Rooted

A prelude to our summer theme

In 1960, writer John Steinbeck took to the road with his dog Charley in search of the subject he had written about his entire life: America. Throughout his travels, Steinbeck becomes acquainted with the people, sights, and history of America, and resurfaces with this insight:

I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation—a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every states I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.

— Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

While this is a keenly American quality, from my 2025 perspective I would say that impulse has been exported as the pervasive modern drive. We know no home, only novelty. Affection is hasty, eyes cast just above the once-beloved’s head, searching for the next. There is an intoxicating allure to lifestyle dictated by our whims, in which locale is something we bend to our tastes.

This self-orbiting way of moving through the world has become second nature to us in this modern-age, but it has not always been so.

I am caught up in a peculiar parade, bookended by a cloud of incense, a golden cross, a purple banner, and my quiet priest. We are strolling through the streets surrounding our parish, our procession punctuated with periods of singing and silence.

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love

Rogation Days (often observed before Ascension Day) are an ancient tradition in the Church, a time in which God’s people historically petitioned the Lord’s blessing on the coming harvest and for His attention to their particular needs. They were an organic component of the Church year in a time when churches were evenly peppered across a particular region, each parish firmly established and attentive to their immediate surroundings. These petitions also had a very tangible object—the health and abundance of the food being grown to feed and maintain the life of those in its vicinity.

The Blessing of the Wheat in Artois (1857) by Jules Breton

This is an unfamiliar concept to us moderners for a handful of reasons. First, we are totally detached from the earth as the means through which the Lord sustains us—even the most rural among us don’t live solely on food grown on local land. Secondly, we select our home church based on an assortment of preferences: denomination, worship styles, congregational demographics, a pastor’s preaching style, and our differing compasses of personal convictions. These preferences can lead us to a church that requires an hour drive to attend, completely detached from where we live the rest of our life.

I don’t say all of this to condemn anyone’s church-going choices. I recognize that it is unreasonable to be held to ancient standards of life when the fabric of reality has been so significantly frayed from its origin. But consider with me: what is lost when every component of our lives is fragmented from place?

I have lived in Cleveland my entire life. When I turned eighteen, an inner restless emerged as I watched friends scatter to different cities and states for college and internships. I became convinced that I was not living up to my full potential by remaining in place—although I truly loved my life in Cleveland. I associated movement with maturity, and that to stay in one place was a child’s lot. This constant relocation is no longer viewed as a luxury but a given—a necessary step for a fulfilled life—and we take the bait despite our best efforts not to because it is appealing.

I can’t help but think of this vignette from my favorite childhood book, Ramona and Beezus by Beverly Cleary:

Ramona was sitting on the floor beside a box of apples. Lying around her on the cement floor were a number of apples -- each with one bite out of it. While Beezus stared, Ramona reached into the box, selected an apple, took one big bite out of the reddest part, and tossed the rest of the apple onto the floor. While she noisily chewed that bite, she reached into the apple box again.

"Ramona!" cried Beezus, horrified. "You can't do that."

"I can, too," said Ramona through her mouthful.

"Stop it," ordered Beezus. "Stop it this instant! You can't eat one bite and then throw the rest away."

"But the first bite tastes best," explained Ramona reasonably, as she reached into the box again.

Beezus had to admit that Ramona was right. The first bite of an apple always did tastes best.

Of course Ramona was right. The first bite always tastes best. Juicy, tart, sweet. With the core comes bitterness. A seed that chips your tooth. Pith.

Reality is clunky. When the norm is constant movement and believing that change and meaning only occur Elsewhere, perhaps the most radically lived life occurs in the same four walls, the same pothole-ridden street that makes you curse every time you bumble down it. It occurs in the weeds, the moldy fridge door, the lamp you’ll try to fix for the fourth time in one year. It occurs when we’re humble enough to see things through, past sexiness, past novelty, past each one of our fleeting cravings. If discontentment is the vice of our age, perhaps quiet contentment could be the virtue.

Ephesians 3:17 bids the people of God to be “rooted and grounded in love,” a phrase that we toss around easily but I’ve found difficult to really comprehend. For guidance on what this actually might mean, I turned to the verbose and refreshingly practical Amplified Classic translation of the Bible:

¹⁷ May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love,

¹⁸ That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it];

¹⁹ [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!

As Christ actually settles into us, He plants himself there for good. This has radical and very tangible connotations as we are called to emulate Christ’s love—we cannot extract Christ-likeness from dwelling with commitment and long-suffering.

As I proceeded with my parish through familiar streets, affection bubbled up in me once again for all of it—for the squirrels, the sycamores, the enchanting old houses and their rumpled gardens, the robins, the chartreuse canopy of leaves filtering the sunlight glinting on the crucified Christ’s bloody forehead. A tree bloomed bulbs to our left—I asked my husband to identify it. A tulip poplar, of course! I had once known this tree, there had been one outside my apartment window once upon a time. And by some miracle, I had the joy of rediscovering it, of being awed by its buttery yellow buds and cross-hatched bark anew.

This is the wonder of being limited. We can intimately know the same small region our entire lives and it will still bare its hidden textures to us, bit by bit. Will we stick around long enough to see it?

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies.

Christ, our Lord, to you we raise
this, our hymn of grateful praise.

Our Summer 2025 theme is Rooted.

For our summer issue, we invite you to consider the particularities of the people and places you know and love. What might it mean for you us to emulate the “settling down” of Christ? Consider the ethos of writers such as Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, and Marilynne Robinson to inform your work. Don’t shy away from your corner of the world, however unassuming you may consider it.

We have a new submission form for you to use! We will no longer be accepting submissions via email. You can still find all of our guidelines here.

Submissions for Rooted close on July 18th.