Guest Preacher: Julia Baker
Years ago in a poetry class I was given a prompt to write a letter to America. I chafed at the initial assignment. Immediately all my social critique about our capitalist society with a deeply ingrained military industrial complex and colonizing global presence whooshed into view.
As I sat with the prompt I thought of Ethiopian environmental activist Baba Diom’s words,
“In the end we will conserve only what we love;
we will love only what we understand;
and we will understand only what we are taught.”
And so I tried to find what I genuinely loved about America.
That took me to nature and beauty
and the several cross-country Amtrak trips I have been privileged to take showcasing the diverse beauty of this large country.
This is the poem that I wrote:
Your Steel Highways
a poem for America
Trains enter towns through the backdoor.
Factories loom like rusted dinosaur fossils.
Backyards reveal half-filled swimming pools,
Christmas tree skeletons piled next to tomato seedlings,
hung laundry surrenders, fabric wind,
from a grandmother’s hands.
Engines trundle into stations, children run
throwing pebbles, flying feet.
Leaning against time, that group of old men
take it all in, what do they gather?
A weathered cowboy tips his hat in Santa Fe,
his wrinkles titter and creak.
We need to cross the land we travel.
Kansas sky and corn, Minnesota blue woods.
Lakeshore Limited, California Zephyr, Desert Wind
Hours map through framed windows,
old stories play against new backdrops.
Constant movement in chambered stillness.
Lovers sleep coiled on seat cushions,
legs loosely twined. Nearby a toddler,
nose squished to glass, her Mama knits.
We all travel together, gentle sway
carries us in our belovedness,
so that soul and body arrive as one.
—
It struck me, re-reading this poem this week that I start with the natural beauty and I end up with the beauty of people. The beauty of people loved by God trundling along together in this project of being human.
We travel together, gentle sway
carries us in our belovedness —
where soul and body arrive as one.
—
It is hard for me not to read this week’s passage in Mark and think of America today. A people loved by God trundling along together.
As we heard Jesus’s words read: “A kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”
I don’t need to go through the litany list of how much division there is right now.
As we turn into the summer of election year, the canyon between red and blue is stark and deep. There is fear and anxiety and defensive anger climbing like mercury in the thermometer.
I often ask myself, what is faithful living in this time?
—
A wonderful conversation partner in the question has been Ken Burns’s commencement address given at Brandeis University a few weeks ago. I highly recommend it to you.
He speaks courageously and prophetically.
I am challenged and renewed by his direct and illuminating words.
He speaks into the present as the historian and storyteller/filmmaker he is,
giving lens on this moment saying,
“It’s clear as individuals and as a nation we are dialectically preoccupied. Everywhere we are trapped by these old, tired, binary reactions, assumptions, and certainties…that preoccupation is imprisoning. Othering is the simplistic binary way to make and identify enemies, but it is also the surest way to your own self imprisonment.”
—–
I hear echoes of Burns’s words in Jesus’s response to the people in his hometown, to the scribes’ accusation, and the question at the end of the chapter —“who is my mother and brother” — cautioning against the imprisonment of binaries and with his arms spread wide to all, “Here are my mother and brothers!”
Jesus is inviting away from separation into interconnection.
—
A few months ago I went to a Trump rally in my neighboring state of NH.
I went with a friend in a posture of prayer, curiosity and seeking to understand more of where we are as a nation.
I could probably speak about the experience for hours. It was a tremendous Spiritual practice to stay in a place of Love and not go into and stay in judgment, anger, fear, horror, and binary argument.
Instead of talking for hours about it here is a poem I wrote about the experience:
There Is No Command Greater Than These
Under every floor is soil,
within all soil are roots —
nourished in the unseen dark.
Frozen though it may be, each seed holds
possibility for transformation.
I stake my life on this.
Such that, when at the Trump rally,
overstimulated with his blatter and smear,
I press my winter boots through
the carpeted hotel floor, press
through my anger at his circular lies,
press through judgment at the cheers and jeers,
the sign choices and loud red hats,
press through terror of what could be, press
until I touch the earth again,
until I feel the only Warmth that thaws.
—-
The scribes and Pharisees accuse Jesus of “losing his mind.”
I wonder if part of being disciples of Jesus the Wisdom Teacher is to lose our minds a bit.
Lose the mind that is conditioned to react with judgment for difference.
To lose our binary mind.
To lose our argumentative and defensive place.
To lose our fear and reaction and grip, anxiety and cling.
This is of course all very easy to say in a list in a sermon and this is not overnight work, this is long-haul work.
This is shining the Light of Love and awareness on the places within that go to judgment and fear, anxiety and grief. To have great compassion for why we go there.
To let the warmth of God’s grace and mercy flow over the hardpan
and soften the soil of our souls.
—
A few months ago I got a job as a hospital chaplain at a small Catholic Hospital here in Maine.
One of the things I have found refreshing about the work is that so often, when I ask people what they want to pray for, they point their gaze outward saying, “sure my health, but really pray for the country, our world.”
I daily get to witness people remembering our kinship,
wanting to pray for all of us, in this collective of mothers and brothers.
This gives me hope.
What is giving you hope now?
How are you being invited to turn the warmth of that hope inward and then outward?
—-
To conclude, in less than a month this country will celebrate July 4.
A day that as a Mennonite I haven’t known what to do with it.
This year I am seeking to see myself more as a part of this great United States.
This country of beautiful humans, of broken humans,
of beautiful systems and broken systems.
To seek to truly see and love it,
to pray for true Freedom and Independence from the divisive traps we are in — both externally and internally.
To remember that….
We travel together, gentle sway
carries us in our belovedness —
where soul and body arrive as one.
Washington City Church of the Brethren 