Jim Wayne Miller's 'Brier Sermon'

‘You Must Be Born Again’

One Friday night the Brier felt called to preach. So Saturday morning, early, he appeared on a street corner in town and started preaching, walking up and down the sidewalk in front of a hardware and sporting goods store, back and forth in front of the shotguns and spin casting rods and Coleman camp stoves in the window, and looking across the street to the Greenstamp Redemption Store, where all the women brought their trading stamps. Cars and trucks were passing on the street, women were going in and out of the Redemption Store; and a few men and boys were standing around, in groups of three or four. The Brier knew they were listening even though they were not looking at him. He took as his text, “You Must Be Born Again.” And started drawing the people closer, saying:

You may say, Preacher, where is your black Bible?
Why ain’t you preaching down sin?
You may say, Preacher, why ain’t you talking about hell?
What about lipstick and short dresses?
What about cigarettes and whiskey?
What about dope and long hair?

Well, I didn’t bring my Bible for a purpose.
Because this morning I wanted to say to you
I’ve been through all the books and come out yonside.
I’m educated, but not like the Brown boys.
Let me tell you about the Brown boys.

Feller over close to where I live
wanted some little cedar trees dug up
and planted in a row beside his house.
Tried to hire the Johnson boys, his neighbors,
but they were too scared to do it, didn’t believe
in digging up cedar trees; they’d always heard
you’d die whenever the trees got tall enough
for their shadow to cover your grave. Get somebody else,
they said. Get old Jim Brown and Tom Brown.
They’re educated, don’t believe in nothing.
Well, I’m educated, but not like the Brown boys.
There’s something I believe in:
You must be born again.

When he told about the Brown boys, The Brier heard some of the men laugh and say things to one another. Across the street at the Redemption Store a woman had come out and stopped, holding a little boy by the hand. The Brier figured the woman and the little boy would like a story, too.

You hear preachers talk about being lost.
What does it mean? What’s it got to do
with being born again? – Feller I know,
he didn’t go to church, but a church bus
always ran right by his house, and his boy,
about five or six years old, wanted to ride it.
So he let him go. Little boy got over there
in church and they were having a revival. Preacher
knelt down by the little boy, said, Son, are you lost?
Little boy said, Yes, for the bus had gone up several
creeks and hollers, picking up other people,
and carried the little boy so far from home
he didn’t know where he was.

We’re not so different from that little boy.
We can be lost, sitting right in the church house.
Because we’ve been carried a long way around,
we’ve got so far away from home, we don’t know where
we are, how we got where we are, how to get home again.
I know I wasn’t so different from that little boy.

In my father’s house, Jesus said.

Our foreparents left us a home here in the mountains.
But we try to live in somebody else’s house.
We’re ashamed to live in out father’s house.
We think it too old-fashioned.
Our foreparents left us a very fine inheritance,
but we don’t believe it.
I just want to set you down, gather you together,
and read you the will!

You’ve wanted to run off and leave it, this inheritance.
You didn’t want to see it,
ashamed to hear about it,
thought it wasn’t pretty because it wasn’t factory-made.
You put it back in the attic,
you’ve thrown it off in a corner of the barn,
thrown it down into a ditch.

In my father’s house.

The house our foreparents left had a song, had a story.
We didn’t care.
We said:
them old love songs
them old ballets
them old stories and like foolishness.

We were too busy anyway
giving our timber away
giving our coal away
to worry about love songs
to worry about ballets
to worry about old stories
and like foolishness.

But I know a man
he had a song from his foreparents.
It got carried off to New York City
and when he heard it played on tv one night
by three fellers who clowned and hip-swinged
he said he began to feel sick,
like he’d lost a loved one.
Tears came in his eyes
and he went out on the ridge and bawled
and said, “Lord, couldn’t they leave me the good memories?”
Now that man wasn’t lost
but he knew what he had lost.

