Letters from the Farm: A Simple Path for a Deeper Spiritual Life - Softcover

Stevens, Becca

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819231754 ISBN 13: 9780819231758

Verlag: Morehouse Publishing, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

Becca Stevens extolls the power of love in this inspirational collection of letters.

Letters from the Farm describes a faith that strives for justice and peace through loving our neighbors. It began with the simple hope that love can help in the community. That hope led to a social enterprise called Thistle Farm and that led to learning that we reap a hundredfold the seeds that are sown into a loving community.

Accompanying each letter is a verse of Scripture and some questions for reflection so that this book can be used as a devotional guide, as well as a piece to inspire you in your faith and life.

“Becca Stevens has written a beautiful book demonstrating the power of God’s healing love.”―Jane Shaw, Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

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Becca Stevens is a justice entrepreneur, survivor of childhood sexual abuse, priest, and tireless advocate for women survivors. She has founded ten justice initiatives around the world and has helped raise millions of dollars to lift women out of poverty and into freedom. Becca is the president of Thistle Farms, and has been featured on NPR, the New York Times, the TODAY Show, and ABC World News. She has been recognized as a Top 10 CNN Hero and a White House Champion of Change. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

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Letters from the Farm

A Simple Path for a Deeper Spiritual Life

By Becca Stevens

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2015 Becca Stevens
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8192-3175-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
Spring, 
Begin with Dirt, 
It's Not What You Believe, It's How You Live, 
Pray to Get Out of the Way, 
Search for Purple in Nature as We Grope for God, 
Let Your Knees Buckle with Gratitude, 
Notice the Light at the Eucharist, 
Let the Mission Form the Worship, 
The Light of Hope, 
Keep It Simple, 
Beggars in the Field, 
The Holy Ground of Farming, 
The Fellowship of Farming, 
Be a Bold Farmer, 
Summer, 
Remember the World Is Our Farm, 
Cultivate the Tender Soil of Forgiveness, 
Cultivating Peace, 
Grow Tree Roots, 
Weep at Injustice, 
Wild Fruits of the Spirit, 
Don't Wait for Inspiration, Be Reinspired as You Work, 
Be a Story-Keeper, 
Find Joy in Your Work, 
Digging for Our Own Healing, 
The Labyrinth of Farming, 
You Are What You Grow, 
Fall, 
Whispered Prayers, 
Find Ritual in the Mundane, 
Old Ways, New Visions, 
Communion Is for the Birds, 
We Are Tenants on the Farm, 
Traveling Light, 
After the Blossom, 
Pray without Ceasing, 
You Can Forget How to Farm, or Ride a Bike, 
Searching for the Heart of Farming, 
Trolling Is Not Farming, 
Imagining the Harvest, 
Winter, 
Signs of Life, 
Stand in the Field of Hope, 
Go to the Prison to Seek Jesus, 
Our Last Remains, 
Preach Love, Truth Will Follow, 
Nurture the Silence Where Transcendence Is Cultivated, 
Fast from Everything You Love Once in a While, 
The Loneliness of Community, 
Farming Is Timeless, but We Are Given Only a Number of Seasons, 
Find the Lost Sheep, 
Ending Full Circle, at the Beginning, 
A Closing Litany for Farmers in All Sorts of Fields in the World, 

CHAPTER 1

Begin with Dirt

From a Geranium Field in Rwanda

Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

MATTHEW 13:3B–8

This letter is written to folks who walk through this world feeling a bit lost. It is both a prayer and a reminder that we can never be truly lost because we are always part of the farm no matter where we are. We have stardust coursing through our veins, oceans for tears, and dirt in our bones. "We are dirt and to dirt we shall return" is the mantra of faith. That is the humbling and freeing truth of the human condition. An old friend used to express it more gently by saying that all our journeys begin and end with God. The first of these letters begins with the simple remembrance that we are made from earth. The gift of our lives is to prepare our soil to bear good fruit and then let it all go. It is what holds the world together and makes us a family.

Over the years I have fallen in love with dirt. I have no idea when it began; maybe in my childhood. Maybe it was the morning glories that trumpeted in the summer mornings like a faithful muse. They would climb out of the ground from volunteer seeds scattered the spring before. Maybe it was watching the transplanted black-eyed Susans grow from a small bundle that didn't look like it could live to take over a garden. It could have been the first time I grew a carrot and imagined magic taking place beneath the dirt as my carrot was forming like a flower bouquet hidden beneath a magician's colored scarf.

I have thought of dirt daily since I began thinking about writing these letters from the farm. I have thought about the red clay dirt in the American south, the rich black soil found in the north, and the dusty earth of the deserts where I have walked. I especially think of dirt when I am in places like Botswana, Uganda, and Rwanda. When you drive in a car there it is necessary to alternate between rolling the windows up and rolling them back down because while it's hot in car , its worse to have the dirt that's kicked up from the road blowing into the car. Dirt is a constant topic of conversation: Is it dry season or wet season?

When my family and I were in Rwanda this year, we drove for hours down bumpy dirt roads to geranium fields. The dusty red dirt layered our clothes and skin, reminding us that dirt has always been here. We drove to the fields where women survivors of the genocide have formed a cooperative to grow geranium. This cooperative has been a partner of Thistle Farms for more than six years and supplies us with geranium as well as eucalyptus, lemon grass, and patchouli. We saw the places in the fields where twenty years ago women on their knees dug up the bones of those they loved who had been murdered and buried in the fields. Now they are still kneeling in that same dirt, digging up weeds and rocks to plant a field of herbs that will become the healing oils Thistle Farms uses in all our products. The planting and tending of these crops for more than a decade has produced such rich soil that things grow thirty and sixtyfold. We are visiting this year in the dry season and watch as some of the women spend all day on a foot pump, watering so that the geranium can thrive. The bright cloth of the workers' clothing, rich green herbs, and the distinctive smell of manure fill the senses. In this space it is all about dirt and there is only farming. Only growing, weeding, tending, and reaping. It feels so simple and beautiful sitting in the field.

It makes sense that Jesus was all about dirt. He wrote notes in the dirt in the face of danger, used dirt to make a healing mud, and told the disciples to shake it off their feet when they found no peace in a town. In the heart of Matthew's Gospel Jesus is in the thick of dirt. He is giving the disciples a road map of how to travel into cities, preaching and teaching. He is focused on dirt and seeds and what needs to be rooted and tilled and tended in the midst of foreign occupation, poverty, hostility. It is so radical. There is so much injustice, so many principalities to rail against and instead he preaches about dirt and seeds. You think he is going to condemn the institutions and maybe demand some kind of military revolution to fight against the oppression. Instead he focuses four parables in a row on something very different: the dirt and seeds growing in us. He starts with the idea of plucking seeds on the Sabbath, then talks about the sower and the seed, then about those who put the weeds among the wheat, and finally about the mustard seed.

I wonder if the disciples weren't puzzled about why he was so focused on dirt and seeds. The lesson of the sower may be one of the most radical in the Gospel. Jesus is turning the soil to uncover roots, to find out what is really planted in our souls. He is inviting us to grow good fruit and to weep at the parched nature of our being. We need to till the earth of our hearts, watering it and weeding the unruly places that cause us to stumble. Dirt is universal and timeless, thank God. Dirt is the community in which all things...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Morehouse Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0819231754
• ISBN 13: 9780819231758
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar