Cast down your bucket where you are!In less poetic language, this is what I have sometimes called practicing the discipline of
place. To practice this discipline is to believe that to suffer one's place and one's people
in the particularity of its and their needs is the primary basis for finding love, friendship,
and an authentic, meaningful life. This is nothing less, I would argue, than the key to the
pursuit of Christian holiness, which is the whole of the Christian adventure: to live in
love with the frailty and limits of one's existence, suffering the places, customs, rites,
joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, and
community--all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced
directly.Now, what am I saying? Does this mean that I think you should always stay in one place,
that you cannot be called elsewhere, or that you ought to forever limit your own horizons.
No. I am neither foolish nor naïve enough to think that this is either possible or even a
good thing. What it does mean is that the human heart, your heart, will never flourish
and blossom if it is forever pining after the next thing, or captured by the false promise of
something better just out of grasp, always seeking satisfaction somewhere other than
where it is. Rather, it is that marriage between the endless internal horizon of your heart
and the limited, restrained, concrete life of geography and community that has borne the
most delightful and satisfying fruits of human history.So cast down your bucket where you are.
This is at once the most radical and the most conservative thing you can do with your life.
Yet you are heading out into a very conventional, middling, controlled world. Oh, they
will tell you that their marches for progress and rights are daring, that they are radical.
Or they will tell you that their religious revivals are conservative, that they are the moral
center. You will hear it all, but the truth is that for the most part, people are in the grips
of a boring, lifeless ideology of personal fulfillment, choice, and upward mobility. We
live in a society of tourists--and if tourists have one thing in common it is this--that they
are not at home.
Read the whole thing. It'll be the best thing you read all day, guaranteed.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
I think you're all missing the point. Stegall is not encouraging these graduates to literally stay in their home town... never to branch out or explore new horizons. He is simply telling them not to believe the world when it tells you that climbing the ladder of material success is more important than putting down roots, forging connections and making a "home" for yourself. He's also encouraging them to recognize and embrace the beauty and precious nature of what they have, here and now, instead of constantly looking toward the greener grass that may exist in some far flung pasteur. And yes, he's encouraging them to treasure those people, places, and experiences that have made them who they are... not to simply cast their heritage aside for newer, flashier horizons, as so many young people do. I think it's a beautiful, wise speech. But then, I agree with it. Freelunch, I wouldn't expect you to like it. And I agree with you that the speech is too "Christian" to have passed muster at a public school.
Yes, freelunch, but what has Mr. Stegall done for you lately?
Something does not make sense with this whole "rooted" thing.
America was founded by people who left their ancestral homes in Europe, crossed the Atlantic in wooden ships (no mean feat as this was actually dangerous), and came to the "new" world to create a new life for themselves, essentially cut off from the people back home. Later, people came out west in covered wagons and, later, trains to create a new life for themselves during the 19th century and early 20th century. All of my ancestors were pioneers as they did these things.
The kids today who seek new opportunities elsewhere, is this not the modern-day equivalent to the pioneers who created the U.S.? I fail to see any qualitative difference. Of course, we don't have a physical frontier right now, but I would think that the sunbelt or other places could be considered as an economic or social frontier that serves the same function of the physical frontier of the past.
What about if space colonization becomes economically feasible or someone invents FTL space travel? Would Stegall and others say we are obliged to stay here when there are new opportunities in space?
Pioneering is a part of religion. The Pilgrims who founded Plymouth and the Mormons who came out west and created Salt Lake City as one of the most livable cities in the U.S., these are examples of religious groups who embraced pioneering. American was founded as a pioneering, frontier-oriented society. It seems to me that pioneering and the quest for new opportunities and the desire to expand one's horizons is a fundamental aspect of human nature.
Viewed within the appropriate historical context, Stegall's speech does not make much sense.
MargaretE,
I set my roots years ago and haven't moved. I'm happy where I am. I like my community. My criticism isn't of what he was trying to say. I think that people who move every three years can do the same thing: make a commitment to where they live, even if it means that it hurts to leave.
I think Stegall has not been keeping up on current events.
Middle America is coming back!
http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules/2009/05/an-american-heartland-renaissance.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124329530359452757.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
I told you guys before that this problem of meritocracy and middle America is self-correcting and that is exactly what is happening. I think Caleb Stegall is still reacting to the excesses of a bubble that no longer exists.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.