I am old Far older than I look I have watched generations Pass beneath my branches I have grown deep and strong Drawing food from within the earth Deeper than any of the younger ones Can reach And then I share Feeding my children And those of the neighborhood Watching them grow strong Grow tall Reach for the light Find their own crowns I shudder On the breeze I feel my time is coming I reach within myself Pulling up food one last time Finding stores of knowledge That I have grown And I send it out I send it all out To my children To my neighbors To anyone And everyone who needs it You thought I was growing a tree But I have birthed a forest
Resilience
In fields razed flat Saplings don’t stand a chance Except you You managed to sprout In that old brick silo In a wreck deemed unusable You found shelter And grew Crown emerging from crumbling column Defying odds A chance to bring the forest back If only they won’t mow your children down
“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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Beautiful words of reflection
For myself I look back on my life through these words and I find such depth, impact spread wider than I gave myself credit for. Value my deep roots. They are a gift.