Wendell Berry and loving the land

Wendell is one of America’s great living poets.  I’ve been enjoying his latest book of poems entitled Leavings: Poems. In the tradition of Thoreau (though with a Christian perspective), Berry loves Nature.  In these poems from 2005 to 2008, alternately, he either extols its beauty or prophetically chastises man for being such a poor steward of it.  And for Berry, love of nature goes hand in hand with love of neighbor, love of stranger.  Seeing and caring for the beautiful world around us leans our hearts towards others who are unlike us.  And loving others, rather than going to war against them, makes us more at home and at peace in this world we live in.

Here are a couple of excerpts. The first captures Berry’s environmental concerns placing them in the context of a greater (Christian) ethic:

“Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground

underfoot.  Be lighted by the light that falls

freely upon it after the darkness of the nights

and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.

Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,

which is the light of imagination.  By it you see

the likeness of people in other places to yourself

in your place.  It lights invariably the need to care

toward other people, other creatures, in other places

as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.

No place at last is better than the world.  The world

is no better than its places.  Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them.  When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.”

Leavings, pp.92-93

The second touches on Berry’s pacifism and social concerns.

“Out of charity let us pray

for the great ones of politics

and war, the intellectuals,

scientists, and advisors,

the golden industrialists,

the CEOs, that they too

may wake to a day without hope

that in their smallness they

may know the greatness of Earth

an Heaven by which they so far

live, that they may see

themselves in their enemies,

and from their great want fallen

know the small immortal

joys of beasts and birds.”

Leavings, pp.86-87