rempel.marcus@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nToward the very end of Judah\u2019s existence as a kingdom, when its defensive and diplomatic stratagems were all played out, the prophet Jeremiah hoisted the yoke of an ox to his shoulders and walked the streets of Jerusalem, in a dramatic enactment of Judah\u2019s future. People were appalled.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nI think about this story as I lay the yoke across the growing shoulders of Oscar and Jonah. The very idea of working a team of oxen on a \u201cfirst world\u201d farm in the twenty-first century is an affront to the narrative of progress.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe official court prophet Hananiah grabbed the yoke from Jeremiah\u2019s hunched shoulders and angrily broke its bars. Jeremiah\u2019s \u201cword from the Lord\u201d predicted a future of servitude under the Babylonian Empire. Hananiah\u2019s \u201cword from the Lord\u201d insisted that any such humbling would be brief; that Judah\u2019s manifest destiny was to carry on the Davidic line in an unbroken trajectory of growth and success. Servitude could never define the throne of David. It was unthinkable that the Lord could let a son of David \u2013 his Anointed One \u2013 suffer the humiliation predicted by Jeremiah. History (and Jesus) showed Jeremiah the true prophet.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nLast week, as thousands gathered on the White House lawn for the largest climate change rally in history, Oscar and Jonah hauled their first loads of hay together here at Ploughshares Community Farm, a small intentional community on the banks of the Brokenhead River in eastern Manitoba. They looked pretty sharp. We have a long way to go before we unhitch this farm from fossil fuels, but they helped us take our foot off the gas at least a little bit, and I love them for it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nWe\u2019re a pretty mixed bunch here at Ploughshares, but I think that each in our own way can identify with Jeremiah\u2019s moment: a moment of decline, a moment of reckoning. We have lost faith in the grandiose project, the big dream; whatever is beautiful in our future will have to be small. We are cautious to declare a \u201cword of the Lord\u201d in any of this. We are aware of many competing \u201cwords of the Lord\u201d clamouring to be heard in these times. When we do pray together as a community, we pray in silence.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSome of us go to church, some of us don\u2019t. The little Anglican church where I worship is in its own moment of decline and reckoning. Jesus\u2019 word about being present \u201cwherever two or three of you are gathered\u2026\u201d is becoming increasingly acute there. Were it not for our priest, a kind old draft dodger from Texas, preaching a gospel that is consistently humble, hopeful and honest, I\u2019d have dropped out by now, too. Many of my favorite people out here are church-averse. At best, they see the church as irrelevant to their lives; for many, it has been a place of humiliation and wounding. Many of our friends out here are gay. And then there are our conservative Christian friends in the neighbourhood \u2013 dear, warm-hearted folks still beholden to a theology that condemns these friends to non-being in this life or everlasting torment in the next.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nJames Alison, my new favourite theologian, writes that any theology not done in the space of a \u201cheart-close-to-cracking\u201d is probably off the mark. Ploughshares is a good place to enter that space. In simplest terms, we are trying to cultivate blessed friendship and food here, to eat and drink \u201cworthily\u201d as the New Testament puts it. To do this, Paul says we have to discern the body <\/em>or we eat and drink damnation unto ourselves. It is easy to see the failures of communion, the damnations in the culture wars and the climate crisis. How to embody the beloved community in a way that does not shun and exclude, how to eat without stealing, how to farm without polluting? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOscar, our \u201coff\u201d ox (the more mature, well-trained worker on the outside of the team) was named for Romero, a bookworm turned prophet of the poor, a priest sacrificially brave against systemic exploitation. Jonah, our \u201cnigh\u201d ox (the newer recruit, the one to keep close) is named for a prophet who discovered an expansiveness of mercy far beyond his imaginings.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a long tradition of folktales where fools set out on adventure and succeed despite their ignorance, because they let their beasts of burden choose the way. Maybe Oscar and Jonah will help us find ours.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the gifts of my work with School for Conversion is that I get to meet and hear from folks who are getting caught up in the \u201ceveryday awakening\u201d that\u2019s happening all around us. For so many of those folks, this entails a journey into community. Marcus Rempel, our guest columnist today, writes about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n