Tag Archives: wendellberry

Two Good Things

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A day of delighting in Gavin:
planting, laughing, reading, feeding.

I’ve been hoarding Anthony Trollope and Wendell Berry
 for special reading treats.
They are my secret stash of Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream.

I’ve been waiting for Hannah Coulter to become available to me at .
I checked it out from our library, but took it back unread, because reading
it without being able to interact by marking it up wouldn’t be a pleasure.

Then I read my friend‘s blog.
The time for holding back had past.
I used a B & N gift card and ordered  the book.
(ordering a new book is still a thrill!)

Now, this is a small thing.
But, when I ordered it, I expected it to look like this.
And it came, looking like this:

I adore, I exult, I am gladdened by matching sets of books.
They make me very happy.
Isn’t this stack just one of the purtiest things you’ve seen?

If you are new to Wendell Berry, I suggest you start at That Distant Land,
a collection of Berry’s “Port William” short stories.
It is one of my favorite books to give away.

Like a newly engaged girl, I am, ahem,  practicing restraint.
I want to read it all in one large gulp.
Instead, I’m reading one chapter at a time.
Soaking.
Enjoying.
Playing footsie.

Life, my friend, is good.

Talking about Work on St. Paddy’s Day

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Ireland’s flag flies from the fence of my next door neighbor.
I think this (partially) atones for the plastic inflatable
Grinch last December, don’t you (wink, wink)?

[regarding the construction Columcille’s House (Columcille = Columba) in the town of Kells, Ireland, built 11th century.  This is where the Book of Kells originated.]


“They didn’t have time to do poor work.”  He was talking about the modern inversion of production standards – the prevalent assumption that we haven’t time, or can’t afford, to work well. But, of course, nobody ever has time or can ever afford to do poor work; that poor work is affordable is an illusion created by the industrial economy.  If bad work is done, a high price must be paid for it; all “the economy” can do is forward the bill to a later generation — and, in the process, make it payable in suffering.


But the real genius of a country, though it may indeed fructify in great individual geniuses, is in the fine abilities – in the minds, eyes, and hands – of tens of thousands of ordinary workers.  Peter called this “the genius of genus.” Columcille’s House was not, like a monument of modern architecture, the work only of one individual genius but grew out of many miles of stone walls around little fields and out of many cottages.


Thus, coming to Ireland has reminded me again how long, complex, and deep must be the origins of the best work of any kind.

                  

   ~ Wendell Berry, Irish Journal essay, included in Home Economics (emphases mine)

* * * * *

And not seldom, after the manner of the apostle Paul, he toiled with manual labor, fishing and tilling the ground; but chiefly in building churches, to the which employment he much urged his disciples, both by exhortation and example.

~ The Life and Acts of Saint Patrick by Jocelin – found in the post The Toiling and Tilling of St. Patrick, by PoiemaPortfolio, a blog I highly value reading.  Thanks, Poiema!

* * * * *

If you have never read through (or sung!) St. Patrick’s Breastplate, also called by its Latin name, Lorica, you have missed a mighty anthem.  On those mornings when despair wants to claim victory, when bleak doesn’t begin to describe your outlook – on those mornings, these are words to strengthen and cheer you. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  Put on The Chieftains,  boil some cabbage, cook up some corned beef, dance a jig, say a prayer of thanks for the gift of this man to our world, and do good work today.

Nurturing Appetites

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And should I die
before you wake,
there’s something I would want to say:

Love life with all your might
Love peace but be willing to fight
Love beauty and train your sight
Nurture your appetite for beauty, goodness and truth
Be strong and be brave, believe and be saved
For there is a God.

~ Wes King, words for his kids, written on a airplane sick bag
after violent turbulence on a flight

from There Is a God on the CD What Matters Most

We never tire of listening to this exceptional CD.  The phrase, nurture your appetite for beauty, goodness and truth, keeps turning over in my mind, gently clanging like the metal rivets and buttons from jeans tumbling in the dryer. 

What does it mean to nurture an appetite?  “Tastes are developed” writes Elisabeth Elliot. 

1. We must distinguish beauty from ugliness, goodness from mediocrity, truth from cleverly couched lies.  I tend to shy from evaluation – that’s my husband’s department – but nurturing an appetite involves evaluation all the day long.  It is good to ask


Why do we love this movie?
Why don’t you like this type of music?
What makes this wonderful?
Where is this weak?
How could this be improved?
What is the point?
What would complement this?
Is this good?

This is one of those inescapable truths.  Whenever we feed ourselves and our children – food, words, sounds, images – we are developing appetites.  If I raise my family on a routine of chicken nuggets, french fries and pop while I drive in the van, they will not learn to appreciate sitting down together to a crisp green salad, a crusty loaf of bread and Quiche Lorraine.  When I buy 20 39¢ hamburgers from McDonalds to scarf down together (which I’m humiliated to admit we did on Sundays coming home from church for, um, years) what kind of appetite am I nurturing?

A steady diet of sitcoms trains the mind to expect quick fixes, shallow character development and short attention spans.  This is my beef with Sesame Street type shows.  It develops a taste for quick takes, easy images, multiple camera shots, and overstimulation: all directly opposed to the patience required to sit, listen to a book, and form the pictures in your own imagination.

