The poem is important, but not more than the people whose survival it serves. Wendell Berry More Quotes by Wendell Berry More Quotes From Wendell Berry Be like the fox Wendell Berry trackpracticefoxes I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure. Wendell Berry griefforeverbelieve In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand. Wendell Berry meaningfulideasthinking You cannot save the land apart from the people, or the people apart from the land. Wendell Berry landpeople When I rise up, let me rise up joyful like a bird. When I fall, let me fall without regret like a leaf. Wendell Berry regretbirdfall Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. Wendell Berry partynaturememories Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you. Wendell Berry fishingsealakes Unexpected wonders happen, not on schedule, or when you expect or want them to happen, but if you keep hanging around, they do happen. Wendell Berry schedulesunexpectedwant The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming, whose hands reach into the ground and sprout, to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn. Wendell Berry gardenmenlying The past is our definition. We may strive with good reason to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it. But we will escape it only by adding something better to it. Wendell Berry wiseinspirationalmemories People are always talking about the first church. The real first church was that gaggle of people who followed Jesus around. We don't know anything about them. But he apparently didn't ask them what creed they subscribed to, or what their sexual preference was, or any of that. He fed them. He healed them. He forgave them. He is clear about sin, but he was also for forgiveness. Wendell Berry realtalkingjesus 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 carry religion out of the temples into the fields and sheep pastures, onto the roadsides and the banks of the rivers, into the houses of sinners and publicans, into the town and the wilderness, toward the membership of all that is here. Well, you can read and see what you think. Wendell Berry sheepyearsthinking I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God. Wendell Berry god-lovebelieveworld It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing. Wendell Berry governmentneedsthinking We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. Wendell Berry communitygovernmentdoubt The mind that is not baffled, is unemployed Wendell Berry unemployedbaffledmind People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other. Wendell Berry drug-usehatelonely There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands. Wendell Berry flagsinspiringcountry To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival. Wendell Berry earth-daygardennature The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means. Wendell Berry politicalcommunitymean
