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Because By Definition They Lack Any Sense Of Mutuality Or Wholeness, Our Specializations Subsist On Conflict With One Another. The Rule Is Never To Cooperate, But Rather To Follow One's Own Interest As Far As Possible. Checks And Balances Are All Applied Externally, By Opposition, Never By Self-restraint. Labor, Management, The Military, The Government, Etc., Never Forbear Until Their Excesses Arouse Enough Opposition To Force Them To Do So.

-Wendell Berry

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Because By Definition They

Wendell Berry

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Because By Definition They Lack Any Sense Of Mutuality Or Wholeness, Our Specializations Subsist On Conflict With One Another. The Rule Is Never To Cooperate, But Rather To Follow One's Own Interest As Far As Possible. Checks And Balances Are All Applied Externally, By Opposition, Never By Self-restraint. Labor, Management, The Military, The Government, Etc., Never Forbear Until Their Excesses Arouse Enough Opposition To Force Them To Do So.

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We Have The World To Live In On The Condition That We Will Take Good Care Of It. And To Take Good Care Of It We Have To Know It. And To Know It And To Be Willing To Take Care Of It, We Have To Love It.

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.

You Can Best Serve Civilization By Being Against What Usually Passes For It.

In Order To Survive, A Plurality Of True Communities Would Require Not Egalitarianism And Tolerance But Knowledge, An Understanding Of The Necessity Of Local Differences, And Respect. Respect, I Think, Always Implies Imagination - The Ability To See One Another, Across Our Inevitable Differences, As Living Souls.

A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymuosly In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild.

We Know Enough Of Our Own History By Now To Be Aware That People Exploit What They Have Merely Concluded To Be Of Value, But They Defend What They Love. To Defend What We Love We Need A Particularizing Language, For We Love What We Particularly Know.

The People Who Benefit From This State Of Affairs Have Been At Pains To Convince Us That The Agricultural Practices And Policies That Have Almost Annihilated The Farming Population Have Greatly Benefited The Population Of Food Consumers. But More And More Consumers Are Now Becoming Aware That Our Supposed Abundance Of Cheap And Healthful Food Is To A Considerable Extent Illusory.

We Have Neglected The Truth That A Good Farmer Is A Craftsman Of The Highest Order, A Kind Of Artist.

A Corporation, Essentially, Is A Pile Of Money To Which A Number Of Persons Have Sold Their Moral Allegiance.

Beauty . . . Cannot Be Interpreted. It Is Not An Empirically Verifiable Fact; It Is Not A Quantity.

History Leaves No Doubt That Among Of The Most Regrettable Crimes Committed By Human Beings Have Been Committed By Those Human Beings Who Thought Of Themselves As Civilized. What, We Must Ask, Does Our Civilization Possess That Is Worth Defending? One Thing Worth Defending, I Suggest, Is The Imperative To Imagine The Lives Of Beings Who Are Not Ourselves And Are Not Like Ourselves: Animals, Plants, Gods, Spirits, People Of Other Countries, Other Races, People Of The Other Sex, Places And Enemies.

A Community Is The Mental And Spiritual Condition Of Knowing That The Place Is Shared, And That The People Who Share The Place Define And Limit The Possibilities Of Each Other's Lives. It Is The Knowledge That People Have Of Each Other, Their Concern For Each Other, Their Trust In Each Other, The Freedom With Which They Come And Go Among Themselves.

Want Of Imagination Makes Things Unreal Enough To Be Destroyed. By Imagination I Mean Knowledge And Love. I Mean Compassion. People Of Power Kill Children, The Old Send The Young To Die, Because They Have No Imagination. They Have Power. Can You Have Power And Imagination At The Same Time? Can You Kill People You Don’t Know And Have Compassion For Them At The Same Time?

You Have Been Given Questions To Which You Cannot Be Given Answers. You Will Have To Live Them Out - Perhaps A Little At A Time.' And How Long Is That Going To Take?' I Don't Know. As Long As You Live, Perhaps.' That Could Be A Long Time.' I Will Tell You A Further Mystery,' He Said. 'it May Take Longer.

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.

How Joyful To Be Together, Alone As When We First Were Joined In Our Little House By The River Long Ago, Except That Now We Know Each Other, As We Did Not Then; And Now Instead Of Two Stories Fumbling To Meet, We Belong To One Story That The Two, Joining, Made. And Now We Touch Each Other With The Tenderness Of Mortals, Who Know Themselves

The Constructions Of Language, Which Is To Say The Constructions Of Thought, Are Formed Within Experience, Not The Other Way Around.

If We Represent Knowledge As A Tree, We Know That Things That Are Divided Are Yet Connected. We Know That To Observe The Divisions And Ignore The Connections Is To Destroy The Tree.

My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.

Specialization Is The Great Evil Of Civilization.

You Can't Live Entirely Alone. You Have To Have Some Kind Of A Support System.

Support Systems

We Conservatives Bemoan The Decline In Values That Has Besieged Our Society. Why Then Should We Not Abhor The Lack Of Morality Involved In Discharging Untested Chemicals Into The Air, Ground, And Water To Alter And Harm, To Whatever Degree, Human Life And Wildlife? As A Conservative, I Do Abhor It.

We Don't Have A Right To Ask Whether We're Going To Succeed Or Not. The Only Question We Have A Right To Ask Is What's The Right Thing To Do? What Does This Earth Require Of Us If We Want To Continue To Live On It?

At The Window He Sits And Looks Out, Musing On The River, A Little Brown Hen Duck Paddling Upstream Among The Windwaves Close To The Far Bank. What He Has Understood Lies Behind Him Like A Road In The Woods. He Is A Wilderness Looking Out At The Wild.

