"We Try To Lose Ourselves"

                

We live by mercy if we live.
To that we have no fit reply
But working well and giving thanks,
Loving God, loving one another,
To keep Creation's neighborhood.

.... my friend David Kline told me,
"It falls strangely on Amish ears,
This talk of how you find yourself.
We Amish, after all, don't try
To find ourselves. We try to lose
Ourselves"--and thus are lost within
The found world of sunlight and rain
Where fields are green and then are ripe,
And the people eat together by
The charity of God, who is kind
Even to those who give no thanks.

The above is a part of one of  Wendell Berry’s poems, “Amish Economy,” published in his 1995 collection “The Timbered Choir” and included in the introduction to Amish farmer David Kline’s book, “Letters from Larksong.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about the Amish/Anabaptist focus on choosing to lose one’s life, to give it away, as taught by Jesus, rather than spending all of our energies trying to preserve as much of it as we can. The Amish seek to live a life of “Gelassenheit,” a German word describing a spirit of yieldedness that results in investing ones life in humble service to others rather than engaging in a lifetime pursuit of domination and accumulation. They would be the first to acknowledge their humanity, though, and that they are far from perfect.

My Amish parents, known throughout our rural community as “Aunt Mary” and "Uncle Ben," were good examples of a well spent life. It wasn’t uncommon for my mother to go help a sick neighbor, a new mother or a needy friend at a moment’s notice, or for them to provide hospitality around our dining room table for all kinds of guests, even from our meager means. And my father, generous to a fault, was faithful in helping his neighbors and in tithing his modest farm income even when times were hard for our family.

Maybe life really is meant to be a gift to be given away. In the end, we have to lose it all anyway, whether we choose to or not. So why not be intentional about it, experience joy in giving away our gifts and assets to make the world a happier and better place? And maybe just die penniless and happy?   

But now, in summer dusk, a man
Whose hair and beard curl like spring ferns
Sits under the yard trees, at rest,
His smallest daughter on his lap.
This is because he rose at dawn,
Cared for his own, helped his neighbors,
Worked much, spent little, kept his peace.

Wendell Berry. 1995.IV in A timbered choir: the Sabbath poems 1979-1997. New York, Counterpoint, 1992, pp. 190-191.

(photo from the not too much web page by Brian McKinlay)

The Power of Good

During the official "Days of Remembrance" this year, members of our local Interfaith Association viewed the film “The Power of Good,” a 2002 International Emmy Award winning documentary on the Holocaust. It is the moving story of Nicholas George Winton, who in 1939 was instrumental in helping save the lives of 669 Czech children, almost all Jewish, by bringing them across Hitler's Germany to his native Britain.

Between December 1938 and May 1940, almost 10,000 children and teens were being rescued through an international effort called Kindertransport and given shelter at farms, hostels, camps, and private homes in Britain. However, this did not include children of Czechoslovakia, which is why the work of Nicholas Winton was so vital.

For nearly 50 years Winton told no one about his tireless rescue mission - not even his wife, who found out about her husband's work as a young adult after finding a scrapbook of his in the couple's attic. In 1988, BBC Television broadcast a show in which over 100 of these rescued children, now very grateful adults, were reunited with their rescuer to express their gratitude.

Today, there are more than 5,000 descendants of the Winton children - all of whom owe their very lives to this quiet unassuming hero. And what impressed me most was the joy everyone experienced as a result of his sacrificial effort.

It made me wonder, what kind of reward might Winton have experienced from investing that same amount of time and money in a larger retirement, a pricier home, or in more travel for his personal pleasure? In the end, the sheer happiness this man experienced was far, far beyond priceless.