Staying Grateful

I had the good fortune last week of seeing my favorite living author, in person, here in Pennsylvania. My younger daughter texted me to say "Hey I just saw that wendell berry will be at villanova today receiving an award at 4 . . .  Want to go with me?"

photo by Guy Mendes, 2012

I’ve been reading Berry for decades, savoring his Port William novels, memorizing parts of his poems, giving volumes of his essays as Christmas presents, quoting him in this blog. My son, living in DC, has seen him in person twice, and once invited me to travel down for a major Berry event, but the timing didn't work and since Berry is now 78, with a preference for staying in one place, I thought it unlikely I’d ever have the privilege of seeing him.

So – "want to go with me?"

I fired back an answer: "You betcha. Tell me where and when!"

Just a few hours later we gathered, my daughter, her boyfriend, and a friend who manages a local community farm, and off we went through suburban rush-hour traffic to hear the voice of rural Kentucky.

We found parking, found the Villanova University Connelly Center, found our way to the well-lit meeting room just as Berry was introduced and took his place at the podium. The room was full, but we slipped into four seats together, slid off our coats, felt our pulses slow as Berry eased into a short essay: “The Fifty Year Farm Bill,” published in The Atlantic that same day.

Berry speaks slowly, with a self-deprecating good humor and a soft Kentucky drawl, but his insights are sharp, and deeply critical of much that passes for current wisdom:

Industrial agriculture characteristically proceeds by single solutions to single problems: If you want the most money from your land this year, grow the crops for which the market price is highest. Though the ground is sloping, kill the standing vegetation and use a no-till planter. For weed control, plant an herbicide-resistant crop variety and use more herbicide.

But even officially approved industrial technologies do not alter reality. The supposed soil saving of no-till farming applies to annual crops during the growing season, but the weather continues through the fall and winter and early spring. Rain continues. Snow falls. The ground freezes and thaws. A dead sod or dead weeds or the dead residue of annual crops is not an adequate ground cover. If this usage continues year after year on sloping land, and especially following soybeans, the soil will erode; it will do so increasingly. And this will be erosion of ground already poisoned with herbicides and other chemicals. Moreover, even with the use of no-till and minimum-till technologies, an estimated half of the applied nitrogen fertilizer runs off into the Mississippi River and finally the dead zone of the Gulf of Mexico. Thus an enormous economic loss to farmers becomes an enormous ecological loss as well.

Berry moved from his critique of current agricultural practice to a story written in remembrance of the Civil War: "The Girl in the Window",  published in the Winter 2010 issue of The Threepenny Review, and recently gathered with other of Berry stories in A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership.  In his fiction, as in his essays and poetry, Berry captures the joy and sorrow of what it is to be human, the contradictions of beauty and brutality, the timeless moments that shape who we are and who we become.

Listening to Berry read his own work, I found myself thinking about integrity: his determination to be consistent across time, to live what he says, to say what he lives. And I found myself thankful for his resonating message, stated quietly, calmly, across decades, across genres:  there are rules and laws impervious to our egocentric longings, and we thrive, as individuals, families, communities, when we live within those boundaries. Berry restated this most recently in his National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Lecture in April, (the event I wanted to attend, but didn’t),  “It All Turns on Affection”:

“We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease. The crisis of this line of thought is the realization that we are at once limited and unendingly responsible for what we know and do.”

Berry has done his best to demonstrate what it means to be responsible for what he knows and does. He has farmed, for years, the same small farm in Port Royal, the town where his family has farmed since before the Civil War. He has been a faithful husband and father, grandfather, now great-grandfather, and a life-long Baptist in regular attendance at his local Baptist church. He’s been engaged in non-violent civil disobedience since the sixties against nuclear power plants, mountain-top removal, most recently against the proposed XL pipeline. He has spoken out against unjust and unwise wars, against abortion, against the death penalty:

As I am made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life before birth, I am also made deeply uncomfortable by the taking of a human life after birth. . . .Probably we have no choice against illegal killing, which continues to happen against the wishes of nearly everybody. But it is possible, morally and rationally, to choose to withhold one’s approval from legal killing, and I so choose.   (Port Royal, KY; January 23, 2009)

After Berry finished reading his story, he entertained questions from the audience. “By contract, I’ll listen to your questions. But I’m not promising to answer them.”