To Mind Being Disliked By A Woman You Don’t Desire And Are Not Married To Is Yet Another Serious Failure Of Common Sense.

We Can Grow Good Wheat And Make Good Bread Only If We Understand That We Do Not Live By Bread Alone.

I Think The Issues Of Identity Mostly Are Poppycock. We Are What We Have Done, Which Includes Our Promises, Includes Our Hopes, But Promises First.

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.

Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias. Say That Your Main Crop Is The Forest That You Did Not Plant, That You Will Not Live To Harvest.

There's A World Of Difference . . . Between That Information To Which We Now Presumably Have Access By Way Of Computers, Libraries, And The Rest Of It, Great Stockpiles Of Data, And The Knowledge That People Have In Their Bones By Which They Do Good Work And Live Good Lives.

It Is Better To Buy From A Small, Privately Owned Local Store Than From A Chain Store. It Is Better To Buy A Good Product Than A Bad One. Do Not Buy Anything You Don't Need. Do As Much As You Can For Yourself. If You Cannot Do Something For Yourself, See If You Have A Neighbor Who Can Do It For You. Do Everything You Can To See That Your Money Stays As Long As Possible In The Local Community.

There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.

With Its Array Of Gadgets And Machines, All Powered By Energies That Are Destructive Of Land Or Air Or Water, And Connected To Work, Market, School, Recreation, Etc., By Gasoline Engines, The Modern Home Is A Veritable Factory Of Waste And Destruction. It Is The Mainstay Of The Economy Of Money. But Within The Economies Of Energy And Nature, It Is A Catastrophe. It Takes In The World's Goods And Converts Them Into Garbage, Sewage, And Noxious Fumes-for None Of Which Have We Found A Use.

As I Understand It, I Am Being Paid Only For My Work In Arranging The Words; My Property Is That Arrangement. The Thoughts In This Book, On The Contrary, Are Not Mine. They Came Freely To Me, And I Give Them Freely Away. I Have No "intellectual Property," And I Think That All Claimants To Such Property Are Theives.

You're Making The Grant Of Affection, Forbearance, Mercy, Out Of Your Own Experience And, Of Course, Out Of Cultural Tradition. You're Saying, To Use The Well-worn Analogy, If I Love My Children, That Puts Me Under Obligation To Assume That Other People Love Theirs.

To Love Anything Good, At Any Cost, Is A Bargain.

We're Living, It Seems, In The Culmination Of A Long Warfare - Warfare Against Human Beings, Other Creatures And The Earth Itself.

Willing To Die You Give Up Your Will; Keep Still, Until Moved By What Moves All Else, You Move.

Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health.

Interdependence

The Mercy Of The World Is You Don't Know What's Going To Happen.

Tomorrow May Never Come

The More Local And Settled A Culture, The Better It Stays Put, The Less The Damage. It Is The Foreigner Whose Road Of Excess Leads To A Desert... A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture... Is A Pestilence. He Shakes More Than He Can Hold.

The Incarnate Word Is With Us, Is Still Speaking, Is Present Always, Yet Leaves No Sign But Everything That Is.

If The Crop Of Any One Year Was All, A Man Would Have To Cut His Throat Every Time It Hailed.

To Cherish What Remains Of The Earth And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Legitimate Hope Of Survival.

There Are Not Enough Rich And Powerful People To Consume The Whole World; For That, The Rich And Powerful Need The Help Of Countless Ordinary People.

The Real Work Of Planet-saving Will Be Small, Humble, And Humbling, And (insofar As It Involves Love) Pleasing And Rewarding. Its Jobs Will Be Too Many To Count, Too Many To Report, Too Many To Be Publicly Noticed Or Rewarded, Too Small To Make Anyone Rich Or Famous.

Anybody Interested In Solving, Rather Than Profiting From, The Problems Of Food Production And Distribution Will See That In The Long Run The Safest Food Supply Is A Local Food Supply, Not A Supply That Is Dependent On A Global Economy. Nations And Regions Within Nations Must Be Left Free And Should Be Encouraged To Develop The Local Food Economies That Best Suit Local Needs And Local Conditions.

But Love, Sooner Or Later, Forces Us Out Of Time...of All That We Feel And Do, All The Virtues And All The Sins, Love Alone Crowds Us At Last Over The Edge Of The World. For Love Is Always More Than A Little Strange Here...it Is In The World, But Is Not Altogether Of It. It Is Of Eternity. It Takes Us There When It Most Holds Us Here.

The World Is Whole Beyond Human Knowing.

There Are Moments When The Heart Is Generous, And Then It Knows That For Better Or Worse Our Lives Are Woven Together Here, One With One Another And With The Place And All The Living Things.

I Like The Way That The History Of The Tree Shapes The Tree. There's No Distinction Between The Tree And Its History. You Can Lose Yourself In That Thought.

No Wonder So Many Sermons Are Devoted Exclusively To "spiritual" Subjects. If One Is Living By The Tithes Of History's Most Destructive Economy, Then The Disembodiment Of The Soul Becomes The Chief Of Worldly Conveniences.

The Sense Of It May Come With Watching A Flock Of Cedar Waxwings Eating Wild Grapes In The Top Of The Woods On A November Afternoon. Everything They Do Is Leisurely. They Pick The Grapes With A Curious Deliberation, Comb Their Feathers, Converse In High Windy Whistles. Now And Then One Will Fly Out And Back In A Sort Of Dancing Flight Full Of Whimsical Flutters And Turns. They Are Like Farmers Loafing In Their Own Fields On Sunday. Though They Have No Sundays, Their Days Are Full Of Sabbaths.

