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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.

-Wendell Berry

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The "developed" Nations Had

Wendell Berry

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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.

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The Fertility Cycle Is A Cycle Entirely Of Living Creatures Passing Again And Again Through Birth, Growth, Maturity, Death, And Decay.

Action Can Only Be Understood In Relation To Place; Only By Staying In Place Can The Imagination Conceive Or Understand Action In Terms Of Consequence, Of Cause And Effect. The Meaning Of Action In Time Is Inseparable From Its Meaning In Place.

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.

Eating Is An Agricultural Act.

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.

It's The Impeded Stream That Sings

We Seem To Know That International Wars Tend Not To Stop With Their Formal "peace Treaties." We Seem Not To Have Thought Enough About The Difference Between The Large Official Events Of Political And Military History And Their Overflow Both Into Recognized Effects And Into The Lives Of Unofficial People Who Suffer Them.

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.

Good Farmers, Who Take Seriously Their Duties As Stewards Of Creation And Of Their Land's Inheritors, Contribute To The Welfare Of Society In More Ways Than Society Usually Acknowledges, Or Even Knows. These Farmers Produce Valuable Goods, Of Course; But They Also Conserve Soil, They Conserve Water, They Conserve Wildlife, They Conserve Open Space, They Conserve Scenery.

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.

Akin To The Idea That Time Is Money Is The Concept, Less Spoken But As Commonly Assumed, That We May Be Adequately Represented By Money. The Giving Of Money Has Thus Become Our Characteristic Virtue. But To Give Is Not To Do. The Money Is Given In Lieu Of Action, Thought, Care, Time.

When The Mind's An Empty Room The Clear Days Come.

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.

The Uplands Of My Home Country In North Central Kentucky Are Sloping And Easily Eroded, Dependent For Safekeeping Upon Year-round Cover Of Perennial Plants.

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.

Why Should Conservationists Have A Positive Interest In... Farming? There Are Lots Of Reasons, But The Plainest Is: Conservationists Eat.

Any Religion Has To Have A Practice. When You Let It Go So Far From Practice That It Just Becomes A Matter Of Talk Something Bad Happens.

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?

A Protest Meeting On The Issue Of Environmental Abuse Is Not A Convocation Of Accusers, It Is A Convocation Of The Guilty. The Realization Ought To Clear The Smog Of Self-righteousness That Has Always Conventionally Hovered Over These Occasions, And Let Us See The Work That Is To Be Done.

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.

A Significant Part Of The Pleasure Of Eating Is In One’s Accurate Consciousness Of The Lives And The World From Which Food Comes.

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.

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

Perhaps It Is To Prepare To Hear Some Day The Music Of The Spheres That I Am Always Turning My Ears To The Music Of Streams. There Is Indeed A Music In Streams, But It Is Not For The Hurried. It Has To Be Loitered By And Imagined. Or Imagined Toward, For It Is Hardly For Men At All. Nature Has A Patient Ear. To Her The Slowest Funeral March Sounds Like A Jig. She Is Satisfied To Have The Notes Drawn Out To The Lengths Of Days Or Weeks Or Months. Small Variations Are Acceptable To Her, Modulations As Leisurely As The Opening Of A Flower.

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?

Unexpected Wonders Happen, Not On Schedule, Or When You Expect Or Want Them To Happen, But If You Keep Hanging Around, They Do Happen.

The Soil Is The Great Connector Of Our Lives, The Source And Destination Of All.

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?

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.

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 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.

We Are Living In The Most Destructive And, Hence, The Most Stupid Period Of The History Of Our Species.

The River And The Garden Have Been The Foundations Of My Economy Here. Of The Two I Have Liked The River Best. It Is Wonderful To Have The Duty Of Being On The River The First And Last Thing Every Day. I Have Loved It Even In The Rain. Sometimes I Have Loved It Most In The Rain.

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.

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.

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

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.

Without Animals, Something Essential Is Removed From The Minds Of The Farmers.

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.

Young Lovers See A Vision Of The World Redeemed By Love. That Is The Truest Thing They Ever See, For Without It Life Is Death.

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.

