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If You Don't Know Where You Are, You Don't Know Who You Are.
-Wendell Berry
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If You Don't Know

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

Understanding the Quote: "if you don't know where you are, you don't know who you..."

This quote by Wendell Berry reflects deeply on the theme of journey. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Journey, Hiking, Where We Come, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Wendell Berry interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is celebrated for insightful thoughts on journey and hiking. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 9850
Topic
Journey
Hiking
Where We Come
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Corn And Bean People, I'm Afraid, Have Extremely Specialized Minds.
People
Mind
Corn
Explanation Changes Whatever Is Explained Into Something Explainable.
Explanation
No Matter How Much One May Love The World As A Whole, One Can Live Fully In It Only By Living Responsibly In Some Small Part Of It. Where We Live And Who We Live There With Define The Terms Of Our Relationship To The World And To Humanity. We Thus Come Again To The Paradox That One Can Become Whole Only By The Responsible Acceptance Of One's Partiality.
Acceptance
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World
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.
Law
Justice
Competition
It Is Only On The Condition Of Humility And Reverence Before The World That Our Species Will Be Able To Remain In It.
Nature
Humility
Animal
When The Mind's An Empty Room The Clear Days Come.
Empty Rooms
Mind
Clear Day
Only By Restoring The Broken Connections Can We Be Healed. Connection Is Health.
Broken
Connections
Interdependence
A Sustainable Agriculture Is One Which Depletes Neither The People Nor The Land.
Land
Agriculture
People
For The True Measure Of Agriculture Is Not The Sophistication Of Its Equipment The Size Of Its Income Or Even The Statistics Of Its Productivity But The Good Health Of The Land.
Land
Agriculture
Income
Not Just Self-restraint, That Old Killjoy, But Communal Restraint.
Self
Restraint
Killjoy
It's Mighty Hard Right Now To Think Of Anything That's Precious That Isn't Endangered. There Are No Sacred And Unsacred Places; There Are Only Sacred And Desecrated Places. My Belief Is That The World And Our Life In It Are Conditional Gifts.
Thinking
Sacred
World
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.
Differences
Choices
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You Mustn’t Wish For Another Life. You Mustn’t Want To Be Somebody Else. What You Must Do Is This: “rejoice Evermore. Pray Without Ceasing. In Everything Give Thanks.” I Am Not All The Way Capable Of So Much, But Those Are The Right Instructions.
Giving
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Way
The Form Of A Poem Is Invisible. A Poem Is Not An "object." This Is Hard To Accept In A Mechanical Age.
Age
Invisible
Accepting
When You Have Large-scale Legitimated Violence In A Place That Is Divided As Profoundly And Bitterly As Kentucky Was, The Legitimate Violence Can Cause Illegitimate Violence, A Terrible Local Heartlessness And Cruelty That Feeds On Itself And Goes On And On.
Kentucky
Violence
Causes
Without Prosperous Local Economies, The People Have No Power And The Land No Voice.
Land
Voice
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To Go In The Dark With A Light Is To Know The Light. To Know The Dark, Go Dark.
Dark
Light
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Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.
World
Speech
Let Me
I Go Among Trees And Sit Still. All My Stirring Becomes Quiet Around Me Like Circles On Water. My Tasks Lie In Their Places Where I Left Them, Asleep Like Cattle... Then What I Am Afraid Of Comes. I Live For A While In Its Sight. What I Fear In It Leaves It, And The Fear Of It Leaves Me. It Sings, And I Hear Its Song.
Song
Lying
Sight
Violence Breeds Violence. Acts Of Violence Committed In "justice" Or In Affirmation Of "rights" Or In Defense Of "peace" Do Not End Violence. They Prepare And Justify Its Continuation.
Rights
Justice
Defense
I Dislike The Thought That Some Animal Has Been Made Miserable To Feed Me. If I Am Going To Eat Meat, I Want It To Be From An Animal That Has Lived A Pleasant, Uncrowded Life Outdoors, On Bountiful Pasture, With Good Water Nearby And Trees For Shade.
Animal
Water
Tree
We Are Living Even Now Among Punishments And Ruins.
Punishment
Ruins
There Comes . . . A Longing Never To Travel Again Except On Foot.
