Kentucky

Kentucky is the Bluegrass State,
Even though the grass is really green.
Not only is Kentucky home to blue/green grass, but she is
Traditionally known for horses, bourbon distilleries, coal camps, and basketball.
Unlucky are those who’ve never beheld her beauty
Comparable to no other place I’ve ever been. True blue natives are
Kindred spirits. There is a bond of commonwealth that unites us.
Yes, the sun shines bright... in my home, Kentucky.


(basketball is supposed to be on the same line as "Traditionally...")

emily paints

i know you were waiting for it...me to unleash paint brushes on the world.

so here it is, my first public painting since middle school art. it's called "Holy Spirit." i know it's not super skillful, but it had been in my head for a while...there could be a few more in there, too.

i've actually been feeling fairly art-sy lately. i've been working with ben on creating a prayer room in the youth hall at the church. the hours we've spent watching HGTV are starting to pay off. i've finished painting all the walls and sewing the curtains for our accent wall. we've got a chair and cross to put in the room, a magnet board and corkboard as well. what we still need are some pillows, a table for the cross and a table for drawing and writing. and the best part is that except for the curtains, we've done everything with leftovers we've found around the church. it's been an exciting project for us. maybe my art can make it's debut there...

“a short conversation on the church steps”

hello.

i like your wings.
they remind me of tissue paper.
they never stop moving –
just dancing to a slower beat.
is the rhythm in your head?

i like your colors.
how is it that on your top you’re orange,
but your underside is black and white?
it doesn’t give you much camouflage –
except for when you pause on a marigold.

oh! wait!
can’t you stay long enough to say

goodbye?

Commonwealth as True Community

So I've just finished reading The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry. It's an essay on racism which he wrote in 1968-1969 with an afterward from 1988. Here's a quote from one of the last paragraphs of the afterward:

"A true and appropriate answer to our race problem, as to many others, would be a restoration of our communities- it being understood that a community, properly speaking, cannot exclude or mistreat any of its members. This is what we forgot during slavery and the industrialization that followed, and have never remembered. A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, and an economy. It answers the needs practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members-among them the need to need one another. "

And I've been thinking a lot about those statements. (really I feel like it would do me good to read the book through again...) I can't help thinking that in the Way Jesus established there is this true community of which Berry speaks. If Jesus' followers actually lived out his Way, there would be true acceptance and no exclusion. As we are told by Paul in this often used verse: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) And could we (people who love Jesus) meet needs practical and economic of our communities by living like the church described in the book of Acts? The people of that church, "all the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need." (Acts 2:44,45) I think so.

It sounds great on paper (or rather now floating in space on the internet, i guess). How can we restore our communities/realize true community in real life? I think it's going to require a chance of mindset and a change of lifestyle, not to mention a habit of prayer.