Monday, March 18, 2024

Hinterlands, Divided Electorate, and Love

Most Americans make up an “exhausted majority” whose views aren’t represented either by the orthodox left or the far right.

So surmised Ben Kawaller in a succinct piece in the Free Press. He is beginning a national road trip to find out -- boots-on-the-ground -- whether we are really polarized and if so, how badly. I dare to believe he is right: that we are not as deeply polarized as we fear.

It brought to mind one of the finest people I know. I grew up in the hinterlands, "flyover country" as it is often called, a term that is surely not intended to be derisive or dismissive, but is in fact those very things. My beloved Kansas comprises all that makes a nation survive: farms, and all the folk, communities and values adjacent. These are people in the very throes of life, very little provided artificially, a way of life known as "rural." And too many outsiders have little idea what that entails. They just fly over it.

This is why the electoral college exists -- to tie the vote to more than persons. The land needs a vote. The seaboard electorate, try as they might, does not get it. If we nullify the electoral college we will cut off our nose to spite our face, despising the land which provides our life and wondering why there is a divide between flyover country and the rest of the nation.

But I was talking about Vernon, that person this polarization brought to mind. Vernon was born and raised in Kansas, and he embodies all that can make the world right if we will let it, though if he read these words he would tell me to shut up. What makes Vernon salt-of-the-earth, the kind of person that can keep us whole in the threatening polarization?

Vernon says what he thinks and doesn't care if you don't like it. He cares about you, mind you, and will listen at length to your perspective. But in the end he has that remarkable gift John McWhorter has. He'll say, "No, I just don't see it that way." No derision, even a handshake when you're done, but plain honesty.

And Vernon lives the land, caring for a small farm and caring for his immediate and extended family. He doesn't mind also living in a very small town, participating in church life, knowing all the folk of his growing up, sharing life with them across 60 years and more. Since I know that town (Miltonvale) I know it has a rich heritage and people rich in soul. His dear mother lives there still. And Vernon will someday join his departed loved ones in the hillside cemetery across the railroad on the southeast edge of town where my loved ones for several generation are also buried.

I recently had a very long conversation with Vernon. I have a beloved but basic college education which I continued in Seminary for a Masters. I love literature and reading and ideas and all that stuff, though I know there's a world of which I have no awareness (for example, I've read almost no Shakespeare and very little of the classics outside the Bible.) 

Vernon has little or no formal education beyond High School, though he could do a Ph.D. if he wanted. But he is wise and articulate. He knows what matters and he will tell you. And he tells you not in order to show off or score points, but because he loves you. If he were to read this he'd have a choice word for me, but I think I am right. Vernon loves. He has that affection for the land and for people -- (I sometimes wonder if that isn't the right sequence) -- of which Wendell Berry speaks. And this love means he cannot be silent even when he wishes he could.

Vernon is the answer to this polarization problem. Living, being, breathing, loving, landed. Knowing what seems right to you, holding it loosely, holding it close, and holding others close as well, if they will let you.

When I started writing I didn't know I would think of Vernon, but I'm glad I did. There is further analysis to be made, and I love the project that Ben from Free Press is doing. I confess I worry if there is not a bit of un-moored pluralism going on. That is, I wonder if our great nation can survive without a singular idea to anchor our founding vision: "one out of many," e pluribus unum. For this vision goes to the core of reality and we are losing our way. We need reality.

The hinterlands have it. Vernon has it. And if we will listen to one another, as Ben says, we may just find we can get along far better than we imagined. And that very goal of getting along, that very love, will be the unum that makes a strong nation possible. 

I want a strong nation, a nation that can hold together because its soul is united. Yes, we have different ideas. The right needs the left and the left the right, or both will end up in the ditch, an uncomfortable proposition. Which brings me to an end of these meandering thoughts with an observation of the great Wendell Berry. 

Mr. Berry is an American treasure, a man who is "landed." Mr. Berry knows what matters, and he isn't afraid to take views which misalign with either side in turn. And he tells us we need to learn forgiveness for our neighbors, suggesting:

“If two neighbors know that they may seriously disagree, but that either of them, given even a small change of circumstances, may desperately need the other, should they not keep between them a sort of pre-paid forgiveness? They ought to keep it ready to hand, like a fire extinguisher.”

Berry is right and I am learning. Vernon helps me see it. At the end of the day we have to live together and doing so will require, sometimes, laying aside our disagreements so real love can win the day.








Saturday, March 16, 2024

More

Life is short, they say
and all along the way
I see reminders and wonder why
this life so grand is tinged by death.

Russian prophet said
that since we'll all be dead
someday it can't be our life's meaning
is found in all-sought happiness.

All who breath, I'm told,
(to proffer, I'll be bold
to say) they share the longing to live
forever and to find there's More.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Man Maker v. 2

 This weekend our church sponsored the second retreat for young men called Man Maker. As our promo says,

“This event will be a mix of youth camp, boot camp, and life skills training with the focused goal of helping young men understand better what it means to be a man, and helping them aspire to that as a core life purpose.”

Our classes include subjects like personal finance and job skills training as well as "What it means to be a Christian," avoiding addiction to the screen, living a life of sexual purity, and choosing the right friends. We will build snow caves, enjoy sledding, and hear good music and preaching in the evening "chapel" services.

This event is something I've dreamed of for a long time and it means so much to see these 12-14 young men come together. They have a great attitude, enjoy some great food, and play hard when we go to the gym.

Our goal is to encourage them to embrace manhood and be all they should be as men. We use the following guide which we repeat often:

A Good and Godly Man:

  • Fears God and keeps His commandments.

  • Honors parents and elders.

  • Is faithful in church.

  • Values and protects women and children.

  • Builds healthy home and community.

