I moved to the small town of Florence, Oregon just about a year ago. Florence resides on the ancestral land of the Coos, Lower Umpqua anSiuslaw peoples, an hour west of Eugene on the central coast. It is a place of astounding beauty, with rugged coastlines, sand dunes, old growth forests and fresh water in almost every direction. I consider myself lucky to call this place home. You might know this region for the conflict between loggers and environmentalists over the northern spotted owl in the 1990s (listen to Timber Wars, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, for more history). As a result of activism, logging has decreased immensely and the communities along the coast struggle to adapt to the changing economy. Florence shifted from the logging industry to the tourism industry, allowing the economy to live on in a new way. Retirees from California love to settle here for the weather, pace of life, and housing prices. Many who live here do not have ancestral ties to the land, but have fallen in love with it as I have.
Because I love this land and call it home, I’ve been trying to learn from it. I’ve read books on mushroom foraging, I peer into tidal pools, and I plan to darken my fingertips with blackberries this fall. I am just beginning a relationship with the land. Reading Wendell Berry’s The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership has stirred my curiosity all the more. Through a series of short stories, he follows a farming community in Kentucky through the generations and how they are affected by war, changing culture, and industrialism. In the short story “The Wild Birds,” the character Wheeler is bent on honoring the dead by preserving tradition, particularly by keeping land within the families that have tended them through the generations. Some land has begun to be sold for profit, and some family farms have been swallowed up by bigger ones. But something begins to change Wheeler’s relationship to tradition and the land when he sits down to draw up the will of his friend, Burley. Burley wishes to break tradition by giving his land to his illegitimate child. This decision is hard for Wheeler to accept, and he tries to convince Burley to change course. At the end of their conversation, Burley confronts Wheeler about his narrowmindedness, saying:
Wheeler, do you know why we’ve been friends? [. . .] Because we ain’t brothers. [. . .] If we’d been brothers, you wouldn’t have put up with me. Or anyway you partly wouldn’t have, because a lot of my doings haven’t been your doings. As it was, they could be tolerable or even funny to you because they wasn’t done close enough to you to matter. You could laugh[1].
Wheeler sits in discomfort, unable to hide from the truth spoken so plainly. Burley continues:
Wheeler, if we’re going to get this will made out, not to mention all else we’ve got to do while there’s breath in us, I think you’ve got to forgive me as if I was a brother to you.
[. . .] and I reckon I’ve got to forgive you for taking so long to do it[2].
Wheeler is brought face to face with Burley—not the idea of him that has kept a wall between them over the years—but the full, real, human Burley. Wheeler discovers a greater lineage than just blood, but oneness with humanity. If you flip to the back of the book to look at the family tree of all the characters mentioned, you can see how the different families are related to one another if you look back far enough. They are of one family.
A poem I read recently by Fred LaMotte echoes a similar sentiment. From monarch butterfly to Genghis Khan, LaMotte claims his heritage with the world. He writes:
Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, black and salty,like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,like mine, like mine.
Don't pretend that earth is not one family.Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.Don't pretend we didn't come here to forgive[3].
We don’t have to look far into our relationships or newspapers to see that our world needs a balm that truly heals. We have forgotten our common heritage. We long for healing and forgiveness whether we are conscious of it or not. We need a Great Physician to bring us to health and wholeness. For us Christians, we garner hope from Jesus Christ, who healed with just a word, dined with saints and sinners, and overcame death and the grave. Christ showed us a different way. Christ reveals the path for true peace by bringing all of creation under God’s roof as one family. But this peace is not an easy peace. We, like Wheeler, know something of goodness and peace, but our peace will never be as complete as God’s peace. The way of Christ during this green season after Pentecost is a hard way, a backwards way. But, encountering Jesus along the paths we take in life leads us to humility and awe of creation, allowing the opportunity to repent and lament the divisions that exist between us.
It is in the throes of lament that we find Jeremiah. The prophet takes up kinship with those who suffer, going so far as to take on the grief of the poor people of the land as if it is his own. In verse 21, Jeremiah cries: “for the hurt of my poor people I am hurt.” Jeremiah doesn’t separate himself from the community he addresses and advocates for. We think of prophets as those who speak truth to power, but Jeremiah embodies the words he speaks. Here is a model of solidarity, of allyship, that actively hopes for a different reality—the reign of peace that Christ will usher in.
Wherever you are today, dear preacher, is where God meets you. Take stock of where God’s green word springs around you. Take heart in knowing that God’s Holy Spirit goes with you as you admit hard truths and discover kinship with the stranger. Just as God cracked open the tomb on Easter Sunday, so too will God crack the hard ways of injustice and let in the light of peace.
Works Cited:
Berry, Wendell. The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership. Counterpoint, 2019.
Lane, Vicki, 2019. My Ancestry DNA by Fred LaMotte. [online] Vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com. Available at: <http://vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com/2019/03/my-ancestry-dna-by-fred-lamotte.html> [Accessed 27 August 2022].
[1] Berry, The Wild Birds, 156.
[2] Berry, The Wild Birds, 157.
[3] LaMotte, “My Ancestry DNA results came in,” lines 26-35.
Pastor Logan McLean Strike
Grants Pass, Oregon
Rev. Logan McLean Strike is a Lutheran pastor serving Newman United Methodist Church in Grants Pass, OR which resides on the land of the Takelma, Shasta, and Athabaskan peoples. She is mom to baby Beau and spouse to Paul. In her free time, she enjoys weaving, knitting, and cycling.