

XI. If a news source offers easy answers to poverty, doubt their motives. If a news story lets you feel smug or justified in your wealth, know that they are vying for your vote or your money.

XII. Remember that to suffer is to be human. Reject all thoughts that suggest that comforts produce the abatement of suffering. It is by comforting ourselves that we can most assuredly insulate ourselves from our need for God. Accepting discomfort is an act of trust, and enables us to walk in faith. Consider that in the Bible, our spiritual ancestors, elected by God to do his work, always suffered. In the Bible, we always suffered. Like it says in Hebrews,

(The people of faith)...were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while sill others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated - the world was not worthy of them."

XIII. See monetary gain as just as likely to harm one's soul as to help it, and beware un-Christian uses of the word, "blessing." The account of the blessings Isaac offered to Jacob and Esau show an understanding of "blessing" that is common throughout the Old Testament. To Jacob, "... May God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness - an abundance of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you..." And to Esau, "Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew of heaven above. You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck." This passage is typical of the Old Testament's and America's usage of the word. Those who are blessed are the rich, and those who are not are poor. Material gain and moves towards wealth are blessings.

Jesus turns this idea on its head, by saying that in His Kingdom, the blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the poor, those who hunger now, those who weep now. These “blessed are the…”statements, are not instructions, but instruction. Jesus is not saying, "try to be poor in spirit, or hungry," or even calling the rich to serve the poor. He is teaching us about the way things are. He is teaching us that in the Kingdom of God, those who suffer are in fact, blessed. He is showing us that sufferers are already close to His heart in ways we who are rich do not know. In the Beatitudes and elsewhere He is telling the Jewish people that they missed the boat on what blessing is all about. We who are rich Christians have mostly missed it, too. Know that the fulfillment of the simple wish, "God bless you," may require the loss of much that you hold dear.

XIV. Trust the Lord.  Jesus never told the rich to solve poverty. He did warn us again and again what will happen to our souls when we ignore it and wrap our lives around ourselves. Your job is to be faithful to Him. If He asks you to sell all you have and give it to the poor, trust that He loves you and don't worry about the consequences. If you take any of these steps outside of a relationship of trust in God, you will have done something good, but not as a Christian. Do whatever good you do with Christ, and find His peace as just one of the fruits.

A message from Paco Amador

If we are to believe Google images, the guy in the picture is named Paco Amador. So is my pastor. The Paco Amador who is my pastor preached an excellent message last Sunday about keeping the Sabbath holy. Give it a listen, here.  

A post in which I conclude with an obvious thought...

I have walked or ridden my bike to work most days for the last 8 years of teaching. I enjoy the walking and what it means: that I live close enough; that I get to walk the same paths as my students; that my own footprints and not carbon's are the only ones I'm leaving. I remember one of my former delinquent students giving me a lift in his car which smelled densely of weed. I see the grin of Frank, a former student whom I'd worked hard to get into a therapeutic school,  as he flagged me down to introduce me to his own son. I hear a rooster's crow one winter morning, welcoming the sun and the day and filling me with thanksgiving.

On top of these moments, I enjoy the sense that I'm a part of something larger than me.  When I get to see third-world level poverty, drug deals and police hold ups it feels like I'm part of a movement of heroes of mine who have joined with their neighbors pain, and walked alongside them.  The walking pace is important, too, because it binds me to consider my neighbors and their lives for longer than my fickle, self-gravitating mind would allow me if I drove. In short, walking to work allows me to live out some ideals that are important to me.

But this school year, the one that ended last Friday, has been different from the others. My group of students was the hardest I've ever taught - the most emotionally needy, the most resistant to authority and instruction, the most directly challenging. The gang violence and influence in my classroom and on my route has been more pervasive. And I know that every bit of un-health in the streets and in our schools is just a fraction of what exists in peoples homes. My walks are often laden with the weight of my students' pain and questions of how I or anyone might reach them. With each dysfunctionality and violence I come across, my footsteps grow heavier.

Just last week as I walked up my front stairs after a long day of work, a pair of 9-year-old boys yelled "suck my dick" and added gestures for clarity, to a pair of girls, probably 10. The girls yelled equally offensive things right back. Friday morning's particular heaviness started around 8 o'clock, as I walked by the home of a former student, Sara, whose gang-banging brothers were up early, looking down the block, at some commotion. I followed their gazes and found Frank (the proud dad) held up against a chain-link fence while two cops waited for back-up. His niece, who graduated from 8th grade this week, was held up right next to him.