You’ve done your best to disremember
what all you’ve lost.
you’ve spoiled the life that’s yours
by right of inheritance.
You have to go around to the back door
of the life that belongs to somebody else.
You’re neither here nor there.
You’re out in the cold, buddy.

But you don’t have to live in the past.
You can’t, even if you try.
You don’t have to talk old-fashioned,
dress old-fashioned.
You don’t have to live the way your foreparents lived.
But if you don’t know about them
if you don’t love them
if you don’t respect them
you’re not going anywhere.
you don’t have to think ridge-to-ridge,
the way they did.
You can think ocean-to-ocean.

You say, I’m not going to live in the past.
And all the time the past is living in you.
If you’re lost, I say it’s because
you’re not living in your father’s house.
It’s the only house you’ve got
the only shelter you’ve got.
It may be just a mountain cabin,
but it’s shelter and it’s yours.

I left my father’s house. Oh, I was moving.
But I noticed I wasn’t getting anywhere.
I was living in somebody else’s house.
I kept stepping out somebody else’s door
and the roads I traveled kept winding, twisting,
had no beginning, had no end.

My own house, heired to me by my foreparents,
was right there all the time
yours is too
but I wasn’t living in it. Well, I went home.
And when I stepped out of my own front door
when I knew where I was starting from
I knew then where I was going.
The only road I could go was the road
that started from my own front door.
-- In my father’s house, that’s what the Bible says.

And it speaks of the sins of the fathers
sins of the fathers visited on the children
unto the fourth generation
says the sins of the fathers
will set the children’s teeth on edge.
You were probably wondering why
I wasn’t talking about sin. Well, I am.
But I say, Forget the sins of the fathers.
What about the sins of the sons and daughters?
We’ve got enough sins of our own to think about.
We’re able to set our own teeth on edge.
Ours is the sin of forgetfulness
forgetfulness of the fathers
forgetfulness of a part of ourselves
makes us less that we ought to be
less than we could be.
Forgetfulness of the fathers makes us a people
who hardly cast a shadow against the ground.

You’ve heard it said you can’t put new wine in old bottles.
Well, I don’t know.
But don’t be too sure you’re new wine.
Maybe we’re all old wine in new bottles.

The Brier was walking up and down the sidewalk, in front of the hardware and sporting goods store, passing back and forth in front of the guns and fishing rods and catalytic heaters, and a good crowd was gathering across the street in front of the Redemption Store. He was pacing to the corner and back, stopping to lay a hand on a parking meter. Traffic was increasing in the street. Some of the people passing nodded or waved a hand, for they knew the Brier. He nodded, and waved back. When the light stopped traffic in the street, he stood on the balls of his feet and talked across the tops of the cars to the crowd in front of the Redemption Store. The light would turn and the traffic would move on—cars and pickup trucks, motorcycles, RV’s pulling boats. A boy parked his wide-tired jacked-up car at the first parking meter in front of the Brier, got out and went into the hardware store. The Brier moved down and talked across the car’s hood.

I see these boys with their old cars jerked up
on a pulley out under a tree somewhere.
I see the cars looking like monster-beasts
that have these boys’ heads bit off
and half of their bodies already eaten up.

I see them lying flat on their backs
with their heads up under cars,
nothing but their feet a-sticking out,
their hands mucking around in grease and gears.
And I think, buddy, that’s how America’s got you,
that’s just the view you have of this country.
you’ve had your head eat off,
or else you’re flat of your back
looking up into the guts and gears of America,
up to your elbows in her moving parts,
flat of your back, always looking up.

And I think to myself
I’d like to open up your heads
just like you raise the hood or go into a gearbox.
I’d like to rewire your heads
and gap your spark plugs and reset your timing.

Because you can get off your back
you can have a new view
you can get behind the wheel of America.
You can sit in the smooth upholstered seats of power
and listen to the music playing.

