Pamphlets and Old Sermons

I got a shipment of pamphlets this week.  They are about $5 a piece and cover an array of garden and garden-adjacent pursuits.  You can order them here.  They have ebook versions of their entire catalog but I am a sucker for print.  Yes, it kills trees.  However, I am the sort of person who reads a book or article with a pen.  I underline.  I put stars and exclamation points in the margin so I can find the good bits again.  Sometimes I write myself notes arguing or affirming certain assertions.  I have an "ereader", which does its best to replicate that experience...but I am not that good at it.  Therefore, my wife--who reads more and more widely than I do--and I also have a library that is more extensive than it needs to be.

I actually do fine "online" with some newer books and essays, particularly if I am reading strictly for enjoyment.  Yet an old book or a new book for work--which is frequently about old books--is best in its analog form. So, too, are pamphlets.  The form has an ancient history and certain early works--Common Sense comes to mind along with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers--had demonstrable world-wide influence. The Epistles are a kind of pamphlet. They are still around, it seems.

Before making decisions about crops and planting in general, I will be consulting the internet.  Youtube has taught me so much over the years.  That said, I will be using these as well.  They have a no-nonsense quality in conveying specific information.  Yet somehow they are engaging more generally.  I have already started underlining and "conversing" with a few of them.  

The process is quite pleasurable, actually. As with any art form that stacks words on each other to generate meaning, a pamphlet needs a good writer.  Knowledge of the subject is important.  So, too, is knowledge of the reader. None of this knowledge is useful if the writer doesn't know how to arrange words into compelling sentences. There are only 32 pages in a Storey County Wisdom Bulletin. For me to be brought along, every word has to do its job.

My favorite as of right now is All the Onions by Betty Jacobs.  By the end I felt like I knew some things. That is the goal.  I also felt a certain confident engagement in the subject, one that I am already interested in.  Jacobs loves onions. She feels I should love them, too.  For the record, I have chives and "walking onions" (Jacobs calls them "Egyptian Onions" but they are the same thing).  Now I am ready to branch out to a breed less perennial.  The question is which one.

Also high on the list is Great Grapes by Annie Proulx.  Yes...that would be Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain, Fen, Bog, and Swamp Annie Proulx.  One can add Great Grapes to her masterful works along with a couple pamphlets on apple cider.  Great Grapes gave me pause, though.  One thing she managed to efficiently convey is that--great as they are--grapes are also a lot of work.

I think I partly like pamphlets because they are just nice to have.  They have texture.  They have a smell.  They have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society.  Also, they hearken back to the long tradition of informational writing.  I like that, too.  It is a form far greater than what comes in our IKEA boxes. My grandfather--who was a farmer and gardener among other things--had publications like these. Sometimes, after a hard day at the office, he found pleasure in figuring out what was wrong with the knot-tying mechanism on the hay baler, or how to properly bring back his own grandfather's apple trees.  

​As the world gets faster, we start looking for things that slow us down.  These pamphlets are part of that connection. Younger generations, tired of their phones and the meaninglessness of life's tasks are now looking to these early things. Nostalgia hits us all.  At its most toxic it manifests as MAGA, white supremacy, and the romantic (and untruthful) retelling of history.  There is a way, though, to look to the past not to replicate it, but to draw from it lessons and life-patterns that might make our own time more fulfilling.  These pamphlets are a way to reach back with an old form, but the content can reflect our needs and motivations today.

I am a preacher on Sundays.  With this in mind I have always taken an interest in another old form.  The sermon isn't exactly like the informational garden pamphlets.  It has more in common with the works of Tom Paine.  Still, there is a form and structure to a piece.  One only has so many pages. A sermon can go very much awry without boundaries and guides to get from beginning to end.  I use a few different forms and modes depending on the subject and how the congregation "listens" to it.  Sometimes those forms are explicit.  More frequently I use them without thinking.  Then when I look back I see the pattern that makes it cogent. 

I am learning a new congregation these days so I am thinking about this a lot.  Maybe that is why I find myself working through a collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards. There are a number of famous figures by that fairly common name.  Of course this John Edwards is not the famously narcissistic politician derailed by a scandal that seems quaint today. Nor is it the underappreciated folk singer of the 1960's and 1970's who I saw opening for Arlo Guthrie a couple of times when I was a child.  This is the Jonathan Edwards,  a Congregationalist lion of the pulpit back before the revolution. He is also the sort of Pioneer Valley resident who might be the answer on an AP US History exam.  That gives him something in common with Daniel Shays, among others.

Much of Edwards' theology is very old fashioned today.  After all, his biggest hit--also possibly on an AP test--is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The reason I am reading his sermons has more to do with structure rather than theology. He was considered one of the great public speakers of any era.  Some of the passages still sing.  The way he preached continues to influence how we do the same thing today.  His church is still just down the river. I don't have to dig too deep to see his influence.

One of the styles in a modern preacher's arsenal is the "three point" sermon. Not everyone likes to admit it...but it is still in use.  There are many variations, of course, but the idea is simple or "Puritan Plain";  There is a topic.  You say three related or escalating things about that topic.  Then you wrap it up. Edwards, who gave himself way more time for a sermon, has at least three little points for each of his three main points!  When taken as a whole, it can sound plodding today. 

Still, the framework is interesting.  It is old.  He also inspired his listeners who didn't mind sitting for hours in those pews. Studying his sermons today helps to see how both the form and theology has changed and how it hasn't. It connects us to our past--both beautiful and ugly--and it gives us a way forward that is hopefully both contemporary and traditional.

The sermon is an old thing worth keeping.  The content changes.  It has to be adjusted for new ideas and new ways of being.  However, it should be on that list of artisanal old-school media that can give something to the modern (or post-modern) person. Like the pamphlet, they also have a reason to exist that serves a clear purpose in society...or they can if we preachers are able to shift the lens to point to what is now than what we wish for in a mythological past.

I used to tell my interns that preachers are like blacksmiths.  There are fewer of us now. Both our art and our reason for existing has changed somewhat.  Still, we are here.  We are cooler than you think. We are--or can be--a part of someone's reaching back and reinterpretation of hand-made days.