I shook my head, as my feet banged like bricks on the pavement. I trudged on past a group of early-arrived students, greeted the office ladies, ascended to my classroom and plopped down at my teacher's desk. As I stared at the black screen of my computer, all I could think was, "I gotta get a car!"

As much as I am a man of ideals, I'm seeing a  limit to the extent to which I can embody them. A crucial part of my teaching job is bringing fresh energy to students, who already at age 12 and 13, have given up.  But if walking past their houses each day brings me to despair before I even get there, well,  I suppose something's gotta give.

It's the same with our chickens. In November we bought 4 ISA Browns (like Rhode Island Reds), and have enjoyed all sorts of benefits from them. The amount of waste we had to have hauled to garbage dumps each weeks was cut drastically. We were able to better appreciate the work that goes into food production. And It gave the kids some meaningful chores, and an understanding of how breakfast got to their plates. There were lots of other benefits, too, but when the rats showed up in May and wouldn't go away no matter how carefully we managed the coop, it was time to give them up.

So I'm learning that in one life, in my one life, I can't do everything I care about. When I write that statement it feels laughably obvious, but I think it's worth saying anyway: We can only do what we can do.

MY MESS Part 2, A Boon on the Road

One of the things that has been hardest about these first 6 weeks of school is their juxtaposition with the last 4 years. I have been used to success. I haven't had a behavioral problem that really worried me for a long time. Experiencing failure at work, even temporary failure as I hope this is, is foreign to me. Last year I worked towards the prestigious National Board Certification and all my co-workers were sure I would achieve. My school's reading coach told me I was one of the best teachers she'd ever seen, and she made sure I knew she was serious. The compliments rained in. And now, at a new school, failures are bountiful.

So last Wednesday morning I took some time to pray about school. That's when the notion began that I should pray for salvation. Right after I did, as I was brushing my teeth, a Sara Groves song lyric popped into my head, "I pray for an idea, and a way I cannot see."

The lyric's song is "The Long Defeat," and I believe God has given it to me to pray during this season of my life. It is my prayer for salvation.


I have joined the long defeat
that falling set in motion
all my strength and energy
are raindrops in the ocean

so conditioned for the win
to share in victor's stories
but in the place of ambition's den
I've heard of other glories

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I can't just fight when I think I'll win
that's the end of all belief
and nothing has provoked it more
than a possible defeat

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

We walk a while we sit and rest
we lay it on the altar
I won't pretend to know what's next
but what I have I've offered

I pray for a vision
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I pray for inspiration
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

MY MESS, Part 1: A Cry for Salvation

I have normally stuck with blogging about overarching principles: society, or God, or some political issue. It's the stuff my mind gravitates towards, and it interests me, and I could spend more time than I should writing about it. But I'm sort of consumed these days with what are for me some major challenges at work, and I think it's time after spending most of my posts weighing in on the world's problems that I share my own.

I'm having a hard school year.

For the last four years, at my previous school, teaching 4th and 5th graders to read took most of my time and energy. I taught about 10 kids to read each year, which was deeply gratifying, life changing, and really fun work.

The group of sixth graders I have this year is overwhelming. I've spent hours designing and implementing behavioral plans that aren't producing any noticeable result. I have a boy who calls me names and refuses or resists doing his work, or anything appropriate, all day. Today he showed up to school at 11:30 without a book bag and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Everyone at the school knows his family and tells me he'll just get worse as the years go on. I have a girl who within the first six weeks has spread the rumor that she herself is pregnant, slapped and pushed two other girls, and come to school with hickies (sp? I've never needed to spell that til now!) She got suspended today, so I have a one week reprieve. I have another boy who is full of potential but doesn't like to work. He just mopes around the room as slowly as you can imagine, and starts looking for his materials right when everyone else is finishing. I have another boy with impulsivity issues; he shouts out whatever comes to mind. I don't know how well you remember sixth grade, but the things that run through a sixth grader's mind should not be shouted.

Yesterday things boiled to a head. I lost control of my own classroom. I could not teach and did not know how to respond to how the kids were acting. This is my 7th full school year as a teacher and it felt like my first week. I have no answers.

I've been praying for salvation. You know how David constantly asks for or thanks God for His salvation throughout the Psalms? Well that's what I'm asking for. I don't know if God will save me from this situation, or if He'll bring me an idea that will save me from it's messiness. I don't know if He will save me by strengthening me to endure or if He will save my students from their hellish lives. I do believe that it is He who saves, and I know that I have no idea how to go forward.