2.  We (as parents and as self-monitors) must monitor the inflow and make the decisions.  If a child is offered a choice between ice cream and oatmeal, that child will assuredly choose the ice cream.   If, whenever there is a lull, we pop a DVD in or turn to a computer game, we are nurturing an appetitie for easy entertainment.  Many folks have praised the television writer’s strike because it was the enforced restriction they needed to find better ways to spend their evenings.  Carrie’s comments (see below) illustrate how effective complete withdrawal can be. 

3.  Begin introducing tiny tastes of what is wonderful to your family.  Start small.  Put on Bach while you are getting ready for a meal.  Read a short poem after the meal.  Get on your belly on the grass (or the beach) with a toddler and a magnifying glass. Turn over on your back and look for faces (eagles, mountains) in the clouds.  Read through the psalms in the Authorized Version.  Pick flowers and put them on the table.  Teach your son how to make Dutch Babies. Buy postcards of fine art and study them together.  Look for the funny things of life and laugh.

These “nurturing appetite” threads are intertwined with the idea of furnishing our minds.  This Wendell Berry interview has also been tumbling in the dryer of my mind for over a year.

The country in front of us now falls off steeply toward Cane Run and
the horse barn. Berry says he hunted squirrels here as a boy. As we
begin to descend, I am thinking about boyhood and Berry’s poetry, and I
ask Berry if he agrees that school children should be reintroduced to
the lost institution of memorizing and reciting poems.

“Yes,” he replies, “you’ve got to furnish their minds.”

The idea of poetry as furniture expands within my imagination and for
weeks, I think about a poem committed to memory as an old chest of
drawers in the corner of a child’s room. At first the thing is simply a
place to put clothes. With time, the grown man, or grown woman learns
to see more of it: toolmarks left by the hand of a long-dead craftsman,
a cornice molding around its top in a shape found on ancient Greek
temples. And by gazing at its sturdiness for so many years, he or she
knows something about how to make things that last.

Yours,

Jayber Crow

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The summer of 2006, this book was the buzz among blogs I frequented.  I believe a speaker at some conference named Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow the best book he had read that year.   Since those glowing reviews this book has been waiting for me.  Recently Angie  and Deb both gave it a mixed review; they liked some parts, didn’t like others. 

I think the order in which one read books plays into his or her response, quickly acknowledging that the chronology of my book reading is quite random.  But I know I would not have benefited as much from this book if I had not first read Wendell Berry’s collection of short stories, That Distand Land and Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma.  

I have only read 2 1/2 Wendell Berry books.  But I would encourage anyone to begin Berry (fiction) with That Distand Land.  His short stories span a century of Port Williams characters and give you the back story of his other Port Williams fiction.  When you have read about and come to love Burley Coulter, encountering him in Jayber Crow is finding an old friend. You understand him better because you know his story.

Pollan’s book (non-fiction) focuses on a farmer who regularly reads Wendell Berry’s nonfiction and subscribes to his ideas.  Having read this apology for sustainable farming made me a sympathetic reader to the conflict between Troy’s “progressive” farming and Athey’s “traditional” methods.  When I read the sentence, “The law of the farm was in the balance between crops (including hay and pasture) and livestock” I comprehended the philosophy behind those words.

Wendell Berry is a talented wordsmith.  He makes you slow down, his words give you pause.  I look forward with anticipation to reading through his published works.  But I’m not interested in gulping him down like a 32 oz. soft drink.  One does not gulp Berry.  One sips him, one savors the words, the thoughts, the poetry.

Ease of going was translated without pause
into a principled unwillingness to stop. p.187

This grief had something in it of generosity,
some nearness to joy.
In a strange way it added to me what I had lost.
I saw that, for me, this country would always be
populated with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come. p.132

Uncle Stanley had no more
sense of privacy than a fruit jar.   p.156
 
 

Pray Without Ceasing

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I read the final installment of a Wendell Berry short story to my husband last night.  The story, Pray Without Ceasing, is a story of friendship, violence, sorrow, mercy and forgiveness.  It is a coming of age story, when a defining moment transforms Mat Feltner from a boy to a man. As we approached the last three pages I started crying, tears trickling down into my ears, in anticipation of what was ahead.  My tears didn’t quite make sense with the text, but my husband is a patient man and he held his peace. 

What I love about Wendell Berry’s stories is the presence of strong men, decent men who lead those around them with confidence, dignity and humility.   Tol Proudfoot, Ben Feltner, Jack Beechum — these are men I’d love to have lived in my neighborhood.  These are men that built strong friendships, men who honored commitments.

From the time Jack was eight years old, Ben had simply been his friend– had encouraged, instructed, corrected, helped, and stood by him; had placed a kindly, humorous, forbearing expectation upon him that he could not shed or shirk and had at last lived up to.

Yesterday in church we prayed for a local family who suddenly lost their 40-something husband/father.  Several prayed for the high-school aged son, that God would provide men to counsel and befriend this young man in the gaping absence of his father. 

Pray Without Ceasing is a fictional picture of the answer to those very real prayers.  It describes one older man walking next to a young man whose life has just come undone.

Jack watched Mat as he would have watched a newborn colt weak on its legs that he had helped to stand, that might continue to stand or might not.  All afternoon Jack did not sit down because Mat did not.  Sometimes there were things to do, and they were busy… But, busy or not, Mat was almost constantly moving, as if seeking his place in a world newly made that day, a world still shaking and doubtful underfoot.  And Jack both moved with him and stayed apart from him, watching.