Piloting Faith: Small great things...

A Word for the Day...

"He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
- Matthew 13:31-33

In his book, American Story, NBC’s Bob Dotson tells about the time he interviewed Paul Rokish. For fifty years, Paul Rokish had watched the trees die, the deer disappear, the grass wither and turn gray near his home in Salt Lake City. His passion, he said, was to return life where it had been taken away. That set him on an odyssey worthy of an epic poem.

He grew up in the old American Smelting camp. Copper was beneath the mountains and to reach it, workers nearly killed the soil. The mountains were so polluted that experts told Rokish they could not be saved. One moonlit night he slipped over the copper company fence, alone in the dark desert with the knapsack and two trees.

Skirting the guards, he climbed to the top of the black rock Canyon and planted the trees at the foot of the dead willow. Rokish sneaked in again the following night, and the night after that–in all of the nights for the next fourteen years, planting and tenderly caring for thousands of trees by carrying water on his back. Darkness hid what he was doing, but not what he accomplished. The burned-out mountains turn green again and his solitary quest got noticed.

When he finally confessed his trespasses to company officials, he figured they call the County Sheriff. Instead, they hired him. They were amazed that he could have secretly planted 70,000 acres. He reported later that he had no idea how far he had come. As he looked out all the trees, he said he preferred to measure all that he can still do.

At first, experts were skeptical, but Kennecott, the company that owned the land, made Paul's environmental plan its policy.

Today Paul stands among the trees that had grown taller and surveys the land around them. It is now green and shows no scars from the previous years of exploitation. He never told anybody about what he is doing.

When you hear the names of the great environmentalists, you will not hear Paul Rokish’s name mentioned. But in his own, remarkable way he started a movement that changed the way some corporations engage environmental justice. He lived like the seeds he loved. While many lives before his were planted in that place but never took root, his did.

What about yours?

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

God,

In the face of great need,
When the work feels huge
and I feel small,
may I learn of the power of
the mustard seed.
May I trust that my showing up,
Taking root,
Growing branches,
be enough to do
small great things that heal the world.

Amen.