Journey
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I Believe Until Fairly Recently Our Destructions Of Nature Were More Or Less Unwitting -- The By-products, So To Speak, Of Our Ignorance Or Weakness Or Depravity. It Is Our Present Principled And Elaborately Rationalized Rape And Plunder Of The Natural World That Is A New Thing Under The Sun.
Believe
Ignorance
Weakness
The Answers To The Human Problems Of Ecology Are To Be Found In Economy. And The Answers To The Problems Of Economy Are To Be Found In Culture And Character. To Fail To See This Is To Go On Dividing The World Falsely Between Guilty Producers And Innocent Consumers.
Character
Culture
Answers
There Is A Religious Principle: Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself. But It's Also An Economic Asset. If You've Got A Neighbour, You've Got Help, And This Implies Another Limit. If You Want To Have Neighbours, You Can't Have A Limitless Growth Economy. You Have To Prefer To Have A Neighbour Rather Than To Own Your Neighbour Farm.
Religious
Growth
Want
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.
Country
Sex
Animal
Again I Resume The Long Lesson: How Small A Thing Can Be Pleasing, How Little In This Hard World It Takes To Satisfy The Mind And Bring It To Its Rest.
Long
Mind
World
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.
Thinking
Ideas
Wanted
I Am Speaking Of The Life Of A Man Who Knows That The World Is Not Given By His Fathers, But Borrowed From His Children; Who Has Undertaken To Cherish It And Do It No Damage, Not Because He Is Duty-bound, But Because He Loves The World And Loves His Children...
Nature
Children
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There Are Some Things The Arrogant Mind Does Not See; It Is Blinded By Its Vision Of What It Desires.
Mind
Vision
Desire
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.
Home
Garden
Practice
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?
Discipline
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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.
Inspiring
Law
Two
A Liberal Education Rests On The Assumption That Nature And Human Nature Do Not Change Very Much Or Very Fast And That One Therefore Needs To Understand The Past.
Past
Needs
Assumption
The Poem Is Important, But Not More Than The People Whose Survival It Serves.
People
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In Losing Stewardship We Lose Fellowship; We Become Outcasts From The Great Neighborhood Of Creation.
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Losing
We Cannot Hope To Be Secure When Our Government Has Declared, By Its Readiness To Act Alone, Its Willingness To Be Everybody's Enemy.
Government
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It's The Impeded Stream That Sings
Wisdom
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Specialization Is The Great Evil Of Civilization.
Civilization
Evil
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We Have Become Blind To The Alternatives To Violence.
Alternatives
Violence
Blind
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.
Loss
Technology
Small Acts
What Leads To Peace Is Not Violence But Peaceableness, Which Is Not Passivity, But An Alert, Informed, Practiced, And Active State Of Being.
Violence
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I Could Die In Peace, I Think, If The World Was Beautiful. To Know It's Being Ruined Is Hard.
Beautiful
Thinking
World
And So You Have A Life That You Are Living Only Now, Now And Now And Now, Gone Before You Can Speak Of It, And You Must Be Thankful For Living Day By Day, Moment By Moment A Life In The Breath And Pulse And Living Light Of The Present
Light
Being Thankful
Pulse
For Any Sin, We All Suffer. That Is Why Our Suffering Is Endless.
Suffering
Sin
Endless
One Cannot Be Aware Both Of The History Of Christian War And Of The Contents Of The Gospels Without Feeling That Something Is Amiss.
Christian
War
Feelings
Much Of Our Waste Problem Is To Be Accounted For By The Intentional Flimsiness And Unrepairability Of The Labor-savers And Gadgets That We Have Become Addicted To.
Addiction
Gadgets
Waste
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.
Pride
Men
Rivers
My Label Is Just "good Farming", Which Isn't Something You Can Put On A T-shirt.
Labels
T Shirt
Farming
Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful
Laughter
Joyful
People Talk About "job Creation," As If That Had Ever Been The Aim The Industrial Economy. The Aim Was To Replace People With Machines.
Jobs
People
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So, Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute...give Your Approval To All You Cannot Understand...ask The Questions That Have No Answers. Put Your Faith In Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years...laugh. Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All The Facts....practice Resurrection.
Years
Practice
Two
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.
Meaningful
Thinking
Ideas
Odd As I Am Sure It Will Appear To Some, I Can Think Of No Better Form Of Personal Involvement In The Cure Of The Environment Than That Of Gardening. A Person Who Is Growing A Garden, If He Is Growing It Organically, Is Improving A Piece Of The World. He Is Producing Something To Eat, Which Makes Him Somewhat Independent Of The Grocery Business, But He Is Also Enlarging, For Himself, The Meaning Of Food And The Pleasure Of Eating.