The questions themselves weren't memorable, but the answers showed Berry’s ability to hear what's said, then flip the question on its head to see what might be of interest.

The last question seemed like a throwaway: "Where and with whom will you spend Thanksgiving? And what are you most thankful for this year, and why?"

With a gentle smile, Berry said "That’s four questions!: then courteously sidestepped them all:

"This business of identifying one thing to be thankful for. Gratitude is a complicated thing. Everything is connected. If you’re thankful that a dear one has recovered from a serious illness, well then, you need to be thankful that you HAVE a dear one." 

I doubt my quotation is exact, but it's a familiar Berry theme: everything is connected. The health of the land leads to the health of the people; the strength of the family depends on the strength of the community. We all belong to one another, to the past, to the future, to the economic and agricultural systems that bind us to each other. Healthy systems yield healthy people; disordered systems lead to increasingly disordered hearts, minds, bodies.

Wendell Berry, more than anyone else I can think of, has looked deeply into the disordered systems of our current culture and has described as carefully as he can the implications for marriages, children, identity, food, farming, faith, trade, our economy, our environment. Yet seeing what he sees, knowing what he knows, he persists in gratitude for the beauty of the world, the kindness of friends and family, the rich goodness beyond what human minds can understand or acknowledge.

He ended his answer, and his session, with this: “My great hope is I have enough sense to be grateful to the end."

I've been carrying his thoughts with me through this Thanksgiving weekend, thinking about what it means not just to be grateful, but to stay grateful.

Those thoughts were clarified the day after Thanksgiving, as four generations gathered to celebrate my in-laws' sixtieth anniversary. In their own ways they, like Wendell Berry, have modeled a gentle, generous life lived within the boundaries of marriage, faith, and family. As their children and grandchildren shared memories, the mood turned to one of thanksgiving: for the security of an ordered family life, for the courageous witness of a faithful, determined marriage, for the freedom of learning together what it means to grow in wisdom and grace.

I’m grateful for my mother and father-in-law, for family gatherings, for shared memories, for lives woven together over decades of games and laughter and far too much pie, for marriage, for friendship, for examples of faithfulness and forgiveness and quiet service to the common good.

And I’m grateful for Wendell Berry’s work and the vision he offers of healthy, nurturing communities, and thankful for the ability to read, to think, for teachers who pointed me toward the joys of thought, books, conversation, thankful for friends and family who share ideas, recommend new authors, pass on books they've found of value, thankful for the blogging community that helps keep the conversations going, that helps to deepen the discourse far past what’s possible in sound bites or passing comments, thankful for stories shared over coffee, questions dissected over leisurely lunches, the ongoing exploration of what it means to be human, faithful, engaged, generously involved.


I could go on – and will, in my own thoughts, prayers, journal, conversations.

And what good fortune do you have to share?

What are you thankful for this week?

And how will you stay grateful?

Learn by little the desire for all things

which perhaps is not desire at all

but undying love which perhaps

is not love at all but gratitude

for the being of things which perhaps

is not gratitude at all

but the maker’s joy in what is made,

the joy in which we come to rest. 

  (Wendell Berry, from ‘Leavings’2005) 

Grateful

This fall I attended two day-long conferences on healing, forgiveness, and the work of reconciliation.

Scribbled in my notes: “Gratitude is the key to wholeness.”

Jesus Heals a Leper, Rembrandt, sketch, 1665

The text prompting that note: Luke 17:11-19. Jesus healed ten lepers; nine ran off rejoicing, and one, a Samaritan, returned to give thanks.

"Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?'
"Then he said to him, 'Rise and go; your faith has made you well.'"

They had all been cured of their leprosy. But one, the one who returned with praise and gratitude, received a deeper healing: “Your faith has made you well.”

I've been puzzling over this idea of gratitude and deeper wholeness for several months now. A friend gave me Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, and I've been struck by how Voskamp's determination to be thankful led her from deep depression into a life of joy, and how gratitude gradually undid the damage of a childhood locked in silent grief.

I've experienced much of this myself. I grew up in a household beset with grievance: “If only” was a frequent refrain. I watched how “If only” can blossom into bitterness and resentment, rage, hatred, violence. Grievance feeds grievance, until every incident, every word, is part of a narrative of injustice and deprivation.

