Manifesto for Living
Like my husband, Wendell Berry grew up a son of tobacco farmers in Kentucky. Unlike my husband, who says “I got out of there as soon as I could,” Berry stayed to get a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Kentucky. For the past forty years, Berry has lived and worked on a 125- acre homestead near Port Royal, a town on the banks of the Kentucky river in the northwest part of the state. He farms there, but more importantly, he is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, short stories, essays, and novels. My college English professor introduced me to Mr. Berry’s writings, but I had forgotten about them until my younger brother Paul requested a few Wendell Berry books for Christmas some years back. My brother and his family live on Black Sheep Farm, 15 acres in Vermont, where they are trying to live out the values that are a theme throughout Wendell Berry’s work.
from Wikipedia .. “ According to Berry, the good life includes sustainable agriculture, appropriate technologies , healthy rural communities , connection to place, the pleasures of good food, husbandry , good work, local economics , the miracle of life, fidelity, frugality , reverence , and the interconnectedness of life.”
For today, this verse from Wendell Berry...
“ So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. “
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Kathleen Capcara
in Search for meaning, heroes
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2 Comments
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Reader Comments (2)
Kathleen,
I have kept this poem in my heart for years.
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.
Thank you for writing about Wendell Berry. Thank you for sharing the link to Black Sheep Farm. Thank you for all the Godly Play information.
Thank you for the blog! I am a new subscriber and will be checking in now and then!
Ann
Ann:
In Robert Frost's poem Choose Something Like a Star, the people say to the star, "Say something to us we can learn by heart and when alone, repeat." I am going to learn that poem by heart, too. I had not seen it before, but when I read it, it made my eyes well up with tears.