"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)

An Evening With An Amish Sage

I’ll long remember hearing David Kline, Holmes County, Ohio, Amish bishop and naturalist, speak at Eastern Mennonite University last week.

In response to a question about the Amish not sending their children to school beyond the eighth grade, he explained that he and his fellow Amish see education as a lifelong endeavor that really just begins after elementary school. As evidence of this, he said that the bookmobile that serves his community, dubbed “The Traveling Book Shelf,” has the largest circulation of any in the United States, in the part of Ohio that now has the largest concentration of Amish in the world.

Kline himself is an example of a truly self-educated man, a naturalist and author of three books that portray some of the simple everyday pleasures of living on their 120-acre organic farm. In his book “Scratching the Woodchuck, Nature on an Amish Farm,” he describes the many birds and other creatures he finds so fascinating, including  how he once discovered a sleeping woodchuck on a warm summer day which he carefully scratched with his walking stick, and how the dozing animal responded by arching its back with pleasure at the attention.

In "Great Possessions, An Amish Farmer's Journal," he describes how his entire family works together to grow and market food and take care of the land and the animals that are so vital to their way of life. Without the distractions of radio, television, computers, e-mail, or cell phones, something as ordinary as cleaning out their horse barn becomes an opportunity for Kline and his teenage son to experience healthy exercise while engaging in an extended man-to-man conversation, something that happens all too seldom between most fathers and sons in our faster paced urban society.

Hearing from this gentle saint helped me appreciate even more my own Amish upbringing and added to my desire to pass on the best of that legacy to my children and grandchildren.

P. S. Here's a link to my post "Going on the Amish Diet."

How Much Real Estate Does God Need?

These properties are all exempt from paying real estate taxes.

I well remember a sign I saw once along along Highway 33 east of town that announced, “God is about to do something wonderful here.”

Turns out God was apparently planning to turn some irreplaceable farm land into a large asphalt parking lot with a multi-million dollar brick and concrete structure built in the middle of it.

As open land in our Valley becomes more and more scarce, I’ve long been concerned about our preserving as much of our remaining unspoiled wooded and agricultural land as possible.

This calls for help even from congregations.

In theory I am on the side of people of whatever faith being able to buy and build wherever they choose. Having said that, I would also expect believers to be especially careful about how much of God’s good earth they gouge out and pave over.

As alternatives, congregations could cooperate in better using their existing buildings. Most church auditoriums are occupied for only a few hours a week, and have plenty of spare pew space. It’s true that some congregations offer day care and other services that use some part of their property more efficiently, but that still represents only a small portion of their total space.

I believe we would honor God more by having numerous services in our existing structures, since it is nowhere written that we need to "assemble ourselves together" on Sunday mornings. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Harrisonburg,  for example, with a parish of over 1500 households, holds four separate services each weekend. When the church added a larger auditorium in 1995, they built on downtown property they already owned.

And there are other options. Numerous local congregations rent “secular” spaces for their services, such as schools, store fronts and town halls.

Why not? Early Christians met for worship and weekly meals together in their homes, and at various times of the day. In parts of the world where Christianity is spreading most rapidly (in China, for example) home-based churches are often the norm. These believers hold that any space becomes sacred when two or more are together in God’s name. They also give witness to the idea that believers themselves, not the edifices they build, are God’s real “temples.”

In the May 2005 issue of Christianity Today, Asbury Seminary historian Howard Snyder notes that “church history shows an inverse ratio between dynamic church multiplication and preoccupation with buildings.” Certainly this has proven to be true in Europe, which has the world’s most beautiful cathedrals but a decreasing number of practicing Christians.

I am not against the use of modest structures set aside for purposes of worship. And I actually favor Christians meeting even more often than just an hour or two on a Sunday morning. But in a world with so much need, what kind of message could we send if we dramatically reduced the money invested in real estate and instead invested in more affordable housing, nutrition and health care for the poor?

That could honor the Creator in a way even an agnostic could understand.

Advertising a False Gospel

One of the problems we have in our society is that we have an enormous capacity for producing goods, but a limited number of people to buy them. So we’ve developed a huge advertising industry aimed at persuading people to buy more and more of what they don’t need and can’t afford.

