I search through the pages of
the reading assignment for any
clue to the making of me. I find my grandfather’s story there, feel his hands
mold my future with a coal pick. Between those pages I hear the song of the
earth. And I wonder about this place called
Appalachia—this place that beats
strong in the heart of me.
It’s a politically defined area that includes all or parts
of thirteen states. It starts at the bottom of New York and travels all the way
down to Mississippi, reaches east to the Carolinas, and points westward in
parts of Kentucky and Ohio. My home state—West Virginia—is the only state
entirely within Appalachia. It’s a politically defined area, yes, but a people
defined area too.
I read about the history, the culture, the land. I hug the
words close to me and picture my ancestors wandering in virgin forests, loving
on mountains and in valleys, wading through rivers and streams. I feel rich
with these words; they name a part of me. It’s a complex heritage that makes my
people.
Our teacher is Dr. Lon Oliver, Executive Director of
AMERC,
Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center and he comes to teach us
about pastoring small churches. Because around here…we have a lot of those. And
it seems that to pastor the church we must pastor the people. And there are
things we need to learn in order to love these people well, he says.
Dr. Oliver has a passion for the Appalachian people.
“More souls will be
won on the local bowling team than in the church,” he says. And he says it
over and over all weekend long: “The church
is borne on the local culture…Wherever
God places us to really hear the voices of our parishioners…we believe the
Spirit of God is with the people.”
We talk about the history—how the Iroquois were here first—about
the three different divisions of Appalachia (Guess what? WV is in the poorest
one.), about systems and the life cycle of a church…
But it is in his stories that his love for the people of
Appalachia speaks loudest.
“I was in Hazard,
Kentucky,” he says. “The only place I
could find to eat dinner was this little tavern. Word got out around the place
that a preacher was in the midst. I ended up staying there until two a.m.
talking with people about life and death. At the end of the night I was
granting absolutions of a sort.”
He laughs it off but then looks hard at all of us—all eighteen
candidates for Lay Pastor certification.
“People are spiritual,”
he says. “And people are hungry for the
Good news of the Gospel. But if we wait until they come through the church
doors, most will not hear the Good News.”
He talks about how the love of the land is a central ideal
for the Appalachian people, how the coal and timber barons robbed us of this
great joy, and how this love of the land is still a pervasive part of our
culture.
“The biodiversity in
Appalachia is phenomenal,” he says.
Missing the glaciers
of the last ice age also means that Appalachia is one of the most diverse
biological regions of North America. As the glaciers moved southward, northern
species came to inhabit the southern areas, creating an unusually rich genetic
pool. There are 690 vertebrate species and 2245 higher plant species native to
the region. The kinds of trees found today were here over fifty million years
ago… (A Handbook to Appalachia, Natural Resources and environment of Appalachia
by Rouse and Greer-Pitt)
We talk about how rapid industrialization in the late 1800s
and early 1900s demoralized our people. How the natural resources were
exploited and the people left barren.
“Most of our forest
here are third or fourth generation…in an economy concerned with outcome and
not quality, most young people don’t have jobs…”
He connects the dots from the past to the present for us and
I begin to grieve the death of all those trees.
…During the great
timber boom between 1890 and 1910, the region’s trees became a source of
industrial activity when outside buyers came into the hills to purchase
hundreds of thousands of acres of forest resources…The height of the timber
boom in Appalachia was reached in 1910. In that year, over 50 percent of the
standing timber production in the United States came from the South, and most
of that was from the mountains. Huge areas of Appalachia had been cut over by
then, and production declined significantly thereafter. (A Handbook to Appalachia, Appalachian History
by Richard Straw
)
At night I dream about those first generation trees. About
the Iroquois and Cherokee who loved them in their infancy. In my heart I hear the
echo of their fallen leaves, gasp at the wide expanse of their trunks. The trees
are my kin and so is anyone who loves these gracious mountains.
“These are some of the
oldest mountains on our planet,” Dr. Oliver says. “That’s why they are so gentle—so welcoming of life.”
The earth whispers to me: you must become like the mountains. And I take this whisper and
carry it inside of me. The mountains know how to love a people well.
The mountains know.
With Jen today:
And Michelle:
