The Pentecostal spring of the first Christian church contrasts sharply with the icy rigidity of our Christianity today … This community of faith and community of life in the first love was marked by the risen Christ … Everything depends on seeing the mystery of the risen Christ as unconditional love.
~~ Eberhard Arnold, Innerland: A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel
The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence. If we are serious about innovation, must we not conclude that we need something new to replace our perpetual “war to end war”?
~~Wendell Berry, Thoughts in the Presence of Fear
It seems to me that the Bible says that true conversion (turning, change, rebirth) comes at the point when a person realizes that the God who was once considered to be a powerful enemy, who was to be avoided or bargained with is, in reality, a friend who is to be trusted. Just when we expect to get clobbered for our guilt, we get clobbered by grace. We realize that, in our frantic search for peace and happiness, we have looked in the wrong places and have overlooked the God who has always been looking for us. God does not have to destroy us in order to deliver us.
~~ William Willimon, The Gospel for the Person Who Has Everything
I begin each day with reading from multiple books. It’s just a thing I do. I love when three different authors from different backgrounds, different books, speak on the same topic.
Eberhard Arnold was German pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and co-founder of the Bruderhof, born in 1883 and in 1935. I read a piece by Arnold this morning in a book called Bread and Wine: Reading for Lent and Easter. The book is published by Plough, a publishing house that Arnold helped to found.
Wendell Berry is a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist and farmer. I first learned about him when I went to Hutchmoot in 2011. (Clink on the link if you’re asking what’s a Hutchmoot.) Recently I was going through books in the attic and found a book of agricultural essays. As I was reading it, I found that some days one or two paragraphs gave me enough food for thought that I had to stop. That made it a slow read, but not a slog. It was fascinating and relevant, even though it had been written fifty years ago. I told one of my sons that I was reading Wendell Berry and he lent me the book where I read this essay.
William Willimon is a former Methodist bishop whose books I am reading this year. I pick an author each year and focus on him. Willimon is this year’s AOY (Author of the Year).
I love when thoughts come together from different places, so I wrote a poem about it.
One
Over
The other –
Three threads braided
Each one different
And yet are similar
Love, non-violence, and grace
Actually “clobbered by grace”
(Is clobbering a violent act?)
One over the other — three threads braided
(I need to write a Dectina Refrain this week for W3, so I thought I would test out the form here.)
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 