The Five Characteristics of a Redeemed Appalachian Spirituality
Our theology is experiential. It is not only a lived experience, but it is also shaped by where we are from and the people who raised us.
Our theology is experiential. It is not only a lived experience, but it is also shaped by where we are from and the people who raised us.
About a year ago, I began thinking about my home in Appalachia and the way it formed me, from the drafty farmhouses where I lived in Christian community with three other families to my earliest trips into the Dolly Sods Wilderness in my home state of West Virginia where I encountered what I would later find out were called “thin spaces” by the ancient Celts.
And as I tried to dream of her redeemed spirituality, free of mountaintop removal and snake handling white clapboard churches, I couldn’t help but feel a little removed from her, because that’s a part of the problem.
We’ve been removed.
We’ve been desensitized to the violence.
We’ve been given our bowl of soup as an inheritance.
But then, one day as I was in the middle of midday prayers, it all just … came to me, and I was smart enough to write it down, which I’m rarely smart enough to do. As I would tell my wife later, it seemed to flow from outside of myself, another aspect coming before I’d finished writing the one before.
The Five Characteristics of an Appalachian Spirituality
A respect and return to the land, rooted in ritual
Fast in charity; slow in discernment
Service to the dignity of all life
Relationship over rightness
Solidarity in suffering
A Respect & Return to Land, Rooted in Ritual
We are in a relationship with the land. We are in a conversation. It gives to us as we give to it. It takes from us as we take from it.
We are divine agents here in this world, entrusted by our Creator to continue in the ongoing story of creation. We are intermediaries and set to rule creation in the same way that God rules in our own lives — with an intention to bring peace and balance to the chaos, to cultivate its potential not only for its own betterment but for the betterment of the greater conversation inherent between all things (logos).
The land is not a limitless commodity for our own pleasure, to grease our ambition and greed on the backs of strip mines and polluted waters. We should strive to maintain a balance, to give back to the land more than we take from it, to treat it with the dignity worthy of being called good by its creator.
And as we dig into the deep roots of our Christian faith as well as the deep roots we have as Appalachians, we find a treasure of rituals and practices filled with our intent as prayer, physical acts and objects that serve our human need for physical reminders of the Creator who hears our cries of anguish as well as the cries of anguish from the land herself — may they once again be lifted up in unity of cause and cry.
Fast in Charity; Slow in Discernment
Life in Appalachia teaches if a person needs help, and you can help, you help. You change a tire. You offer a hot meal. You give them a fresh change of clothes. You do it without the question of context.
This isn’t on account of a native naivety or simpleness. It’s because we know what it is to be in want and need. In an unforgiving climate, the rhythmic seasons of scarcity and abundance change often and sometimes without warning. When you have, you are quick to give because it may be only a short time until you too may need a hand held out in help.
But when it comes to making big decisions, when it comes to “testin’ the spirits” toward something bigger than the moment, you slow way down. The bigger the decision, the bigger the consequences might be, and in the spaces between unforgiving hill and hollow, those consequences can ripple out for generations.
We should live a spirituality fast to help with little regard for our own selves while still maintaining an appreciation for the slow wisdom of tree and mountain — that like the creeks that run toward the river, we might be fast to quench the thirst of those who stop by our banks to be refreshed but slow to smooth the rocks that line our bed and shape our path.
Relationship Over Rightness
We live in an age of rightness. It is an age of logic, apologetics, and polarity. We sadly have not matched that with any sense of civility or humility.
You can’t do that when you depend on your neighbors, when you truly care about the people you’re putting down. You need them, and they need you. Your lives are in conversation with each other, and your words need to follow suit.
By prioritizing the dignity of those we come in contact with over our natural desire to be seen as knowledgeable, right, or wise, we again fulfill our promise to cultivate conversations that bring us closer to wholeness while eschewing those that infringe on the dignity of God’s creation.
Relationship over rightness says that I will speak truth in love, and part of loving is being slow to speak or act in such a way that might injure our relationships. It means that we follow the admonishment of the Apostle Paul when he says to “do our best to live at peace with all men.”
Service to the Dignity of All Life
In the beginning, God created, and what he created was good. If God says it is good, is it not worthy of dignity?
Those who would follow the tangled branches of an Appalachian spirituality acknowledge that we can not hope to align with the heart of God without first acknowledging that we must first reconcile the way we approach all of God’s creation, all of which reflects his image and essence.
In its perfection, this attitude should impact the way we treat not only the lost, lonely, and left out in humanity but also the way we eat, hunt, farm, develop, and cultivate the relationships we have with the plants, animals, and land around us.
Solidarity in Suffering
There is perhaps no more solidified Appalachian ideal than a solidarity in suffering. When a family “down holler” is hungry, you are hungry. When labor strikes, the community strikes. When a family deals with loss, the community deals with that loss.
Our spirituality is not separated from our community. Our lives are not separated from our brother or our neighbor. When they rejoice, we rejoice, but if they suffer, is it holy for us to feast? Should we not also weep with them, to feel their hunger if we can not ourselves feed them? Should we enjoy the security of our earnings while others fight for their own?
No. We should, with wisdom, seek solidarity with those who know present loss and languish, for we are all one great conversation, one great sharing in the love and providence of God. While this world may never be at peace or know the wholeness of God until heaven is brought here to earth, we should, as God’s ambassadors of this new community of creation, model its principles and way of life as a stark alternative to humanity’s reason, logic, and self-centered focus on getting ahead, especially at the expense of the other.