I've written before about our little church down the mountain in Willis, Va. I've not written about e. e. cummings but he has been for a long time one of my favorite authors. I've been fascinated by his ability to get the poetic idea across using words to create a picture thought-feeling. "Balloon man and weee" and "anyone living in a little how town" are the essence of what poetry should be. Andy, he of "Older and No Wiser" fame posted this by cummings and it describes New Harvest Ministries very well even to the geography. It also gave me a greater appreciation of e. e. (the habit of his not capitalizing his name makes typing so much easier, not that I'm lazy or anything...) whose idea of church seems very close to mine.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~ e.e.cummings ~