Independent
Garden
Thinking
To Work Without Pleasure Or Affection, To Make A Product That Is Not Both Useful And Beautiful, Is To Dishonor God, Nature, The Thing That Is Made, And Whomever It Is Made For.
Beautiful
Affection
Pleasure
The Music, While It Lasted, Brought A New World Into Being.
World
New World
The Shoddy Work Of Despair, The Pointless Work Of Pride, Equally Betray Creation. They Are Wastes Of Life.
Pride
Despair
Waste
The Mercy Of The World Is You Don't Know What's Going To Happen.
Rap
Tomorrow May Never Come
World
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.
Environmental
Generations
Life Is
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.
Land
People
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To The Extent That We Consume, In Our Present Circumstances, We Are Guilty. To The Extent That We Guilty Consumers Are Conservationists, We Are Absurd. But What Can We Do? Must We Go On Writing Letters To Politicians And Donating To Conservation Organizations Until The Majority Of Our Fellow Citizens Agree With Us? Or Can We Do Something Directly To Solve Our Share Of The Problem? I Am A Conservationist. I Believe Wholeheartedly In Putting Pressure On The Politicians And In Maintaining The Conservation Organizations.
Believe
Writing
Organization
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.
Men
Community
Progress
The Good Of The Whole Of Creation, The World And All Its Creatures Together, Is Never A Consideration Because It Is Never Thought Of; Our Culture Now Simply Lacks The Means For Thinking Of It.
Mean
Thinking
Together
The Damages Of Our Present Agriculture All Come From The Determination To Use The Life Of The Soil As If It Were An Extractable Resource Like Coal.
Determination
Land
Agriculture
Long Live Gravity! Long Live Stupidity, Error, And Greed In The Palaces Of Fantasy Capitalism!
Errors
Long
Stupidity
The Issue Here Really Is Not Whether International Trade Shall Be Free But Whether Or Not It Makes Any Sense For A Country - Or, For That Matter, A Region - To Destroy Its Own Capacity To Produce Its Own Food. How Can A Government, Entrusted With The Safety And Health Of Its People, Conscientiously Barter Away In The Name Of An Economic Idea That People's Ability To Feed Itself? And If People Lose Their Ability To Feed Themselves, How Can They Be Said To Be Free?
Country
Names
Ideas
My Wish Simply Is To Live My Life As Fully As I Can. In Both Our Work And Our Leisure, I Think, We Should Be So Employed. And In Our Time This Means That We Must Save Ourselves From The Products That We Are Asked To Buy In Order, Ultimately, To Replace Ourselves.
Life
Positive
Passion
Every Day You Have Less Reason Not To Give Yourself Away.
Giving
Reason
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.
Government
Simplicity
Doe
The Promoters Of The Global Economy...see Nothing Odd Or Difficult About Unlimited Economic Growth Or Unlimited Consumption In A Limited World.
Growth
World
Odd
Invest In The Millennium. Plant Sequoias.
Plant
Millennium
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")
Loneliness
Healing
Opposites
It Is Possible, I Think, To Say That... A Christian Agriculture [is] Formed Upon The Understanding That It Is Sinful For People To Misuse Or Destroy What They Did Not Make. The Creation Is A Unique, Irreplaceable Gift, Therefore To Be Used With Humility, Respect, And Skill.
Christian
Humility
Unique
It Gets Darker And Darker And Darker, And Then Jesus Is Born.
Jesus
Born
Supporters Of The War Are Constantly Asking Those Who Oppose It: Why Don't You Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side? The Answer, So Far As I Am Concerned, Is That I Do Deplore The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By The Other Side. But I Am Responsible For The Wrongs And Atrocities Committed By Our Side. And I Am No Longer Able To Participate In The Assumption That Atrocities Committed By Remote Control Are Less Objectionable Than Those Committed At Arm's Length. I Am Most Concerned With American Obstacles To Peace Because I Am An American.
War
Atrocities Committed
Asking
There Are Lots Of Bad Things That Can Happen To A Food Economy That's Both Extensive And Centralized. There's No Substitute For Petroleum. To Have A Growth Economy Based On A Declining Fuel Supply Is Bound To Be Stressful.
