Our neighbor Ivy Moyers has a very simple religion — no, that's not quite right —she has a simple and well-exercised faith. For Ivy, God is God, and knows exactly what he's doing. While he’s working out whatever it is he has in mind for the nations, he still has enough grace and more to pity the sparrows and all the other little people of the world. She knows, because over the long hard years of her life God has loved her, and worked some blessings into her days. When her husband died and she still had two children at home to care for, she scratched a living for them from her patch of land. And God was there to help her.

No, he didn't pick up an axe and chop her kindling. Her boys were big enough; even the oldest who were already married, found time to chop and pile her firewood.

Well, that's her boys helping out, not God. "True," she'd say, "but they feel good about helping me." That’s just psychological feedback for altruism." Maybe. I don't understand that kind of thing. But I know God loves us and helps us love others; why shouldn't we feel good? Call it anything you like, that won't change it." 

Jesus said something like, "Blessed are the pure-hearted, the people with integrity, for they will see God." Now that’s what God will look like, integrity itself, and like Ivy, those with integrity will recognize him; essence will respond to essence.

Ivy's world has changed, as it has changed for all of us. Even the religion she grew up with is not quite the same. When Ivy was young the mountain churches were simple buildings like the simple homes of the members. Today churches are far more elaborate and expensive. People are better off financially; even their religion is wealthier and more comfortable now, not like the matter of naked trust it used to be for folks who struggled on the edge of survival.

Jesus said the poor were close to the kingdom of God, because their lives were a matter of trust, in God and in each other. During the depression of the 30s, survival in the mountains depended on good (or reasonably good) health. If you could stay healthy, there were occasional odd jobs to trade for cash or kind, there was a garden to plant, and there was game in the woods to hunt for the table. But — just as it is now for most of the people In the rest of the world — if you tore a muscle, had an appendix go sour or a bad tooth poison your system, or dropped a log on your foot, all you had was God and the caring of his people.

The community of caring people was the living evidence of the God that Ivy and her neighbors believed in. His reality gave them courage and a goal. Work hard at what God is calling you to be; do right by your neighbor and God can be trusted to look after the rest.  

Sam Heatwole reading from Frog Hollow Journal, by Jim Fairfield, available here.