Provocative.
We’re back and alive from vacation. Although I’m not sure we have much of a pulse.
I’ve got a bunch of random thoughts that have been playing around in my head. Sort of a perfect storm in my mind with 4 things . . . Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, some Wendell Berry lectures, Rabbi Heschel talking about Sabbath, awe, and rest, and then our slow vacation time . . . interplaying back and forth.
I keep thinking about how normal these things (local, sustainable, integrated, slow lifestyles) would have been a couple of generations ago but how now they just seem rather provocative. And accusatory of the industrial systems we currently live in. And how almost necessary it is to the christian life to live a life of critique. Going through school and through my “formative” years I always believed that the church’s role was to affirm culture and find mediums that bridged the gap between church and culture. Maybe that is the christian call. But I’m beginning to think more and more that perhaps the life that we are called to live is one of critique of the larger culture. And when our lives look exactly like the culture around us . . . eating, fashion, believes, consumption . . . what’s the point of christianity then?
I even think us in the emerging church circles . . . you know those of us who like to think that we’re provocative . . . are way too tame sometimes. I think we need more prophets who are borderline over the top with their provocative speech and action.
I want to be a farmer more and more. And I’m not just joking. Or saying this on a whim. I’ve been really interested and growing more and more by the day of what it could or would look like if we had a small piece of land where farming was possible.
Wendell Berry says the key to life is to get rid of choice. Or something along those lines. That you’re basically freed up the most when you have the fewest choices to choose from.
Joel Salatin as quoted in The Omnivore’s Dilemma,
“You know what the best kind of organic certification would be? Make an unannounced visit to a farm and take a good long look at the farmer’s bookshelf. Because what you’re feeding your emotions and thoughts is what this is really all about. The way I produce a chicken is an extension of my world view. You can learn more about that by seeing what’s sitting on my bookshelf than having me fill out a whole bunch of forms.”
You know I might becoming more and more weird when guys like Salatin are becoming heroes to me.
Joel Salatin on YouTube and a great article by Pollan on Salatin and his farm
Alan
Monday, 10. March 2008 um 9:25 am Uhr
The Church definitely needs to speak out against the culture more. The reason for your critique that the Church looks so much like the culture they are trying to “bridge” to is because we are too ignorant to find healthy ways to bridge into culture. Most youth ministry, for one example, sees making a bridge as having music and clothing all that which sounds and looks like popular culture, but that doesn’t get to the heart of it, the actual culture lying underneath. And that is the part we need to be provocative and subversive with. That’s the part we need to challenge, in society at large and in the Church.
Anyway, you as a farmer wouldn’t be entirely different than getting back to your roots, would it?
Josh Brown
Monday, 10. March 2008 um 9:27 am Uhr
haha. not at all when you consider i had 3 ducks, a donkey, and a garden in my back yard and a clothes line.
which was really more redneck since i had an above ground pool, a cemetery and a snake handling pentecostal church within throwing distance from my house.
James Kingsley
Monday, 10. March 2008 um 1:18 pm Uhr
dude – i hear ya.
one suggestion…
realizing that all great realities begin as thoughts and conversations before they take physical shape, i would suggest that the most beautiful of all critiques are those which are levied by example and aimed at nobody but the mirror and one’s own sense of integrity and responsibility.
if we could “critique” by living “the alternative” with an open-invite and encouragement for anybody willing to take even the smallest of steps in that direction I think we’d find evolutionary change laying deeper roots than the surface face-lifts that revolutionary change often offers
(ht: kester brewin on the “evolution vs revolution” stuff).
corey
Monday, 10. March 2008 um 6:44 pm Uhr
“Wendell Berry says the key to life is to get rid of choice.”
I was just discussing the “burden of too much choice” with a housemate over coffee a few mornings ago. This idea of too much choice has been a huge struggle of mine for many years now.
Being a relatively well educated, white male living in the U.S. allows me to have access to a plethora of career and lifestyle choices that most never will.
I’ve that with too many choices comes inaction. Basically because i can choose anything i end up choosing nothing at all. Or at least nothing more than 40 or 50 percent. i do most things half assed.
This would be an interesting post topic if you’re up for it. Maybe something like “How much is too much?” when it comes to choice?
I’d blog it myself but have had some massive writers block which in turn has frustrated my blogging process.
By the way, my bro is going to school for agriculture at a college somewhere in the hills of North Georgia. He’s thinking of farming as well.
Ariah Fine
Wednesday, 12. March 2008 um 8:23 am Uhr
Looking forward to visiting your farm someday.