The Presbyterian Leader

Reflections on a Call

A Presbyterian Leader blogpost by Marcia Clark Myers, Director Office of Vocation

Early in my ministry, I remember sitting in the national offices at 475 Riverside Drive in New York with a wise staff person who gave this advice about discerning a call, “Be open. Go and meet the people.” In my mind I knew where I should serve – somewhere in the urban northeast where I had family, friends, and felt comfortable.

Later when I was approached by a parish of small churches in the coalfields of southern West Virginia, I went (grumbling) to see the chair of the presbytery committee. I said, “Those churches are dying. The members are “the frozen chosen”.  He said “You never know what God can do through you.”

I was wrong. Those churches grew – with newcomers and long time neighbors. I baptized more than a dozen folks into the faith (one in the river on a snowy Easter Sunday). My family grew too and my daughter and son were well loved by those congregations. I went on to serve another congregation and the presbytery before leaving West Virginia with regret, some 20 years after hearing “Be open. Go and meet the people.”

Such good counsel about life….”Be open. Go and meet the people.” How often in scriptures Jesus told his disciples to “go”.  It is the primary manner of disciple-making. We go and meet God’s people where they are and we are changed. They are changed.

Many of our candidates for ministry are finishing up the last requirements before seeking a call. These are anxious times for them, wondering “Will there be a place for me?”  Now I am the one to say to them “Be open. Go and meet the people.”  There is no better way to learn about faith, than to follow God’s call to “go to a land I will show you.” Want to learn about leadership, change management, spiritual development, cultural proficiency?  Be open to the possibilities!

Of course I will take this opportunity to promote a possibility for first call pastors. The For Such a Time as This small church pastoral residency program is now accepting applications for the Class of 2013. All Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) candidates who will be certified ready to receive a call by summer 2013 are eligible to apply. For more information, visit the website.

For those who are not pastors, what are the opportunities God is offering for you?  Where are your growing edges? Where do you hear whispers “Be open. Go and meet the people?”

Making Ministry with Friends

Recently, Craig Barnes wrote a provocative essay questioning whether a pastor should have friends in the church where she or he serves. Others have taken issue with specific aspects of this claim, including my colleague, MaryAnn McKibben Dana right here.

It concerns me that Barnes compares his relationship with parishioners to that of a doctor who needs to maintain a strict professional detachment with the patient in order to operate on the body. Though boundaries are important, I think this is an unfortunate metaphor for the call to ministry. Implicit is a disconnection between body and spirit, between a physical ailment and an emotional connection. As applied to ministry, this smacks of gnosticism, one of the oldest and most persistent hersies in Christian theology.

We should not seek to divorce the heart from the head. In the PC (USA), we pledge in our ordination vows to pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination and love. So we need both our bodies and minds. A song by Mumford & Sons puts it like this: "In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die; where you invest your love, you invest your life" ("Awake My Soul" from Sigh No More).

So instead of the medical analogy, I need something more life-giving to describe the practice of ministry. An idea that takes seriously the reality that pastors have specific roles in a community (as Barnes points out), yet affords the opportunity to acknowledge feelings and emotions, especially those, like friendship, which are capable of sustaining, empowering, and equipping ministers. In taking a cue from music, perhaps a pastor's relationship is something like that between band members.

In college, I was a member of a couple of bands. Truthfully, we didn't have many gigs. But we wrote songs together. I remember staying up all night, practicing and playing, arguing and laughing. We'd take a break just to eat something simple, like a cheese sandwich. Sometimes tensions ran high, either because of a specific situation or a clash of personalities. But at the end of the day, we were in relationship because we were trying to create something. And the creative process brought us together. I'd call that friendship.

Barnes' essay was prompted by his move from the parish to president at Princeton Seminary. I have moved several times since college and no longer keep in touch with my former band members. People move on; but isn't it also true that our experiences shape us and change us? I'm sure Barnes agrees, but perhaps the crux of our disagreement is that I think we can have friends in one context with the understanding that our relationship will not last forever. The point is to create something sacred, holy, beautiful, and meaningful in the time we have together. Maybe that is a part of my worldview as a member of a generation that moves frequently and even changes careers; but I also think it is more honest.

Where we invest our love, we invest our life. So let's make ministry together as friends.

