I have been asked to speak this evening about "Despair and Hope in Rural America." Despair and hope are strong emotions. They are very closely related to desire and fear. Desire moving in the direction of fulfillment of desires provides the completion of hope's quest by the achievement of one's heart's desire. The completion or termination of fear is despair, the loss of hope. Rural America, indeed, the rural world, is frequently on the doorstep of despair, dealing with the loss of hope, of the achievement of the complete sense of hopelessness, a limit situation of seeing no light or of seeing total darkness. These are the feeling sets you've invited me to explore, and the situation is pretty clear, the rural world.
As religious persons, I'm sure you've heard or read of the theology of Soren Kierkegaard. He has identified feelings and their expression as occurring on three levels, the aesthetic, the moral and the religious. Each level deals with an object or event as beautiful, good or holy. The aesthetic level is the level of beauty. The moral level is the level of goodness. The religious level is the level of the holy. From the human or subjective side of things, which is to say from the point of view of you the perceiver, I believe that you can recognize that the level of feeling shifts inward, more intensively and more critically, as one's personal evaluation moves from the beautiful, to the good, and then to the holy.
The beautiful, the good, and the holy are all one, like the Russian dolls, each inside the other, in a Kingdom perspective. And of course, ultimately we are about constituting or realizing the Kingdom in our Christian efforts. So, when we talk about despair and hope, we are in the realm of religious values and religious feelings, at a pretty deep level of appreciation. When we are in the realms of desire and fear, we are simply at the level of aesthetic imagination. So, when we contrast desire and fear with despair and hope, we move from the aesthetic realm to the religious realm. Our feelings move at a more intensive level from one level to the other.
An example of the different levels of feeling can be our food here tonight. We can evaluate it on a simple level of aesthetics. The food looks good. The tables have been well set. The plates of food have more than edible materials on them, there are garnishes of leaves that are merely ornamental. We appreciate a well decorated plate. And it tastes good too. That is a meal appreciated on the aesthetic level alone. In addition we can appreciate the dinner from a moral vantage point. We can ask about who prepared the food, were they well paid, did the food come from factory farms, or family farms? Were migrant laborers involved in the production? Did the food production contribute to a healthy environment? These are moral questions. They deal with the food from the vantage point not only of aesthetics or artistry, but also from the moral deliberations about the good of the order or system which produced the food which has come to our table.
Finally, we can ask about the food from the vantage point of religion. Is the food holy food? Has it been dependent upon the gifts of nature and of nature's God. Is our food enjoyment preceded or succeeded by prayer, words of thanksgiving? Each level of evaluation brings us a deeper level of feeling on the personal side and a deeper level of evaluation on the appreciation or critique of what we are doing when we are eating. Eating is an agricultural act. Eating is an aesthetic act. Eating is a moral act. Eating is a religious act. We may not all farm, but we all eat, and as such we have a responsibility to think, among other things, about hope and despair in rural America. But that level of thinking is theological, ultimate. Let us first ask the question about desire and fear, the aesthetic question.
I've been moving around the country, indeed the world, and have seen up close and personal the poles of hope and despair, the contrasts between transcendence and limitation, at home and abroad in rural communities. Another way I've interpreted your question is to deal with it as: "What kind of story are we in?" "What kind of story are we experiencing in rural America?" I would like to suggest that there are four kinds of stories, Romances where the dashing hero or heroine defeats all enemies; Tragedies where the hero or heroine suffers due to a flaw in his or her own character. Satire/Ironies where characters suffer from overwhelming odds against their success and images of oppression reign. Finally, there are comic stories, where the community achieves its own happiness, often by surprising changes in fortune.