I've seen the same story play out in households I've been close to. Abandonment, resentment, jealousy, rage: once the dial is set to grievance, the story plays out toward a predictably disturbing end.

On a larger stage the story is the same. The language of this past week, for those expecting a different end to our national election, is full of blame, bitterness, anger, hints of retribution.

Is gratitude possible when the default mode is grievance? Is it possible to learn gratitude as a spiritual discipline that can reshape our hearts and open the way to emotional health?

It seems the first step toward gratitude is to let go: let go of our own ideas of how the story was to go, let go of the “If onlys”, the sense of blame, the certainty that our way would have been best, that we've been denied the only happy ending.

It occurs to me that repentance is the one way out. I’m reminded of a sermon years ago that cut through a sense of angry entitlement I was struggling with: "Sin is wanting my own way more than God's."

We were in the middle of a move, at an impasse about what kind of house to buy, and I was sure beyond doubt I was right. And furious that the solution I had in mind was out of reach.

And then, in church the morning the decision needed to be made, the rector of Truro Church, John Howe, said "Sin is wanting my own way more than God's," and I saw my anger and bitter determination for what it was: sin. Wanting my way. Inability to listen to any voice outside my own.

Repentance was the turning point, as it has been many times since then. I set aside the single family house I had in mind, the fenced back yard, the garden, and agreed to the brick townhouse in the planned community, just miles from my husband's new job. I didn't know then what I found out quickly: it was a community with a strong network of caring families, with lots of kids, a babysitting co-op, acres of open space for kids to play, paths and fields and pools and playgrounds in greater abundance than anywhere else I've ever seen. Provision far beyond expectation, a lasting blessing in my  life and in the lives of our three children.

Christ in Gethsemane, Michael D. O'brien, Canada

My repentance allowed me to hear more clearly what Jesus said in the garden of Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

That repentance led the way to gratitude. The first step was giving up my own narrow view of what would be best, but gratitude takes more than giving up of grievance, more than repenting for holding so fiercely to having things my way.

It takes awareness, attention, grateful acceptance of what's been given.

I wrote several weeks ago about the Ignatian prayer of examen. One of the steps in that daily practice is looking back on the day and giving thanks for where God's hand has been visible.

But what would happen if that kind of attention became part of the ongoing focus of each day? Not just for a few minutes before bed, or a few minutes over coffee the next morning, but throughout the day.

Voskamp's Thousand Gifts moves in that direction:

"I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep." 

G. K, Chesteron, a master of the art of gratitude, wrote in an early notebook:

"You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

How do we learn that kind of gratitude? How do we teach it?

Is gratitude a gift? A habit of the heart?

When our children were small, we’d talk at bedtime about the day:

What did you learn today?
What was a thing of beauty?
What are you thankful for?

Then we’d sing a simple song my grandmother taught me:

"Father, we thank thee, for the night
And for the blessed morning light,
For health and strength, and tender care,
And all that makes the day so fair.”

Simple stuff.

But pausing to say thank you can refocus the heart. A 2008 study by Jeffrey Froh, assistant professor of psychology at Hofstra University in New York, found that middle school students asked to list up to five things they were grateful for every day for two weeks “experienced a jump in optimism and overall well-being . . .  Furthermore, they were more satisfied with school even three weeks later  

Ann Voskamp found that keeping a notebook of “gifts” forced her to pay atention, to see things she would not have seen.

“I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep the eyes wide, every fiber of every muscle sensing all wonder and this is the thrill of the hunt and I could be an expert on the life full, the beauty meat that lurks in every moment.
I hunger to taste life.
God.” 

Northern Harrier in Flight, Dan Pancamo,
Wikimedia Commons, 2010

 A hunter of beauty . . . What a great idea.

I think of that as I prowl the fields by Church Farm pond, watching for the northern harrier low across the dry, brown corn stubble, listening to the sweet call of the white-throated sparrow hidden in the overgrown thickets that edge the wetland pond.

I think of it again as I watch my granddaughter greeting wolf cubs at the Upper Schuykill Valley Park. “I’m telling you, I love this farm!” And I agree: the farm, the wolf pups, the red foxes watching, ears alert, the red-tail hawk spiraling overhead, the lively little face, the firm little hand, the exuberant declaration.