Christopher Decker, in an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Selling Desire, Why Chastity is Bad for Business," notes that there was a time when advertising emphasized thrift, durability, and economy. Choices were usually made around how good a product was and how long it would last.  But a consumer society has to reverse these values, he notes, because if advertising is to succeed, and business thrive, people have to be convinced that desires alone are sufficient reasons to buy something and that all of our passions are to be indulged now, rather than denied or postponed. So the very notion of chastity has to go, he says, because that represents a mindset that is opposite from a throw away, consumer culture that urges us to get our our Visa cards to buy and use stuff with abandonment, and then simply discard it for whatever you like even better.

According to Dr. Sut Jhally of the University of Massachusetts, the right question to ask about how a given commercial affects us is not how much it influences whether we buy a particular product, but how advertising as a whole affects our buying into a whole different set of values that are counter to the ones we profess to believe. Modern advertising promotes a magical way of thinking, he says, making fantastic promises about what certain products will do for us, like offer us incredible happiness, gain the gloating admiration of all kinds of desirable people, and transform us into an instant, spectacular success. Consumerism promises all, and as such becomes a kind of religion that replaces the faith we actually claim to live by
.
We need to teach ourselves and our children to talk back to the blatantly false messages we’re all hearing on television and other media every day. Or better yet, just unplug ourselves from the barrage of untruths we're being bombarded with and read or tell them some good messages of our own.

Going on the "Amish Diet"

 

In light of studies showing that members of Old Order Amish communities have significantly fewer cases of obesity, diabetes and related health problems, some have suggested that an “Amish diet” might work even better than, say, an Atkins diet.

In short, it would mean eating hearty meals every day but being as physically active as are typical members of Amish farm families. Their meals routinely include lots of home grown meats, fruits and vegetables, but also some very tasty desserts. But all of that is accompanied by hours of good manual labor (and the use of far less fossil fuel) in the growing, preserving, preparing and transporting of food, in making many of their own clothes and otherwise taking good care of their households and farms.

In his book, "Great Possessions, An Amish Farmer's Journal," David Kline describes some of the simple everyday pleasures of living on their 120-acre Holmes County, Ohio, farm, where the entire family works together to grow and market food and take care of the land that is so vital to their way of life. Without the distractions of radio, television, computers, e-mail, or cell phones, something as ordinary as cleaning out their horse barn becomes an opportunity for Kline and his teenage son to experience rigorous exercise while engaging in an extended man-to-man conversation, something that happens all too seldom between most fathers and sons in our faster paced urban society.

While not many of us urbanites will be able to live like the Amish, a healthier, lower-tech lifestyle might involve the following:

1) less mowing and more hoeing--and gardening
2) less shopping at crowded malls and more sharing of home produced goods and resources with our neighbors
3) less dependence on far-off corporate farms and factories and more reliance on home and locally grown products
4) less dependence on passive forms of media entertainment and more involvement in physically active and socially interactive work and play
5) less riding and more walking and biking

We could call it the latest, state-of-the-art "Amish Diet and Workout Plan."

P. S.  I grew up in an Amish family and community but have been a member of the Virginia Conference Mennonite church most of my adult life.

The 258th Richest Person in the World

Let’s say you buy a $43.5 million, 6,000-square-foot oceanfront estate on 6.5 acres in Sagaponack, Long Island (the country's most expensive zip code, according to BusinessWeek). What's the first thing you do? According to a June 2, 2010 post on the AOL homepage, if you're hedge fund billionaire David Tepper, you tear it down -- along with the guesthouse, swimming pool and tennis court -- to build an even bigger mega-mansion.

According to the Southampton Patch, Tepper bought the home in 2009 from ex-wife of former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine, in the area's most expensive transaction of 2010. In April, he got a permit for the demolition, and two months later the site was completely cleared.

The new house is about twice the size of the original, with "ocean views from every room, a sunken tennis court, a three-car garage, a widow's walk, second-floor decks, including one with a Jacuzzi, and a covered porch," according to the minutes of a recent town board meeting at which the construction was reviewed.

From Wikkipedia, we learn that in 2009, Tepper's hedge-fund firm earned about $7 billion by buying distressed financial stocks (including acquiring Bank of America common stock at $3 per share) in February and March of that year and profiting from recovery of those stocks, with $4 billion of these profits going to Tepper's personal wealth. In March 2010, the New York Times reported that Tepper's success made him the top-earning hedge fund manager in the world in 2009, and in 2010 he was ranked by Forbes as the 258th richest person in the world, all through engaging in what Ghandi, in his list of "seven deadly social sins," describes as the wrong of "wealth without work."

