Wednesday, June 4, 2020
Nathan Bourne
Hope
Our Real Work
By Wendell BerryIt may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
These words from Wendell Berry flowed through my mind yesterday as I read Rob’s letter to the St. John’s community.
Thank God we are uncomfortable. I urge you, especially if you are white, to resist shedding your discomfort. Your fellow parishioners of color have been uncomfortable for a long time. Maybe it is time for all of us to be uncomfortable.
This challenge to become comfortable with discomfort is an important one. Our Christian faith is grounded in the story of those in power being made uncomfortable. Religious leaders, Roman authorities, members of his own community – they were made uncomfortable by Jesus’s teachings of love and inclusion, his decisions to eat with sinners and tax collectors, and to touch the untouchable.
I love these words of Wendell Berry because they remind me that my real work begins when I can’t see the way forward. It begins at that point where I feel helpless and uncertain, caught by the enormity of the problems of the world around me and my own smallness. Like the impeded stream, I may not know how to proceed, but with God’s help I’ll find “a way where there is no way.” Love will find a way. I don’t know what the months ahead hold for our community, our nation, and our world. But I trust that we are in the midst of our real journey, and that God is leading us with love into uncomfortable and challenging places. I find hope in knowing that we are entering into that discomfort together.