Neil’s Niche

I was doing some Latin the other day and came across the word colere, which means to “cultivate, till the soil, or even worship”.  The early Romans were tied into their religion by the farmland.  As an agrarian community before the Republic in the days of the Kings, the Latins worshipped the ground that they toiled ceaselessly to produce from.  From this word we get many of our English derivatives.  Some obvious ones are “agriculture” (which combines agri (field) with colere (to cultivate).  Another word that comes from this Latin term is “cult”, which is the worship of a specific individual.

Yet another term that stems from this word (via the Middle French [i.e. Medieval French]) is the term “culture”.  Culture is something that we are all engrained in, yet is something that is uniquely distinct amongst many groups.  What I mean is that we are all currently residents of the Birmingham area, thus we share a common culture, and we have different cultural interactions from that of people in Atlanta, Nashville, or Memphis.  (In fact, I would say that the cultures of Memphis and Birmingham are indeed different… I still get weird looks from people when I tell them that I support neither Alabama nor Auburn and that football isn’t that big deal to me.)  We do share some commonalities in that the cities listed are Southern cities (everyone has had fried chicken before, and sweet tea is sweet, not iced).  If you were to travel to California, the culture would still be different, but the common language would be English (language is the foundation of what makes a culture a culture).  Still branching out we could say that different generations are different culturally. (Drew, who is only 10 years my senior, and I differ vehemently over what is “good” 90’s music even now as I listen to Collective Soul on Pandora Radio.)

The point of all this is that we live in a unified yet compartmentalized “culture”… each and every one of us.  Yet culture has not always meant, “What age someone was born in, what region someone lives in, and what language someone speaks.”  Culture is something that has something to do with worship.  Here is where we can share a common bond.  Rather than being “citizens of Leeds, born in the year 19XX speaking English,” why can’t our culture be Christian?

We can still like football or basketball better, and we can still prefer to say “Coke” instead of “soda pop” (like my Illinois born grandmother); but the definition of our existence is the worship of our Lord and God, Jesus Christ.  That is what defines our culture!

Much Love.