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Millard Fuller died last Monday, February 2, 2009. He was the founder of Habitat for Humanity. I read about his death and some of his life in an On Faith post, Millard Fuller’s “Theology of Enough”, by David Waters. I was so taken by Fuller’s life that I went on to read of Koinonia Farm where Fuller started Habitat for Humanity. I continued reading about Clarence Jordan the one of the founders of Koinonia Farm. I felt humbled after reading about Millard and Jordan’s lives. I could go on and give a brief summation of their lives but not today. If you want to know about them you will have to follow the links and read for yourselves.
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What interests me is the connection between their spiritual practice of their faith and the care of the earth and its inhabitants. Last Sunday, February 1, 2009 I read another article, Praise the Lord and Green the Roof, in the New York Times about some very different people that have that same connection in their lives. Praise the Lord and Green the Roof is about an order of Episcopal women in New York City that is also driven to practice care of the Earth in their everyday living. I don’t know about you but New York City is not on the top of my list of places where spirituality or environmental are over riding concerns. Maybe my understanding of such things needs some work. My spiritual life could benefit from some also.
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I think I see some common threads in the lives of Millard, Clarence and the Episcopal sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. They were (and are) more concerned with living life according to the teachings of Jesus than they are in making life to be about Jesus. Evangelicals are notorious for making it about Jesus but mainline sects (such as the Episcopals) and us super progressives often make that same error. They are willing to accept less of material things in the pursuit of the Christian life. The most foreign to me personally is that they join in communities to pursue both their spiritual life and the furtherance of ecological concerns.
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Clarence Jordan was an ex-Southern Baptist as am I. I appreciate the way he put it:
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“an ex-Baptist,” a member of the confessional and universal church.
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Millard Fuller was buried yesterday, February 4 2009, in a plain wood coffin on Koinonia Farm in a grave with no headstone (in same manner as Clarence Jordan).
The Episcopal sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit continue living a quiet simple life a world away from Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia but in a similar spirit.
I wonder if I can find that spirit in Phoenix.