MaryBeth LaMont

Heroes, generally speaking, get their due. They receive name recognition, credit, praise, and sometimes even develop a following. At times we learn some not so heroic part of their personality or life, but typically those things are not enough to knock them off their hero’s pedestal.

Jackie Robinson, for example, is someone baseball fans and people with no interest in sports recognize. Most people are aware of his legendary status as major league baseball’s first African American in the 20th Century (baseball did have African American players in part of the 19th century). Jackie earned his fame the hard way. The pressure he went through may have led to his death at only 53 years old.

Most of us, however, are not aware of many others who had to endure something similar. Imagine for a moment the very first African Americans in minor league baseball in the South where it was often illegal for races to play together on some fields. The African American players could not eat in the same restaurants or stay in the same hotels as their teammates. Sometimes they were not even allowed to ride in the same bus. The abuse often directed at them from fans, players on the other teams, and occasionally their own teammates, was horrendous. Yet who knows the name of any of these? They were heroes despite their anonymity.

The church has heroes. Usually they are called saints. Some in the Protestant fold have never acquired that churchly prefix but are honored just the same: Martin Luther, John Knox, Menno Simons, John Calvin, Martin Luther King Jr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to name just a few.

The world could not survive if all it had were heroes. The world needs day to day people who do ordinary daily tasks. The world needs people to prepare food, collect trash, wash windows, build buildings, work in retail, clean hospital rooms, and so on. During the pandemic we have called some of these “essential workers.” Indeed. Their value has risen if not in wages, certainly in our collective and individual esteem. Heroes are helpful. Day to day often anonymous people are essential.

So it is in the church. It is nice to have statues of St. Francis feeding the birds, Mother Theresa reaching out to a child, and stained glass images of Luther and others. They would merely be works of art with little value were there not lesser known and mostly little known followers of Jesus in the church around the world. We need always remember Jesus came to earth in a barn, not a palace. Jesus was born to a very ordinary couple who only later became known and understood as extraordinary.

The typical follower of Jesus may never have a church or college named after them nor a statue commissioned. For a typical follower stained glass church windows will be something to gaze upon and appreciate but never display their countenance. But a typical follower has exactly what the saints had: Jesus Christ, the one who seemed often to prefer the unheralded. The one who transforms the day-to-day person and day to day life into the extraordinary, the one who turns anonymous ones into saints.

Many years ago one of the women’s circles meeting in our church invited me in. Their gathering had ended and they were sharing in a desert someone had made. The conversation was centered around growing up on a farm. Every woman in this particular circle had this in common. Some of the farms were in Colorado, some in Nebraska, and some in North Dakota, as I recall.

Such warm stories of happy childhoods growing up around farm animals, barns, fields, tractors, and family. Pleasant memories of home cooked dinners, early to bed, early to rise, and hard work. However, when I asked if they wished they lived on a farm now as adults, my question was met with a loud and simultaneous chorus of “NO!”. They all preferred the more lifestyle of indoor plumbing, centrally heated homes with air conditioning. Now scrubbing the floor seems the most difficult labor challenge.

Thomas Jefferson actually thought the future of our then infant nation was in farming. He envisioned a country of gentlemen farmers with only a few small cities. How surprised he would be could he see so many today fleeing small towns and rural areas for cities.

So much of our life schedule remains on “farm time”. Schools continue to have summers off. Originally this was so children could help with the farm during summer’s growing season. Our own church year has the summer months decorated in green for growth and centers on scriptures dealing with the growth of faith and discipleship.

Having grown up near but not on a farm, I must say I never had a hankering to live in a rural area, much less on a farm. Yet there is something lost in our more urban, communal living where most time is spent indoors. Lost is our connection to the earth. Lost also is the value we once had for manual labor.

We need that connection to the earth. I wonder if some of the indifference to climate change and agricultural issues is because few of us literally get our hands dirty in the soil. We have little direct relationship in our modern, urban lifestyles with the very earth upon which we walk and live. Today’s life is more about paving over and building up on the earth instead of plowing it, digging into it, and using it in some way directly connected to our life.

Then there is that second cost: We see physical labor as somehow lesser than the kind of work that can be done in a cerebral fashion; the kind a good education can get us. It is not that we should devalue education. It is that we need to get back to greater respect for those who work with their hands, those whose work can pull muscles and strain backs.

I am not sure if the answer is a simple as having a few live plants around. If we live in a home with a yard, some small garden might help. It has always amazed me how a small seed can become a large plant or even a huge tree. This kind of life lesson can never be learned too often.

If we can, we need to get out more. Walk. Watch sunrises or sunsets, drive up South Mountain or into the desert. Visit parks. Have a picnic. Go outside after a rain to sniff that fresh smell that only a rain can produce. Sprinklers just don’t do the same. Do anything to remember our connection to the earth…the plants, the animals, the soil itself. Pay attention as you do to those wearing brightly colored orange or green vests working hard often in the heat for roadways and utilities.

Next time you are in the produce section of the grocery store, look around. Hold an ear of corn in your hand and feel the avocado as you place it in your cart. Wonder just a bit about where it came from and how many may have been involved in growing it and getting it to you.

God can and does come to us in and through others. God does so whether we live in a high rise building or a single family home. God’s artwork as sculptor and painter is less seen in our urban living. God’s miracle of life that once surrounded us in nature has become more limited to just the human story. There is a reason Ken Burns of PBS documentary fame has called our National Parks, “America’s Best Idea.” There is a grandness of God on display in most of them not seen in apartment rooms or walled-in backyards.

It is not that we have to return to some former often idealized past way of living. It is that we need to be intentional about recognizing and recovering that which has been lost. Oh, and if you would like a gardening project, I am sure Lynn Becker would welcome help with the small communal garden at the church…there is room for growth…growth for the garden and for you. A little work and digging in the soil can be good for the soul.