This is an excerpt from Alex Sossler’s new book. A short guide to spiritual formation: Finding life in truth, goodness, beauty, and community.
St. Anthony was once asked: “What must I do to please God?” He responded: “Pay attention to what I say. Whoever you are, always keep God before your eyes. Whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the Bible. Wherever you live, do not leave it easily. Keep these commandments and you will be saved.” The first two pieces of advice are standard enough. But the third piece of advice has a different meaning for modern people. Antonio does not say never to move, but he does say not to leave easily. I think this is rich advice to take to heart in today’s world. Sometimes there are good reasons to leave the church. It may be dysfunctional or unhealthy church leadership or an attractive opportunity in another city. But I think overall we should stay. The church is a place of commitment, and it begins with the baptismal vows. And commitment is a scary thing.
In the documentary Best of luckis a film about slowing down the pace of life and getting to know your neighbors in a parochial sense, and it features interviews with monks. Benedictine monks take a vow of stability, promising to stay in the same monastery for life. In our mobile, globalized world, that sounds impossible: no travel, no exploration, just staying in the same place? Yes. For these monks, attachment to place is a spiritual thing.
The monk interviewed, Father Giles, says the secret to stability is the recognition that he is a sinner, yet a loved sinner. He says, “You see a person’s faults quickly — look at that guy — but it takes longer to see a person’s virtues. It takes time to learn to know.” He explains that modern culture is obsessed with the “shallow novelty” of new experiences, but deep relationships take time. Later, he talks about growing up with these brothers as an opportunity to see God’s grace at work. “You see Brother So-and-so. You can’t get within two miles of him.” But after ten years you can get within a mile. And after twenty years you can get half a mile. And after forty years maybe six feet. And if God can do that, what grace is at work in me?
When conflicts arise in my life, I often just leave. If the leader makes a decision I don’t like, I’ll go somewhere else. Or if that woman seems arrogant and rude, I’ll think this is not the church for me. Or if those people seem closed and aloof, I’ll get out of here. I could choose to live like that, but I would never stay anywhere long enough to really get to know the people. Therefore, I would never be able to really love anyone or have my love returned. Even worse, I would never stay long enough to see God’s grace at work. Wendell Berry suggests that we should carry forgiveness with us like a fire extinguisher. “If two neighbors may seriously disagree, but know that if circumstances change even a little, one of them might desperately need the other, shouldn’t they have forgiveness ready in advance? They should have it on hand like a fire extinguisher.” The problem with many communities is that we live as if we don’t need each other. We think we can move forward without caring. We don’t live with love, so we can’t get forgiveness in advance.
Stability is important for the life of the Church and it is also important for the life of our neighbors: in other words, stability is not just a commitment to the holy assembly, but also a commitment to the peace of the community.
People aren’t disposable. Neither are places. Sure, I can make new friends, but I’ll never have friends like Nick, Danny, Logan, Jack, Matt, and Ben. Because they’ve known me the longest. They knew my silly high school days. They’ve watched me grow up. They loved me when I felt unloved. I’ve made new friends, but they can’t replace the pals I had on day one.
Likewise, I would never have had friends like Jonathan and Gary if I left Asheville, North Carolina. Our friendship is special. We have shared our lives together, cried together, and worshipped together. Even if I moved to another house in the same city, I would never have neighbors like Luis and Marianne. You may meet new neighbors, and they may give you unique gifts. But Luis makes tacos for his family when his wife is sick. Luis has introduced me to his hometown of Oaxaca, Mexico, and its famous mezcal. Their lives and friendship are a priceless gift.
When I talk about stability, I can’t promise that I’ll never move, but I want to live in a place as if I’m going to be there forever. That way, I’m committed to it. When you commit, it’s hard to leave. When you leave a place, it should feel like you’re ripped out of a web of connections. And it is. If I live in a place and it’s hard to leave, I don’t think I cared about it or was nourished by it. If I don’t care about the place or the people, then my love for God is mental and spiritual and doesn’t affect where I live. I’m not sure that’s the kind of peace and healing God aspires to bring to the earth.
After the first sin, a response of blame occurs. God asks Adam, “Who told you that you were naked?” (Genesis 3:11). Adam points his finger and says, “The woman whom you gave to be with me” (verse 12). When Cain kills Abel and God comes to see, Cain asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). The implicit answer to this rhetorical question is “no,” but the real answer is “yes.” Yes! You are your brother’s keeper. When Christ comes, He comes bearing sin as his brother’s keeper. He takes responsibility. If you do not connect yourself to a connected community that includes the land and all living things, your spiritual formation will be misguided and distorted.
We are situated beings. We are taken from the land and we feed off the land. There is no escaping the truth that “just as our bodies go in and out of the land, so our land goes in and out of us” and that “all living things are part of one another and cannot thrive alone.” We are in a web of beings that includes not only our churches and neighbors but also the very soil on which we live. Thus, stewardship of creation is a spiritual formation. Stewardship of the land is stewardship of God’s gift. All of creation is loved by God. But we do not love what we do not know. As Wendell Berry writes in Native Grasses and Their Meanings, “The first duty of stewardship is to see and respect what is there.” Perhaps we are less interested in maintaining what we have been given because our hands rarely touch the land. We drive on paved roads and walk on cement. Part of the creation mandate in Genesis 1 is ecological stewardship as an act of dominion. Not dominion, but vigilance.
Theologian Norman Wirzba has suggested on the topic of living in the present, “If you want to be with God, don’t look up at some far-off destination across the blue sky. Look down and around you, for that is where God is at work and that is where He wants to be. God does not run from his creation.” God meets his creations where they are. He is not around the next bend or beyond the next big thing. He is here, among us, and he wants to meet us. Adam, AdamaEarth. Humans originated from humus. God inspired humanity with earth. We are called to serve diligently the earth from which we were born. We are called to nourish the place that nourished us. But we often abandon the earth and neglect to live with the land. We exploit and erode our origins.
In an interview with nature writer Barry Lopez, Fred Bahnson asked about the time Lopez spent among the Inuit of the Arctic in the 1970s and 1980s. Lopez asked what adjectives these indigenous communities would use to describe white North American culture. The word he heard over and over was “lonely.” “They see us as a very lonely people,” Barry told Fred. “And one of the reasons we’re lonely is that we’ve separated ourselves from the non-human world and called this ‘progress.'” Maturity in Christ is not an escape, it’s a being.
When I began my spiritual life, I knew to care for the land, but I hadn’t tried to get to know the land. And those few word changes make all the difference. Modern society encourages us to try to live as disembodied beings, disconnected from both time and place. While technology may give us the feeling that we have access to every place, every place is not a place. Similarly, every time is not a time. Because I buy packaged food at the grocery store, I am disconnected from the earth and the seasons, rhythms, and cycles that come with it. I don’t know what the effects of a long drought will be, or what season a particular vegetable will grow in. When I go to the supermarket, everything is not in season.
“people exploit They simply decided it was worth it. protect Berry insists, “It’s what they love.” Life is a miracle. “And to protect what we love, we need a language of particularization, because we especially love what we know.” An agrarian mindset invites us to nurture life holistically, bringing together the vitality of land, creatures, and people. It invites us to care for and love our land and our neighbors. Where we are is where God wants to meet us.
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Berry, American Anxiety22.↑
Image from Flickr
