April 11, 2009
“Slowly, slowly, they return
To the small woodland let alone:
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.”
(Wendell Berry)
As Wangari Maatthai began her first public presentation in Brattleboro since receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, she focused first on the Guilford Nine O’clock Choir singing her the verse above as part of the welcome song.
Terry Sylvester had written the words on a piece of birch bark and had rolled it up with a piece of twine as a gift to her and she carefully held the bark open as the choir sang the song, singing quietly, and then as she began to speak, she responded to the words in her introduction.
Wangari has come a long way since she first visited our church and planted a tree in 2002. She is now a sought-after speaker who can demand $50,000 a speech at colleges and universities. And she has grown older and slower so that she needs to be careful about how much she does. Nonetheless, she gave Brattleboro the gift of her presence—in recognition of Alan Dater and Lisa Merton, who have spent years making a film about her—and to honor our support of her for the past few years and before she was famous.
Our choir provided the song above as her welcome—the words set to music by our own Mary Alice Amidon—and then invited everyone to sing “Amazing Grace” in Wangari’s native language, Kikuyu. Imagine hundreds of Americans singing her language and her dream aloud, and that was what you found that afternoon at the Latchis Theatre. As a church we will continue to support the orphanage that bears the blessing of the Green Belt Movement as our contribution to that dream. As with all blessings, it blesses us all.
