Excerpt from The Brier Sermon

. . . 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 their 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 on your back looking up into the guts and gears of America, up to your elbows in her moving parts, flat on your back, always looking up.

And I think to myself I’d like to open your heads just like you raise the hood or go into a gearbox. I’d like to re-wire your heads and gap your spark plugs and re-set 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. . . .