It's Impossible To Contemplate The Life Of Soil Very Long Without Seeing Its Analogy To The Life Of The Spirit.

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.

Humans, Like All Other Creatures, Must Make A Difference; Otherwise, They Cannot Live. But Unlike Other Creatures, Humans Must Make A Choice As To The Kind And Scale Of Difference They Make. If They Choose To Make Too Small A Difference, They Diminish Their Humanity. If They Choose To Make Too Great A Difference, They Diminish Nature, And Narrow Their Subsequent Choices; Ultimately, They Diminish Or Destroy Themselves. Nature, Then, Is Not Only Our Source But Also Our Limit And Measure.

Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful

We Had Entered An Era Of Limitlessness, Or The Illusion Thereof, And This In Itself Is A Sort Of Wonder. My Grandfather Lived A Life Of Limits, Both Suffered And Strictly Observed, In A World Of Limits. I Learned Much Of That World From Him And Others, And Then I Changed; I Entered The World Of Labor-saving Machines And Of Limitless Cheap Fossil Fuel. It Would Take Me Years Of Reading, Thought, And Experience To Learn Again That In This World Limits Are Not Only Inescapable But Indispensable.

People Who Blame The Bible For The Modern Destruction Of Nature Have Failed To See Its Delight In The Variety And Individuality Of Creatures And Its Insistence Upon Their Holiness. But That Delight-in, Say, The Final Chapters Of Job Or The 104th Psalm-is Far More Useful To The Cause Of Conservation Than The Undifferentiating Abstractions Of Science... Reverence Gives Standing To Creatures, And To Our Perception Of Them, Just As The Law Gives Standing To A Citizen.

Eating Is An Agricultural Act.

Eaters Must Understand That Eating Takes Place Inescapably In The World, That It Is Inescapably An Agricultural Act, And That How We Eat Determines, To A Considerable Extent, How The World Is Used.

What Leads To Peace Is Not Violence But Peaceableness, Which Is Not Passivity, But An Alert, Informed, Practiced, And Active State Of Being.

So Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute.

Today, Local Economies Are Being Destroyed By The 'pluralistic,' Displaced, Global Economy, Which Has No Respect For What Works In A Locality. The Global Economy Is Built On The Principle That One Place Can Be Exploited, Even Destroyed, For The Sake Of Another Place.

New Grief, When It Came, You Could Feel Filling The Air. It Took Up All The Room There Was. The Place Itself, The Whole Place, Became A Reminder Of The Absence Of The Hurt Or The Dead Or The Missing One. 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.

A Sustainable Agriculture Is One Which Depletes Neither The People Nor The Land.

We Enter Solitude, In Which Also We Lose Loneliness. True Solitude Is Found In The Wild Places, Where One Is Without Human Obligation. One’s Inner Voices Become Audible. One Feels The Attraction Of One’s Most Intimate Sources. In Consequence, One Responds More Clearly To Other Lives. The More Coherent One Becomes Within Oneself As A Creature, The More Fully One Enters Into The Communion Of All Creatures.

When You Are New At Sheep-raising And Your Ewe Has A Lamb, Your Impulse Is To Stay There And Help It Nurse And See To It And All. After A While You Know That The Best Thing You Can Do Is Walk Out Of The Barn.

When Humans Act Like Animals, They Become The Most Dangerous Of Animals To Themselves And Other Humans, And This Is Because Of Another Critical Difference Between Humans And Animals: Whereas Animals Are Usually Restrained By The Limits Of Physical Appetites, Humans Have Mental Appetites That Can Be Far More Gross And Capacious Than Physical Ones. Only Humans Squander And Hoard, Murder And Pillage Because Of Notions.

In The Loss Of Skill, We Lose Stewardship; In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation. It Is Possible - As Our Experience In This Good Land Shows - To Exile Ourselves From Creation, And To Ally Ourselves With The Principle Of Destruction - Which Is, Ultimately, The Principle Of Nonentity. It Is To Be Willing In General For Being To Not-be. And Once We Have Allied Ourselves With That Principle, We Are Foolish To Think That We Can Control The Results. (pg. 303, The Gift Of Good Land)

Despite Its Protests To The Contrary, Modern Christianity Has Become Willy-nilly The Religion Of The State And The Economic Status Quo. Because It Has Been So Exclusively Dedicated To Incanting Anemic Souls Into Heaven, It Has Been Made The Tool Of Much Earthly Villainy. It Has, For The Most Part, Stood Silently By While A Predatory Economy Has Ravaged The World, Destroyed Its Natural Beauty And Health, Divided And Plundered Its Human Communities And Households.

A Sustainable Agriculture Does Not Deplete Soils Or People.

Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health. And What Our Society Does Its Best To Disguise From Us Is How Ordinary, How Commonly Attainable, Health Is. We Lose Our Health -- And Create Profitable Diseases And Dependencies -- By Failing To See The Direct Connections Between Living And Eating, Eating And Working, Working And Loving.

Love Is What Carries You, For It Is Always There, Even In The Dark, Or Most In The Dark, But Shining Out At Times Like Gold Stitches In A Piece Of Embroidery.

