Happy to Be Marginal
Yesterday I thought it would be snow--skies have been grey and even black for over a week. Clouds of birds gathered around the hermitage. Twenty robins or more, a dozen finches, jays, many juncos (including one I found dead on the porch), other small birds and even a couple of bluebirds--I had not seen them around in the winter. Yesterday morning about two I heard something scampering around in the house and found it was a little flying squirrel. I have no idea how he got in. I thought for a moment of keeping him and taming him, but opened the door and turned him loose. At least let the animals be free and be themselves! While they still can.
A man wrote an article in America magazine on the vernacular liturgy: "If the Church wants to sweep the world like the Beatles..." With this kind of mentality, what can you expect? But I am afraid that is the trouble. The Church is conscious of being inferior now not only to the Communists but to four English kids with mops of hair (and I like them OK). More and more I see the importance of not mopping the world with the mops, Beatle or liturgical. I am glad to be marginal. The best thing I can do for the "world" is stay out of it--in so far as one can.
December 14, 1966, VI.168-69
Interesting to read this selection right after reading "Prophets as Poets: An interview with Walter Brueggemann" in the Fall 2011 issue of From the Mountain, the University of the South (Sewanee) seminary publication. Brueggemann describes prophets as "uncredentialed poets using subversive images to picture the world as though God is a real player."
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