#wendellberry | itsawonderfilledlife

Posts Tagged ‘#wendellberry’

Good News Builds Community

Posted in GOD, WONDER, tagged #evangelism, #exclusivity, #goodnewsbuildscommunity, #wendellberry, community on November 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

This week, at different times and in separate contexts, three words keep surfacing:

community

different people sharing life together

exclusivity

omitting or excluding

evangelism

reaching out to others with the good news of Jesus

On first glance, they might not go together, but, after a conversation on this dark and monsoon-rainy night, I began to see a thread connecting them all.

We humans seek community with others. We are constantly seeking open gates into cozy and accepting spaces full of others. We need each other. We long, with everything in us, to know that we are not alone.

But, fear enters the picture. We build walls around our communities. We lock the gates, and post a guard. Our desire to not be alone, can cause us to protect the community we have found or achieved, resulting in exclusivity.

Any community can easily become exclusive, and these exclusive communities can be found on our streets, in our schools, our workplaces and our churches. Turning our cherished communities into gangs or cliques.

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Community is the desired, the goal.

Exclusivity is the result of fear.

But, there is a third word,

evangelism.

Evangelism is the reaching out to others with the good news of Jesus.

In a sense, it is the heart and foundation of community, being offered to us all. It is the anecdote for the fear that leads us to exclusivity, and exclusivity is the reason Christ came. He came not just for the Jew, but the Gentile as well … a new, inclusive community.

Evangelism is the reason for human community. We strive to share the good news of Jesus, because he is the one that can not only eliminate fear, but he fills the void with the communion (community) of saints.

Protect our community from exclusivity … share the good news.

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” … and then came baby Jesus”

Posted in WONDER, tagged #andthencamebabyjesus, #annlamont, #christinarossetti, #lightindarkness, #merrychristmas, #wendellberry, christmas, Jesus on December 24, 2015| Leave a Comment »

“It gets darker and darker and then came baby Jesus.”

Ann Lamont shared the words, above, spoken in her presence by poet and author, Wendell Berry. It was a dark and stormy December day.

Today is a rather dark day, as the sound of rain falling interrupts the Christmas music playing in our house. Or is the music interrupting the rain falling?

In our world there is much darkness, much hatred, much too little peace … too little peace on Earth.

Darkness is the backdrop of our world and our lives, today, as it was that first Christmas, when love and light came to us in the form of baby. The innocence of a helpless, dependent baby, in the arms of his mother, who he came to save.

Delivered in the arms of a world, who he came to save, to redeem.

And, as a helpless babe, he was entrusted to a dark dark world. A world given the choice to love him, or reject him. To embrace him, or abandon him.

But, this celebration of Christmas is about how the light of that helpless babe still shines.

It shines in his birth foretold so long before fulfilled.

It shines in the Christmas story fulfilling the prophesy.

It shines in you and me, those of us who claim his redemption, who live illuminated by his love within us.

Merry Christmas is not a message for red cupped retailers, or turkey dinners or reindeers with lit noses.

Merry Christmas is the message of the word, become flesh, in the form of a baby, arms stretched open towards all of humanity, giving light to a dark world.

“CHRISTMAS hath darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.”

Christina Rossetti

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Summer Plans

Posted in WONDER, tagged #justbreath, #psalm46:10, #summerplans, #summerrest, #summervacation, #wendellberry on June 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Our final staff meeting of the school year ended with a prayer, but before that, a poem:

“There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place”
Wendell Berry

For me, summer break began today. The joys and delights of rest, recreation and refreshment are now at my fingertips. Time is on my side, as living for the clock has been replaced with living for the sake of living.

As we all know, these times of vacation, and the delights associated with them are not an indicator of displeasure with our life’s work, but a need to change perspective so that we might have fresh and clearer focus when we return to our jobs, our professions, our work.

I have such plans for this summer …

refinishing furniture and selling it

tending my garden, my roses, each morning

more exercising

cleaning closets

painting bedrooms

finding more furniture to refinish, to sell

I am feeling tired just writing my plans …

But …

“There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place”

Maybe my plans, your plans, need further consideration. Maybe our plans for down time ought to actually include down time. Maybe the road we should consider traveling this summer is one without destination (or accomplishment). Maybe the only direction we need is to breath, to be still, just for a little while.

“He says,
be still and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10

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