My wife and I celebrated Valentines Day yesterday by going to the I Love Mountains Day celebration/protest at our state capitol (Frankfort). It was a very good day with a very good turnout for a very good cause that will unfortunately, probably be ignored by our representatives.
Wendell Berry was there and spoke prophetically, of course, of change. Of making change, whether or not our representatives wanted to disagree with their corporate overseers.
Great stuff.
We attended the protest with our pastor, Cindy, Susan and Maria - all from church - along with 1,000 of our closest friends from the region (and the Clack Mountain String Band and Kentucky's own Randy Wilson provided the soundtrack - gotta give a shout out to them!)
BUT, the highlight of the day was that Cindy, got a chance to talk with Berry beforehand.
Cindy (whose husband, Robert, has some family connections to Berry) introduced herself to Berry and reminded him who she was and our dear St Wendell said to one of his colleagues there, "Oh, this is that radical pastor of that church that's like Jesus: They'll love just about anyone."
How great is that??!!
Cindy'll have to put that on her business cards (if she had business cards ) and the church'll have to put that as a header on our blog.
Short of a pat on the back by Jesus himself, for what higher praise could we ask?
5 comments:
It's the highest praise possible.
What was the protest about?
i'm a wv'ian helping in the fight against MTR, and i'm so glad to hear that the turnout was good for this day. i can't think of a better way to spend valentine's day.
Well, welcome down here to Payne Hollow, Ms Blue Mountain. Come back any time.
John, the protest was about Mountaintop removal, the subject of the previous post. You can link to some info on that post.
Basically, the problem is that they're blowing the top off our mountains to get to the coal that lies in bands beneath the mountain. It's cheaper and more "efficient" for the coal companies to do it that way (meaning it takes fewer employees).
But the downside of it (beyond the obvious BLOWING THE TOP OFF OUR MOUNTAINS!!! is that once they've done that, all the rubble from the mountain goes into the valleys below, destroying ecosystems and polluting the water. It's a horrible, horrible practice that gets us a little more coal for a little less money but soon, the coal will be gone and we'll be missing mountain tops AND have no energy to show for it.
It's a very short term solution that is not very sustainable.
Your dear church certainly deserves that moniker. The church that would love just about anybody. Goodness gracious that does sound like Jesus.
Why thank you, Miss Brd. I was afraid I'd put you off terribly by my harsh words for the NY NOW.
Jeff St is made all the better by your son's delightful presence. Thanks again for sharing him.
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