This week, Wendell Berry, an influential writer and personal favorite of mine, went to be with the Lord. I was introduced to Wendell Berry’s work by my seminary professor of pastoral ministry, during an extremely formative time in my life. My professor showed that the long, slow growth of creating healthy agrarian terrain, a favorite topic for Berry, ran parallel to the commitment necessary for spiritual growth and pastoral care.
I will forever be indebted to Berry’s wisdom and christian conviction. He taught a very unpopular ideal: to be people that work for the healing of the world, we must live fully and purposefully within our place. In a time when most people live transient, fast paced lives, constantly looking for the next place to live, to work, to get- he taught, through his writings, that the most influential thing you can do is to find a place- taking in all the pains and problems, joys and beauty of that place and to live fully within it. In this way, we become like the mustard seed that grew roots deep into the soil and become so large that it gave comfort to everything around it.
Here are a few of his words that I hope will encourage you:
For many years, my walks have taken me down an old fencerow in a wooded hollow on what was once my grandfather's farm. A battered galvanized bucket is hanging on a fence post near the head of the hollow, and I never go by it without stopping to look inside. For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; bird have scratched in it and left their droppings or perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human. I have seen the same process at work on the tops of boulders in a forest, and it has been at work immemorially over most of the land surface of the world. All creatures die into it, and they live by it." (From his essay, What are People For?)
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
(From his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front)
Announcements
Sept. 5th from 10am-4pm will be our Woody Island Retreat
Labor Day Picnic- Sept 7th from 11am-1pm
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!!! Sept. 20th starting at 7pm we will be hosting a FREE Concert. Jess Ray and Taylor Leonhardt are amazing musicians. Shout out to Leslie Fields for making this all possible. Click here to read more about this band. (See Flyer Below for more details)
Link to the CBC Calendar
Church Weekly Schedule
Sunday worship at 11am
Wednesday Prayer Posse 12pm
Trail Life each Sunday from 2-3pm
Pastor Steven’s Office Hours 8-4 Mon-Thursday
I have an open sign (if it is on, I am here)
If I am not in the office at these times, I am meeting with someone
Call or text me 972-921-2516
Email steven@kodiakcbc.org