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

One Cannot Be Aware Both Of The History Of Christian War And Of The Contents Of The Gospels Without Feeling That Something Is Amiss.

The Passive American Consumer, Sitting Down To A Meal Of Pre-prepared Food, Confronts Inert, Anonymous Substances That Have Been Processed, Dyed, Breaded, Sauced, Gravied, Ground, Pulped, Strained, Blended, Prettified, And Sanitized Beyond Resemblance To Any Part Of Any Creature That Ever Lived. The Products Of Nature And Agriculture Have Been Made, To All Appearances, The Products Of Industry. Both Eater And Eaten Are Thus In Exile From Biological Reality.

Those Who Say Islam Is A Warlike Religion Must Ask If Christianity Has Been As Well.

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.

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)

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.

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. Say That The Leaves Are Harvested When They Have Rotted Into The Mold. Call That Profit. Prophesy Such Returns. Put Your Faith In The Two Inches Of Humus That Will Build Under The Trees Every Thousand Years.

It Is Impossible To Prefigure The Salvation Of The World In The Same Language By Which The World Has Been Dismembered And Defaced.

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.

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

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.

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

The Christian Gospel Is A Summons To Peace, Calling For Justice Beyond Anger, Mercy Beyond Justice, Forgiveness Beyond Mercy, Love Beyond Forgiveness.

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.

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

An Agrarian Mind Begins With The Love Of Fields And Ramifies In Good Farming, Good Cooking & Good Eating

Beware The Machinery Of Longevity. When A Man's Life Is Over The Decent Thing Is For Him To Die. The Forest Does Not Withhold Itself From Death. What It Gives Up It Takes Back.

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.

We Do Need A 'new Economy,' But One That Is Founded On Thrift And Care, On Saving And Conserving, Not On Excess And Waste. An Economy Based On Waste Is Inherently And Hopelessly Violent, And War Is Its Inevitable By-product. We Need A Peaceable Economy.

To Treat Life As Less Than A Miracle Is To Give Up On It.

There Is No Sense And No Sanity In Objecting To The Desecration Of The Flag While Tolerating And Justifying And Encouraging As A Daily Business The Desecration Of The Country For Which It Stands.

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.

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.

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

Go With Your Love To The Fields. Lie Down In The Shade. Rest Your Head In Her Lap. Swear Allegiance To What Is Nighest Your Thoughts. As Soon As The Generals And The Politicos Can Predict The Motions Of Your Mind, Lose It. Leave It As A Sign To Mark The False Trail, The Way You Didn't Go. Be Like The Fox Who Makes More Tracks Than Necessary, Some In The Wrong Direction. Practice Resurrection.

I Have This Love For Mattie. It Was Formed In Me As He Himself Was Formed. It Has His Shape, You Might Say. He Fits It. He Fits Into It As He Fits Into His Clothes. He Will Always Fit Into It. When He Gets Out Of The Car And I Meet Him And Hug Him, There He Is, Him Himself, Something Of My Very Own Forever, And My Love For Him Goes All Around Him Just As It Did When He Was A Baby And A Little Boy And A Young Man Grown.

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.

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.

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

Don't Pray For The Rain To Stop; Pray For Good Luck Fishing When The River Floods.

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.

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.

Invest In The Millenium.

There Are Some Things The Arrogant Mind Does Not See; It Is Blinded By Its Vision Of What It Desires.

Our Model Citizen Is A Sophisticate Who, Before Puberty, Understands How To Produce A Baby, But Who At The Age Of Thirty Will Not Know How To Produce A Potato

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

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.

To Have Good Farming Or Good Land Use Of Any Kind, You Have Got To Have Limits. Capitalism Doesn't Acknowledge Limits.

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 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.

Nobody Can Discover The World For Somebody Else. Only When We Discover It For Ourselves Does It Become Common Ground And A Common Bond And We Cease To Be Alone.

