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.