From James Agee's brilliant Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

(In 1936, he spent two months with three tenant farmer families in Alabama. The book gave an account of their lives. These passages come from his chapter on Education)

In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again: and in him, too, once more, and of each of us, our terrific responsibility towards human life; towards the utmost idea of goodness, of the horror of error, of God.

Every breath his senses shall draw, every act and every shadow and thing in all creation, is a mortal poison, or is a drug, or is a signal or symptom, or is a teacher, or is a liberator, or is liberty itself, depending entirely upon his understanding: and understanding,* and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual, and in the race.

...

But let what I have tried to suggest amount to this alone: that not only within present reach of human intelligence, but even within reach of mine as it stands today, it would be possible that young human beings should rise onto their feet a great deal less dreadfully crippled than they are, a great deal more nearly capable of living well, a great deal more nearly aware, each of them, of their own dignity in existence, a great deal better qualified, each within his limits, to live and to take part toward the creation of a world in which good living will be possible without guilt toward every neighbor: and that teaching at present, such as it is, is almost entirely either irrelevant to these possibilities or destructive of them, and is, indeed, all but entirely unsuccessful even within its own 'scales' of 'value.'

...

'Literacy' is to some people a pleasing word: when 'illiteracy' percentages drop, many are pleased who formerly were shocked, and think no more of it. Disregarding the proved fact that few doctors of philosophy are literate, that is, that few of them have the remotest idea how to read, how to say what they mean, or what they mean in the first place, the word literacy means very little even as it is ordinarily used....Or to say it in another way: I believe that every human being is potentially capable, within his 'limits,' of fully 'realizing' his potentialities; that this, his being cheated and choked of it, is infinitely the ghastliest, commonest, and most inclusive of all the crimes of which the human world can accuse itself; and that the discovery and use of 'consciousness,' which has always been and is our deadliest enemy and deceiver, is also the source and guide of all hope and cure, and the only one...I only know that murder is being done, against nearly every individual in the planet, and that there are dimensions and correlations of cure which not only are not being used but appear to be scarcely considered or suspected. I know there is cure, even now available, if only it were available, in science and in the fear and joy of God.

...

It would be hard to make clear enough the deadliness of vacuum and of apathy which is closed over the very nature of teaching, over teachers and pupils alike: or in what different worlds words and processes leave a teacher, and reach a child. Children, taught either years beneath their intelligence or miles wide of relevance to it, or both: their intelligence becomes hopelessly bewildered, drawn off its centers, bored, or atrophied.

*Active 'understanding' is only one form, and there are suggestions of 'perfection' which could be called 'understanding' only by definitions so broad as to include diametric reversals. The peace of God surpasses all understanding; Mrs. Ricketts and her youngest child do, too; 'understanding' can be its own, and hope's most dangerous enemy.

Figuring out what it means to be a Christian is funny: I feel like I am constantly in a state of becoming, never of having arrived.

After a year and a half of searching for spiritual life here, I have found it in what many see as a colonial relic. Picture an old lemon yellow church with gun racks in the pews. There's plenty of dusty stained glass and candles in brass. A typical Sunday morning might bring twelve congregants. Every hymn becomes a battle of tempo between the beleaguered, elderly organist and the belting, white-robed Reverend who insists on holding the last note of each line long after the rest of the group has moved along. The Reverend's wife is also a Reverend. She delivers the homily from carefully handwritten sheets of rustling paper. She looks like a grandmother, strangely incongruous against the marble pulpit. But she is not afraid to speak Truth. In the simplicity of each Sunday's service, in the constancy of the liturgy, in the knowledge that I am uniting myself with two millenia of Christians, I find life. Each week, I am reminded of the whole hope and love and faith to which I cling. And I don't care about the packaging.

The fact that the music is not trendy or that the service is not "Indian" (though I'm not sure what that means) does not bother me. I am simply hungry, by Sunday morning. I am so tired of people trying to sell God. I only want to know my Creator, and worship him wholeheartedly--Sunday and every other day. I want to see Christ working around me, bringing hope from despair, life from death, belief from cynicism.

Good Friday found me walking to an even older, yellower, dustier sister church tucked in among the bustle of the bazaar. The service, as usual, was simple. We read seven passages of Scripture, each followed by a meditation from Rev. Anita. She looked at the people around Jesus at the time of his crucifixion. What did each of them do with Jesus? What does their response mean for us?

Ever since I was a child and our pastor did a monologue from the perspective of Pontius Pilate, he is the figure who has most intrigued me in the story of the Passion. Specifically, it's one tiny question he asks that catches my heart each time I hear it: When Jesus says that he came to testify to the truth, Pilate asks world-wearily, "What is truth?" To me, the question more than echoes, it booms down through the centuries. We never stop asking it. And to dare to seek answers takes courage. Pilate lacked the courage to stand even by the truth he knew--that Jesus had done nothing wrong.

What seems most likely to me this year, reading the story, is that Pilate couldn't be bothered. If you think about it, his question to Jesus is ridiculous. Can you imagine a trial for murder in which the judge asks the accused to please define truth for him? He has some inkling of who Jesus is--he even orders a sign, "King of the Jews," to be placed on the cross, over the protestations of Jewish leaders. "I have written what I have written," Pilate says. Yet he can't be bothered to risk his position for the sake of this man. I can just see him finding the whole ordeal messy, distasteful. I see him wishing the Jews could handle their own bizarre religious problems without his intervention. I see him mildly regretting the death of an innocent.

Did he ever figure it out, though? Could he rouse himself even to investigate seriously the claims made about the resurrection? Or was he afraid to investigate? When he shrugged his shoulders to truth, did Pilate simply give up on knowing? Was his a life of resignation? Or does the tiniest chance remain that, when Pilate asked about the nature of truth, he asked because the question burned in him? Did he dare to hope that this strange teacher might be able to connect Pilate to the truth? We can't know Pilate's motives, I suppose.

But we know our own motives. Weary myself of all the theatrical antics that Christians use to package God to a disinterested world, I am profoundly drawn to Pilate's simple question and Jesus's simple statement of purpose. Humans seek to know what truth is. Jesus came to show it. Either he did, or he didn't. Either he conquered death, or he did not. Being a Christian means holding daily, hourly to the hope that yes, Jesus came to testify to the truth--the truth that only he has power over life, because he created it.

I do not set aside my rational self to hold to this truth. My entire self still burns with Pilate's question, "What is truth?" Christ's answer that he testifies to truth, that he embodies truth, burns in me equally.

This is how I feel both hungry and fed, both full of faith and doubting. Being a Christian here on earth means facing Pilate's question directly and walking into it. It means trusting that, as he did with Thomas, Christ can mercifully provide the means of faith. He understands our struggle to believe, which makes me love him more. And today his means of faith came through Reverend Anita. I am thankful.