But first you’ve got to come home
and live in your father’s house
and step out your own front door.
There’s a road back, buddy.

Let me go back a little, let me tell you
how we got in this fix in the first place.
Our people settled in these mountains
and lived pretty much left to themselves.
When we got back in touch we started seeing
we had to catch up with the others.
And people came in telling us,
You’ve got to run, you’ve got to catch up.

Buddy, we’ve run so fast
we’ve run off and left ourselves.
We’ve run off and left the best part of ourselves.

And here’s something peculiar:
running we met people on the road
coming from where we were headed,
wild-eyed people, running away from something.
We said, What’ll you have? And it turned out
they were running away from what we were running after.
They were on their way to sit a spell with us.
We had something they wanted.
When they got here, a lot of us weren’t to home.
We’d already run off and left ourselves.
So they set to picking up
all the things we’d already cast off--
our songs and stories, our whole way of life.
We couldn’t see the treasures in our own house,
but they could, and they picked up what we’d abandoned.

You say, Preacher, you must be touched, that’s foolishness.
How can anybody run off and leave himself?
I say, Don’t ask me. You’re the one who’s done it.

You’ve kept the worst
and thrown away the best.
You’ve stayed the same where you ought to have changed,
changed where you ought to have stayed the same.
Wouldn’t you like to know what to throw away
what to keep
what to be ashamed of
what to be proud of?
Wouldn’t you like to know
how to change and stay the same?

You must be born again.

Say you were going on a trip
knowing you wouldn’t ever be coming back
and all you’d ever have of that place you knew,
that place where you’d always lived
was what you could take with you.
you’d want to think what to take along
what would travel well
what you’d really need and wouldn’t need.
I’m telling you, every day you’re leaving
a place you won’t be coming back to ever.
What are you going to leave behind?
What are you taking with you?
Don’t run off and leave the best part of yourself.

And what is that best part? It’s spirit.
I tell you, I know places in these mountains,
back off the big roads,
up the coves and hollers
old homeplaces
with barns and apple orchards, cattle gaps,
haunted by spirits
spirits of people who left there
taking everything with them but their spirits
for their spirits wouldn’t leave that place
and their spirits are there yet
like half-wild dogs or cats that will live on
around a place after the people are gone.

And I know other places
in our towns and cities
where the people have moved to without their spirits.
Do you believe in signs? I do.
I believe in signs.
And when I see people living in dirt
living in filth and trash
I believe it’s a sign.
I believe it’s a sign the spirits of those people
are living somewhere else.
For a spirit won’t live in filth and nastiness.
A spirit keeps its own place clean
like around a fox’s den
when the little foxes come out and play in the evening
and it’s clean around the den.

Yes, foxes have their dens
but what do we have?

We’ve lost the ground from underneath our feet,
lost the spiritual ground.
We’ve run off and left the best part of ourselves.

We’ve moved to the cities
moved to town
and left our spirits in the mountains
to live like half-wild dogs around the homeplace.

You say, Preacher, we have to change.
That’s right.
But we’re forgetful.

It’s our forgetfulness that’s a sin against ourselves.
We don’t know any more about our history
than a dog knows about his daddy.
We’re ignorant of ourselves
confused in what little we do know.
All we know is what other folks have told us.
They’ve said, You’re find Anglo-Saxons,
pioneer stock.
Then we went to the cities.
They said we were trash, said we were Briers.
They said, You’re proud and independent.
They said, You’re narrow-minded.
They said, You’re right from the heart of America.
They said, You’re the worst part of America.
They said, We ought to be more like you.
They said, You ought to be more like us.

You’ve heard that prayer that goes:
Help us to see ourselves as others see us.
Buddy, that’s not a prayer we want to pray.
I believe we ought to pray:
Lord, help us to see ourselves—and no more.

Or maybe: Help us to see ourselves,
help us to be ourselves,
help us to free ourselves,
from seeing ourselves
as others see us.