A Question to Ponder

A Presbyterian Leader post by Peggy Hinds

Frederick Buechner wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I wonder if he had any idea how much it would be quoted. It has become the go-to phrase of people writing, preaching, and teaching about mission, vocation, leadership and spiritual growth. I cite it all the time.

It is understandable. Buechner beautifully put into one sentence what many of us use many more words trying to express. Vocation, call, purpose – the tiny seed planted in each of us that wears on us, rubs against the heart, pushing the mind, and drives us to non-complacency – is often difficult to describe. Our limited vocabulary and lack of understanding of the soul makes it difficult to articulate. But we all know it’s there. We can feel it even if we can’t explain it.

An essential role of the Christian community is to help people (one another) to discover, articulate, and live into the deep soul longing that God plants within us. In what ways can and does the church do this? I asked this question to a few colleagues across the PCUSA. Here are some of the responses I received:

By providing a safe space.  There is this Hebrew  verb “barah” meaning to create space – or to make wide what was narrow.  For instance, in Psalm 4:1 “you gave me room when I was in distress” – God, the Psalmist understands, does not remove fear or injustice.  God, instead, promises space to live into the injustice, the fear, the unknowing. Through worship, study, prayer, and even silence, the church, like God, is called to make those narrow spaces wide – to be welcoming of all sorts of people, especially people who are broken and need healing, who need space to authentically encounter God no matter what their current mental, physical, spiritual state.  DH

Through seeing one another as whole and holy without the need to change or fix anyone.  Treating each person as a unique manifestation of God, as the beloved.  Behold Christ in one another! Naming and claiming the unique gifting and call of each person and inviting its expression within community and outside of community.  Many members one body. Creating opportunities for those unique gifts and calls to be nurtured, strengthened formed and expressed in the life of community and outside the community while helping to dissolve the distinction between inside and outside.  Creating a community of accountability and a process by which each of us can discern our call and passion while always being the wounded healer. Creating developmentally appropriate paths for soul formation that allow each person to discern what they need to know and experience in order to grow and become uniquely them. JH

I think the church lives out the deep longing of God by loving people in practical ways: Turning around on a Sunday morning and asking another to coffee. Just inquiring "what's going on in your life?" and really meaning it. Offering to take someone to the airport, doctor's appt., grocery store, by bringing warm chicken soup. It's these simple acts of kindness that demonstrates the deep heart of God for God's people. BW

The church is a gathering place not only for the worship of the whole, but for growth and study in small groups, as well.  From Sunday school, youth group and circle meetings to Mission outings and retreats - both close to home and abroad, the Christian community explores God's kingdom, drawing individuals into action.  It is in these smaller groups that individuals have the opportunity to reflect about and be drawn into speech about their faith and service.  LS

How would you answer this question?

 

Gun Control

A Presbyterian Leader blog post by Rev. Noe Juarez

This matter of gun control is not an easy one. I have been listening to conversations in the media, neighbors, parishioners and friends. It is a very controversial one. I write these reflections as a disciple of Jesus Christ and as a father of a 6 year old kindergartener and a pre-school student.

Growing up in Peru in the 80’s, I have seen the consequences of gun and violence, from both the military powers and the guerilla movements. The violence was mostly used against the innocent farmers and civilians.  Historically, we can see that weapons were mostly used by the powerful to destroy the weak. An example of that are the European Colonists who used weapons against Native Americans. Also, the second amendment seems to address the issue self-defense and food. In 1791, most people were farmers and hunters and bearing arms was a necessity for food. These days hunting it is not a necessity anymore it is a sport. Therefore, more control on guns seems to be a reasonable approach. The second amendment was not written for development of gangsters and criminals or for the mass killings of children in schools and civilians. It was written to help the founding fathers have food and to fight against tyranny.  It is time to do everything we can to make our neighborhoods more peaceful and safer.

Since a very early age I have committed to do everything I can to be peaceful and to be a peacemaker. When I see the gospels, it is very clear to me that a non-violent approach is the model. The first disciples of Jesus did not bear arms nor had security. Only later on, when Christianity grew and became institutionalized Saint Augustine wrote about the sad necessity of violence, “Though defensive violence will always be 'a sad necessity' in the eyes of men of principle, it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men”. Defensive violence should be the last resource. Non-violence response seems to always be a higher approach.

