Tag: wendell berry
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“…the man at the end of the Protestant road…”
I am, maybe, the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for as I have read the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems to have come to…
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“…more than anybody wants to hear.”
Telling a story is like reaching into a granary full of wheat and drawing out a handful. There is always more to tell than can be told. As almost any barber can testify, there is also more than needs to be told, and more than anybody wants to hear. Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow.
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Confession, Huckleberry Finn, and Beloved Community
During my sermon from Nehemiah 1 on Sunday I paused and asked for reflection from the congregation. I’d pointed out that, as part of his prayer, Nehemiah confessed his own complicity in the fate that had befallen his people. In verse 6 he says, “I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my ancestral…
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Wendell Berry on Parenthood
But I have thought, too, that the term of human judgment is longer than parenthood, that the upbringing we give our children is not just for their childhood but for all their lives. And it is sure the duty of the older generation to be embarrassingly old-fashioned, for the claims of the “newness” of any…
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“We came with visions…”
We came with visions, but not with sight. In his essay, “The Native Grasses and What they Mean,” Wendell Berry reflects on how the American forests and prairies were remade for the settlers’ purposes.
David W. Swanson 