Ragan Sutterfield
Holy Cell Phones
Not long ago I had to decide—new cell phone, no cell phone; smart phone, plain phone…I found the most basic free phone I could—one that could make calls, text with difficulty, and maybe survive my abuse. In making this choice I was choosing much more than a cell phone—I was choosing a different form of life…
Anchors
How do we know where we are? Increasingly the answer is through the dot on a screen—the little man on a Google map, the arrow on a dashboard GPS…
Reclaiming Local Culture
I have been thinking a good deal lately about culture and how it happens. There are two kinds of Pop culture it seems—the kind we consume and the kind we produce. These days the kind we consume seems to dominate. That we consume culture is not a bad thing, but that this form of pop [...]
Recovering the Practice of Penance
The practice of actively turning our lives from sin and embodying our mourning for sin is called penance—an ancient practice that needs to be recovered in the lives of Christians seeking to live their lives holistically.
The Means of Production
If we are to recover the agrarian virtues of self-reliance and free ourselves increasingly from the bad valuations inherent in the money economy we are going to have to not only grow our own but breed our own…
The “Mad Farmer” on Education
Caitlin Flanagan recently created a stir with her article in The Atlantic criticizing school gardens. There have been some excellent rebuttals to Flannagan, but as I read the article I kept hearing Wendell Berry’s poetic character, “The Mad Farmer,”…
In Pursuit of Difficult Pleasures
One result of the consumer economy has been a weakening of desire and a diluting of pleasure. This may seem counter-intuitive at first because desire is all around us after all…
Work for Free
Perhaps we should give up on making a living from our work and simply do it because we are called to it and offer our work to our neighbors as a free, gift just as we have received freely.
Escaping “Usefulness”
I have been working to be unproductive at least one day a week. It’s a difficult chore, but one I think we are called to. We are called to be still so that we can know God—to simply be in God’s presence.
The Key To Action
Now I simply eat locally, shop locally, and largely avoid the big box stores. Those choices are no longer conscious choices. They are simply the outcomes of my form of life.
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