But beauty takes lots of forms:

Jim and friends at the Pottstown recycling center, engaging my two pre-teen assistants in loading the foam crusher, in sorting batteries, in pointing us toward the peacock strutting its stuff on the office roof.

A new acquaintance, over guacamole and flautas de puerco, sharing the story of God’s miraculous grace flowing through her life.

In another notebook, Chesterton wrote: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

I think I would agree.

And one more Chesterton quote:

Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?

This post is part of the November Synchroblog: The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude.  Other posts: 

• Jeremy Myers – 5 Things to be Unthankful For
• Glenn Hager – Gr-atitude
• Amy Martin – Gratitude in a Culture of Economy 
• Leah at Desert Spirit Fire - Living Thanks 
• Kathy Escobar - turning our ingrown eyeballs up & out

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Green Grace

Blue Heron  -C Kuniholm 2010

 When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life 
    and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, 
    and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

    (The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry)

It’s easy to get caught up in the burdens of our day – headlines of nuclear fallout, record floods, fraud, fiscal impossibilities.

It’s easy to start the day uneasy, to hurry from appointment to task to challenge, and fall into bed at night still carrying that sense of unease, that feeling of modern malaise.

In the last decade, sociological and scientific research has validated a cure as old as the psalms: time in nature, “green time,” time spent in “the peace of wild things.”

Frances Kuo, a strong advocate of “green time”, recently published a major study documenting the importance of trees, grass, natural beauty, in calming the heart and easing the mind: 

An April article in Science Daily summarizes the findings:

• Access to nature and green environments yields better cognitive functioning, more self-discipline and impulse control, and greater mental health overall.
• Less access to nature is linked to exacerbated attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, higher rates of anxiety disorders, and higher rates of clinical depression.
• Greener environments enhance recovery from surgery, enable and support higher levels of physical activity, improve immune system functioning, help diabetics achieve healthier blood glucose levels, and improve functional health status and independent living skills among older adults.
• By contrast, environments with less green space are associated with greater rates of childhood obesity; higher rates of 15 out of 24 categories of physician-diagnosed diseases, including cardiovascular diseases; and higher rates of mortality in younger and older adults.

"While it is true that richer people tend to have both greater access to nature and better physical health outcomes, the comparisons here show that even among people of the same socioeconomic status, those who have greater access to nature, have better physical health outcomes. Rarely do the scientific findings on any question align so clearly."

Backyard - C. Kuniholm 2010

I know for myself, in times of stress an hour spent weeding the moss path in my backyard can return me to quiet calm. When I’m angry or troubled, a short bird-watching jaunt around nearby Church Farm pond can shift my focus, realign my priorities, bring unexpected delight.  During my teen years, hovering on the edge of depression, I found myself taking long walks down unknown roads, finding grace and calm in the hills around my home, finding hope in the budding trees, the bright spring flowers, the feel of wind ruffling my hair. In my senior year of high school, during a very dark time, I would sit on the grassy bank of Lake Gleneida, watching the sunlight move across the ripples, finding rest, even joy, in the dance of sparkling water and sudden silky shadow.   

Outdoors I have experienced, more times than I can count, the truth of Psalm 23:

     The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
     he leads me beside quiet waters,
     he restores my soul. 

I worry about kids who have no experience of green space, who can’t imagine spending an hour outside alone. In youth ministry, camp ministry, scout work, I tried hard to get kids outside, playing Ultimate Frisbee barefoot in the grass, reading under a tree, paddling a kayak on a little mountain pond, sitting around a campfire counting shooting stars.

Bayside nature walk - C. Kuniholm 2011

An amazing grace from my childhood was summers spent at a camp in the Catskllls. I still remember with great thanks the view across the valleys, the green grass of the baseball field sloping down the side of the mountain. I remember sitting by the little hidden waterfall, down across Sutton Road, and feeling the cool of the mist, the soothing song of the water, soaking in the grace of God’s beauty. I’d arrive at camp every summer feeling ragged and a little lost; somewhere along the way, swinging in the sun with the world below my feet, hiking up through the pine grove with whippoorwills calling, I’d notice I was strong again. Happy again. Healthy again.

In Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder , Richard Louv describes the forces that have kept our kids inside, creating a dangerous disconnect between children and the natural world. Our kids would be healthier if they spent more time outside. Their view would be clearer if they spent less time in simulated worlds and more time in the world of seasons, weather, bird song, soaking up God’s green grace.

But the same is true for us as adults. I have neighbors who only come outside to mow the grass and unload their groceries from the car.

I’m reminded of the Gerard Manley Hopkin poem, written more than a century ago.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

                (God's Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins)

We are “smeared with toil,” hurrying to get what we need, worrying about many things. Yet, for many of us, a place of refuge is just steps away. God’s grace is there, waiting to fill us, as it filled David, out in the wilderness, on the run for his life. As it filled Elijah, weary and despairing. 

I’m puzzled, and saddened, at Christians who seem alarmed at the idea that God can meet us in nature, that He can use his creation to soothe and heal us. It’s His, right? His gift to us. There’s nothing pantheistic, new age, spiritually dangerous, about finding God’s grace at work in his world.

Backyard shooting stars - C. Kuniholm 2011

As David said in Psalm 65:

The whole earth is filled with awe 
   at your wonders;
   where morning dawns, where evening fades,
   you call forth songs of joy.

You crown the year with your bounty,
   and your carts overflow with abundance.
The grasslands of the wilderness overflow;
   the hills are clothed with gladness.
The meadows are covered with flocks
   and the valleys are mantled with grain;
   they shout for joy and sing.

David repeatedly mentions awe and joy in his experience of nature. When I think of times I’ve spent exploring creation, digging in the dirt with small children, wandering waterways with kids of all ages, celebrating spring in all its glory, awe and joy are the emotions that come to mind: a good foundation for mental health, and a gracious reminder of God and his goodness.

I’m heading outside – to check what’s blooming, to plant some native azaleas, to see what’s happening in the nests around our yard.  

I hope you have time outside as well, enjoying God’s green grace. 

 Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

thank you for the cross

Titian ca 1555

The wounded surgeon plies the steel

That questions the distempered part;

Beneath the bleeding hands we feel

The sharp compassion of the healer's art

Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

Our only health is the disease

If we obey the dying nurse

Whose constant care is not to please

But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,

And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

….  The dripping blood our only drink,

The bloody flesh our only food:

In spite of which we like to think

That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—

Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

                   (T. S. Eliot, East Coker, IV)


There are more words written about the death of Christ than any other event in history: spoken of centuries before it happened, recorded by more eyewitnesses than any other moment in ancient history, documented by historians of the time, religious and secular, discussed, debated, dissected for two thousand years since.

The crucifixion appears as well in art and literature of all kinds: maudlin, moving, mocking, deeply memorable. Strange, isn’t it, that the death of an uneducated carpenter on the other side of the world would still echo around the globe.  

Yet, here we are, still trying to understand what happened there on that desolate hillside, Goglatha, Skull Hill, the rocky wasteland where criminals were left to die. Rob Bell, in his brilliant and controversial new book, Love Wins, takes on this question: 

What happened on the cross?

Is the cross about the end of the sacrificial system

Or a broken relationship that’s been reconciled

Or a guilty defendant who’s been set free

Or a battle that’s been won

Or the redeeming of something that was lost?

Which is it?

Which perspective is the right one? Which metaphor is correct? Which explanation is true?

As Bell tries to make clear (offending theological purists of all camps in the process) no one image, metaphor, explanation, will ever fully do justice to something so “massive and universe-changing.” So we keep trying. “It’s like this … It’s like this….”

For me, the illustration that first caught my heart was Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. My uncle brought the Chroncles of Narnia home from England when I was just launching into chapter books, and I read the first one through with great excitement. I was sure I was Lucy, the younger daughter, the little sister, the odd man out in family conflicts. Like Lucy, I felt an immediate allegiance to Aslan. I craved his warmth, strength, kindness. I remember grieving with Lucy when Aslan agreed to the white witch’s terms, offering himself in exchange for foolish traitor Edmund, and I remember following with Lucy up the dark hill to the stone table where Aslan would be sacrificed.

What a terrible story! The sisters crying bitterly, the hideous celebration of the witch’s company of hags, wraiths and horrors. I could hardly read on. And yet, I had to read on to the finish.

