Water At The Roots
$16.00
In a society uprooted by war, industrialization, hate-filled ideology, and dehumanizing technology, a revolutionary farmer-poet reconnects his people to the land and one another.
Something of a British Wendell Berry, Philip Britts (1917-1949) was a soft-spoken West Country farmer, poet, activist, and mystic. Even as his country plunged headlong into a second world war, he sought a way of life where people could work together in harmony with nature and one another. He found an answer, though it would cost him his land and his life.
These were years of turbulence and disillusionment, in Europe and beyond. Why had progress brought with it so much suffering? Britts saw that in losing our connection to nature and the earth, we are losing our humanity – our connection to one another. He watched as his friends in the peace movement, socialist circles, and Christian churches joined the battle against Hitler, but he refused to resort to violence. Instead he threw himself into an attempt to live out the radical demands of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount on a personal and local level in community.
Britts’s story is no romantic agrarian elegy, but a life lived in the thick of history. The international pacifist community he joined, the Bruderhof, was soon forced to flee Europe. Now the earth he tilled was no longer the moist soil of his homeland, but a harsh tropical climate of drought, locusts, and blight. A highly trained horticulturalist, he loved working the land and discovering new wonders of nature, “to see in growing corn the fingerprints of God.” And his expertise and research helped alleviate hunger in Paraguay and Brazil. But now the soil was also shoveled over babies’ graves, and soon Britts himself contracted a rare tropical disease that would take his life at the age of thirty-one, leaving behind a wife and three young children.
Philip Britts’s generation faced great dangers and upheavals, as does ours. His response – to root himself in God, to dedicate himself to a community, to restore the land he farmed, and to use his gift with words to turn people from their madness – speaks into our age just as forcefully. The life he chose, as well as his poetry, remain a prophetic challenge in a time still wracked by war, racism, nationalism, materialism, and ecological devastation. Britts’s insights into our relationship with the natural environment are particularly poignant now that we are even more aware of its fragility.
In a world of concrete and p
in stock within 3-5 days of online purchase
SKU (ISBN): 9780874861280
ISBN10: 0874861284
Philip Britts
Binding: Trade Paper
Published: March 2018
Publisher: Plough Publishing House
Related products
-
Knowledge Of The Holy
$15.99Add to cartInformative and inspiring, The Knowledge of the Holy illuminates God’s attributes–from wisdom, to grace, to mercy–and shows through prayerful and discussion, how we can more fully recognize and appreciate each of these divine aspects. This book will be treasured by anyone committed to the Christian faith. It bears eloquent witness to God’s majesty and shows us new ways to experience and understand the wonder and the power of God’s spirit in our daily lives.
-
God I Never Knew
$16.00Add to cartWho is the Holy Spirit, and exactly what does He do?
Many people find the Holy Spirit mysterious, confounding-even controversial. Why is the third person in the Godhead-the one Jesus said would be the believer’s ultimate source of truth and comfort-the source of such confusion?
In The God I Never Knew, Robert Morris clearly explains that the Holy Spirit’s chief desire is for relationship–to offer us the encouragement and guidance of a trusted friend. This insightful and biblically-based book moves beyond theological jargon, religious tradition, and cultural misconceptions to clarify what the Holy Spirit promises to do in your life:
* Dwell within you
* Be your helper
* Guide you into all truth
* Comfort you
* Pray for you
* Show you things to come
* Never leave youIt’s time to experience the Holy Spirit in a fresh, new way-to meet the God you may have never known.
Includes a small group study guide!
-
Screwtape Letters
$17.99Add to cartWormwood, a demon apprentice, must secure the damnation of a young man who’s just become a Christian. He seeks the advice of an experienced devil, his uncle Screwtape. Their correspondence offers invaluable—and often humorous—insights on temptation, pride, and the ultimate victory of faith over evil forces. Paperback with French flaps and deckled page edges.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.