I
was as surprised as anyone to receive a Facebook friend request from Frank in
Holmes’ Prairie. Of all the people you
wouldn’t expect to have a Facebook account.
Knowing Frank as well as I do, I should have known that trouble was on
the way. The next time I logged in I
discovered that he had posted more than a dozen home videos of people’s dogs to
my page. There were dogs jumping into
swimming pools, dogs jumping on trampolines, dogs jumping on other dogs. I gave Frank a call to tell him to knock it
off.
“Glad
I got your attention,” Frank told me. “I
wish I had created one of these Facebook accounts years ago. Now all I have to do to annoy someone is to push
a few buttons on the computer from the comfort of my own home.”
“Just
what the internet was designed for,” I mumbled back.
“Well,
I’m glad you called,” Frank told me. “I
could stand to talk to a pastor. I’ll
buy the coffee. What do you say,
preacher boy?”
“Frank,
you know I’ve always got time for a trip over to Holmes’ Prairie.”
***
Pardon
my lack of manners. There are probably a
few of you of who have never heard about Holmes’ Prairie. Well, Holmes’ Prairie is a small town, way
out on the Kansas prairie, going the way that small towns go. It is a town known for its stifling
neighborliness and its overbearing decency, a town where nothing ever changes
because nothing ever happens. But, if
you can open your eyes, you’ll find that there is a lot going on for a small
town where nothing ever happens.
If
you’re trying to find Holmes’ Prairie on a map, you’ll find it well to West of
Wichita geographically but well to the right of Liberal, geographically and
politically. If you’re traveling by car,
just wait for the radio stations to turn to static and be careful not to blink,or
else you’ll miss it. On a map it is far
away. And, most of the time it feels
even further away. But, you’ll also find
if you can quiet your complaints, put aside your cynicism, and let go of your
own self-importance that Holmes’ Prairie is closer than you might think.
I
should probably also introduce you to Frank.
Frank is the town curmudgeon of Holmes’ Prairie, a veritable fount of
criticism and blasphemy. He’s never met
anyone whose business wasn’t his. Frank
doesn’t really have a religious home though he’s been known to attend the three
houses of worship in Holmes’ Prairie.
There’s the First Full-Gospel Baptist Church of Holmes’ Prairie led by
Pastor Solomon J. Samuels. Pastor Sol
has seen it all, and the years he’s spent living out on the prairie has turned
him into a Christian existentialist.
There’s also St. John’s Catholic Church, shepherded by Father Diaz. And, there’s the Holmes’ Prairie Unitarian
Universalist Fellowship, a lay-led group with ten members, twelve committees,
and their sensible leader, Mabel Pool, who keeps them whipped into shape. Frank tells me that he chooses where to go to
church each week based on who he feels most like arguing with, but I suspect
that his choice actually depends on who puts out the best lunch spread.
After
the Facebook episode with Frank I rolled into Holmes’ Prairie, parked on Main
Street, stretched my limbs and walked into Annie’s Coffee Shop where Frank had
settled into a corner booth and Annie had a fresh slice of apple pie and a cup
of dismal coffee waiting for me.
“So,
Frank, what’s on your mind?”
“Llamas,”
Frank replied.
“You
had me drive half-way across the state for llamas? I don’t know the first thing about
llamas. I went to seminary, not
agricultural school.”
“Eat
your pie and let me talk,” Frank interrupted.
“It’s actually this new family, the Walters, Ed and Lisa. Just moved to town, which is strange enough. People aren’t supposed to move to Holmes’
Prairie. People are supposed to move
away. Follow their dreams away because
this is the place where dreams go to die.
But, this couple bought some land out on the edge of town, and set up a
farm with two hundred llamas. As soon as
they moved here you could be sure that every good neighbor and gossip in the
town was knocking on their door, offering them a jar of preserves or a basket
of muffins, and asking after their business.
Of course, I went by with one of Annie’s apple pies and do you know what
Ed told me? He said, ‘We were living in
the city. We both had business careers. And, I guess one day we just looked at each
other and told each other that we wanted something different from life. So, we sold everything, cashed it all in, and
bought this farm and the llamas. Now
we’re living the good life.’”
Frank
continued, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the words ‘the good life’
and Holmes’ Prairie in the same sentence.
To each, his own I suppose. What
do they see that I don’t see? There’s no
good life in Holmes’ Prairie. Hey preacher,
help me out here. What is the good life,
anyways?”
“Well,”
I answered, signaling Annie for a warm-up while trying to think on my feet,
“I’d say the good life partly has to do with asking questions about the impact that
our lives have and also challenging popular assumptions about what makes us
happy. It also has to do with awareness
of life in the here and now. I think of
Henry David Thoreau asking hard questions about his own culture. ‘Why should we live in such a hurry and waste
of life?’ What does it mean to live
deliberately? What exactly would it look
like to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life? And, I think of words by William Henry
Channing who wrote about living contently with small means and letting the spiritual
grow up through the common. They told us
that the good life was often closer to us than we recognize.”
“So,
preacher,” Frank asked, “You’re telling me that your church is full of people
who are content? That sounds pretty
boring.”
“I
suppose some are more content than others.
They’re troubled by different things.”
I replied.
Frank
smiled at me that devilish smile and I knew he wanted to push me into an argument. “I didn’t know that there such a thing as a
content Unitarian Universalist. I
thought you were all like Mabel Pool over at the UU Fellowship. Every day she has about four different
petitions she’s collecting signatures for, everything from closing down
Guantanamo Bay to having a women’s history month display at the public library. She has more bumper stickers than I knew it
was possible to fit on a car. ‘If you’re
not outraged, you’re not paying attention.’