And that's where I am

Coming soon: MY MESS, Part 2: A Boon on the Road

work

My pastor sent me a link to his friend's blog, which discusses work in relation to Christian discipleship. After reading a few (good) posts, I wrote these thoughts about work. I saved this post to expand further, but never got to it.

One major problem with work is that in the post-industrial revolution world is that home and work are now separated. When people used their homes and land as work space, both places were of utmost importance, to keep orderly and maintained, fertile and healthy. People depended on the land they owned to provide for their existence, so of course they took great care of their workplace. Maintenance of one's house and one's outbuildings and fields was all in a day's work.

Now our work has very little connection with where we live. Home is an oasis; a place of leisure, where the real enjoyment of life is supposed to take place. "Home is where the heart is," and because the two are apart, people don't put their heart into their work. Our workplaces are burdens; a price to pay for getting back home to the real stuff. This mentality can only result in shoddy workmanship - only doing our best on that for which we are held accountable; doing just enough to not get fired.

In agricultural days, many people owned, lived, and tended small pieces of land. Today, most everyone works for someone else, and people do not "own" their work. Lack of ownership is a problem for which I see little end in sight. If you are not doing work that you want to last for years to come, but just getting your paycheck, your mentality of work will be treating it as something inferior, to be rushed through.

The way forward here, I think, is to find the meaning in what we do, and to work with that meaning in mind. But also, we must abstain from doing work whose only meaning is the paycheck that awaits us; from allowing ourselves to be cogs in meaningless wheels.

Two Radio Shows

I want to pass along a couple episodes from shows that have been rattlin' around in my head.

The first is called, "Island Time," from the show This American LIfe. It's about the current state of Haiti and our (Americans) involvement versus some of the Haitian nationals involvement. The show left me wrestling with the wisdom/folly of supporting agencies and people who are in the business of helping the poor. And it makes me wonder: Does anyone know a sound way to support very poor people (like people groups dealing with AIDS and starvation) without paying for a missionary or aid worker's plane ticket or 401(k)? I guess I want to grow up a bit in my giving. It's clear enough that as Christians we are to sell all we have and give to the poor, but I find it hard to give to organizations or people who are paid well to care for the poor, especially after hearing this show. On top of raising these questions, the show highlights Americans who are there doing some really good work. The good ones are not presented as the rule, but the exception, which lines up with what I saw and heard from all sorts of missionaries when in Latin America in 2000. Hear it by clicking here.

The other show I listened to tonight. It's called, "Land, Life and the Poetry of Creatures," from another NPR show, Speaking of Faith. It features one of my oft-quoteds, Wendell Berry, and Ellen Davis, a biblical scholar whom I knew nothing about until tonight. Davis said that as she began to read the bible with "agrarian eyes," she found "there was a huge gap between the kind of exquisite attention that the biblical writers are giving to the fragile land on which they live and the kind of obliviousness that characterizes our culture...in respect to our use of land."

I've noticed the same thing in reading the Old Testament. The land and its care is all over the place. I noticed it most recently, and for me most powerfully, in reading of the Year of Jubilee in the book of Leviticus. In this passage (chapter 25), God grants the land a Sabbath rest(!), and establishes distributive justice by ensuring that none of his people become too rich/powerful/corrupted by thinking the land they have accrued is truly "theirs." Verse 23: "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land."

Which gets me back to the radio show. Davis talks later in the show about the way city dwellers can become more agrarian in our mindsets. She recommends being conscious of the sources of our food. I think, and I'm sure Davis and Berry would agree, that this food-source-consciousness is a crucial step in the redemption of our land here in America. And here's a link for that show.

You can download the podcast from both shows at the iTunes store.

I really am curious how others give to the very poor in the world. Please share.

Safe Families

Here is a link to an article and video about Safe Families. They are an organization we have worked with to take care of babies in need. They are making the world more of what it was intended to be.

The value of nothing

I will be reading this book.

creating a new budget

I'm trying to create a new budget. I'm starting from scratch because I feel led to give more away to the world's very poor, and i've felt led by God to make my budget with the image of a starving child staring me in the face.

So I watched this video.

Then I wept.

Then I watched another video that was less emotionally disturbing mainly because the presenter has such entertaining eyebrows. I think the presenter speaks to my budget making, too. I'm not sure what the eyebrows speak to.

I don't know how my budget numbers will end up, but they will be made with a new heaviness.