Growth
Fuel
Economy
A Teacher's Major Contribution May Pop Out Anonymuosly In The Life Of Some Ex-student's Grandchild.
Teacher
Grandchildren
May
Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.
Party
Lines
Uniforms
If The Crop Of Any One Year Was All, A Man Would Have To Cut His Throat Every Time It Hailed.
Cutting
Men
Years
I’ve Been Thinking About That Question About What City People Can Do. The Main Thing Is To Realize That Country People Can’t Invent A Better Agriculture By Ourselves. Industrial Agriculture Wasn’t Invented By Us, And We Can’t Uninvent It. We’ll Need Some Help With That.
Country
Thinking
Cities
The Difference Between A Path And A Road Is Not Only The Obvious One. A Path Is Little More Than A Habit That Comes With Knowledge Of A Place. It Is A Sort Of Ritual Of Familiarity. As A Form, It Is A Form Of Contact With A Known Landscape. It Is Not Destructive. It Is The Perfect Adaptation, Through Experience And Familiarity, Of Movement To Place; It Obeys The Natural Contours; Such Obstacles As It Meets It Goes Around.
Differences
Perfect
Movement
What Would Be The Point Of Being Personally Whole In A Dismembered Society, Or Personally Healthy In A Land Scalped, Eroded And Poisoned, Or Personally Free In A World Entirely Controlled By The Government Or Enlightened By Television?
Government
Land
Healthy
You Cannot Devalue The Body And Value The Soul Or Value Anything Else.
Soul
Body
Devalue
If Love Could Force My Own Thoughts Over The Edge Of The World And Out Of Time, Then Could I Not See How Even Divine Omnipotence Might By The Force Of Its Own Love Be Swayed Down To The World? ...how It Might, Because It Could Know Its Own Creatures Only By Compassion, Put On Mortal Flesh, Become A Man, And Walk Among Us, Assume Our Nature And Our Fate, Suffer Our Faults And Our Death?
Fate
Love Is
Men
...i Was A Young Man. I Hardly Knew What I Knew, Let Alone What I Was Going To Know.
Men
Young
Knows
The Only Time I've Been Arrested Was In Opposing The Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant In Indiana. That Was In 1979.
Nuclear
Indiana
Hills
Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer
Computer
So Friends, Every Day Do Something That Won't Compute.
Simplicity
When Despair For The World Grows In Me And I Wake In 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 With Their Light. For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Nature
Stars
Children
We Cannot Know The Whole Truth, Which Belongs To God Alone, But Our Task Nevertheless Is To Seek To Know What Is True. And If We Offend Gravely Enough Against What We Know To Be True, As By Failing Badly Enough To Deal Affectionately And Responsibly With Our Land And Our Neighbors, Truth Will Retaliate With Ugliness, Poverty, And Disease.
Land
Disease
Poverty
The Name Of Our Proper Connection To The Earth Is 'good Work,' For Good Work Involves Much Giving Of Honor. It Honors The Source Of Its Materials; It Honors The Place Where It Is Done; It Honors The Art By Which It Is Done; It Honors The Thing That It Makes And The User Of The Made Thing.
Art
Work
Names
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.
Inspirational
Wise
Memories
Some Nights In The Midst Of This Loneliness I Swung Among The Scattered Stars At The End Of The Thin Thread Of Faith Alone.
Stars
Loneliness
Night
Better Than Any Argument Is To Rise At Dawn And Pick Dew-wet Red Berries In A Cup.
Food
Cooking
Red Lipstick
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.
Love
Dark
Shining
For Want Of A Pilate Of Their Own, Some Christians Would Accept A Constantine Or Whomever Might Be The Current Incarnation Of Caesar.
Christian
Want
Might
The "developed" Nations Had Given To The "free Market" The Status Of A God, And Were Sacrificing To It Their Farmers, Farmlands, And Communities, Their Forests, Wetlands, And Prairies, Their Ecosystems And Watersheds. They Had Accepted Universal Pollution And Global Warming As Normal Costs Of Doing Business.
Sacrifice
Ecosystems
Community
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.
Thinking
Egalitarianism
Differences
The Most Insistent And Formidable Concern Of Agriculture, Wherever It Is Taken Seriously, Is The Distinct Individuality Of Every Farm, Every Field On Every Farm, Every Farm Family, And Every Creature On Every Farm.
