By Father Casey

A few days after Dolly's death, a farmer from Kentucky named Wendell Berry also died. In addition to tending a few hundred acres using old-fashioned tools and methods, Mr. Berry was also a writer. He wrote poetry, novels, and essays that put him in the company of the greats of American literature. He wrote about the land and people that tend it. He wrote about the possibility of life not lived in a hamster wheel. He wrote about nature – the nature around us and the nature within us.

Wendell Berry was a beautiful writer – Jayber Crow is among the finest novels I've ever read – and also a prophet. He didn't merely paint pictures with words that evoked wonder at the world; he also challenged our assumptions that the world we love will endure if we carry on the way we do. Consider this passage from an essay he wrote in 1969:

"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. … We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it." (from The Long-Legged House)

In 1987 he published an essay titled "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," that even then raised many eyebrows. People accused him of being naïve and contrarian, and he later felt the need to respond to the many mocking letters he received. Today, as we careen into the age of AI, Berry's concerns seem profoundly prescient. Perhaps we should listen more carefully to his worry that we can easily become tools to our technology, rather than the other way around. Those who join me for the seminar on the pope's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas in coming weeks will be invited to read parts of a few Berry essays. There is wisdom to be gained by listening to the cautious and patient.

Berry's writing often feels like prayer. This is because caring for the land is a kind of prayer. Being content with what you have is a kind of prayer. Loving your neighbor, including the ones who will come long after you've left this earth, is a kind of prayer. In a lovely little poem titled "How to Be a Poet," he wrote, "There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places."

About ten years ago, he wrote this poem, "The Peace of the Wild Things," which is spiritual wisdom if ever there was. He's essentially paraphrasing Jesus, who invites us to consider the birds and flowers in times of anxiety.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

From The Peace of Wild Things and Other Poems, 2018

I feel like God is nudging me when I read Wendell Berry. I feel like a bucket of truth is being cranked up from a deep well so I can take a drink. He challenges me and inspires me and causes me to think. He makes me slow down and pay attention. He helps me grow more grateful for what I have, and realize what is at stake if I don't take better care. We all need people like that in our lives. People who sound like Jesus.

Let me share one final little Berry passage. It comes from Jayber Crow, which again is one of my favorite novels.

'You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out – perhaps a little at a time.'
'And how long is that going to take?'
'I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.'
'That could be a long time.'
'I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.'

Casey +