Better Off_ Flipping the Switch on Technology - Eric Brende [40]
“I hope you have come with the right preparation. I know many of you have. If we are thankful for God’s many gifts, we will be filled. Filled with the word of God, the bread of life.
“If we are hungry in a natural sense, we don’t need sugar coating on our bread. The bread alone will satisfy us. But most of us never have gone hungry for natural food. So we often want to dress it up and make it fancy.
“If we have prepared room in our hearts, we will savor the taste of the Gospel. Like natural food when we are hungry, it will fill us with thankfulness. But if we haven’t prepared, over time we will lose our taste and pursue vain amusements.
“And when we come to trials, tribulations, and temptations, we will lose heart. These we can endure only by a willingness to suffer them. If we are hungry for food, we can also hunger for even these hardships, and discover Christ’s meaning when he says, ‘My cross is easy and my burden light.’ If we avoid the cross, we follow two masters; we place a severe burden on ourselves. We are of two leanings.
“Christ leads us only along the straight and narrow path. Some may try to take a detour and still hope to reach the same destination.”
This added a necessary corrective to a too-literal interpretation of the passage. The banquet was not really a carnal festivity, but a feast of good gifts that come to us when we least expect them, a common life that transcends the individual self. To be able to partake, one must prepare, one must learn to savor the taste of surprise, to cultivate an openness to realities beyond ordinary certainties. These higher gifts, in the Minimite view, only the Gospel could teach and only God could ultimately supply. Minister James acknowledged that there indeed were difficulties to surmount before we could enjoy spiritual festivity, but the main one was our own too-stubborn will. Its only antidote was willingness. The word, I realized, was probably a rough translation of the Anabaptist term Gelassenheit.
The fire of the preaching never relented, and when the service ended after another lengthy hymn, I felt refreshed, even purified. Returning to ordinary consciousness, I joined the men around me, who were standing up and shuffling toward the exit with rejuvenated purpose, or unpurposefulness. Having endured the greatest physical and mental test of the week, we poured out-of-doors into the light of midday, ready for an afternoon of feasting, quiet conversation, and rest. I moved through small groups of men and shook hands. I could see Mary a few yards away, talking with the women. No, they weren’t ostracizing us, even though we were outsiders. Minister James, after all, had urged them to include the blind and the lame.
The service had not been a waste. In its solemnity, its chanting cadences and eerie beauty, it rivaled the most memorable Catholic ones we’d attended.
Several days passed before the glow from the meeting faded. It was easier to see why so many of these people had become converts. If they suffered together in the fields and if that suffering changed into conviviality, then they suffered even more in the meetinghouse, and this ordeal blossomed into even greater mutual relief. In all seriousness, the preaching about self-surrender hit home. It aroused a real ache. I ached for something missing in my own religion, something it once aspired to supply—to join human, God, Earth, and spirit in what was called “the great chain of being.” I yearned to be part of a greater whole. I had left the Lutheran tradition of my upbringing because it pronounced the human sphere intrinsically defiled, and I joined the Catholic church because it endeavored to christen that same sphere and call it good—not merely to cover over but to repair and transform the damage wreaked by human choices. But the Catholic totality was now in tatters.
Yet, to enter this company…Even Mr. Miller held back.