Dr. Martin Luther King speaking of gun violence helps to have a clearer understanding of the matter, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.  Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

So, friends in this difficult conversation let us go the root of gun control issues. No law and no proposal will give us a reasonable alternative unless we focus our conversation on peace and non-violence approach. Let us protect our children and our neighborhoods against violence by being peacemakers, ‘blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God”.

 

Jesus is Here!

A Presbyterian Leader blogpost by Marcia Clark Myers, Director Office of Vocation

Over Sunday dinner in early December my four year old granddaughter said, “Ganny (she has a little trouble with “gr” sounds), I want to come to your work soon because Jesus is there.” 

What a wonderful perspective!  While others may speak negatively about the culture of the Presbyterian Center or “Louisville” and those who work here, Isabel sees differently. She sees people who welcome her and who have put Jesus tangibly in our midst with a life sized nativity in the Atrium. She remembers coming to Advent worship here when she was two and the worship leader placed a hand on her head and blessed her during Communion. She experiences people here as part of church and extended family as I do.

I have served at the Presbyterian Center for 14 years now (having said some ago that I would never serve the national church). Hmmmm. God’s little surprises…. I was told all sorts of things and cautioned about coming. I was told I couldn’t make a difference. Being a contrarian, that was the challenge I needed. 

I have found it a place where gifted, committed Christians come to work. It is a crossroads of the world where amazing people come to visit. I am honored to talk to Presbyterians all over the country, to hear their stories and support their ministries. The work is hard. Sometimes short tempers and shortage of funds add to that. But it is the church of Jesus Christ…folks on a journey of faith and call trying to make a difference. Isabel is right. Jesus is here.

What are you hungry for?

A Presbyterian Leader blog post by Peggy Hinds

“Where the hunger of the world beyond you meets the hunger of the world within you: may you find yourself in this place.”

This is a blessing from a devotional book by Jan Richardson, In the Sanctuary of Women (p.32). (I am grateful to my dear friend and colleague, Betty Meadows for giving me this book. It is not only spiritually appealing, but also thought-provoking.) The entry that includes this blessing draws from Buechner’s famous quote, “The place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” As a life and leadership coach, I find Richardson’s writing about hunger to be very engaging.

Richardson’s questions are helpful to leaders who aspire to grow in their depth of being and leadership ability.

1. What are you hungry for?
2. What do you desire, and what desire lies beneath that desire – or within it?
3. What does your wanting teach you about yourself; about what you love, what you fear, what is possible?
4. How does your longing meet the world’s longing?
5. How do you pray with your desire?

Many leaders have trouble answering these types of questions, myself included. My answer to “what do you desire?” is often “to have clarity about what I desire.” Sometimes we think we know what we want, but by asking the harder questions, we discover that what we think we want is only surface desire. If we dig deeper, we discover deep gladness.

It can be difficult to lead a group of people (like a congregation) into understanding God’s desire for them until we have a better idea of God’s desire for ourselves. People look to their leader(s) for guidance in discerning and following God’s will. Spiritual discernment doesn’t come naturally for most of us. We are accustomed to having someone give us the answers and tell us what we are supposed to believe.  How can we tell someone else what they believe, or what their deepest desires are? Of course, we cannot. We can ask good questions and model discernment.

Discernment is a practice. One cannot simply read books on how to discern and then teach it to someone else. A leader who wants his/her parishioners to be equipped for spiritual discernment has to practice this in his/her own life first. We need to be able to ask ourselves questions like the ones Richardson suggests. The gift of discernment is that we do not have to have the answers; in fact, we cannot have them, because everyone has to answer these kinds of questions for themselves.

Where the hunger of the world beyond you meets the hunger of the world within you—may you find yourself in this place.

A Love Story

A Presbyterian Leader blog post by Rev. Noe Juarez

There are many families who will be missing their loved ones this Christmas. It is my hope and prayer that God will strengthen your faith through this beautiful love story of Marie and Howard Leonhard. Merry Christmas everyone! Howie, I dedicate this story to you:

Marie’s Love story actually begins at the age of 68, widowed and a very, very busy, working lady, living in Florida, with a good job, and a home, she thought she had the world on a string!  After raising three wonderful kids and looking back on her past marriages that kind of left her thinking “being on my own was the best of all worlds”.  She though those “prince charming romances” and the “happily ever afters” were only in story books, movies or they only happened to someone else!   Any spare time she had was filled with church work or being involved in club activities.  So who needs a man?