A Proper Community, We Should Remember Also, Is A Commonwealth: A Place, A Resource, An Economy. It Answers The Needs, Practical As Well As Social And Spiritual, Of Its Members - Among Them The Need To Need One Another. The Answer To The Present Alignment Of Political Power With Wealth Is The Restoration Of The Identity Of Community And Economy. (pg. 63, "racism And The Economy")

And Having Thoughtlessly Polluted Our Streams And Rivers, We Have Seen In Recent Years A Rapidly Growing Market For Bottled Drinking Water. I Am Sure That Some Will Say That A Rapidly Growing Market For Water Is "good For The Economy," And Most Of Us Are Still Affluent Enough To Pay The Cost. Nevertheless, It Is A Considerable Cost That We Are Now Paying For Drinkable Water, Which We Once Had In Plentiful Supply At Little Cost Or None At All. And The Increasing Of The Cost Suggests That The Time May Come When The Cost Will Be Unaffordable.

I Come Into The Peace Of Wild Things Who Do Not Tax Their Lives With Forethought Of Grief.... For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.

The River Is Of The Earth And It Is Free. It Is Rigorously Embanked And Bound, And Yet It Is Free. To Hell With Restraint, It Says, I Have Got To Be Going. It Will Grind Out Its Dams. It Will Go Over Or Around Them. They Will Become Pieces.

We Could Say That The Human Race Is A Great Coauthorship In Which We Are Collaborating With God And Nature In The Making Of Ourselves And One Another. From This There Is No Escape. We May Collaborate Either Well Or Poorly Or We May Refuse To Collaborate, But Even To Refuse To Collaborate Is To Exert An Influence And To Affect The Quality Of The Product. This Is Only A Way Of Saying That By Ourselves We Have No Meaning And No Dignity; By Ourselves We Are Outside The Human Definition, Outside Our Identity.

Eating Is An Agricultural Act. Eating Ends The Annual Drama Of The Food Economy That Begins With Planting And Birth. Most Eaters, However, Are No Longer Aware That This Is True. They Think Of Food As An Agricultural Product, Perhaps, But They Do Not Think Of Themselves As Participants In Agriculture. They Think Of Themselves As 'consumers.'

It Surely Is Far Better To Be Disliked By Somebody You Don't Love Than By Somebody You Do. Even So, I Mind. Even So, Failing To Love Somebody Is A Failure.

People Are Fed By The Food Industry, Which Pays No Attention To Health, And Are Treated By The Health Industry, Which Pays No Attention To Food.

The Line That Connects The Bombing Of Civilian Populations To The Mountain Removed By Strip Mining ... To The Tortured Prisoner Seems To Run Pretty Straight. We're Living, It Seems, In The Culmination Of A Long Warfare - Warfare Against Human Beings, Other Creatures And The Earth Itself.

The Religion And The Environmentalism Of The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something That They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. We All Live By Robbing Nature, But Our Standard Of Living Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue. We Must Achieve The Character And Acquire The Skills To Live Much Poorer Than We Do.

...i Was A Young Man. I Hardly Knew What I Knew, Let Alone What I Was Going To Know.

Love The Quick Profit, The Annual Raise, Vacation With Pay. Want More Of Everything Ready-made. Be Afraid To Know Your Neighbors And To Die. And You Will Have A Window In Your Head. Not Even Your Future Will Be A Mystery Any More. Your Mind Will Be Punched In A Card And Shut Away In A Little Drawer. When They Want You To Buy Something They Will Call You. When They Want You To Die For Profit They Will Let You Know.

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.

It Is Therefore Absurd To Approach The Subject Of Health Piecemeal With A Departmentalized Band Of Specialists. A Medical Doctor Uninterested In Nutrition, In Agriculture, In The Wholesomeness Of Mind And Spirit Is As Absurd As A Farmer Who Is Uninterested In Health. Our Fragmentation Of This Subject Cannot Be Our Cure, Because It Is Our Disease. The Body Cannot Be Whole Alone. Persons Cannot Be Whole Alone. It Is Wrong To Think That Bodily Health Is Compatible With Spiritual Confusion Or Cultural Disorder, Or With Polluted Air And Water Or Impoverished Soil.

Under The Pavement The Dirt Is Dreaming Of Grass.

Let Us Have The Candor To Acknowledge That What We Call "the Economy" Or "the Free Market" Is Less And Less Distinguishable From Warfare.

I Have Always Loved A Window, Especially An Open One.

When There Are Enough People On The Land To Use It But Not Enough To Husband It, Then The Wildness Of The Soil That We Call Fertility Begins To Diminish, And The Soil Itself Begins To Flee From Us In Water And Wind.

We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us, And The Hands Of Those Who Come After Us; We Enter The Little Circle Of Each Other's Arms, And The Larger Circle Of Lovers Whose Hands Are Joined In A Dance, And The Larger Circle Of All Creatures, Passing In And Out Of Life, Who Move Also In A Dance, To A Music So Subtle And Vast That No Ear Hears It Except In Fragments.

Don't Own So Much Clutter That You Will Be Relieved To See Your House Catch Fire.

Finally From The Crease Of The Ravine I Am Following, There Begins To Come The Trickling And Splashing Of Water. There Is A Great Restfulness In The Sounds These Small Streams Make; They Are Going Down As Fast As They Can, But Their Sound Seem Leisurely And Idle, As If Produced Like Gemstones With The Greatest Patience And Care.

What Could Be More Superstitious Than The Idea That Money Brings Forth Food?

Returning From The Wilderness A Man Becomes A Restorer Of Order, A Preserver. He Sees The Truth, Recognizes His True Heir, Honors His Forbears And His Heritage, And Gives His Blessing To His Successors. He Embodies The Passing Of Human Time, Living And Dying Within The Human Limits Of Grief And Joy.

