Friday, October 3, 2008
Technological tilling
Today, a couple of friends and I made a couple of videos for the church website. In the second one, we actually used the "festival wagon" that I'd built for our enjoyment of Lafayette music festivals to film from. Chris was toting Tyler along while Tyler recorded. I was walking in the back, trying to look at the camera and talk about our attempt to minister to this community via a "parish" model of ministry. It was a challenge to be articulate while trying to stay in the center of the frame, as well as keep my breath (Chris was practically running! ... not really). So, we'll see how it turns out after all the editing and audio overlay. Thank God for technology. Maybe He'll use this as our intro into for this community - the initial spade dig,... a "tilling" of sorts.
Amish country
Today, a friend told of his recent visit to Amish country. He discovered through various conversations with the locals that there is a general distress over the loss of the younger generation. Their children are leaving. And they're asking themselves "why?" What have we done? How can we make amends? And, perhaps, at root, "Is what we're doing valuable, i.e., worth saving?"
The answer, of course, depends on the agenda. What exactly are the Amish doing? All America would like to know. I have the suspicion that many of them don't exactly know. Maybe they've got some vague idea of the value of community and relationships - things you cannot objectively measure or put on a spread sheet to determine their value. And the irony is that while the Amish are at last losing their communities to modernity, post-modernity has become disillusioned with the its rootless lack of community. Empty-hearted America gazes longingly over its heaping armfuls of gadgets at the fertile Amish fields, dotted by community-constructed barns and homes, and wishes. We wish we had their wisdom, their joy, their pace of life. We wish we had the inter-dependence and even that we experienced the painstaking humanness of their earth-labors. But not at the expense of our conveniences.
We want self-indulgent convenience as well as the joyful fruit of community. But I suspect that the latter cannot have its deepest expression without the selfless investment of sacrifice. Life only comes through dying. The larger fruit of love in a community only comes from the smaller plantings of self-abnegation. A relationship, like the soil, can only be cultivated when we choose to be "inconvenienced" by the digging. And that means getting dirty.
And thus a community like that of Amish.
The answer, of course, depends on the agenda. What exactly are the Amish doing? All America would like to know. I have the suspicion that many of them don't exactly know. Maybe they've got some vague idea of the value of community and relationships - things you cannot objectively measure or put on a spread sheet to determine their value. And the irony is that while the Amish are at last losing their communities to modernity, post-modernity has become disillusioned with the its rootless lack of community. Empty-hearted America gazes longingly over its heaping armfuls of gadgets at the fertile Amish fields, dotted by community-constructed barns and homes, and wishes. We wish we had their wisdom, their joy, their pace of life. We wish we had the inter-dependence and even that we experienced the painstaking humanness of their earth-labors. But not at the expense of our conveniences.
We want self-indulgent convenience as well as the joyful fruit of community. But I suspect that the latter cannot have its deepest expression without the selfless investment of sacrifice. Life only comes through dying. The larger fruit of love in a community only comes from the smaller plantings of self-abnegation. A relationship, like the soil, can only be cultivated when we choose to be "inconvenienced" by the digging. And that means getting dirty.
And thus a community like that of Amish.
Amish country
Today, a friend told of his recent visit to Amish country.  He discovered through various conversations with the locals that there is a general distress over the loss of the younger generation. Their children are leaving. And they're asking themselves "why?" What have we done? How can we make amends? And, perhaps, at root, "Is what we're doing valuable?"
The answer, of course, depends on the agenda. What exactly are the Amish doing? All America would like to know. I have the suspicion that many of them don't exactly know. Maybe they've got some vague idea of the value of community and relationships - things you cannot objectively measure or put on a spread sheet to determine their value. And the irony is that while the Amish are at last losing their communities to modernity, post-modernity has become disillusioned with the its rootless lack of community. Empty-hearted America gazes longingly over its heaping armfuls of gadgets at the fertile Amish fields, dotted by community-constructed barns and homes, and wishes. We wish we had their wisdom, their joy, their pace of life. We wish we had the inter-dependence and even that we experienced the painstaking humanness of their earth-labors. But not at the expense of our conveniences.
We want self-indulgent convenience as well as the joyful fruit of community. But I suspect that the latter cannot have its deepest expression without the selfless investment of sacrifice. Life only comes through dying. The larger fruit of love in a community only comes from the smaller plantings of self-abnegation. A relationship, like the soil, can only be cultivated when we choose to be "inconvenienced" by the digging. And that means getting dirty.
The answer, of course, depends on the agenda. What exactly are the Amish doing? All America would like to know. I have the suspicion that many of them don't exactly know. Maybe they've got some vague idea of the value of community and relationships - things you cannot objectively measure or put on a spread sheet to determine their value. And the irony is that while the Amish are at last losing their communities to modernity, post-modernity has become disillusioned with the its rootless lack of community. Empty-hearted America gazes longingly over its heaping armfuls of gadgets at the fertile Amish fields, dotted by community-constructed barns and homes, and wishes. We wish we had their wisdom, their joy, their pace of life. We wish we had the inter-dependence and even that we experienced the painstaking humanness of their earth-labors. But not at the expense of our conveniences.
We want self-indulgent convenience as well as the joyful fruit of community. But I suspect that the latter cannot have its deepest expression without the selfless investment of sacrifice. Life only comes through dying. The larger fruit of love in a community only comes from the smaller plantings of self-abnegation. A relationship, like the soil, can only be cultivated when we choose to be "inconvenienced" by the digging. And that means getting dirty.
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