I don’t remember how I came to see that Aslan was a picture of Christ, offering himself for me. Did my uncle explain it? Did someone say “Aslan is Jesus”? The book was still new in the US at the time – who would have told me?

Yet, I do remember understanding the cross more clearly once I’d read Lewis’ story. Aslan’s love brought Christ’s alive for me. His powerful surrender made the cross more real, more awful, more moving.

Yet no story will ever do justice to the full mystery of the cross. I remember thinking that when I saw another powerful crucifixion image. Gandalf, in Peter Jackson’s film version of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, stands in the shadows of the deep mines of Moria doing battle with the Balrog, “the demon of the ancient world.” While Gandalf’s companions run across an narrow bridge to safety, Gandalf plants himself in the Balrog’s way and cries, with great authority and power, “You shall not pass!”

He sends the Balrog tumbling back into the depths of darkness but as the monster falls, it catches his foot with its whip and pulls Gandalf into the darkness behind him. It’s a stunning image of protection and power in the face of looming evil, and of a sacrificial offering for the safety of the others. Yet it only captures a tiny part of what happened on the cross. Any explanation, depiction, illustration of the cross is by necessity partial. Finite creatures, we see in part, and understand in part. 

As Rob Bell summarizes: 

What happened on the cross is like . .
 A defendant going free
A relationship being reconciled
Something lost being redeemed,
A battle being won,
A final sacrifice being offered,
So that no one ever has to offer another one again,
An enemy being loved. 

And more.

Think of the food imagery surrounding the cross – “this is my body, broken for you.” We draw back, alarmed, at the hint of cannibalism latent in that Eucharistic terminology. Yet in places where food security is in doubt, in ravaged lands where water is scarce and hunger certain, Jesus points to the cross and says “I will be your food and your drink. Your water, and your wine.” What does that mean?

It ties back to the idea of sacrifice. Some human sacrifice was appeasement for guilt. Much more was intercession for continued crops. Traveling in Guatemala, we visited Ixim'ché, a pre-Columbian Mayan city where young men and women were sacrificed to the god of corn (Ixim'ché translated means"tree of corn").

We stood in the ballfield where young men competed in a game preceding soccer; the outcome of the game would determine who was sacrificed next. The day we visited, we were warned to avoid the wooded area beyond the ruins since a sacrificial ritual would be taking place. While in most parts of the world human sacrifice no longer takes place, in Guatemala and other places there are still offerings given, of grains, candles, incense, even animals, in an attempt to ensure harvests and appeal for food in the face of hunger.

The cross offers food, bread, water, wine, in ways we can't understand, in ways we reenact every time we take what we call the eucharist, the Lord' supper.


The cross also offers healing. In pagan cultures there is a continuing belief that blood or body parts from another can bring healing. Muti killings are the most well-known remaining example of this. Despite laws forbidding it, regions of Africa and Asia still struggle with tribal medicine that depends on harvesting human body parts.

The western world shakes its head at the pagan superstition that would take one life to heal another. And yet we do the same thing in new ways, looking for healing in organ transplants, stem cell research.

Isaiah says “by his wounds we are healed.” What does that mean?  Peter expands this: “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” The healing is eternal – but also a present reality, as the disciples demonstrated in the early day of the church

Healed, forgiven, fed, reconciled to God, brought to life, protected.

One more image:

Isaiah prophecied: “he was despised and rejected.” Jesus himself said he would be rejected by the elders, chief priests, teachers of the law, by his generation. On the cross, that rejection went further, as he cried out to God himself: "Eli Eli lama sabachthani?" "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34)

I have never been really hungry. Never had an illness with no doctor to turn to. I’ve never faced actual battle with a visible enemy. But have I felt rejected? More times than I care to count.

At the cross, Jesus faced into total rejection, so we could be adopted into the household of God, brought into a place of belonging beyond any we can imagine: children of God, sisters and brothers of Christ himself, part of an eternal, global body where every part is wanted, every person welcome, every gift celebrated, every burden shared. Relationships restored, but even more: orphans given families. Aliens accepted.


What happened on the cross? We grasp hints of the magnitude of the miracle. We struggle to understand, try to line things up. But in the end, we bow down in awe at the mysterious heart of history, what T. S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world," what Paul called “the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 

And we say "thank you."           

