Karen Hollis | August 13, 2023
Care for the Common Good 2
Braiding Sweetgrass: “the years when the corn harvests were so plentiful that the caches were full. The fields had been so generous with the villagers that the people scarcely needed to work. So they didn’t. Hoes leaned against a tree, idle. The people became so lazy that they let the time for corn ceremonies go by without a single song of gratitude. They began to use the corn in ways the Three Sisters had not intended when they gave the people corn as a sacred gift of food. They burned it for fuel when they couldn’t be bothered to cut firewood. The dogs dragged it off from the untidy heaps the people made instead of storing the harvest in the secure granaries. No one stopped the kids when they kicked ears around the village in their games.
Saddened by the lack of respect, the Corn Spirit decided to leave, to go where she would be appreciated. At first the people didn’t even notice. But the next year, the cornfields were nothing but weeds. The caches were nearly empty and the grain that had been left untended was moldy and mouse-chewed. There was nothing to eat. The people sat about in despair, growing thinner and thinner. When they abandoned gratitude, the gifts abandoned them.
One small child walked out from the village and wandered for hungry days until he found the Corn Spirit in a sunlit clearing in the woods. He begged her to return to his people. She smiled kindly at him and instructed him to teach his people the gratitude and respect that they had forgotten. Only then would she return. He did as she asked and after a hard winter without corn, to remind them of the cost, she returned to them in the spring.”
Luke 12:13-21 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be reflections of your word to us today, in Christ’s name we pray. Amen
CxU Care for the Common Good: filtered through my ear and pen.
General comments:
As humans and Christians, we have a duty to Care for the Common Good.
It also flows naturally from spirituality, openness and radical love.
It’s important to accept people and care for them, regardless.
It’s important to do something, even if it’s small. How can our church budget support this ministry and help us serve better?
There was also a voice of concern that we be careful not to take our caring for others to the extreme of control.
We are inundated with the needs of the world.
It’s distressing to look at the news; we feel a bit desperate; the church needs to stand up and be a strong voice of reason and hope; the culture is in danger of being lost when kids aren’t growing up with church; we want hope.
Comments about caring for one another in the church:
I care for friends who really need it.
We lost years during covid and age caught up with us. The care group kept things together; it was a lot of work and we don’t want to wear people out.
The October congregational retreat builds community.
This year we also had a caregiver’s retreat for those who do a lot every day.
Comments about caring for the community:
Caring for the Common Good is reaching out and caring for the wider community with wide open arms.
So many people have nothing – I have to do something.
Walk the walk, support community things. I want to be hands on and be useful.
I feel better about talk when I am doing.
There is a lot of need in our community and the needs are complex. People in downtown Courtenay experiencing homelessness and addiction, people losing family members to overdose, addiction, poverty, trauma. We work at these issues and they don’t seem to be getting better. They are endemic.
We support the CaraVan.
We do things and can do more; how do we reach out more? speakers? movies?
Does the church have a role in the wider society?
When I think about Caring for the Common Good, I’m reminded of a quote from the Talmud, which is a record of the rabbinic debates in the 2nd-5th century on the teachings of the Torah (5 books of Moses). It says, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
I invite us to take a couple of breaths together in silence as we receive this teaching and the responses from within our community of faith.
On Indigenous People’s Day this year, I attended the celebration that was open to the public. As I walked around, I saw children playing in a bouncy house, I could smell the delicious food people were cooking up, I stopped by a number of artisan booths, and continued to wander. I came around to the open side of a tent and found an indigenous storyteller. With 30 people or so around her, the storyteller was in the middle of telling one of her traditional stories . . . but she wasn’t just telling it, she engaged the hearers, making sure that we remembered who all the characters were, that we were tracking with the story and noticing all of the critical moments. She reminded me that oral teaching takes time. In the Hebrew tradition, the storyteller would encourage questions, conversation and debate throughout, such that the stories would last an hour or two. Our worship practice is different from that – it takes our readers just a couple of minutes to read a story and then someone offers a reflection that hopefully opens doorways for all to reflect on the text. Though told differently from their original context, the stories still hold power for us. The moments within them that I find the most interesting are the decision points . . . the moments where the characters have a choice to go this way or that way, which then impacts how the story unfolds.