If We Are Looking For Insurance Against Want And Oppression, We Will Find It Only In Our Neighbors' Prosperity And Goodwill And, Beyond That, In The Good Health Of Our Worldly Places, Our Homelands. If We Were Sincerely Looking For A Place Of Safety, For Real Security And Success, Then We Would Begin To Turn To Our Communities - And Not The Communities Simply Of Our Human Neighbors But Also Of The Water, Earth, And Air, The Plants And Animals, All The Creatures With Whom Our Local Life Is Shared. (pg. 59, "racism And The Economy")

This New War, Like The Previous One, Would Be A Test Of The Power Of Machines Against People And Places; Whatever Its Causes And Justifications, It Would Make The World Worse. This Was True Of That New War, And It Has Been True Of Every New War Since... I Knew Too That This New War Was Not Even New But Was Only The Old One Come Again. And What Caused It? It Was Caused, I Thought, By People Failing To Love One Another, Failing To Love Their Enemies.

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.

The Only Sustainable City - And This, To Me, Is The Indispensable Ideal And Goal - Is A City In Balance With Its Countryside.

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

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.

It Is, Of Course, One Of The Miracles Of Science That The Germs That Used To Be In Our Food Have Been Replaced By Poisons.

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...

When The Self Is Ones Exclusive Subject And Limit, Reference And Measure, One Has No Choice But To Make A World Of Words.

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

Condemnation By Category Is The Lowest Form Of Hatred, For It Is Cold-hearted And Abstract, Lacking Even The Courage Of A Personal Hatred.

We Walked Always In Beauty, It Seemed To Me. We Walked And Looked About, Or Stood And Looked. Sometimes, Less Often, We Would Sit Down. We Did Not Often Speak. The Place Spoke For Us And Was A Kind Of Speech. We Spoke To Each Other In The Things We Saw.

It Would Not Do For The Consumer To Know That The Hamburger She Is Eating Came From A Steer Who Spent Much Of His Life Standing Deep In His Own Excrement In A Feedlot, Helping To Pollute The Local Streams. Or That The Calf That Yielded The Veal Cutlet On Her Plate Spent Its Life In A Box In Which It Did Not Have Room To Turn Around.

We Clasp The Hands Of Those Who Go Before Us.

The Promoters Of The Global Economy...see Nothing Odd Or Difficult About Unlimited Economic Growth Or Unlimited Consumption In A Limited World.

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.

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.

The Primary Motive For Good Care And Good Use Of The Land-community Is Always Going To Be Affection, Which Is Too Often Lacking.

The Wrecking Ball Is Characteristic Of Our Way With Materials. We 'cannot Afford' To Log A Forest Selectively, To Mine Without Destroying Topography, Or To Farm Without Catastrophic Soil Erosion. A Production-oriented Economy Can Indeed Live In This Way, But Only So Long As Production Lasts.

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.

The World Is Whole Beyond Human Knowing.

But The Only Possible Guarantee Of The Future Is Responsible Behavior In The Present.

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.

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.

Let Me Say And Not Mourn: The World Lives In The Death Of Speech And Sings There.

It Is The Man Who Can Think Of No Alternative To His Enslavement Who Is Truly A Slave.

We Live Beyond Words, As Also We Live Beyond Computation And Beyond Theory.

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.

To Think Better, To Think Like The Best Humans, We Are Probably Going To Have To Learn Again To Judge A Person's Intelligence, Not By The Ability To Recite Facts, But By The Good Order Or Harmoniousness Of His Or Her Surroundings. We Must Suspect That Any Statistical Justification Of Ugliness And Violence Is A Revelation Of Stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, And Community)

If We Are To Have A Culture As Resilient And Competent In The Face Of Necessity As It Needs To Be, Then It Must Somehow Involve Within Itself A Ceremonious Generosity Toward The Wilderness Of Natural Force And Instinct. The Farm Must Yield A Place To The Forest, Not As A Wood Lot, Or Even As A Necessary Agricultural Principle But As A Sacred Grove - A Place Where The Creation Is Let Alone, To Serve As Instruction, Example, Refuge; A Place For People To Go, Free Of Work And Presumption, To Let Themselves Alone. (pg. 125, The Body And The Earth)

You Can't Be A Critic By Simply Being A Griper. One Has Also To Search Out The Examples Of Good Work.

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.