  • Becomes a skilled and diligent workman.

  • Remains pure, saving himself for marriage.

  • Builds friendships with other good men.

  • If married, honors vows and gives life for family.

  • Develops gifts and abilities for maximum blessing.


We believe the world is better if young men imbibe these values and live them out. May God be pleased to make it so.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Turns Fifty (and it's still worth the read!)

I am sure there are those who have read most of the best books, looking past the merely good and knowing from elders and ancients which are worth reading: the soul-feeding, the making-wise tomes we all know we should read but seldom do. I'm definitely in the camp of “seldom do” though I remedy it a bit each year. And while I wandered among the non-classics and more modern, I ran across Annie Dillard.

I remember my first encounter while reading Eugene Peterson. He excerpted her discussion of explorers' quest for the North Pole. Annie compared this to the quest for God: worship is “a kind of northing...a single minded trek to a place.” I was reading while walking on a treadmill and when I finished the section I laid the book aside and exclaimed repeatedly: “Wow!” I had never read anything like it.

Annie Dillard would never put herself in the camp of the greats, nor am I, but I reckon she is as good as most of us will read. And if you give her half a chance she'll make you think about things you never imagined, and make you wonder if you'd done much thinking at all.

I later discovered her Pulitzer Prize winner, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, published 50 years ago this week. She won the Pulitzer in 1975 at the mere age of 29. “Wow” I thought again. I learned she attended Hollins College (now University), and then discovered that very Tinker Creek bordered our property. Further, I had often mowed yards with my son in the area she discusses, dipping a foot in that creek now and then and visiting homes she witnessed in her treks.

When I learned this was the 50th anniversary, I decided it was time to read Pilgrim for the first time. A friend told me it was a top-five lifetime book. The editor at her publishing house said one can only hope to read such a book. And of course it is well-known she is considered an heir to Thoreau. I am deciding she combines Wendell Berry and Neil Postman, among others of course. I am also deciding I will not try to read the book fast.

I once took up the Bonhoeffer [modern] classic, Life Together, thinking I would read it in an afternoon and crank out a lesson in which others could feed mind and soul. Not! I quit after ten minutes! It was not a book for analysis but for soaking, for plodding, for praying and waiting and wishing to learn.

Pilgrim is in a different class to be sure, but I made the same error. Impossible.

Hang analysis. Pilgrim is for pondering, praying, wondering, learning, laughing. The book uncovers nature and in the process uncovers the reader. No doubt that's half the battle, giving in to the uncovering that cannot be had without letting go. We determine to listen, to see, to stop, to just be. And we begin to live again, if we ever really did.

I laugh now to imagine I might read the book in a long afternoon and then convey all I learned to others. I was on a timeline that in itself denied all the book would teach me. What can I know – at all – if I do not stop, if I do not listen, if I do not learn from the creek?

So I decided to do something outside my gift-mix: letting go. Maybe there would be something to say after I was quiet for a long time, if I took notes, if I just listened before saying anything. So that's what I'm going to do. I am going to read Tinker Creek at a slow pace throughout the year. Yes, I will write before I know much – that's what writers do. But I look forward to the journey and hope some others will join me on it.

Dillard is rightly a celebrated American author. I think I will find the journals which unveiled Tinker Creek 50 years ago – much like the Scripture she repeatedly invokes – uncover the reader in turn. That's what art is supposed to do, and great art all the more. I bet Pilgrim does a good job of this unveiling, and I look forward to finding out if I am right.


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

A Perilous Idea [100WWed]

A perilous idea: "All can be processed. As in a combine, the wheat will go to the hopper, the straw into the field, the chaff away to choke my unbelieving friends." (did I just say that?!) The wheat field is the world as we know it, the combine our processing, always susceptible to the mess of chaff and straw and stubble. I'd rather a scythe and cottage, enough to feed my soul and family, disturbing little enough to know what's chaff and know it blows away. Wheat -- I need it; a scythe, I suppose. Life, trying to live it.







Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Dot Lake [10'Tu]

Ten minute Tuesday finds me writing about Alaska. In particular Dot Lake, Alaska. Specifically, what is know as the “Children's Home” property in said village. This so-called 'children's home' was actually a home for troubled youth. It served that purpose in two iterations, I believe, the one I am closest to being that which ended about 1994.

Since then this home and property have been a destination for youth camp and occasional other events for a church fellowship based in North Pole. We refer to the property simply as “Dot Lake” and 10 pages would not be enough to tell you why we love it so. You would have to visit.

There is just something special about the place. Yes it is in the middle of nowhere, though by Alaska interior standards it is almost downtown. One can find a small city within an hour either direction. Most hardware, groceries, equipment rental, restaurants and etc. are no more than 62 miles away on good roads. Yes, good roads.

What makes it special? I do not know. I believe in God and goodness and grace. And so I imagine the care good people have given across the years somehow shapes a place. And I believe God has a “presence” that is more evident in some places and around some people than not.

That seems true of the Dot Lake property of which I speak – God is there. Of course such a claim is true if it is (true) and not so much if it is not (true). The only way to know such a thing is to pray for awareness, dare to believe, and come and see.

I may write about Dot Lake more, we'll see. Today I visited Dot Lake with a friend, in the Alaskan “bleak mid-winter.” And I knew again that just like ancient Bethlehem, when God sees fit to bless a place all who are there can be blessed.

Alleluia!



Monday, March 11, 2024

Hints of Heaven's Memory

Excerpt from "Letters of a Youthful Poet" by Charles Glenn:

So if there is summing in counting or thought,
I know it is knowing, that things can't be bought;
Like love and rem'iscence, like lovers' embrace,
Like heaven's sweet memory, writ deep in the race.