            Life was soon on the brink of changing when a letter came in the mail inviting Marie to her “50th High School Class Reunion” from Pennsylvania.  WOW!   How great it would be to see some of the people in our small home town where she had spent all her school days!! - She thought -  “I won’t even know any of them”, “No one will even recognize me after 50th years”!   1200 miles was a long way to see people who she wouldn’t know and who would not remember her.   Now, she was thinking of flying 1200 miles to go back to what?  Back to who?  Then another thought struck.  Since her daughter Diane lived near Washington DC with her hubby, 2 teen-age daughters and her 2 year old daughter Sarah, she thought it would be good to fly to Washington, rent a car and take Diane, Sarah and the two older girls, Rose and Marie back to her hometown.  That was the clincher, it’s a done deal!

            The day of the reunion finally arrived and she had more second thoughts about going.  But as she walked in the door she heard a voice at the registration desk saying “Howard Leonhard”.  Her ears perked up and she thought “at least there will be one person there that I will know but only because of my eavesdropping.”  She remembered Howard - tall, good looking, great athlete.   After registering, when she walked to the door “he” was standing in the doorway.  Trying to be cute, she said “Howard… I'll bet you don’t remember me, do you?”    There was just a blank stare so she mumbled “Marie”…. what a difference…..  his eyes lit up and he seemed genuinely happy to see me!  After a few nice words, he went his way and she saw some of the gals that she recognized so she went off to reconnect with them. You could call it luck or the Grace of God, but when they were seated for the luncheon, ‘he’ was by her side.  They had a great time and talked and laughed more than they did in the 12 years of school, more than she had laughed in a long time. They just seemed to click.   The conversations were all about good old Highspire High School, teachers and classmates but they did learn that they both lost their spouses many years before and had no attachments.

As they finished lunch, Marie asked Howard if he knew how to find the Ladies Room.  He said, “I’ll show you”, (Even though he did not know…) taking her arm and leading the way.  What a gentleman!  Not to mention the sparks that flew as he touched her arm!   Later in the evening at the reunion he asked for her address. Marie just happened to have business cards with her name, address and “e-mail” so she handed him one of those.   When the party broke up, Marie really hoped that he would walk her to her car and they could continue the conversation but that didn’t happen and she truly thought she would never see him again.  From the time the invitation to the reunion came to that moment, there were no thoughts of making a love connection, the thought never entered her mind but now she felt like a giddy school girl again. She just couldn’t get him off her mind.  He really touched her in a way I thought would never happen.  but oh well, back to reality and the lonely hotel room.  The next morning she went to breakfast at one of the local restaurants, hoping that he might wander in but that didn’t happen either.  So she picked up her daughter and granddaughters and headed back to Washington and then home to Florida.  It was a wonderful visit with family but it felt like something very important was left undone.

            Two days later back in Fort Lauderdale she was on the Internet checking messages.   Her eyes lit up when she an e-mail address she didn’t recognize?  Could it be??   YUP, it was!!   He was happy that she came to the Class Reunion and really enjoyed her company, so Marie replied with a polite but friendly answer.

After many, many e-mail messages back and forth, Instant Messages, phone calls and cards…..  one day he wrote, “I just have to come to Florida to see where this is heading?”  So after 30 days of messages and phone calls, Marie found herself waiting for a plane to arrive at the airport.  What would they say?  How would they act?  It was impossible to predict what their reaction would be when they met face to face and actually “touched”!  Looking back, it was unbelievable how they connected and it seemed as though they had always been meant for each other.  All it took was that first hug and kiss; and we both knew we had to be together!  This was already a lifetime commitment.  After 11 wonderful days getting to know all about each other, the good and the bad, they were back at the airport for his return to Pennsylvania.  Deep inside was the worst fear of Marie’s life “that they would never see each other again”.  How wrong she was.  Within a few days of separation and endless phone calls and e-mails, the subject of wedding bells came up and they were married 3 months to the day after that 50th class reunion.  Their marriage was performed by the local Mayor at the Leonhard family reunion on Labor Day week-end 2000 in the Park with many of their children, grandchildren, relatives, in-laws and classmates to wish them well.   Two weeks later we had a “Celebration of Marriage” at Sunset church in Fort Lauderdale performed by their minister with a marvelous reception done by their friends.