In Romantic stories desire overcomes fear, the character controls the plot, the plot ends in success, the main character has special powers and overcomes great obstacles. In Tragic stories fear dominates hope, the character controls the plot, character reaches too high and seeks more than she or he is really capable of achieving. In the Ironic or satiric story fear dominates desire, the plot controls the character, fate determines destiny, bondage and oppression reign, the main characters are treated as less than human. In the comic story desire and hope overcome fear, the plot controls the characters, some unexpected twist transforms what looked like an absurd situation into a delightful set of circumstances. The community is the chief beneficiary of the hopeful conclusion. In a play, all characters are on stage at the end, and all are happy. For rural America, what kind of story are we in in? Are we moving toward hope or despair? Listen to some stories of the past.
Listen to some stories of the present: hunger, poverty, obesity. Local food systems work in Arizona among Native Peoples (Tristan Reader), in California, Oregon, Washington State (Sustainable Agriculture Working Groups, Community Food Security Coalition). In Colorado, Texas (Farmers Union, The Ogallala Commons); in New Mexico, Missouri, Iowa (Farmers Union, Russ Kramer, Mary Hendickson, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Iowa Network for Community Agriculture); in Maryland and Delaware, New England, New York., Chicago, Illinois (Chesapeake Bay Chicken, LaDonna Herman). Activity, hopeful, active, community based activity, making things look as if there is a new comic mode in the ascendency. I have been to Malta, Belize, Mexico, Chile, Europe…and am on my way to Asia next weekend. Heard new stories of the globalization of solidarity in peasant farmers working together to defeat WTO centralization, learning about a new civic movement among consumers and farmers together, a new civic agriculture, a new economia civile. The World Social Forum, Slow Food Movement in Italy last week, Terre Madre where 5,000 from around the world committed themselves to a new vision of economic life and to a food culture. These are movement s of hope.
At the Heifer Project International 60th anniversary in Little Rock, AK, hundred from around the world celebrated the energy of new rural economic enterprises in this country and abroad. Desmond Jolly, from the University of California at Davis' Small Farm Project raised the question: What do we need to do to keep the hopeful stories of community based projects and programs creating economies of life and economies of hope and economies of solidarity. How do we keep the hope alive in the rural world. We need to deal, not only with the Yes of hope, but also with the threat or, fear, to be induced by centralized forces of power and might. When Sears and K-Mart combine to fight Wal-Mart, is that good? What about Cargil, ConAgra, Monsanto? Tyson, Purdue, Safeway?
The question Desmond Jolly asked was, after you've built your community around that community pond, how do you stop someone from pulling the plug? How do we control the mighty forces at work in rural America? Dramatically lowered predatory pricing can undermine all of our hopeful work. Despair is possible in rural America and in the rural world. We continue to need citizen activity to buttress the possibility of community empowerment and citizen engagement. One project which NCRLC sponsors is the Agribusiness Accountability Initiative. It is a network meant to bring under one large tent researchers, academicians, activists, educators, policy makers to both undermine the power of a few large agro-food giants, forces of despair; to empower and enable the forces of hope.
I have a godson who lives in New York City. His favorite toy is a farm. When he was being raised, like many in this room, he learned songs and stories from rural life: "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." "Baaa baaa black sheep have you any wool?" This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none. And this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home." These are the songs and stories we've inherited from our parents. But like my godchild's parents who shop in nearby urban grocery stores, buying milk in plastic containers, and tomatoes in cellophane wrapped plastic boxes, we've largely lost the connections between food and its production. And as eaters, we can help restore the connection, and buy doing so, help restore hope in rural America by thinking about where the food comes from, how it tastes, how it looks, how good the system is that produced it, and whether or not the food system is adequate to the task we all have to help realize and promote the kingdom of God.
We will take this task seriously, because we are a community of faith, not invested in a vision of support for inordinate power in corporate giants, and not invested in a vision of rugged individualism. We are a community of faith, and as a community, we have a sense of our we-ness. As bearers of hope we cannot give in to despair, but need to be beacons of hope. So, we say yes. As a community of faith we do care about the marketplace; as a community of faith we do care about the home; as a community of faith we do care about those who have roast beef; and as a community of faith we care about those who have none. As a community of faith, bearers of hope in a world given to despair, we do not say I, I, I…but say we, we, we…all the way home.
Thank you, and God Bless You.