Taken
Agriculture
Individuality
We Are Alive Within Mystery, By Miracle... We Have More Than We Can Know. We Know More Than We Can Say.
Miracle
Alive
Mystery
In Kentucky, We're Destroying Mountains, Including Their Soils And Forests, In Order To Get At The Coal. In Other Words, We're Destroying A Permanent Value In Order To Get At An Almost Inconceivably Transient Value. That Coal Has A Value Only If And When It Is Burnt. And After It Is Burnt, It Is A Pollutant And A Waste-a Burden.
Kentucky
Order
Ifs And
The Soil Under The Grass Is Dreaming Of A Young Forest, And Under The Pavement The Soil Is Dreaming Of Grass.
Dream
Pavement
Soil
A Proper Education Enables Young People To Put Their Lives In Order, Which Means Knowing What Things Are More Important Than Other Things; It Means Putting First Things First.
Education
Mean
Order
Without A Complex Knowledge Of One's Place And Without The Faithfulness To One's Place On Which Such Knowledge Depends, It Is Inevitable That The Place Will Be Used Carelessly, And Eventually Destroyed. Without Such Knowledge And Faithfulness, Moreover, The Culture Of A Country Will Be Superficial And Decorative, Functional Only Insofar As It May Be A Symbol Of Prestige, The Affectation Of An Elite Or "in" Group.
Country
May
Groups
Our Politics And Science Have Never Mastered The Fact That People Need More Than To Understand Their Obligation To One Another And To The Earth; They Need Also The Feeling Of Such Obligation, And The Feeling Can Come Only Within The Patterns Of Familiarity. A Nation Of Urban Nomads, Such As We Have Become, May Simply Be Unable To Be Enough Disturbed By Its Destruction Of The Ecological Health Of The Land, Because The People's Dependence On The Land, Though It Has Been Expounded To Them Over And Over Again In General Terms, Is Not Immediate To Their Feelings.
Land
People
Feelings
At Night Make Me One With The Darkness In The Morning Make Me One With The Light.
Morning
Night
Light
Perhaps All The Good That Ever Has Come Here Has Come Because People Prayed It Into The World.
People
World
To Mind Being Disliked By A Woman You Don’t Desire And Are Not Married To Is Yet Another Serious Failure Of Common Sense.
Common Sense
Mind
Desire
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.
Principles
Today
Sake
The Soil Is The Great Connector Of Our Lives, The Source And Destination Of All.
Journey
Garden
Land
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.
Military
Government
Self
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.
Technology
People
Political
But The Only Possible Guarantee Of The Future Is Responsible Behavior In The Present.
Future
Environmental
Guarantees
The Pleasure Of Eating Should Be An Extensive Pleasure, Not That Of The Mere Gourmet. People Who Know The Garden In Which Their Vegetables Have Grown And Know That The Garden Is Healthy Will Remember The Beauty Of The Growing Plants, Perhaps In The Dewy First Light Of Morning When Gardens Are At Their Best. Such A Memory Involves Itself With The Food And Is One Of The Pleasures Of Eating. (pg. 326, The Pleasures Of Eating)
Morning
Memories
Garden
To Me, An Economy That Sees The Life Of A Community Or A Place As Expendable, And Reckons Its Value Only In Terms Of Money, Is Not Acceptable Because It Is Not Realistic. I Am Thinking As I Believe We Must Think If We Wish To Discuss The Best Uses Of People, Places, And Things, And If We Wish To Give Affection Some Standing In Our Thoughts.
Believe
Thinking
People
In Health The Flesh Is Graced, The Holy Enters The World.
World
Flesh
Healthcare
The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed
Mind
Baffled
Unemployed
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?
Want
Succeed
Doe
To Treat Life As Less Than A Miracle Is To Give Up On It.
Life
Giving Up
Miracle
We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us.
Hands
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.
Thinking
Government
Needs
It Is No More Possible To Live In The Future Than It Is To Live In The Past. If Life Is Not Now, It Is Never.
Past
Life Is
Ifs
The Reason To Preserve Wilderness Is That We Need It. We Need Wilderness Of All Kinds, Large And Small, Public And Private. Wee Need To Go Now And Again Into Places Where Our Work Is Disallowed, Where Our Hopes And Plans Have No Standing. We Need To Come Into The Presence Of The Unqualified And Mysterious Formality Of Creation.
