Fear's the Way We Die

Ye Olde Roger, a photo by paynehollow on Flickr.

One of the quotes I like from the commentators on Psalm 37 is this – it is just a comment on the psalms in general – “Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, whatever emotions your heart may be feeling, whatever struggles you may be going through, you will find a place in the Psalms that resonates and draws you closer to the Lord.”

I felt the truth of this statement the other day as I was working out at the farm. I was cleaning out the pond – you know, pulling out trees that had fallen into the pond and clearing some of the brush back from the edge of the water.

Yesterday Steven and I spent several hours in the canoe dragging these fallen trees and branches closer to the shore where we then snagged them and dragged them ashore.

Anyway, the other day I was taking a break and enjoying the view of the pond, the cattails and tulip poplars and the ridge leading up the knobs rising beyond them. I saw a kingfisher swoop down and catch a fish and land on one of the overhanging branches briefly before flying off. And it started to rain. It was a gentle summer rain. The pond was dotted with surprising raindrop circles from one end to the other, just a few at first then more and more.

The musical plops in the pond complemented the sound of the easy rhythm of the falling rain on the leaves of the surrounding trees. It was a blessed moment.

I was reminded of a line in a song John Denver sings:

I guess he’d rather work out where the only thing you earn is what you spend.

I love the work out at the farm. I really feel like I earn what I spend out there. I love clearing the trails and messing with the mowers. I love it that we’ve had so many of our church family come out and play and hike and relax and move very heavy cabin timbers.

I love watching the deer and turkey and bluebirds and kingfishers. I can’t wait to get the chicken coop up and going so we can have chickens to keep the bugs out of the garden and eat the ticks. I love it that we have blackberries and grapes and watermelons growing. I love it that we’ll be able to raise more of our own food and use less nonrenewable energy to do so. I love it that we’re looking at passive solar options for building our homes. I love the work out at the farm and I love the dreams that work represents.

In a lot of ways, though, I’m finding myself challenged by the prospects of now going beyond the words and ideas I’ve shared for over five years now of living on a farm and living in community with others. Any day we’ll be closing on the property.

We’ve got our drawings of adding onto the farmhouse where Michelle lives to make space for Christy, the girls and me. There are many challenges we will face as a community, some I’m sure we’ve never imagined, and sometimes I am anxious. Sometimes I worry. Sometimes I am afraid.

On the other hand, I have found a place in the Psalms that resonates with where I am now and draws me closer to God, closer to my family, closer to the Farm community and closer to my church.

Again I am blessed with the opportunity to hear the psalmist’s words.

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
Delight yourself in the LORD and
God will give you the desires of your heart.

God has been with us as we’ve met and prayed and discussed and looked at land and dreamed our dreams of community and retreat. This New Albany property came into the picture just as Christy and I were feeling a need to find a more immediate housing alternative to our home on Campbell Street. I was afraid we’d need to part ways with the Farm community.

But God gave us the desire of our heart. I believe that God has given us the desire to live in community on this farm, on this land.

I believe that God has given us the desire to raise our girls more simply and closer to nature.

I believe that God has given us the desire to stay in close proximity to Jeff Street so that others can both retreat and participate and celebrate with us as we “dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.”

God has given us the desire of our hearts. Part of what being perfect as my Abba in heaven is perfect now means for me is that I am a husband and father and teacher and youth minister and Jeff Streeter and Farmer in community.

The last verse of the song, “Get Together” goes like this:

If you hear the song I sing you will understand. You hold the key to love and fear in your trembling hand. Just one key unlocks them both – it’s there at your command.

The key to love and fear is the choice we make. Will we put into practice the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount? Will we recognize and embrace the desires God has put in our hearts? Will we let selfishness, greed and fear keep us from fully participating in God’s reign and being everything we are created to be?

Psalm 37 is a psalm about how selfishness, greed and fear can keep us from being satisfied. It is about looking to God’s love and about God providing us with all we need, even the very desires of our heart, as we seek to be God’s people.

May our choices lead us to love – to love ourselves when we are selfish, greedy or afraid and need to make better choices; to love those around us, family, co-workers, fellow students, our neighbors and our enemies; to love justice and work for peace; to love God’s good earth and to lessen the impact of our energy consumption and the pollution it causes for us all; to love God and recognize that God wants us to live and love with integrity in all we do so as to participate fully in God’s reign here on earth as it is in heaven.

A Blessing

Farm Group, a photo by paynehollow on Flickr.

Obviously, given a choice: Would you like to live without limits and eventually die and destroy everything in the whole world except perhaps the roaches, OR would you like to live wisely and within reasonable boundaries? – Most of us would choose the second option.

The problem is, no one ever offers us the choice. We just live life as it comes to us, making what seems like either the wisest or easiest choice at the time problems arise.

This sort of laissez faire life – taking whatever comes to us without much thinking or planning - has led to a world of problems. We know the problems – pollution, breakdown of community, consumerism – I won’t belabor that.

Because it’s easier to take life as it comes to us, we tend to just be part of the larger problem. It’s not that we intentionally set out to pollute or destroy, it just sort of happens that way.

But Jeff Street has never been about doing what’s expedient, about taking the easy way out. We’re not lemmings running toward oblivion! We are a bunch of salmon here, swimming upstream.

And so, I think it very appropriate to choose this Earth Day, with this particular message, as the day that we give blessing to the latest endeavor by one of our school of salmon: The Unknown Community Group. The Farmtalkers. The As-Yet-Named-Retreaters.

I want you all to know, though, that they’re no casual fly-by-night communitarians, no sir. They’ve been working on this idea of a community in various forms for, I’d say decades now, right? And this particular group has been working, praying, visioning, meeting and planning their rowdy departure from Babylon for five years.

The success that they will meet in their move to their farm community across the river – and they will meet with success – will not be an overnight success, but one of careful planning and prayerful consideration.

They know, in the words of Thoreau, that “What’s the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?”

They know, in the words of Dorothy Day, that “The best thing to do with the best things in life, is to give them up.”

They know, in the words of Aldo Leopold, that “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

Dave, Cindy, Lydia, Amos, Michelle, Chie, Adam, Hanae, Roger, Christy, Mikaela, Katherine, Laura, Kate, Paul, Martin and Sophia: You know we love you and are proud of you. You’re showing us a way of living more sustainably. More wholly.

And so, we pray God's blessings on you all, as you have and continue to bless us.

Go, learn the passing of the seasons as a friend passing by. Dig deep into the soil and make it rich as it enriches you. Climb your mountains, tend your valleys, nestle your homes in their elegant embrace. Make a safe haven for children and bluebirds, Jeff Streeters and normal people.

Lead the way for us and for the world. “Go, not where the path may lead, but where there is no path, and leave a trail” (Emerson). Show us how to live and to live well.

Amen.