I belong to a vast group of Americans my age who are beginning to realize a few things. On the one hand, we are beginning to see that the old way of doing things (which is really the new way) with impersonal products produced and packaged by completely impersonal entities within the context of an economy based around the created need for these products is very, very false.
Let me give an example. In this old (new) way, I might drive my Honda Civic to the store--let's say it is Vons grocery store--to buy cold medicine, vegetables, and mustard. These are all products which could be just as easily purchased with virtually zero variation in Jacksonville, Florida or Madison, Wisconsin or Brookings, Oregon as here in San Diego, California. They are owned by massive corporations--Pfizer, Monsanto Foods, and Heinz, for ezample. I drive and therefore support oil companies because the Vons is too far away to ride my bike to and I feel that owning a car is important for me so that I can go places and take things with me whenever I need to, no matter the distance (within reason). This satisfies my need for diversity and freedom, for convenience and readily available food and medicine, and contributes to the same economy which provides me with work and therefore allows me to contribute back to the economy in which I find fulfillment and purpose. Except that the ultimate goal of that economy is the deep pockets of those far outside my community.
But my question and the question of so many of us that have been raised right in the heart of all this without even the hint of a question as to whether or not this is acutally the best way to live is, "Is this really the best way to live? Were we really so wrong all along?" In the new way that is being envisioned and acted out on a small scale, which is actually an old way dating back 80 to 100 years (I think) in my part of the country, less and more in others, I would walk or catch a ride on a cart to a store that would be owned by someone I probably know or at least know of. The food that I buy would need to be bought more often--forcing me into contact with people around me--but would also be from nearby farms or industries that served a nearby market. My money and my relationships would be found within a small locale. My life would be smaller, but I would have more say in the production of food and the workings of the local economy, if only because of a closer relationship to the land. This closeness would provide me with my sense of freedom that comes from belonging to a place and a people--not freedom abstracted out from anything that is nothing more than an idea. Life would be more complex as it would be more connected to the actual goings-on of life: growing food, giving birth, witnessing death, working deals, holding responsible, confessing faith.
I've been wrestling with this identity of mine for a few reasons. The first is that I have been reading some Wendell Berry. And the second is that I am preaching Sunday.
Regarding the first point, I will not explain Berry to you--the first few paragraphs are my take on what he is saying translated into my life. Regarding the second point, I have found myself with the passage of Mark 2:18-22. I will post my sermon when I have finished it in a few days, but the way that this has been working in me (Its the passage where Jesus says that his disciples do not fast because he is still with them--that would be like sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on old clothes or pouring new wine in old wineskins!) is that I am coming to see us as the cloth, wine and wineskins. Fasting grows us or shrinks us and it is in the presence of Jesus--in the celebration of Eucharist, in the acknowledgement of Jesus' presence, that we come to know Christ as fully God. In this knowledge, we ought not be fasting--which is emptying so that God might fill us with Godself--but we stay put so that we can absorb the presence of God as much as possible. This is a sort of not-growing where we are simply the pupils who absorb God, a filling but not a expanding or contracting.
It all connects to Berry, too. I'm still working on that part, though.
3 comments:
hey jeff, good luck tomorrow. i'll be praying for you all while one of the elders speaks in navajo (i've tried to ask God to make the holy spirit interpret what he's saying, but it hasn't work yet, so instead i can just pray for southeast).
anyway, sounds like an interesting topic. i don't really know what is "the best way" to live, but here it takes an hour to drive to town. then we go to "the" walmart. not exactly local... i did buy a mutton sandwich on frybread the other day from someone out here though. gotta love mutton you know? how's that for a mixer of the old and new? people out here totally live in that tension. maybe even more so than in the city.
Maddie, it is goooooooooood to hear from you.
Thanks for your prayers. the sermon went great. Hey, I miss you. what's your address so I can write a letter? and when do you come home? Talk to you soon.
Post a Comment