Reading Wendell Berry’s short novel Hannah Coulter has been a balm this summer, for me and for many participating in our Sunday morning book conversation. The book is narrated by Hannah as an old woman; she says at the end of the first chapter, “this is my story, my giving of thanks.” A fancy book review would probably call it “elegiac,” and the book remembers Hannah’s many losses over a long life. Her first husband was killed in the Battle of the Bulge, her children left home, the generation above her went the way of all flesh. These losses were part of a larger loss, the slow death of a rural community and the loss of its life together on the land. She and her neighbors had followed St. Paul in thinking of themselves as “a membership,” members of one another, like the parts of a body. The loss of each member hurt, for they were deeply connected. Work was central to their membership. The working households exchanged labor at times of planting and harvest. Meals are miracles in this book, deep times of table fellowship, nourishing the body. Those meals were often the result of shared work, households coming together, each with their own contribution. 

Throughout the book, work then creates place, transforming a location into something more, first through the shared work of marriage. Hannah and her husband transformed the broken-down farm they bought into a place of loving production, in contrast to the worn-out farm she was raised on, which suffered from her father’s misery in a bad marriage. On their farm, Hannah and her husband Nathan worked together, making it their place through daily engagement. Convicted by that, I’ve been tending my yard in Forest Acres with more care and recently floated the idea that Elizabeth and I might take care not to fall entirely into a divide-and-conquer mindset, she working inside, me outside. Maybe I’ll dust while she vacuums, and she can pick up pinecones ahead of the mower. Perhaps our children will help. But it seems unlikely my neighbors and I will share work like the people of Berry’s novel. My suburban world is not much like Hannah’s rural Kentucky, which Wendell Berry and I regret.

Beyond domestic applications, this lovely book has me thinking about church as the place we still experience the gifts of membership, even if lost in our current version of the wider world. God brings us together as his people at church and invites us to work together. You can pull weeds, teach Sunday School, or sing in the choir. If you do one of those, you might not do another, but God will bring someone else to that calling. We exchange labor here, offering it all to the glory of God. If we are often dislocated and isolated in our neighborhoods, church can be the place of shared work that becomes a real place in our lives. One of the most important things we do at church is eat together, at the Lord’s altar and in our fellowship meals. We bring gifts of money, bread, and wine to the altar, our collective offering, and feast there with the Lord. We bring our casseroles, salads, and side dishes to the gym and enjoy the table God has spread through us. There is work and love in every bite. 

St. John’s is a membership, not the dues-paying kind, but a most significant one, the body of Christ. There are timeless antidotes here to what ails the dismembered modern world, for we are a deep and demanding community called together by God in Christ. Though summer rest and wandering are still upon us, let’s look forward to what the fall will bring, a chance to belong to each other and God, to make this a place, by working together in the cause of Christ. I’m thankful this novel has reminded me of all that. Nicholas †

Learn more about other important updates in the latest church newsletter: The Epistle – July 18, 2024