Someone once asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew he was going to die the next day. He said he’d plant a tree.
It seems that all the best things God has done on earth were in a garden. I took comfort in that while I dug up dirt and stacked stones.
I don’t know how my sun-burned skin, dirty feet, and dried-out hands makes me more human but I trust that it does. I don’t know how my making a garden contributes to God’s new creation but I trust that I took part in that too.
We finished the garden, took a step back and read these words:
God of the Universe,
You made the heavens and the earth,
So we do not call our home merely “planet earth.”
We call it your Creation, a Divine Mystery,
a Gift from Your Most Blessed Hand.
The world itself is your miracle.
Bread and vegetables from earth are thus also from heaven.
Help us to see in our daily bread your presence.
Upon this garden
May your stars rain down their blessed dust.
May you send rain and sunshine upon our garden and us.
Grant us the humility to touch the humus,
That we might become more human.
That we might mend our rift from your Creation,
That we might then know the sacredness of the gift of life—
That we might truly experience life from the hand of God.
For you planted humanity in a garden,
and began our resurrection in a garden.
Our blessed memory and hope lie in a garden.
Thanks be to God,
Who made the world teeming with variety,
Of things on the earth, above, the earth, and under the earth.
Thanks be to God,
For the many kinds of plants, trees, and fruits,
We celebrate.
For the centipedes, ants, and worms,
For the mice, marmots, and bats,
For the cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers
We rejoice,
That we find ourselves eclipsed by the magnitude
Of generosity and mystery.
Thanks be to God.
Thanks, indeed.
Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967
Dammit, Mayer. You sure know how to write a tune.
(Source: reason141)
I’ve been a fan of this guy ever since I found about him through Rachel Held Evans. What’s particularly great about what he does is how he illustrates the Bible passages that most people ignore or pretend don’t exist. The ones that don’t fit our worldview and consequently make us feel uncomfortable. I like what he does because he’s all about accepting the Bible for what it is not what we want it to be.
He also started a new project just recently called Old & New. Check him out!
(via itsphoebers)
The Wire is an HBO television show that was created by a former journalist named David Simon and aired from 2002 to 2008. It takes place in Baltimore, Maryland and each of the 5 seasons is dedicated to exploring a different facet of the city such as the drug trade, unions, politics, the school system, and news media. It articulates a decidedly cynical world view; David Simon says that The Wire ”suggests that our political, economic, and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we’re not going to be all right”. In fact Mr. Simon has summed up the show even more succinctly: The Wire documents nothing less than “the decline of the American empire”.
I’ve been watching The Wire for the past couple months or so (and by watching I mean hopelessly enamored with). I’m at the beginning of the 4th season and it has its hooks in me quite securely; it has captured my imagination and inspired me. And the reason for this is not just because the characters are fascinating and lovingly written, or because it refuses to be like any other slick, unrealistic network crime drama, but because it is so bluntly honest about what Western culture has really become - a place where the poor and disadvantaged are marginalized and forgotten and where every institution and structure is fundamentally broken and only disappoints the very people it was created to serve. It seems that no one else is willing to look critically at how our society functions or ask the hard questions that try to figure out how all of this came to be.
What has also made the show particularly meaningful for me to watch has been my studying social work at the same time. Social work by day, The Wire by night. The timing of this has been fortuitous as I have been able to apply what I learn from The Wire to my studies and vice versa - in fact most of the images I use to illustrate concepts at school has come from this show. For example, during a class on effective group work strategies my first thought was that of Howard “Bunny” Colvin trying to implement his “amnesty” sections of West end Baltimore where drug dealers could grind without interference from police (known collectively as “Hamsterdam”). How he went about enforcing this new strategy seemed to mirror my lesson quite nicely. Studying harm reduction also brought to mind Hamsterdam as well and watching it unfold in Baltimore made a great parallel to something very similar happening in Vancouver’s downtown lower east side - the safe injection site called Insite which has long been a controversial social service. And on top of all this (and perhaps most importantly) watching The Wire helps me understand more deeply what it means to be a person who has been compromised by an institution, something that couldn’t be more helpful considering I am being trained to help these same compromised people.
Lastly, I have found The Wire to not only speak powerfully to the world of social work but to the Church as well. Like the characters in the show Christians inhabit institutions and places of leadership too, but I feel that those who follow Jesus are particularly well suited to live in this world of tension and complexity, and perhaps even give answers to the kind of desperate questions David Simon asks throughout The Wire. When it comes to responding to the ills of the world followers of Jesus lay claim to a unique and essential purpose that calls us to live in between hope and the reality that sin stubbornly persists in the world. Together we can acknowledge that unjust power structures continue to exist today but at the same time live in hope knowing that the tomb is empty and the fight is already over. Because of the Resurrection we know the end of the story. We trust that the way the world is currently ordered is not the way it will always be ordered. That the reality The Wire holds a mirror up to will one day cease to be. And that in the end God will wipe away all tears from all eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away.