The Law Is Meant To Work For Justice. But People Who Know Themselves Know That, At Some Point, Justice Had Better Be Mitigated By Mercy. And You Don't Get To Mercy By A Legal Principle. You Get To Mercy By Way Of Imagination, Sympathy, Tenderness Of Heart - Which Are Not Weaknesses.

You Cannot Affirm The Power Plant And Condemn The Smokestack, Or Affirm The Smoke And Condemn The Cough

People Who Want To See The Beauty Of Nature From Motorboats And Automobiles Would Obviously Be Just As Pleased, And As Fully Recreated, At A Drive-in Movie.

As Industrial Technology Advances And Enlarges, And In The Process Assumes Greater Social, Economic, And Political Force, It Carries People Away From Where They Belong By History, Culture, Deeds, Association, And Affection.

As I Age In The World It Will Rise And Spread, And Be For This Place Horizon And Orison, The Voice Of Its Winds. I Have Made Myself A Dream To Dream Of Its Rising, That Has Gentled My Nights. Let Me Desire And Wish Well The Life These Trees May Live When I No Longer Rise In The Mornings To Be Pleased With The Green Of Them Shining, And Their Shadows On The Ground, And The Sound Of The Wind In Them.

All We Can Do To Prepare Rightly For Tomorrow Is To Do The Right Thing Today.

Our Most Serious Problem, Perhaps, Is That We Have Become A Nation Of Fantasists. We Believe, Apparently, In The Infinite Availability Of Finite Resources.

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.

A Man's Life Is Always Dealing With Permanence, That Is The Most Dangerous Kind Of Irresponsibility Is To Think Of Your Doings As Temporary.

If The Devil Doesn't Exist... How Do You Explain That Some People Are A Lot Worse Than They're Smart Enough To Be?

It Is To Be Broken. It Is To Be Torn Open. It Is Not To Be Reached And Come To Rest In Ever. I Turn Against You, I Break From You, I Turn To You. We Hurt, And Are Hurt, And Have Each Other For Healing. It Is Healing. It Is Never Whole.

I'd Rather Rely On Mother Nature's Wisdom Than Man's Cleverness

A Person Who Undertakes To Grow A Garden At Home, By Practices That Will Preserve Rather Than Exploit The Economy Of The Soil, Has His Mind Precisely Against What Is Wrong With Us... What I Am Saying Is That If We Apply Our Minds Directly And Competently To The Needs Of The Earth, Then We Will Have Begun To Make Fundamental And Necessary Changes In Our Minds. We Will Begin To Understand And To Mistrust And To Change Our Wasteful Economy, Which Markets Not Just The Produce Of Earth, But Also The Earth's Ability To Produce.

It Was A Country . . . That He And His People Had Known How To Use And Abuse, But Not How To Preserve.

An Economy Genuinely Local And Neighborly Offers To Localities A Measure Of Security That They Cannot Derive From A National Or A Global Economy Controlled By People Who, By Principle, Have No Local Commitment.

...and We Pray, Not For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be Quiet In Heart, And In Eye Clear. What We Need Is Here.

Our Destruction Of Nature Is Not Just Bad Stewardship, Or Stupid Economics, Or A Betrayal Of Family Responsibility; It Is The Most Horrid Blasphemy. It Is Flinging God's Gifts Into His Face, As If They Were Of No Worth Beyond That Assigned To Them By Our Destruction Of Them.

In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.

Far From Making Peace, Wars Invariably Serve As Classrooms And Laboratories Where Men And Techniques And States Of Mind Are Prepared For The Next War.

A Viable Neighborhood Is A Community: And A Viable Community Is Made Up Of Neighbors Who Cherish And Protect What They Have In Common.

The Cloud Is Free Only To Go With The Wind. The Rain Is Free Only In Falling.

If I Was Freer Than I Had Ever Been In My Life, I Was Not Yet Entirely Free, For I Still Hung On To An Idea That Had Been Set Deep In Me By All My Schooling So Far: I Was A Bright Boy And I Ought To Make Something Out Of Myself... Something Else That Would Be A Cut Or Two Above My Humble Origins.

No Individual Life Is An End In Itself. One Can Live Fully Only By Participating Fully In The Succession Of The Generations, In Death As Well As In Life. Some Would Say (and I Am One Of Them) That We Can Live Fully Only By Making Ourselves Answerable To The Claims Of Eternity As To Those Of Time.

[all The Ancient Wisdom] Tells Us That Work Is Necessary To Us, As Much A Part Of Our Condition As Mortality; That Good Work Is Our Salvation And Our Joy; That Shoddy Or Dishonest Or Self-serving Work Is Our Curse And Our Doom. We Have Tried To Escape The Sweat And Sorrow Promised In Genesis - Only To Find That, In Order To Do So, We Must Forswear Love And Excellence, Health And Joy. (pg. 44, "the Unsettling Of America")

Our Children No Longer Learn How To Read The Great Book Of Nature From Their Own Direct Experience, Or How To Interact Creatively With The Seasonal Transformations Of The Planet. They Seldom Learn Where Their Water Come From Or Where It Goes. We No Longer Coordinate Our Human Celebration With The Great Liturgy Of The Heavens.

Properly Speaking, Global Thinking Is Not Possible... Look At One Of Those Photographs Of Half The Earth Taken From Outer Space, And See If You Recognize Your Neighborhood. The Right Local Questions And Answers Will Be The Right Global Ones. The Amish Question, What Will This Do To Our Community? Tends Toward The Right Answer For The World.

If You Start A Conversation With The Assumption That You Are Right Or That You Must Win, Obviously It Is Difficult To Talk.