That kind of stuff.”
“You’re
right, Frank. Some of the most alive
people I know are discontents. The
people who speak out about sexism, racism, and homophobia. The people who work to combat poverty and
protest injustice. But, that spirit of
discontent is not narrow. I remember
hearing about John Wolf, the really famous minister of the Unitarian Church in
Tulsa. He was really well known for
being the outspoken liberal in that town and not just when it came to racial
justice or women’s rights or religious freedom.
He’d speak out on just about anything.
Back in the 1970s Tulsa was debating about whether to spend public money
to build a performing arts center. John
Wolf had an opinion about this so he decided to preach a sermon throwing his
support behind the performing arts center. It caused a bit of controversy, probably
because he gave his sermon the title, ‘Tulsa is a Hick Town.’ True story.
Imagine that on a church sign.”
“Let’s
make sure we don’t tell that story to Mabel over at the Fellowship,” Frank
interjected. “I can’t even imagine what
she would put up on a church sign. Great
God almighty! But, tell me this. How can people see what’s good and right in
one moment, but not also see the better parts of life, even if it’s right in
front of their faces? I remember this
story that Pastor Sol posted on his Facebook page before he defriended me.”
“Dogs
on trampolines?” I asked.
“Far
worse,” he answered.
“I
don’t want to know,” I said.
“You’re
better off that way. Anyways, Pastor Sol
posted this true story that ran in the Washington Post a couple of years
ago. A reporter wanted to do a social
experiment, so he arranged to have this violinist play for forty-five minutes
at a Metro stop around rush hour. The
reporter wanted to see who would stop to listen to this busker playing the
violin. Only, the violinist the reporter
gets to play was only disguised as a busker.
In reality, he was one of the world’s most accomplished violinists, a
world-renowned musician who has played with all of the world’s major symphonies. At the Metro stop he played selections from
Bach on his 3.5 million dollar Stradivarius violin. He played the same selections that he had
played the night before at a sold-out show where tickets were a hundred dollars
a seat. More than 1,000 people walked by
without noticing him. Sixteen people put
money in the hat. Seven people stopped
to listen for more than a few seconds.
One person recognized him as a famous violinist and, with a knowing
wink, put a twenty dollar bill in the hat.
The violinist’s total haul was thirty-two dollars and seventeen
cents. What makes you think that we
would recognize the good life if it jumped up and bit us on the nose?”
“Good
point, Frank. I think the good life is
telling us that we should have another piece of pie.”
***
The
sun sets on a long day in Holmes’ Prairie.
Pastor Solomon J. Samuels is putting the final touches on his sermon
about the Biblical stories of abundance, like Jesus turning water into wine at
the wedding in Cana and the multiplying the fishes and loaves by the Sea of
Galilee. Pastor Sol is troubled, questioning
his own faith, wondering if those stories of plenty still speak to us today.
Meanwhile,
Father Diaz over at St. John’s Catholic is making preparations for Ash Wednesday,
the beginning of Lent, that drama of life’s goodness and life’s hardship as two
sides of the same coin. And, over at the
Holmes’ Prairie UU Fellowship, Mabel Pool is working to perfect her vegan
jambalaya recipe for the Fellowship’s Mardi Gras party and social justice
fundraiser. Despite the prevailing
politics of Holmes’ Prairie the Fellowship fundraisers are always a big
success, mostly due to the fact that Holmes’ Prairie sits in the heart of a dry
county and the Fellowship understands freedom of religion as giving them the
prerogative to violate every liquor law in the state of Kansas.
On
the outskirts of town, Edward and Lisa Walters come inside after a long day of
work. As they take their evening rest
they pause for a moment of awareness and memory. They remember the books they had read that had
gotten them interested in llamas in the first place. They had learned about the history of South
America, how the good life had meant something to the Andean tribes and
something different when the tribes were joined together as part of the Incan
Empire. The good life had certainly meant
something different to the Spanish conquerors who came carrying disease and
warfare, hungry for as much gold and silver as they could force the tribes to
dig out of the earth.
The
good life had meant something to the first nations of this prairie land, the
Osage, Pawnee, Kiowa, and Kansa. The
good life had meant something to the immigrants from central Europe who came in
search of the land they would never have been able to own in their homelands, land
subsidized here by act of Congress. And,
the good life looks different now, in the age of big agriculture and globalism,
with manufacturing jobs shipped overseas.
The
good life had meant something to Edward and Lisa in their previous lives. It was something they questioned. Is this the good life? For whom?
Who shares in it? Who is excluded
from it? What are the trade-offs, the
small print, the hidden costs? Is it
real?
On
the outskirts of town, Edward and Lisa turn towards one another. “The good life,” they say to each other. I’ll let you decide whether they were telling
or asking.
Sermon Notes
I preach about one Holmes' Prairie sermon each year. My discovery of Holmes' Prairie was only possible because of my internship supervisor, Rev. Dennis Hamilton of the Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, TX, who introduced me to the town of Bodacia, Texas, during my internship year. Similarities between the two towns may not be coincidental and may indicate a "blood relationship."
John Wolf's "Tulsa is a Hick Town" sermon is mentioned on the Wikipedia page for All Souls in Tulsa. The Washington Post piece about the master violinist playing at a Metro stop came from a friend's Facebook page. My understanding of Holmes' Prairie has also been impacted by a recent reading of several anti-racism books by Tim Wise. Finally, a bit note of thanks to Frank. I sit down to catch up with you for an hour at Annie's coffee shop and I leave with most of the sermon finished.
