Southerners
have pointed to the benefits of an agrarian way of life for generations, that
it is the mode of life best suited to caring for the creation and for
inculcating virtues in man: humility,
dependence on God, patience, generosity, hospitality, supplying the needs of
one’s household, patriotism, and so on.
But
there is something more in agrarianism that seems to be overlooked here in the
South at the moment, something key to ‘working out our salvation with fear and
trembling’ (Phil. 2:12): The hard work
of tilling the earth (and the contemplation of the creation that is closely
bound up with it) is both a spur to repentance and right living and a safeguard
against sin. In exploring these
intertwined ideas, we will delve into the writings of the Holy Fathers of the
Church, those most helpful guides to the Christian life, who are also a part of
the Southerner’s Christian inheritance but whose writings often go unread by
them.
St
John Chrysostom (+407), the ‘Golden-tongued’, one of the greatest preachers to
arise in the Church, with his commentary on Genesis 3:17-19, is a good place to
begin. In it one will hear emphasized,
amongst other things, the familiar theme of human limits often found in
Southern agrarian literature:
3:17-19 And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of
thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou
shalt not eat of it: cursed is the
ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy
life. Thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field; in the sweat
of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of
it wast thou taken. For dust thou art,
and unto dust shalt thou return (KJV).
. . . Behold the reminders of the curse! Thorns it will bring forth, He [God] says,
and thistles. I will do this so you will
endure severe labor and cares and spend your whole life in sorrow, that this
might be a restraint for you, that you might not dream that you are higher than
your station; but that you might constantly remember your nature and might
henceforth not allow yourself to come to a similar state of deception.
“Thou shalt eat of
the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” See how after his [Adam’s] disobedience
everything was not as it had been before in his life! I, He says, bringing you into this world,
wanted you to live without afflictions, without labors, without cares, without
sorrows; to be in contentment and prosperity and not be subject to bodily
needs, but to be a stranger to all this and enjoy perfect freedom. But since such freedom was not of benefit to
you, I will curse the earth so that henceforth it will not be as it was
formerly, giving forth fruit without sowing and cultivation, but will do so
only with great labor, exertion and cares.
I will subject you to constant afflictions and sorrows, and force you to
do everything with exhausting efforts, that these tormenting labors might be
for you a constant lesson to behave modestly and know your own nature (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, p.
269-70).
Another
remarkable Father, St Symeon the New Theologian (+1022), speaks in a similar
way:
And so it is that
these are our sins, that is, that we do not patiently bear the temporal
chastisements of God and do not give thanks for them but becoming presumptuous
as if we were enemies of God we go in a certain sense against that Divine
decree that states in the sweat of thy
face thou shall eat thy bread (Gen. 3:19), and we exert all our strength so
as to find repose and we do not find it because there is no opportunity for us
to escape from labors and sweats, and from this being yoked to needs, no matter
what we might do.
Therefore, fortunate
is he who endures all these temporal chastisements with gratitude, confessing
that he has been justly condemned to them for the ancestral sin. Yea, he will find repose from his labors; for
by reason of these chastisements the All-good God has given death to men, so
that those who bear them with gratitude might rest from them for a time, and
then might be resurrected and glorified in the day of judgment through the new
Adam, the sinless Jesus Christ and God Who
was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification
(Rom. 4:25) (The First-Created Man,
p. 61).
This
is a warning to us not to live a life of ease (which has become the goal of
modern man) that dulls the soul. Without
hard work to humble us, our pride will swell, and another disastrous fall into
evil with all its terrible consequences will follow. Too much mechanization, labor-saving devices,
and the like - that is, attempts to undo the Fall and to conjure up Eden here
in the world apart from God’s ways - are a threat not just to human dignity,
sound economics, and the like, but to our spiritual health, our very
salvation. But here our memory can be
put to good use - in particular, the memory of the Paradise we have lost:
. . . let us note the spiritual benefit of being close to Paradise, of still seeing the
place and state from which man had fallen and to which he is called to
return. St. John Chrysostom writes:
The view (of Paradise),
even if it aroused in Adam an unbearable grief, at the same time afforded him
much profit: the constant beholding (of
Paradise) served for the grieving one as a warning for the future, so that he
would not fall again into the same (transgression) (Genesis, pgs. 285, 288).
But
can we see Paradise at all today? In a
sense we can. Blessed Fr Seraphim Rose
(+1982) says,
Even in our fallen state,
can we not be reminded of Paradise and our fall from it in the nature that
surrounds us? In the animals it is not
difficult to see the passions over which we should be masters, but which have
largely taken possession of us; and in the peaceful murmur of the forests
(where so many ascetic strugglers have taken refuge) can we not see a reminder
of the Paradise of vegetation originally intended for our dwelling and food,
and still existing for those able to ascend, with St. Paul, to behold it (p.
252)?
Here
we find a great encouragement not to transgress, lest we mar what few traces of
Eden remain in this world. Toward such
remnants the South has been keenly attuned from her beginning, and this may
partly explain her slowness to embrace ugly, urbanized Modernity.
Abba
Dorotheus of Gaza (+565), another highly gifted spiritual teacher, also enjoins
us to remember Paradise, this time, however, as a goad to advancement in the
spiritual life:
. . .
The
rest is at https://usareally.com/2407-the-necessity-of-agrarianism
.
Please
note: Since the intrepid, neo-Puritan
guardians of morality, from Silicon Valley to Washington City, have gotten
their underbritches tied into a knot over an alternative news and opinion site
like USA Really, you may have trouble
viewing it on some web browsers. If so,
try an indie browser like Brave, https://brave.com/
. But like all good hypocrites, these
neo-Puritans are busily doing the very things they are accusing others of doing: They have no trouble cramming their own nihilistic
vision of freedom, etc. down the throats of unwilling people. Case in point, the pushing of sexual
perversion onto the traditional peoples of the Ukraine, Serbia, Uganda,
Georgia, etc. by various federal agencies of Washington City and/or NGOs. On the Ukraine in particular:
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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