A Man With A Machine And Inadequate Culture Is A Pestilence.

A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymously In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild. A Teacher, Finally, Has Nothing To Go On But Faith, A Student Nothing To Offer In Return But Testimony.

We Still (sometimes) Remember That We Cannot Be Free If Our Minds And Voices Are Controlled By Someone Else. But We Have Neglected To Understand That We Cannot Be Free If Our Food And Its Sources Are Controlled By Someone Else. The Condition Of The Passive Consumer Of Food Is Not A Democratic Condition. One Reason To Eat Responsibly Is To Live Free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures Of Eating)

Only The Action That Is Moved By Love For The Good At Hand Has The Hope Of Being Responsible And Generous.

The Economy Is Still Substantially That Of The Fur Trade, Still Based On The Same General Kinds Of Commercial Items: Technology, Weapons, Ornaments, Novelties, And Drugs. The One Great Difference Is That By Now The Revolution Has Deprived The Mass Of Consumers Of Any Independent Access To The Staples Of Life: Clothing, Shelter, Food, Even Water. Air Access Remains The Only Necessity That The Average User Can Still Get For Himself, And The Revolution Has Imposed A Heavy Tax On That By Way Of Pollution. Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.

I Would Consider Myself Simply A Critic Of The Market Economy. My Standard Isn't Primarily Political. First Of All, It's Ecological. And Then I Get To Matters That Are Social And Cultural.

The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.

Latest Technology

Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.

It Is Wrong To Condemn People For Doing A Thing And Then Offer No Alternative But Failure. A Person Could Get Mad About That.

We Can Make Ourselves Whole Only By Accepting Our Partiality, By Living Within Our Limits, By Being Humans Not By Trying To Be Gods.

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.

Our Obsession With Security Is A Measure Of The Power We Have Granted The Future To Hold Over Us.

Where Is Our Comfort But In The Free, Uninvolved, Finally Mysterious Beauty And Grace Of This World That We Did Not Make, That Has No Price? Where Is Our Sanity But There? Where Is Our Pleasure But In Working And Resting Kindly In The Presence Of This World? (pg. 215, Economy And Pleasure)

It Is Not From Ourselves That We Learn To Be Better Than We Are.

There Is Much Good Work To Be Done By Every One Of Us And We Must Begin To Do It.

The Consumer Wants Food To Be As Cheap As Possible. The Producer Wants It To Be As Expensive As Possible. Both Want It To Involve As Little Labor As Possible. And So The Standards Of Cheapness And Convenience, Which Are Irresistibly Simplifying And Therefore Inevitably Exploitive, Have Been Substituted For The Standard Of Health (of Both People And Land), Which Would Enforce Consideration Of Essential Complexities.

I Prayed Like A Man Walking In A Forest At Night, Feeling His Way With His Hands, At Each Step Fearing To Fall Into Pure Bottomlessness Forever. Prayer Is Like Lying Awake At Night, Afraid, With Your Head Under The Cover, Hearing Only The Beating Of Your Own Heart.

We Are Going To Have To Gather Up The Fragments Of Knowledge And Responsibilities That Have Been Turned Over To Governments, Corporations, And Specialists, And Put Those Fragments Back Together Again In Our Own Minds And In Our Families And Household And Neighborhoods.

The Rule, Acknowledged Or Not, Seems To Be That If We Have Great Power We Must Use It. We Would Use A Steam Shovel To Pick Up A Dime. We Have Experts Who Can Prove There Is No Other Way To Do It.

To Go In The Dark With A Light Is To Know The Light. To Know The Dark, Go Dark. Go Without Sight, And Find That The Dark, Too, Blooms And Sings, And Is Traveled By Dark Feet And Dark Wings.

Laugh. Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts.

I Don't Think I Had Even Begun To Have An Idea Where I Was Going, But Wherever It Was, That Was Where I Wanted To Go.

These Are People Who Are Capable Of Devotion, Public Devotion, To Justice. They Meant What They Said And Every Day That Passes, They Mean It More.

Rats And Roaches Live By Competition Under The Laws Of Supply And Demand; It Is The Privilege Of Human Beings To Live Under The Laws Of Justice And Mercy.

To Live, We Must Daily Break The Body And Shed The Blood Of Creation. When We Do This Knowingly, Lovingly, Skillfully, Reverently, It Is A Sacrament. When We Do It Ignorantly, Greedily, Clumsily, Destructively, It Is A Desecration. In Such Desecration We Condemn Ourselves To Spiritual And Moral Loneliness, And Others To Want.

Community, Then, Is An Indispensable Term In Any Discussion Of The Connection Between People And Land. A Healthy Community Is A Form That Includes All The Local Things That Are Connected By The Larger, Ultimately Mysterious Form Of The Creation. In Speaking Of Community, Then, We Are Speaking Of A Complex Connection Not Only Among Human Beings Or Between Humans And Their Homeland But Also Between Human Economy And Nature, Between Forest Or Prairie And Field Or Orchard, And Between Troublesome Creatures And Pleasant Ones. All Neighbors Are Included.

Outdoors We Are Confronted Everywhere With Wonders; We See That The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary, But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread.

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.

If We Do Not Serve What Coheres And Endures, We Serve What Disintegrates And Destroys.

There Are Two Laws That We Had Better Take To Be Absolute. The First Is That As We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Living In This World, Then If We Wish To Live, We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Using The World. If We Cannot Exempt Ourselves From Use, Then We Must Deal With The Issues Raised By Use. And So The Second Law Is That If We Want To Continue Living, We Cannot Exempt Use From Care.