Needs
Unqualified
Mysterious
You've Got To Reach Towards A Better Language, And You're Not Going To Make It Up From Scratch; You've Got To Reach Back Into The Tradition. Western Tradition Is Not As Impoverished As A Lot Of People Would Like To Think, But You'd Have To Go Back Before The Industrial Revolution; You May Have To Go Back Farther Than That. Of Course, The Bible Has A Perfectly Adequate Language, But It's Suffered A Lot Of Thoughtless Wear.
Thinking
People
Scratches
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.
Pain
Practice
Convince Us
One Of The Strongest Of Contemporary Conventions Is That Of Comparing To Thoreau Every Writer Who Has Been As Far Out Of The House As The Mailbox.
House
Conventions
Mailboxes
The Problems Are Our Lives. In The "developed" Countries, At Least, The Large Problems Occur Because All Of Us Are Living Either Partly Wrong Or Almost Entirely Wrong. It Was Not Just The Greed Of Corporate Shareholders And The Hubris Of Corporate Executives That Put The Fate Of Prince William Sound Into One Ship; It Was Also Our Demand That Energy Be Cheap And Plentiful.
Country
Fate
Greed
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.
Prayer
Rain
Rocks
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?
Dream
Thinking
People
We Are Far More Concerned About The Desecration Of The Flag Than We Are About The Desecration Of Our Land.
Land
Flags
Environment
You Cannot Save The Land Apart From The People, Or The People Apart From The Land.
Land
People
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.
Dark
Light
Sight
A Man Who Does Not Ask To Much Become The Promise Of His Land. His Marriage Married To His Place, He Waits And Does Not Stray.
Men
Land
Waiting
Commercial Conquest Is Far More Thorough And Final Than Military Defeat.
Military
Finals
Defeat
Do Not Tax Your Life With Forethought Of Grief.
Grief
Taxes
Forethought
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.
Sunday
Dancing
Cedars
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.
Sleep
Eye
Heart
We Can Grow Good Wheat And Make Good Bread Only If We Understand That We Do Not Live By Bread Alone.
Bread
Wheat
Live By
It May Be That When We No Longer Know... Which Way To Go We Have Begun Our Real Journey. The Mind That Is Not Baffled Is Not Employed. The Impeded Stream Is The One That Sings.
Real
Journey
Mind
Like The Water Of A Deep Stream, Love Is Always Too Much. We Did Not Make It. Though We Drink Till We Burst, We Cannot Have It All, Or Want It All. In Its Abundance It Survives Our Thirst. In The Evening We Come Down To The Shore To Drink Our Fill, And Sleep, While It Flows Through The Regions Of The Dark. It Does Not Hold Us, Except We Keep Returning To Its Rich Waters Thirsty. We Enter, Willing To Die, Into The Commonwealth Of Its Joy.
Sleep
Dark
Love Is
During The Last 17 Years... I Have Been Working At The Restoration Of A Once Exhausted Hillside. Its Scars Are Now Healed Over, Though Still Visible, And This Year It Has Provided Abundant Pasture, More Than In Any Year Since We Have Owned It. But To Make It As Good As It Is Now Has Taken 17 Years. If I Had Been A Millionaire Or If My Family Had Been Starving, It Would Still Have Taken 17 Years. It Can Be Better Than It Is Now, But That Will Take Longer. For It To Live Fully In Its Own Responsibility, As It Did Before Bad Use Ran It Down, May Take Hundreds Of Years.
Taken
Responsibility
Years
A Good Community Insures Itself By Trust, By Good Faith And Good Will, By Mutual Help. A Good Community, In Other Words, Is A Good Local Economy.
Mutual Help
Community
Helping
Reverence Makes It Possible To Be Whole, Though Ignorant. It Is The Wholeness Of Understanding.
Respect
Understanding
Ignorant
The Language That Reveals Also Obscures.
Language
The Latest Technology Is Not Always Good For Anything Except To The Producers Of The Technology.
Technology
Producers
Latest Technology
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.
Government
Citizens
Principles
When Going Back Makes Sense, You Are Going Ahead.
Make Sense
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.
Thinking
Self
Availability
History Overflows Time. Love Overflows The Allowance Of The World. All The Vessels Overflow, And No End Or Limit Stays Put. Every Shakable Thing Has Got To Be Shaken. In A Sense, Nothing That Was Ever Lost In Port William Ever Has Been Replaced. In Another Sense, Nothing Is Ever Lost, And We Are Compacted Together Forever, Even By Our Failures, Our Regrets, And Our Longings.
