Dying to Live at Koinonia

         It was June of 1987.  I was travelling through the night on a Greyhound from my abandoned apartment Columbus, Indiana to Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia with a battered Goodwill suitcase, a journal with two pens, and enough money for two cups of coffee or a pack of cigarettes.  At the first rest stop, I opted for the coffee.  It had more grounds than liquid, but it would keep me awake to experience all that God might have in store for me on this journey.

 

 

           I was going to Americus to work a summer on Koinonia Farm, where my spiritual hero – Clarence Jordan – had penned his Cotton Patch Gospels version of the Bible and stood up to the local KKK when they tried to run him off for paying a black man a decent wage and sitting down to dinner with him.  Clarence was long dead, but his wife Florence was there, and so were people who had known him and many who had been influenced by his work and teachings.  I’m not sure exactly what I expected to find there, but I suspected Clarence Jordan cast a long shadow and if I just went and sat in it awhile, something would happen.

 

 

     I did a lot of things that summer.  Stacked straw.  Sprayed weeds.  Milked goats and a cow.  Froze vegetables.  Taught local African-American children about Jesus.  I quit smoking and then started again.  I tried to make transcripts of some old Jordan sermons, but the tapes were too garbled.  I cut firewood.  I laughed with Queenie, the cook who had been there nearly from the beginning.  She made the best fried okra I’d ever eaten.  I even made Koinonia granola and ate it each morning with blueberries and cream-covered milk one of us had taken fresh from the cow the preceding day.

        I also watched Florence Jordan die that summer.   Her health was failing and she wouldn’t let any of her long-term friends lift her around.   She was more than a little proud and didn’t want to be a burden on them.  Being somewhat able-bodied, and having just met her, she let me help her as best I could, mostly transferring her from bed to the toilet, to her chair, and back again.   She was always complimenting me about how strong I was and how she could always trust me not to let her fall. 

           Often, Florence asked me about the neighborhood children, how they were doing, and how concerned she was that they were facing such a difficult life of poverty, lacking time and attention from parents who were either busy or work or lost somewhere in the world.  I so much wanted to ask her about Clarence, but I thought, given these were her last days on earth, she should be allowed to set the topic of conversation.

        Florence had hoped to die at home, but the pain became so great one day that she consented to go to the hospital.  I rode with her to the hospital.  When we got there, the attendant reached into the car to transfer her into the wheelchair, but she would have none of it.  She insisted I do it.  Before they wheeled her into the hospital, the last words I heard her say to me (in that sweet Southern drawl of hers) were, “You’ve been good to me.  I thank you kindly.”

 

 

         Florence died later that afternoon.  As were her wishes, she was buried at the farm.   I went with a couple other men that night to pick up the body (I’m told it took a call from former President Jimmy Carter to get them to release her without the coroner’s consent.)  We loaded her body into the back of a gutted van.  It was a challenge keeping it still as we took sharp corners.

          Someone worked through the night to build a plain, wooden casket.  The next day she was laid to rest.  I can’t even remember if there were prayers or Scripture or a sermon (though there must have been).  I was lost in thoughts of how this woman had blessed me.  I still didn’t know much about what to do with the rest of my life, but I knew part of it would be helping people die.  Or, said better, let dying people help me live.   

 

 

          {If you want to learn more about the Jordans and Koinonia Farm, I recommend you read the book – The Cotton Patch Evidence: The Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm Experiment .   You might also watch the Video/DVD  Briars in the Cottonpatch: The Story of Koinonia Farm .   You can purchase them through Koinonia, or, better yet, get your local library to purchase them – to better spread the word.}