If You Establish, Or Reestablish, Local Economies On The Right Scale And With The Right Standard, Then Politics Would Come Right As A Matter Of Course. I Don't Know What You'd Call The Result - Probably Not Capitalism Or Socialism.

I Think Of The Old Slavery, And Of The Way The Economy Has Now Improved Upon It. The New Slavery Has Improved Upon The Old By Giving The New Slaves The Illusion That They Are Free. The Economy Does Not Take People's Freedom By Force, Which Would Be Against Its Principles, For It Is Very Humane. It Buys Their Freedom, Pays For It, And Then Persuades Its Money Back Again With Shoddy Goods And The Promise Of Freedom. "buy A Car," It Says, "and Be Free. Buy A Boat And Be Free." Is This Not The Raw Material Of Bad Dreams? Or Is It Maybe The Very Nightmare Itself?

The Acquisition Of Knowledge Always Involves The Revelation Of Ignorance-almost Is The Revelation Of Ignorance.

I Lack The Peace Of Simple Things. I Am Never Wholly In Place. I Find No Peace Or Grace. We Sell The World To Buy Fire, Our Way Lighted By Burning Men.

I Thought, He Must Forebear To Reveal His Power And Glory By Presenting Himself As Himself, And Must Be Present Only In The Ordinary Miracle Of The Existence Of His Creatures. Those Who Wish To See Him Must See Him In The Poor, The Hungry, The Hurt, The Wordless Creatures, The Groaning And Travailing Beautiful World.

We Are Far More Concerned About The Desecration Of The Flag Than We Are About The Desecration Of Our Land.

I Go Among Trees And Sit Still. All My Stirring Becomes Quiet Around Me Like Circles On Water.

I Believe That The Community - In The Fullest Sense: A Place And All Its Creatures - Is The Smallest Unit Of Health And That To Speak Of The Health Of An Isolated Individual Is A Contradiction In Terms. (pg. 146, Health Is Membership)

Annual Plants Are Nature's Emergency Medical Service, Seeded In Sounds And Scars To Hold The Land Until The Perennial Cover Is Re-established.

Soil Is Not Usually Lost In Slabs Or Heaps Of Magnificent Tonnage. It Is Lost A Little At A Time Over Millions Of Acres By The Careless Acts Of Millions Of People. It Cannot Be Saved By Heroic Feats Of Gigantic Technology, But Only By Millions Of Small Acts And Restraints, Conditioned By Small Fidelities, Skills, And Desires. Soil Loss Is Ultimately A Cultural Problem; It Will Be Corrected Only By Cultural Solutions.

If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Who You Are.

One Of The Most Important Resources That A Garden Makes Available For Use, Is The Gardener's Own Body. A Garden Gives The Body The Dignity Of Working In Its Own Support. It Is A Way Of Rejoining The Human Race.

All Goes Back To The Earth, And So I Do Not Desire Pride Of Excess Or Power, But The Contentments Made By Men Who Have Had Little: The Fisherman's Silence Receiving The River's Grace, The Gardener's Musing On Rows.

Analogies Have Tied Things Together For Me, Personally. The Fundamental One For Me Is The Analogy Between Your Relationship To Your Spouse And Your Relationship To Your Place. Both Need To Be A Settled Commitment And Both Involve Continuous Learning And Adjusting.

If You Can Read And Have More Imagination Than A Doorknob, What Need Do You Have For A 'movie Version' Of A Novel?

A Change Of Heart Or Of Values Without A Practice Is Only Another Pointless Luxury Of A Passively Consumptive Way Of Life.

The Surface Of The Quieted River, As I Think Now, Is Like A Window Looking Into Another World That Is Like This One Except That It Is Quiet. Its Quietness Makes It Seem Perfect. The Ripples Are Like The Slates Of A Blind Of A Shutter Through Which We See Imperfectly What Is Perfect. Though That Other World Can Be Seen Only Momentarily, It Looks Everlasting. As The Ripples Become More Agitated, The Window Darkens And The Other World Is Hidden.the Surface Of The River Is Like A Living Soul, Which Is Easy To Disturb, Is Often Disturbed, But, Growing Calm, Shows What It Was, Is, And Will Be.

Sit And Be Still Until In The Time Of No Rain You Hear Beneath The Dry Wind's Commotion In The Trees The Sound Of Flowing Water Among The Rocks, A Stream Unheard Before, And You Are Where Breathing Is Prayer.

Love Changes, And In Change Is True.

We Must See That It Is Foolish, Sinful And Suicidal To Destroy The Health Of Nature For The Sake Of An Economy That Is Really Not An Economy At All But Merely A Financial System, One That Is Unnatural, Undemocratic, Sacrilegious, And Ephemeral.

If Conservationists Will Attempt To Resume Responsibility For Their Need To Eat, They Will Be Led Back Fairly Directly To All Their Previous Concerns For The Welfare Of Nature.

Eating With The Fullest Pleasure - Pleasure, That Is, That Does Not Depend On Ignorance - Is Perhaps The Profoundest Enactment Of Our Connection With The World. In This Pleasure We Experience Our Dependence And Our Gratitude, For We Are Living In A Mystery, From Creatures We Did Not Make And Powers We Cannot Comprehend.

Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!

And So There Would Always Be More To Remember That Could No Longer Be Seen...our History Is Always Returning To A Little Patch Of Weeds And Saplings With An Old Chimney Sticking Up By Itself...and Here I Look Ahead To The Resting Of My Case: I Love The House That Belonged To The Chimney, Holding It Bright In Memory, And Love The Saplings And The Weeds.

