Highlights
“But earth speaks to us of Heaven, or why would we want to go there?” Jayber Crow
When I meet someone who mentions with affection the name of Wendell Berry, my heart immediately thrills that we will have much in common, and much to discuss. I realize now that no other contemporary name has such an effect on me.
This might seem odd, especially given that Berry—who passed away on August 31—was in no normal sense a ‘religious’ writer, and that certain features of his worldview diverge from mine. Yet his place in twentieth and twenty-first century America is unique. And I feel almost boundless gratitude and affection for the man whose writings changed who I am, and on whose porch I once had occasion to sit.
I think the heart of what he has done is this: Wendell Berry helped me and countless others discover deep desires we didn’t know we had. Whether it was his essays, his fiction, or his poetry—and each has its unique power and appeal—we felt something stir and come to life within us. What stirred within was never alien, even if it was frightening, novel or new.
Berry excels in pointing to precisely those features of human life and happiness that we tend to miss. He is the prophet of the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary.
What was coming alive was our very self—like the sprouting of a seed. What was speaking to us was nature; more specifically, human nature. It was astounding, most of all because it was real, palpably so. And it was us—our inheritance: an inheritance we have been robbed of in significant ways. Wendell Berry gently but firmly told it like it is.
His railings against governments, corporations, and other institutions were the fruit of clear convictions about human flourishing, and of a sorrow born of love for people who have been served a mess of pottage. He knew from experience—eye-opening, heart-rending, and hard-won—what human relationships and community can look like. And he leaned into sharing what he saw. Because he cared.
His characters are unforgettable, whether it’s Matt Feltner or Burley Coulter, Jayber Crow, Hannah Coulter, or Old Jack Beechum—who like his creator lived to age 92. In these characters, we see so much about ourselves, and who we want to be, or not be. Though they seem to be from a different time, I suggest that these characters are precisely for our time.
Why? One of the most subversive aspects of life today is how our common practices obscure what should be obvious. Berry excels in pointing to precisely those features of human life and happiness that we tend to miss. He is the prophet of the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary. Membership in a community. Marriage. Home. Friendship. Family ties. Physical place. Working with our hands. Sitting on the porch. Cultivating the earth. Belonging to one another.
One of the most subversive aspects of life today is how our common practices obscure what should be obvious.
The autumn afternoon years ago that I spent sitting on his porch with Wendell and his wife, Tanya, reinforced what already seemed clear to me from his writings. Here is a man who speaks and writes from convictions that he lives.
That day, I remember him glancing down to the river he so loved. A loud motorboat was speeding by, and he winced and then frowned. Looking back now, I think how easily one might perceive him as an anti-technology crank, grumpily chaffing against ‘progress.’ But what I saw was a man who had known a different way of living in the world, and therefore had a more comprehensive vision. In writing on husbandry he refers, with characteristically thought-provoking language, to exercising “an elaborate courtesy toward all creatures, animate and inanimate.” He states that the "husbanding mind" is “both careful and humble.”
Today, as I go about my way in my own household, I often think of such an approach to life, as well as many other such striking principles. A few quotations cannot do justice. But I offer a couple from his essays and a few from his fiction:
- “Work is the health of love. To last, love must enflesh itself in the materiality of the world—produce food, shelter, warmth or shade, surround itself with careful acts, well-made things.” (The Unsettling of America)
- “I do not believe that there is anything better to do than to make one’s marriage and household, whether one is a man or a woman.” (What are People For?)
- Of a married couple: “What if they endured and suffered through so many years because, even failing each other, they loved each other?” (Jayber Crow)
- “When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.” (Hannah Coulter)
- “Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in… Some come in and stay, until they die, and after… I am there with all the others, most of them gone but some who are still here, who gave me love and called forth love from me.” (Hannah Coulter)
Berry fanned the flame of our desire to live life to the full, here today, in the oh-so-ordinary. I think what moves me most is that his love for the things of this life did not obscure the bigger picture. These amazing words are on the lips of Jayber Crow:
I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally, a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.
Wendell, may you now know the full reality behind your words. I hope and pray you are ready. Like so many countless others, I will miss your voice, even as I treasure it yet with us, calling us to remember. Who we are. Calling us back home.
John Cuddeback’s new book The Intentional Household: Living as if People Matter is available here and wherever you get books. He writes at LifeCraft, offering principles and encouragement for renewing life in the home. You can find his podcast,“The Intentional Household,” here.
*Photo credit: The Berry Center