Regret
Community
Forever
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?
Children
Mean
Compassion
We Have Made It Our Overriding Ambition To Escape Work, And As A Consequence Have Debased Work Until It Is Only Fit To Escape From. We Have Debased The Products Of Work And Have Been, In Turn, Debased By Them. (pg. 43, "the Unsettling Of America")
Ambition
America
Fit
A Tree Forms Itself In Answer To Its Place And The Light. Explain It How You Will, The Only Thing Explainable Will Be Your Explanation.” Sabbaths 1999 Iv
Light
Tree
Answers
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.
Baby
Grief
Nurse
Condemnation By Category Is The Lowest Form Of Hatred, For It Is Cold-hearted And Abstract, Lacking Even The Courage Of A Personal Hatred.
Hatred
Cold Hearted
Abstract
If In The Human Economy, A Squash In The Field Is Worth More Than A Bushel Of Soil, That Does Not Mean That Food Is More Valuable Than Soil; It Means Simply That We Do Not Know How To Value The Soil. In Its Complexity And Its Potential Longevity, The Soil Exceeds Our Comprehension; We Do Not Know How To Place A Just Market Value On It, And We Will Never Learn How. Its Value Is Inestimable; We Must Value It, Beyond Whatever Price We Put On It, By Respecting It.
Mean
Land
Squash
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.
Heart
Law
People
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.
Land
People
Community
Unexpected Wonders Happen, Not On Schedule, Or When You Expect Or Want Them To Happen, But If You Keep Hanging Around, They Do Happen.
Schedules
Want
Unexpected
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.
Thinking
Other Worlds
Rivers
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.
Humble
Cutting
Boys
Monsanto Doesn't Care About Feeding The World. We Have To Think About The Wage Slavery Of Migrant Workers And Salary Slavery Of Those Who Are Desperately Unhappy.
Freedom
Thinking
Unhappy
But In Its De Facto Alliance With Caesar, Christianity Connives Directly In The Murder Of Creation. For In These Days, Caesar Is No Longer A Mere Destroyer Of Armies, Cities, And Nations. He Is A Contradicter Of The Fundamental Miracle Of Life.
Army
Cities
Miracle
But Our Waste Problem Is Not The Fault Only Of Producers. It Is The Fault Of An Economy That Is Wasteful From Top To Bottom-a Symbiosis Of An Unlimited Greed At The Top And A Lazy, Passive, And Self-indulgent Consumptiveness At The Bottom-and All Of Us Are Involved In It.
Self
Greed
Lazy
Under The Rule Of The "free Market" Ideology, We Have Gone Through Two Decades Of An Energy Crisis Without An Effective Energy Policy. Because Of An Easy And Thoughtless Reliance On Imported Oil, We Have No Adequate Policy For The Conservation Of Gasoline And Other Petroleum Products. We Have No Adequate Policy For The Development Or Use Of Other, Less Harmful Forms Of Energy. We Have No Adequate System Of Public Transportation.
Two
Oil
Energy
The World Is Whole Beyond Human Knowing.
Life
Knowing
World
The Most Available Example Of How Poetry Works For A Poet Is Yourself, And Yet You'll Probably Be The Last One To Know Exactly How You're Serving The Art And How The Art Is Serving You.
Art
Example
Lasts
Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.
Practice
Track
Foxes
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.
Retirement
Ambition
Weekend
An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating
Cooking
Mind
Fields
I Dream Of A Quiet Man / Who Explains Nothing And Defends Nothing, But Only Knows / Where The Rarest Wildflowers / Are Blooming, And Who Goes, / And Finds That He Is Smiling / Not By His Own Will.
Dream
Men
Wildflowers
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.
Gratitude
Food
Ignorance
The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.
Christian
Justice
Calling
The Constructions Of Language, Which Is To Say The Constructions Of Thought, Are Formed Within Experience, Not The Other Way Around.
Way
Language
Construction
The Wild Rose” – By Wendell Berry Sometimes, Hidden From Me In Daily Custom And In Ritual I Live By You Unaware, As If By The Beating Of My Heart. Suddenly You Flare Again In My Sight A Wild Rose At The Edge Of The Thicket Where Yesterday There Was Only Shade And I Am Blessed And Choose Again, That Which I Chose Before.