In both of our stories this morning, the characters are faced with the question of how to respond to abundance . . . what to do when there are so many resources that we don’t have the capacity to store them. At this decision point, both decide to disengage. In the Indigenous story, the community’s food caches are full, so there is no motivation to work and people become lazy . . . they become disconnected from their gratitude, and therefore disconnected from the bigger picture of their collective wellness. They’re not thinking about their food source into the future, they’re not thinking about teaching their children, not thinking about what work does for their souls, not thinking about how their work serves the greater good. They just know that things are good now, so they can relax.
Jesus’ parable is a little different but has similar themes. Instead of a community responding to abundance, we have a single landowner who wonders what to do when he has no more room to store his grain and goods. Having consulted only himself, he decides that building bigger barns is the thing to do, and then he will tell his soul to “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” He tells this to his living soul . . . his own breath of life . . . the vital force which animates the body and shows itself in breathing . . . his connection to God and his highest purpose[1] . . . he tells this part of him to take a seat. Meanwhile, what impact does his disengagement have on those around him? What about his farm workers – do they still have jobs? What about those who would glean the edges of his fields? Without local food production, what will happen to the community?
In both of these stories there is a moment where consequences catch up with them. God says to the landowner, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”[2] God seems to be asking, what good is the grain when it’s put up away from those who need it now? The land owner’s spiritual poverty contributes to the physical poverty of those around him.
The Indigenous story has a similar moment of consequence. With the community members too lazy to engage in corn ceremonies and sing songs of gratitude, the Corn Spirit is saddened by the lack of respect and decides to go where she would be appreciated.[3] It is not until the people re-learn the spiritual connection through gratitude that the Corn Spirit returns. This story teaches that gratitude is the linchpin that holds together abundance, engagement, care for the common good, and relationship with spirit. We find this same theme in our own practice of communion: we express our gratitude by giving thanks to God, break bread, pour out the cup, and share them with more than enough to go around, and our spirits are filled in the shared experience. Perhaps the relationship between gratitude, engagement, caring, and spirituality is universal.
I thought of another example: Do you remember the Christmas morning scene in the story Little Women. The girls come down to a dining room table practically overflowing with food. They are so excited to dig in when Marmie comes in the door and tells them that their neighbours, the Hummels, are cold, hungry and sick . . . she asks: “would you share your Christmas breakfast with them?” They can’t say no to Marmie, because they know she’s right, so they pack up the food and carry it over. As disappointed as they are, they find gratitude in their sharing, they find joy in connection. What they don’t know is that their generosity has inspired more generosity; they come home to find their wealthy neighbours, the Lawrences, have in turn shared their Christmas breakfast with the girls. Gratitude and joy abound once again, their spirits are engaged and full.
I invite us to reflect on how Caring for the Common Good, relates to abundance, engagement, and gratitude in our own context. What is our response to abundance? Where is our abundance stored? Do we behave differently when we believe there is enough versus when we see need in our wider community? What is the role of gratitude in our caring? Is gratitude conscious or unconscious? Where in your practice of caring do you experience your spirit aliven or connect to a higher purpose?
As I ask these questions, I’m aware that several of our own community members have pointed out, when we care for others, we have to be aware of burnout. When weave caring for the common good together with the abundance we have to share, our practice of gratitude, and our spirituality, how do these shift the potential for burnout? Theologian Richard Rohr teaches about the symbiotic relationship between action and contemplation. Action is the movement out in the world to serve; contemplation is then about bringing our experiences back for reflection and prayer. The cycle continues as our acts of service are infused with vitality of life, found in rest, prayer, and reflection . . . and then our prayer and contemplation are grounded in our direct engagement with the world.
What flows from this cycle of action and contemplation? What is at the heart of caring for the good we hold in common? It’s gratitude, authentic gratitude . . . for everything that is given, gratitude for everything received, and gratitude for the sharing between us.
[1] https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/g5590/kjv/tr/0-1/
[2] Luke 12:20
[3] Braiding Sweetgrass p. 188