This reminds me of a story Jesus once told of a well-to-do farmer who had an exceptionally good harvest one year. Pleased with his newly acquired wealth, he decided, “I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink and be merry.’”

That may sound like a great plan for an early retirement, but what the poor man didn’t realize was that God labeled him as a fool for this kind of self-centered planning, a wealth-blinded mortal whose priorities were short-sighted and whose life was about to be terminated.

Unbeknownst to him, he was about to leave it all behind. Every bit of it.

Waste Amid Want

In his new book "American Wasteland," writer Jonathan Bloom documents how so much food produced in America is wasted along every step of the supply chain from field to fridge. Somewhere between 25-50% of all food produced in America, he says, goes to waste every year.

Journalist and author Bloom documents specific examples, beginning with food crops lying rotting in fields owing to intentional policy, economic factors, and sheer ignorance. And in restaurants, portion sizes have become ever larger and daily buffet meals result in enormous amounts of delicious leftover food being thrown away at the end of every day.

Unlike my mother, who believed wasting food was a mortal sin, Bloom points out how many Americans allow food to spoil in their refrigerators out of carelessness, lack of meal planning, and just plain neglect.

He does find hopeful signs, though, in some grocery stores and restaurants disposing of their surplus through food pantries and other charities. And some socially conscious farmers are even reviving the ancient practice of allowing those in need to glean from their fields after a harvest.

What makes food waste especially appalling is that while in developed nations like ours we throw away massive amounts of food, people all over the globe are starving. Every day we see TV images of dying children and gaunt mothers dying of malnutrition in Somali refugee camps--interspersed with ads urging already overweight Americans to gorge on super-sized burgers and fries and to make yet another trip to an abundance laden supermarket or a restaurant buffet. 

Bloom believes we have trained ourselves to regard food as a symbol of American plenty that should always be available cheaply in all seasons and times, and in limitless quantities. He warns, "Current rates of waste and population growth can't coexist much longer," and makes practical suggestions on how we can all help "keep our Earth and its inhabitants physically and morally healthy."

My mother would like that.

P. S.  Here are some agencies that can help provide urgently needed food relief:  http://www.care.org/    http://www.mcc.org/, http://www.oxfamamerica.org/

Old Order Savings and Thrift

According to an NPR story aired after the 2008 financial meltdown, not all financial institutions took a hit following that crisis. Banks in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with lots of Old Order Amish customers kept doing just fine.

"We've never lost any money on an Amish deal," noted Hometowne Heritage banker Bill O’Brien in the NPR interview. He explained that Old Order farmers and business people seldom take out loans except for major purchases like building construction or real estate, and pay for most other things by cash or from their savings or checking accounts. They use no credit cards, avoid fancy wardrobes and high tech entertainment centers, shun automobiles and most fuel guzzling farm equipment and are generally known for living a frugal and simple life. No sub prime loans here.

Banker O’Brien noted that even if his bank had wanted to, it could not have “bundled” its mortgages and resold them elsewhere for the easy profits other banks pursued. His Amish holdings wouldn't qualify anyway, he said, because in order for a mortgage to be securitized a home has to have electricity and be covered by traditional insurance. The Amish have chosen to do without electricity, and the primary insurance they have is their commitment to help each other when fellow members have any kind of major property damage or medical expenses.

Meanwhile, too many of us borrow and spend as though there were no tomorrow. The result is our nation experiencing an overall negative savings rate for the first time in American history. We have charged way more than we can afford, spent far more on instant gratification than we’ve been willing to save, and have too often accumulated debts greater than our net worth. We assumed that the value of our investments and real estate could only go up, and that there would always be a larger income and more credit where the last came from.

Those days appear to be over. More than ever we are being denied access to the bountiful buffet of easy, cheap credit and endless consumer goods we’ve been feasting on for so long. And now that it’s time to pay the piper, we find ourselves seriously short of cash.

As more of our collective bills are coming due, average American incomes are falling and unemployment rates are still unacceptably high. And to bail ourselves out and to get our economy back on track, the federal government is about to borrow even more trillions our grandchildren will be burdened with.

Maybe its time to take some lessons from our Amish and Old Order Mennonite neighbors. They, like our grandparents and great-grandparents who experienced hard times and the Great Depression, have learned to get by without expecting the good life to be handed them on a silver platter. They exercise fiscal restraint, wait to buy things until they can afford them, and routinely make and grow many of the things they need.