I will love you for the cross

And I will love you for the cost

Man of sufferings

Bringer of my peace

You came into a world of shame

And paid the price we could not pay

Death that brought me life

Blood that brought me home

And I love you for the cross

I'm overwhelmed by the mystery

I love you for the cost

That Jesus you would do this for me

When you were broken, you were beaten,

You were punished, I go free

You were wounded and rejected

In your mercy - I am healed

Jesus Christ the sinner’s friend

Does this kindness know no bounds

With your precious blood you have purchased me

Oh the mystery of the cross

You were punished you were crushed

But that punishment has become my peace . . .

For the cross, for the cross, for the cross I thank you

  (Matt Redman)

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Grandma and Gratitude

Today is my grandmother, Elda Capra’s, birthday.  I’ve always connected her birthday with Thanksgiving, since we often celebrated both together. Eight years ago, for her ninetieth birthday, we had a grand Thanksgiving/ birthday celebration, complete with pie, her famous cheesecake, and every other celebration food we could think of. Seven years ago, just weeks before Thanksgiving, we celebrated her life, and the fact that she had been granted her wish to be in heaven before her next birthday.

She was my best example of gratitude, and a reminder, even now, of what it means to find joy in a place of obedience to God’s sovereignty and provision. By any worldly standard, she never had much. She quit school after just a few days of ninth grade, embarrassed at the fact that she had only two threadbare dresses to wear. She left home in her early teens, and supported herself until her marriage at 16 to an often abusive man ten years older. She parented four sons, then, months after the youngest started college, took on the burden of four grandchildren.

Elda grew up in rural Oklahoma, honed her housekeeping skills during the depression, never fed her family packaged cereal, baked her own bread long after, and long before, home-baked bread was popular. She worked hard into her eighties, grew her own tomatoes whenever possible, harvested wild raspberries for jam, fell several times in search of wild watercress for her much-loved watercress sandwiches.

Grandma rarely rested. But when she did, it was with a sense of celebration. When she pulled two chairs under her massive lilac bushes and poured the iced tea, it was a party. When she took off her shoes and put her feet in a stream, it was clear: Sabbath is here.  Simple picnics, with Grandma, were an occasion, a celebration, a time to pause and give thanks.

Elda believed, wholeheartedly, unreservedly, in God’s provision. She was fifty-six when her husband sold the house we lived in and she found herself piecing together a life for herself and four grandchildren. I remember her saying, when people asked how we would manage: Sometimes at night my mind gets going, but then I review scripture, and I go right to sleep.  

She had many passages about God’s faithfulness and provision stored away in her memory; they found their way into her conversation, and it was rare to discuss anything of importance without some direct quote from the Bible. Her Bible was open on the kitchen table every morning before breakfast, and most days started with some observation or question from that morning’s study. She was a gifted Bible study leader, and in her sixties and seventies led well-attended studies in homes of people she had introduced to Christ.

For Grandma, riches had nothing to do with things, money, leisure, travel. She marveled at the complexities of seeds and buds, the songs of birds, the colors of fall leaves. She loved conversation, meeting new people, looking for ways God worked in people’s lives. She enjoyed hymns, momentos of God’s faithfulness handed down across the centuries. And she treasured the Bible, every word of it, puzzling over the harder passages, looking for themes, patterns, instruction, wisdom, reminders of God’s love.

This past week, reading poems about Thanksgiving to the smallest family members, I was struck by the reality of the Pilgrim’s celebration. They had stared death in the face, they had weathered a hard winter, they knew how precarious life can be. Yet, they could see evidence of God’s goodness: unexpected, undeserved friendship; unfamiliar, filling food. They weren’t out of difficulty, but they could look back with gratitude, and look ahead with hope, knowing that, as William Bradford wrote, “they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which let His holy name have the praise forever, to all posterity.”

Our extended family will be gathering this Thanksgiving, carrying on the heritage of Grandma’s pies, celebrating God’s blessings through the past years and his promise of provision for the years ahead, the beauty of his creation, the glory of his plans, the incredible complexity and richness of his work in us, and in the world. 

To quote Gerard Manley Hopkins in "Pied Beauty":

                            
    Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: 

                                                Práise hím.