Under The Discipline Of Unity, Knowledge And Morality Come Together. No Longer Can We Have That Paltry 'objective' Knowledge So Prized By The Academic Specialists. To Know Anything At All Becomes A Moral Predicament. Aware That There Is No Such Thing As A Specialized Effect, One Becomes Responsible For Judgments As Well As Facts. Aware That As An Agricultural Scientist He Had 'one Great Subject,' Sir Albert Howard Could No Longer Ask, What Can I Do With What I Know? Without At The Same Time Asking, How Can I Be Responsible For What I Know?

And I Knew That The Spirit That Had Gone Forth To Shape The World And Make It Live Was Still Alive In It. I Just Had No Doubt. I Could See That I Lived In The Created World, And It Was Still Being Created. I Would Be Part Of It Forever. There Was No Escape. The Spirit That Made It Was In It, Shaping It And Reshaping It, Sometimes Lying At Rest, Sometimes Standing Up And Shaking Itself, Like A Muddy Horse, And Letting The Pieces Fly.

When The Possessions And Households Of Citizens Are No Longer Honored By The Acts, As Well As The Principles, Of Their Government, Then The Concentration Camp Ceases To Be One Of The Possibilities Of Human Nature And Becomes One Of Its Likelihoods.

We Can Say Without Exaggeration That The Present National Ambition Of The United States Is Unemployment. People Live For Quitting Time, For Weekends, For Vacations, And For Retirement; Moreover, This Ambition Seems To Be Classless, As True In The Executive Suites As On The Assembly Lines. One Works Not Because The Work Is Necessary, Valuable, Useful To A Desirable End, Or Because One Loves To Do It, But Only To Be Able To Quit - A Condition That A Saner Time Would Regard As Infernal, A Condemnation.

The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed

I Am Not Bound For Any Public Place, But For Ground Of My Own Where I Have Planted Vines And Orchard Trees, And In The Heat Of The Day Climbed Up Into The Healing Shadow Of The Woods.

The More Artificial A Human Environment Becomes, The More The Word ‘natural’ Becomes A Term Of Value.

They Will Grow, Deliver, And Cook Your Food For You And (just Like Your Mother) Beg You To Eat It. That They Do Not Yet Offer To Insert It, Pre-chewed, Into Your Mouth Is Only Because They Have Found No Profitable Way To Do So.

Geese Appear High Over Us, / Pass, And The Sky Closes. Abandon, / As In Love Or Sleep, Holds Them To Their Way, Clear / In The Ancient Faith: What We Need / Is Here. And We Pray, Not / For New Earth Or Heaven, But To Be / Quiet In Heart, And In Eye, / Clear. What We Need Is Here.

I Took Her Into Bed With Me And Propped Myself Up With Pillows Against The Headboard To Let Her Nurse. As She Nursed And The Milk Came, She Began A Little Low Contented Sort Of Singing. I Would Feel Milk And Love Flowing From Me To Her As Once It Had Flowed To Me. It Emptied Me. As The Baby Fed, I Seemed Slowly To Grow Empty Of Myself, As If In The Presence Of That Long Flow Of Love Even Grief Could Not Stand.

To Be Interested In Food But Not In Food Production Is Clearly Absurd.

Food Production

You Cannot Devalue The Body And Value The Soul Or Value Anything Else.

We Are Now, Measurably, Reducing The Availability Of These Life-supporting Goods Which We Can Think Of (though Only On The Conditions Of Good Health And Good Care) As Self-renewing Or "sustainable." We Are Also Destroying Rapidly The Supplies Of The Fossil Fuels, Which Are Limited And Not Renewable, And On Which We Have Become Totally Dependent.

We Have Forgotten That Vietnam, And Iraq Resent Being Invaded And Know The Ground Better Than We Do.

I Would Like You To Show Me, If You Can, Where The Line Can Be Drawn Between An Organism And It's Environment. The Environment Is In You. It's Passing Through You. You're Breathing It In And Out. You And Every Other Creature.

It May Be That When We No Longer Know What To Do, We Have Come To Our Real Work, And That When We No Longer Know Which Way To Go, We Have Begun Our Real Journey.

It Is A Fact That The Entire Kentucky River System, Which The Central Part Of The State Complacently Depends Upon For Its Future Water, Is Deteriorating Rapidly Because Of Strip Mining, Because Of Bad Farming, Because Of Industrial And Agricultural Pollutants, Because Of Urban Sewage. It Is Deteriorating, That Is To Say, Because Almost Nobody Cares, Or Cares To Know, Where Water Comes From, So Long As It Keeps Coming.

We Cannot Know The Whole Truth, Which Belongs To God Alone, But Our Task Nevertheless Is To Seek To Know What Is True.

To Hear Of A Thousand Deaths In War Is Terrible, And We 'know' That It Is. But As It Registers On Our Hearts, It Is Not More Terrible Than One Death Fully Imagined.

The Care Of The Earth Is Our Most Ancient And Most Worthy, And After All Our Most Pleasing Responsibility. To Cherish What Remains Of It And To Foster Its Renewal Is Our Only Hope.

Healing Is Impossible In Loneliness; It Is The Opposite Of Loneliness. Conviviality Is Healing. To Be Healed We Must Come With All The Other Creatures To The Feast Of Creation. (pg.99, "the Body And The Earth")

You May Say That I Am Just Another Outdated Old Man Complaining About Progress And The Changes Of Time. But, You See, I Have Well Considered That Possibility Myself, And Am Prepared O Submit To Correction By Anybody Who Cares About A Community, Who Can Show Me How The World Is Improved By That Community's Dying.

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