Blessed
Heart
Wild Roses
For A Time I Rest In The Grace Of The World, And Am Free.
Grace
World
Still Waters
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.
Mother
Way
Mouths
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.
Heart
Together
Woven
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.
Lonely
Hate
Drug Use
We Are Destroying Our Country - I Mean Our Country Itself, Our Land. This Is A Terrible Thing To Know, But It Is Not A Reason For Despair Unless We Decide To Continue The Destruction. If We Decide To Continue The Destruction, That Will Not Be Because We Have No Other Choice. This Destruction Is Not Necessary. It Is Not Inevitable, Except That By Our Submissiveness We Make It So.
Country
Mean
Land
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.
Experts
Dimes
Use
We Must Learn To Acknowledge That The Creation Is Full Of Mystery; We Will Never Entirely Understand It. We Must Abandon Arrogance And Stand In Awe. We Must Recover The Sense Of The Majesty Of Creation, And The Ability To Be Worshipful In Its Presence. For I Do Not Doubt That It Is Only On The Condition Of Humility And Reverence Before The World That Our Species Will Be Able To Remain In It.
Humility
Arrogance
Doubt
How Would You Describe The Difference Between Modern War And Modern Industry-between Say, Bombing And Strip Mining, Or Between Chemical Warfare And Chemical Manufacturing? The Difference Seems To Be Only That In War The Victimization Of Humans Is Directly Intentional And In Industry It Is "accepted" As A "trade-off." Were The Catastrophes Of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, And The Exxon Valdez Episodes Of War Or Of Peace? They Were In Fact, Peacetime Acts Of Aggression, Intentional To The Extent That The Risks Were Known And Ignored.
War
Differences
Risk
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.
Lying
Men
Garden
An Art That Heals And Protects Its Subject Is A Geography Of Scars.
Art
Scar
Geography
We Will Instead Have To Measure Our Economy By The Health Of The Ecosystems And Human Communities Where We Do Our Work.
Ecosystems
Community
Environmental
The Most Alarming Sign Of The State Of Our Society Now Is That Our Leaders Have The Courage To Sacrifice The Lives Of Young People In War But Have Not The Courage To Tell Us That We Must Be Less Greedy And Wasteful.
War
Sacrifice
People
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.
Lakes
Sea
Fishing
At Home The Great Delight Is To See The Clover And Grass Now Growing On Places That Were Bare When We Came. These Small Healings Of The Ground Are My Model Accomplishment-everything Else I Do Must Aspire To That. While I Was At That Work The World Gained With Every Move I Made, And I Harmed Nothing.
Moving
Healing
Home
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.
Jesus
Real
Talking
We Must Waste Less. We Must Do More For Ourselves And For Each Other. It Is Either That Or Continue Merely To Think And Talk About Changes That We Are Inviting Catastrophe To Make. The Great Obstacle Is Simply This: The Conviction That We Cannot Change Because We Are Dependant On What Is Wrong. But That Is The Addict's Excuse, And We Know That It Will Not Do.
Thinking
Waste
Obstacles
Don't Pray For The Rain To Stop; Pray For Good Luck Fishing When The River Floods.
Rain
Good Luck
Fishing
Only The Action That Is Moved By Love For The Good At Hand Has The Hope Of Being Responsible And Generous.
Hands
Action
Responsible
You Cannot Affirm The Power Plant And Condemn The Smokestack, Or Affirm The Smoke And Condemn The Cough
Rivers
Environmental
Affirmation
It's Impossible To Contemplate The Life Of Soil Very Long Without Seeing Its Analogy To The Life Of The Spirit.
Long
Analogies
Soil
You Can't Be A Critic By Simply Being A Griper. One Has Also To Search Out The Examples Of Good Work.
Example
Good Work
Critics
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.
Beautiful
Hurt
Miracle
If We Are Serious About Peace, Then We Must Work For It As Ardently, Seriously, Continuously, Carefully, And Bravely As We Have Ever Prepared For War.
War
Serious
Prepared
Never Forget: We Are Alive Within Mysteries.
Life
Alive
Never Forget
Let Us Have The Candor To Acknowledge That What We Call "the Economy" Or "the Free Market" Is Less And Less Distinguishable From Warfare.
Warfare
Economy
Candor
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