Roots and Sky by Christie Purifoy

Author:Christie Purifoy [Purifoy, Christie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012000, REL012040, REL012120, Life—Religious aspects—Christianity, Christian life, Spirituality—Christianity
ISBN: 9781493401796
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

It is not right that anyone should live without shelter. But exile and poverty are not the only wrongs in our world. Too many of us grow fat on abundant, familiar foods yet starve for want of symbols. We live in solid houses, but do not understand what they mean. We forget the one who shelters us. The one who is the roof over our heads and the walls around us. Bilbo didn’t leave his home because it wasn’t important. He left because of how very important it was.

I reach for our worn copy of The Hobbit, an illustrated relic from Jonathan’s own childhood, but somehow Lillian and I become distracted by a library book about chickens. This month baby chicks will arrive at our local feed and lumber store, and we want to be ready. Jonathan hasn’t yet built a chicken coop. I don’t know the first thing about raising newly hatched chicks in a brooder, but as we read the descriptions of different breeds, like the Barred Rocks and the Buff Orpingtons, I begin to feel something stirring. It’s as if I have new energy in my limbs. After months spent sitting still with seed catalogs and Tolkien’s tales, I am ready to move. I am ready to work. I am ready to see winter dreams come flickering to life.

In the wilderness we lost some things and surrendered others. Now we have received. We have come home. Yet I am wary of making this house, these five acres, an idol on a pedestal. Symbols die when we lift them up in this way. They sway in heaven’s wind only as long as their roots are planted in real dirt.

A garden. A few happy hens. They are such little things. Yet it is in these small ways that we allow a kingdom of plenty and of peace to stake its rightful claim in one more bit of earth. The notion of kingdom suggests both a ruler and a realm.1 Over Christmas, we welcomed the ruler. Now, it is Candlemas. Now, by the light of a strengthening sun, we will begin to work our own small corner of his realm.

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