            Was it love at first sight?  You might say that (after a 50 year separation).  Marie prefered to think that with so many coincidences in a period of 3 months, it was much more than luck.  They truly believed that only God could have orchestrated such a miracle.   Marie writes:  “These have truly been the happiest years of my life.”

            Is everything perfect?  Of course not, that only happens in fairy tales but they found that when two people really love each other and realize that God’s hand was involved in the union, they can compromise and work out anything that comes their way. 

            Is it worth it?  You bet it is!!  A good marriage is the best investment anyone can make!

            This past September Marie and Howie celebrated their Twelfth Wedding Anniversary and now “Marie is watching over Howie”. As Marie and Howie favorite song says:

There's a somebody I'm longin' to see, I hope that Marie, turns out to be
Someone who'll watch over me,
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood,
I know I could, always be good, To one who'll watch over me…
Won't you tell her please to put on some speed…Follow my lead, oh, how I need, Someone to watch over me”  

“I can’t imagine my life without “Howie” and obviously he is in it for the long haul too”.  “It is truly NEVER too late for happiness!” said Marie before she went into the aternal arms of God.

 

Waiting for Jesus is Getting Harder

A Presbyterian Leader Blogpost by Tom M. Trinidad, Vice-Moderator, 220^th General Assembly

I think I might have passed another mid-life milestone. For the past few years Advent has grown in significance for me. It started with an insight while reading Karl Barth, of all people, that we are an Advent people—ironic because Barth wasn’t much for liturgy and the liturgical year.

But Barth’s steady reminder that we are a people determined by Christ’s advent, a people suspended between Christ’s incarnation and our consummation to come, transformed the way I looked at the whole year, but especially Advent-Christmas. I began to “celebrate,” not just “observe” Advent. Then Christmas was delivered from cynicism to anamnesis—hope grounded in remembering.

But this year a new realization is dawning. I’m tired of waiting. I could attribute it to fatigue generally; a product of my dual role as pastor and vice-moderator. Perhaps I’ve grown weary of arguing for Advent as the solution to the misunderstood so-called “war on Christmas.” Or, as I’ll readily admit, it is getting increasingly difficult to be creative with the liturgies this time of year.

But the real issue, I think, is not so much that within myself I am wearing down, but that there are more things doing the wearing down in my life. This week a beloved aging relative fell inexplicably for the first time. Today I learned one of our bridesmaids, together with her husband since before we were married 15 years ago, is separated from her husband. Last week 20 elementary school children were massacred. Psalm 6 speaks to me like never before: “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my soul also is in deep anguish, while you, O Lord—how long?”

Tonight I am leading an Advent worship service. Sunday is “Christmas Sunday,” and Monday night is obviously Christmas Eve. But before all that, I felt my congregation needed to worship deeply in the spirit of Advent. Over the past month I have spoken with more people whose futures are dangling over the fiscal cliff, who are facing the holidays for the first time without their parents or their spouses, whose hearts break over the bittersweet reality that their children and grandchildren will be with us Sunday and Monday, but not again until Resurrection Sunday.

I’m tired of all this. I want it to end. Marana tha, Lord Jesus! What are you waiting for? I’ve concluded that I’m crossing another threshold of midlife. I’m old enough for parents to fear death, for friends to get divorced, and to empathize with the trials and tribulations of an ever-deepening pool of humanity.

I find myself in solidarity with the history of the world and our salvation narrative. Of the two poles between which we are suspended—Christ’s first advent and his second—I am affectionately drawn to his second. And it is this that gives me hope and will allow me to preach come Sunday morning and Monday night, that, in the words of Romans 13:11-12, “it is now the moment for us to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

“Far gone”? It sure doesn’t seem like it. But the longer it lasts, the closer our next “day is near.” Herein is hope. My prayer is this: that as is the case this year, may our lighting of the fourth Advent candle be brief. Amen.

The Slaughter of the Innocents

A Presbyterian Leader blogpost by Marcia Clark Myers, Director Office of Vocation

My heart aches for the families of the victims in Connecticut.  Little ones who should be enjoying Christmas parties instead of facing terror and death. 

As a mother and grandmother of a sweet child about to enter kindergarten next fall, I find it strikes very close to home. And the news (blessing and curse of the information age) shows me beautiful children in Tucson and Aurora and China and Afghanistan and Syria – all murdered, young and innocent.

