I'm so glad you and your wife spent last night with us. You were in high school when I left Asheville, some thirty years your elder. Even still, something awoke within me when you walked into our home. Standing in the back hallway there was no great desire to be introduced to any new thing... our house, our town, our almost nine years missed with one another. Instead the Spirit of gladness filled the air in our words but, even more so, in the silence between the words.
And I would wager this. You might be a little drunk when it comes to your pleasant thoughts of me. Good eye contact, a little gray hair and well-crafted words can greatly advance my persona in the thoughts of man.
Since others can articulate this much better than I, and since it's the Saturday before Holy week begins, may I cut this letter short with a poem, a quote and a verse which are so applicable to me.
A Warning to my Readers, by Wendell Berry
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That
I may have spoken well
at times is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
"There could not be anything more foolish than an untaught man, such as I confess I am, to presume to teach what he knows nothing about" Bernard of Clairvaux
I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what He does for us, not by what we are and what we do for Him. Romans 12:3 (The Message)
Apart from God I have nothing.
Apart from God I am nothing.
Let us now together approach the Week before us with sobriety and anticipation.
