Maybe I should start this off by saying that I don't agree with every idea of Mr. Berry's — I disagree with him in several areas.
But I love his stories, his living memories and creations. They are unlike anything that I have read. He has helped me to respect people, to respect the past, and to live from it. I am not just myself. I am a sum of things.
His work delves deep into my heart because I have loved land all my life. I have had the opportunity to live and work on a plot of ground, to build a fence.
I am made by my place, by the land and animals I have worked with, by my family and the people come before me.
It is interesting to soak in Mr. Berry's work while on a college campus, among the hustle and bustle of things he has critically analyzed, among the intellectual academy that wore away at home places and farming and family. It promises a better life than the old place, better things, in a new place.
And so this gives one a different perspective when one is figuratively "uprooted." The roots still trail behind. Maybe I can sit in my desk with the Pike Road soil and grass beneath my tennis shoes. I can walk campus with past and present starlight sparkling above, with my family speaking behind my shoulders, and stories of the past tumbling about in my head.
It is easy to disconnect oneself, to try to make yourself someone else, in order to fit in, make friends, get a job. But this is a deep sort of betrayal. You betray not only yourself, but the people and places that have made you.
We stopped wanting to build the future and have started wanting to get it, to buy it. Change, change, change, maybe too much change. We disconnect ourselves from land and death and goods and call it good. Newer. Faster. Easier. These words don't always equal better. People are stories in a long, slow scrawl. Know their stories and know them. Make family and friends more important than whims. Respect. Respect the land and the people of the land, the wild things. Don't forget. Learn from your pasts and the pasts of others. Know your place. Be content in it and better it. Stewardship. Cultivate. Leave things better than you found them. Practice order and prosperity. And responsibilities, you have them. To people you know and don't know, to places.
These are some of the things that Wendell Berry's stories have taught me.
All this is getting at a kind of deeper meaning. It is a dim reflection of something more important. If our lives shine brighter and truer when we stand in the shoes of time past, in the light of memories and love and land, how much more important is it that we be "seated in the heavenlies?" That our lives be "seated in Christ?" To love Jesus, to stay true to Christ and our identity in Christ, we must know our place in Him. We must love him and be content with the gifts He has given. It all traces back to Him, to the stories of the Bible, the stories of human failure and God's relentless pursuit. Our stories intertwine with the bigger.
And the theme of home. It is in Wendell Berry's books, in the idea and reality of the homestead, the farm, the family's place. Our longings for a place to belong point us to a greater home, a homeland. That homeland lies with God. We were made for Him, to be with Him. That is our true homeplace. This is a planet that we are passing through, but we must steward it, respecting this gift, while we breathe earth's air.
Mr. Berry has changed my outlook and enriched me with lives not lived. He has given me keys to the past and to truth that I did not possess. I have Wendell Berry to thank for hours spent in laughter and grief alongside the residents of Port William, alongside a community that taught me a bushel and a half about life. They have allowed me to live lives not mine, to feel at once quite young and very old, older than the trees, older than the Nest Egg. For these things, I will thank Wendell Berry.
And for Wendell Berry, I will thank God.
"Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men. . .
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection." ― Wendell Berry