A Truly Royal Wedding

The Right Honourable bishop of London, the Rev. Richard Chartres, in his wedding homily for Prince William and Kate Middleton, stated, "In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding, with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future."

My wife and I will never forget a wedding we attended some time ago that was as impressive to us as  the lavish event millions all over the world witnessed yesterday in Westminster Abby.

The bride, a family friend, and her new groom personally welcomed each of the guests as they arrived at the Eastern Mennonite Seminary chapel. He wore a simple white shirt and ordinary dress pants, she a matching white blouse and a dark skirt. There was no formal processional, no elaborately decorated auditorium, not even the traditional bridesmaids and groomsmen. All of us were to be the wedding party and to join together in the festive atmosphere the couple and their families created for this once-in-a-lifetime celebration.

As we sat down, we noted a cloth covered table in the front of the chapel with a variety of white candles, a visual feast of light and warmth for the ceremony. Next to it was a live tree from a local nursery to be planted after the reception as a symbol of the couple’s new life together. Music was plentiful and wonderful, and included some congregational hymns everyone joined in singing as members of one grand choir. Several brief meditations were personally addressed to the young pair seated in the front row, and as they stood to pledge their vows to each other for life--and as various friends and family members spoke their personal blessings--many of us were moved to tears.

At the reception there was plenty of hot cider and two kinds of hot soup for all the guests, along with a generous slice of zucchini cake, all of which had been prepared by various friends of the bride and groom for the occasion. After the meal, a time of reminiscing and story telling helped us get better acquainted with the couple and to learn more about their after-honeymoon plans, she to take a volunteer service assignment in a church-run program for at-risk families and he to enter graduate school.

I don’t know how much this wedding cost, but with no pearl-studded gowns or rented tuxedos, no expensive caterers or lavish floral arrangements, no stretch limousines or impressive candelabras, I’m sure it was considerably less than the national average of over $16,000 for such productions. Yet there was something about the service that seemed just right. It was less a staged performance than a time of community togetherness, one in which we felt a connection with the couple as real people and with the God who seemed to smile a warm blessing on the whole affair.

It made me wonder whether we shouldn’t encourage investing more of our resources in helping young people prepare for their marriage, and less in exhaustive preparations for a display of wealth out of keeping with the rest of their lifestyle. 

This service represented a different kind of richness, a celebration many of us considered one of the most beautiful ever. An example of a different kind of royal wedding.

     

Church--Simple, Hospitable and Affordable

When I tell people that Alma Jean and I have been part of a house church congregation for the past 22 years, I often get a puzzled look. They can see cell groups meeting in people's living rooms, but how can you be a real church and not meet in a specially dedicated building for Sunday services that are led by professional clergy?

For the first centuries after Pentecost, nearly all Christians met in homes for worship and for their weekly Eucharist meals. Most of the New Testament letters are addressed to such home-based congregations scattered all over the Roman empire. With no pipe organs, pulpits, pews, or paid clergy, believers regularly gathered in the living rooms or courtyards of their members to share “a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation... for the building up of the church." *

Since “Sundays” back then were not holidays, Christians often met early in the morning or at the end of the work day for teaching, fellowship and the “breaking of bread.” An example of one such service in the Acts of the Apostles describes a group of believers meeting by lamplight in an upstairs room--on "the evening of the first day of the week.” **

By the second century AD some congregations had renovated houses or “basilicas” as special places to meet, and by the time the fourth century Emperor Constantine officially endorsed Christianity modest houses of worship had become common in some urban areas. Then Constantine himself launched a gigantic building campaign that resulted in elaborate and expensive edifices for Christian worship appearing all over the empire, an effort that earned him widespread acclaim.

The rest, as they say, is history.

I don’t oppose the idea of church buildings as such, nor do I believe that homes are the only proper settings for worship. But since there is an actual surplus of empty pews in our community, I’d at least like to see a moratorium on investing ever more money in church real estate in favor of other creative options for worship spaces, such as churches sharing facilities (meeting at different times of the day) and/or utilizing other existing meeting places in the community. Or to have more believers meet in each others homes.

And then to invest some of the millions of dollars saved in projects like building Habitat for Humanity homes for the poor or helping feed the hungry.

That might send a message even an agnostic could understand.

                                                          * I Corinthians 14:26      ** Acts 20:7-17