What does it mean to have a God who came as an infant into a world where little children are massacred? 

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
   wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
   she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’  (Matthew 2:16-18)

I want a fix-it God who will ride in like James Bond and do away with evil and protect the innocent!!!

How could God let this happen?

What does it mean to have a God who was born to a teenaged Mom and whose death caused her great pain? It means that our God understands suffering, has walked with us in this world filled with greed and hate, and violence and has not been immune.  And God walks with us now “In the valley of the shadow of death”.

But I want a different ending!!!

Imagine a school bus drives up to where those grieving Connecticut parents are standing comforting each other. The doors slowly open and out come their children, whole and healthy.

That is the promise that we cannot yet see -

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
‘See, the home of God is among mortals.
He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’ (Rev 21:1-4)

 As we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, we must act to create a more heaven-like place where all children can be whole and healthy.

pro-life in lower-case letters

A blog post by Andrew Taylor-Troutman for The Presbyterian Leader

In the conservative journal, First Things, executive editor David Mills writes of Wendell Berry, “There seems to be no principle [he] will think through to its conclusion.” This statement betrays a stunning ignorance of Berry’s work, so much so that I am tempted to dismiss Mills’ claim. However, there seems to be more at stake.

Mills’ derision was prompted by a single comment he lifted from an interview Berry gave for the National Review. The quote, which raised Mills’ hackles, is as follows: “I’m pro-life, in lower-case letters . . . Abortion for birth control is wrong. That’s as far as I’m going to go.” Mills feels that Berry is avoiding the “hard questions of political commitment.” I see things differently and glean an insight about leadership in the midst of cultural wars.

In essays, fiction, and poems, Berry has developed, in rich and luminous ways, the concept of community that he calls membership. In a short story entitled “The Boundary,” Berry’s narrator has the character, Mat Feltner, define the term in this way:

A shadowless love moves [Feltner] now, not his, but a love that he belongs to, as he belongs to the place and to the light over it . . . He is thinking of the membership of the fields that he has belonged to all his life, and will belong to while he breathes, and afterward. He is thinking of the living ones of that membership – at work today in the fields that the dead were at work in before them. “I am blessed,” he thinks. “I am blessed.”

In Berry’s fictional world of Port William, this membership is love, but not sappy or sentimental; rather love through daily action, the toil of making a living and the joy of that work. Fundamentally, the membership represents a deep and abiding sense of belonging to something greater than oneself. This is what Berry means by pro-life in lower case letters. It is the blessing of community, of trusting others and being trusted, of giving one’s life over to others as they do the same for you. It is the blessing of relationships, both past and present, and the gift of a sustaining vision for the future, which means that after one dies, the way of life continues. And so, you are forever a part of the membership.

Where does abortion fit into this membership?

The same Mat Feltner lost a son, Virgil, to World War II. But not before Virgil impregnated his new wife, Hannah. The family learns of Virgil’s death before the child is born. Hannah remains a daughter-in-law, more like a daughter. She names the little girl after Mat’s wife; they call her little Margaret. In the coming years, Hannah will re-marry a local man, Nathan, who works in the same fields. She remains just as much a part of the Feltner family, for Nathan, too, is a part of the membership.

At bottom, Berry’s work is about cultivating such community where mothers would have the support to raise children. Yet, to his credit, Berry is also a realist. He knows that the world intrudes on the membership; that things, like war, tragically break up families. Moreover, our increasingly transitory society makes it harder and harder to find “memberships” by which communities are bound together by blood, sweat, and tears – the kind of intentional effort at creating meaning that constitutes Berry’s ideal for family.

If David Mills had bothered to research Wendell Berry’s work, I think he would have found much to commend. Unfortunately, he seems more than willing to lapse into categories that readily discredit those who do not immediately seem to agree with his position. It seems to me that one of the tragedies of a sound bite culture is the so-called pundits that supposedly interpret positions for us. That is not helpful; nor does it represent true leadership. While it is a shame that David Mills is unwilling to investigate the idea, Wendell Berry’s stance of being “pro-life in lower-case letters” is worthy of consideration by all sides of the abortion debate. And it would be wonderful if people of faith, with different opinions, could lead a fruitful conversation along such lines.