Hill Country Say “Appalachia” and most Americans will have a very specific image pop into their minds — “Hillbillies.” But what does that mean? Is it the Hollywood image of impoverished and ignorant white people living half-starved in dirt floor shacks with too many children around and missing too many teeth? (Thanks, Hollywood.) Or is it the Appalachia of a proud, culturally cohesive people who love their ancestral American home even as it safeguarded and nurtured their Scotch-Irish roots? The Appalachia of the Foxfire series of books, started as a Georgia high school project, favors the later as do I. Everything about growing up and living in Appalachia before modern conveniences was shared in these books: bushcraft, planting, weaving, cooking, building, farming, and of course, storytelling (people who worked this hard wanted a bit of entertainment too!) It is notable that the series was named for a bioluminescent fungus that grows in the woods in the hills — a natural light in the darkness. Appalachia is the mountainous region of the Eastern US between the coast and the Mississippi river. It is 1500 miles long, stretching from Georgia through the Catskill mountains in New York. The path that Hurricane Helene took was a straight line through half of Appalachia, leaving a trail of complete devastation in its wake like some great, destructive Leviathan emerging from the sea. Neighborhoods and even whole towns were completely destroyed and many people died. But the people of Appalachia will not die. They are strong; they know who they are and they will rebuild and tell stories again. They are a light in the darkness. On last night’s Mosaic Ark, on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, we talked about that great man and about the deluge in western North Carolina. Most people today think of St. Francis as a tree-hugging hippy, delicately frolicking through fields of daisies while singing a Donovan song. (Thanks again, Hollywood.) The real St. Francis was a lot more complex. Yes, he sang praises to creation because of his love for the Creator; he also got to work with his hands, rebuilding a crumbling church. Yes, he was poor and owned no possessions, begging for his sustenance from town to town; he was also the shrewd son of a wealthy merchant who knew how to talk to wealthy, influential people and convince them to donate their time and talent. In many ways he was like an Appalachian, living close to the land with an easy acquaintance with animals and nature. But he also understood the relationship between city folk and country folk — how they needed each other the way we all need God. St. Francis was a light in the darkness of this world, and that light still fascinates and inspires people today. St. Francis, pray for us. —KJ Crilly, low-country lover of the hills |
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| | Conservative is the New Redneck January 30, 2016 This one's a no-brainer, right? Of course conservatives are rednecks, Mr. Obama told us so all the way back in 2008 when he was first running for president. As he told his supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser:
“You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” With the implication that they should (or would) be clinging to government instead, if only the government worked? | | |
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| | The Unbearable Whiteness of the West January 29, 2016 Enough dancing around, let's just say it.
It is one thing to say that the peoples who inhabit the westernmost parts of the Eurasian continent — the majority of whom during recorded human history happened to be white or at least what we would now call "white" (although they didn't think of themselves that way until more recently) — have had a disproportionate effect over the past five hundred or so years (give or take a couple of centuries) on the development of the world as we now know it.
It is wholly another thing to say that they have had this effect because they were white. | | |
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Mosaic Ark 108 What Would St. Francis Do? “Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.” — St. Francis of Assisi, “Canticle of the Creatures” (1225) As the fallen-away followers of our Lord Jesus Christ might have said, this is a hard teaching, especially this week. How do we praise God for “every kind of weather” after the devastating and deadly floods in Appalachia this past week? How did St. Francis do it in the face of the trials of his day? This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark discuss St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today (October 4). Was he simply the tree-hugging, animal-loving hippy portrayed by Franco Zeffirelli in his 1972 film? Or was he the devout but shrewd son of a wealthy merchant who founded a world-wide movement? Spoiler alert: He was both! Join us as we talk about why people still love this saint so much, and what he has to teach us about the modern world. — Streamed October 4, 2024 |
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