I know it’s hard
to turn loose of that old self,
that confused self.

You think, That’s the only thing I am,
what someone else has told me I am.
I’ve hung there, I know.
I’ve twisted in that wind.
But you can turn loose, you can do it.

One dark night in the fall of the year
a man went out to coonhunt—went all by himself.
His dogs they struck a trail and he followed
up the ridge, stopping to listen, moving on,
moving through the dark.
And when his dogs barked treed, way over yonder,
he hurried on through the brush, moving faster,
and walked, yes, walked right over a cliff.
You’ll do that in these mountains if you’re not careful,
Well, he managed to grab a hold as he went over.
A little twisty, runty tree was growing out,
out from a crack in the cliff, and he hung by it,
held on in the dark.

But he couldn’t do anything but just hang there.
He couldn’t get back up, there was no footing.
And nothing but death and darkness there below him.
But he couldn’t hold on much longer, either.
Finally all the strength in his hands was gone.
He couldn’t hold on any longer, and he fell--
about a foot. Yes, fell about a foot.
He’d hung as long as he could. He’d held to dear life,
just as anybody will.
Having no choice, he turned loose of his life.
But he didn’t lose it.
He didn’t lose himself, he found himself,
found himself on firm ground. And he went home.
But he went home a changed man.

You’re handing like that man.
You’re struggling for a toehold in the dark,
You’re holding on to that old self
but your grip is growing weaker all the time.
Turn loose.
All you’ll do is fall about a foot.
You’ll fall about a foot to spiritual ground.
You’ll fall home.
You’ll walk away a different man or woman.

Oh you’ll think, I’m going to die.
But, you won’t die.
I’m not talking about physical death.
When you die a physical death
you’re put into the ground.
And the Bible teaches you’ll be raised up,
resurrected from that physical death.

But I’m not talking about physical death.
I’m talking about spiritual death.
I’m not talking about life after death.
I’m talking about life before death.
I’m saying if you’re dead in life,
spiritually dead in life,
you must be born again,
you must be born again and again and again.

You say, Preacher, what’s it like? I’m here to tell you:
It’s like becoming a little child again
but being grown up too.
It’s the best of both.
It’s being at home everywhere.
It’s living in your own house.
It’s stepping out your own front door every morning.
It’s being old wine in a new bottle.

It’s getting to know another side of yourself.
You know how sometimes when you squirrel hunt
a squirrel will get on the back side of a tree
and if you step around there, he just goes
around to the side of the tree where you were standing,
and if you step back around to that side again,
he goes to the side where he was in the first place
and on and on and you never get him that way.
You’ve got a side of yourself that’s like that squirrel,
always out of sight.

What’s it like—being born again?
It’s going back to what you were before
without losing what you’ve since become.

They say people can go blind gradually.
They say people can go deaf gradually.
Lose the sense of taste little by little.
They forget the shapes of leaves on trees,
forget the sound of the creek running,
the world just blurs, grows silent.
They forget the taste of coffee and all their food.
Now what would it be like if that sight were given back?
If they heard the creek running again, or a crow call?
If suddenly they could taste their food again?
Something is restored to them, a richness.
They’ve found something they didn’t even know they’d lost.
They’re born again to sights and sounds and tastes.

Oh, you must be born again.

Do you remember, back when you were little,
and wore brogans or heavy shoes all winter?
And do you remember that first day in spring
when you took them off and started going barefoot?
The air was warm but the ground was still so cool,
your feet were white and tender
but you felt light-footed
you had good wind
and you felt like you could fly right off the earth.

You must be born again!

The crowd had scattered now. The street was almost empty when he finished. He stood a moment like a blind man smiling and gazing past people he spoke to. Then he reached out, as if to gather something in and, raising his hand higher still, he blessed an invisible crowd on the sidewalk. Traffic stopped at the light, and the Brier on the corner disappeared behind a motor home. When it pulled away, he had gone.