Explanation Changes Whatever Is Explained Into Something Explainable.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Never Abstract. It Does Not Adhere To The Universe Or The Planet Or The Nation Or The Institution Or The Profession, But To The Singular Sparrows Of The Street, The Lilies Of The Field, "to The Least Of These My Brethren." Love Is Not, By Its Own Desire, Heroic. It Is Heroic Only When Compelled To Be. It Exists By Its Willingness To Be Anonymous, Humble, And Unrewarded.

Sometimes I Knew In All My Mind And Heart Why I Had Done What I Had Done, And I Welcomed The Sacrifice. But There Were Times Too When I Lived In A Desert And Felt No Joy And Saw No Hope And Could Not Remember My Old Feelings. Then I Lived By Faith Alone, Faith Without Hope. What Good Did I Get From It? I Got To Have Love In My Heart.

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.

We Need To Confront Honestly The Issue Of Scale... You May Need A Large Corporation To Run An Airline Or To Manufacture Cars, But You Don't Need A Large Corporation To Raise A Chicken Or A Hog. You Don't Need A Large Corporation To Process Local Food Or Local Timber And Market It Locally.

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.

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.

Do Not Tax Your Life With Forethought Of Grief.

The Living Can't Quit Living Because The World Has Turned Terrible And People They Love And Need Are Killed. They Can't Because They Don't. The Light That Shines Into Darkness And Never Goes Out Calls Them On Into Life. It Calls Them Back Again Into The Great Room. It Calls Them Into Their Bodies And Into The World, Into Whatever The World Will Require. It Calls Them Into Work And Pleasure, Goodness And Beauty, And The Company Of Other Loved Ones.

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.

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.

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

In Living In The World By His Own Will And Skill, The Stupidest Peasant Or Tribesman Is More Competent Than The Most Intelligent Worker Or Technician Or Intellectual In A Society Of Specialists.

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.

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.

Why I Am Not Going To Buy A Computer

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.

We Learn From Our Gardens To Deal With The Most Urgent Question Of The Time: How Much Is Enough?

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.

The Miraculous Is Not Extraordinary But The Common Mode Of Existence. It Is Our Daily Bread. Whoever Really Has Considered The Lilies Of The Field Or The Birds Of The Air And Pondered The Improbability Of Their Existence In This Warm World Within The Cold And Empty Stellar Distances Will Hardly Balk At The Turning Of Water Into Wine Which Was, After All, A Very Small Miracle. We Forget The Greater And Still Continuing Miracle By Which Water (with Soil And Sunlight) Is Turned Into Grapes.

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.

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

Waking Up From A Dream Of Violence Is Much The Same As Waking Up From A Dream Of Love. You Must Go On Living Your Life.

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.

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.

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.

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

Interdependence

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.

This Is A Book About Heaven. I Know It Now. It Floats Among Us Like A Cloud And Is The Realest Thing We Know And The Least To Be Captured, The Least To Be Possessed By Anybody For Himself. It Is Like A Grain Of Mustard Seed, Which You Cannot See Among The Crumbs Of Earth Where It Lies. It Is Like The Reflection Of The Trees On The Water.

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.

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.

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.

When Despair For The World Grows In Me... 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.

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.

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.

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.

Creation Is Thus God's Presence In Creatures. The Greek Orthodox Theologian Philip Sherrard Has Written That "creation Is Nothing Less Than The Manifestation Of God's Hidden Being." This Means That We And All Other Creatures Live By A Sanctity That Is Inexpressibly Intimate, For To Every Creature, The Gift Of Life Is A Portion Of The Breath And Spirit Of God. (pg. 308, Christianity And The Survival Of Creation)

It's Kind Of Alarming For Me To Realize That, When I'm Writing Stories About Times I Remember, It's Already Historical Fiction.

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.

The Chance You Had Is The Life You've Got. You Can Make Complaints About What People, Including You, Make Of Their Lives After They Have Got Them, And About What People Make Of Other People's Lives, ...but You Mustn't Wish For Another Life. You Mustn't Want To Be Somebody Else.

Urban Conservationists May Feel Entitled To Be Unconcerned About Food Production Because They Are Not Farmers. But They Can't Be Let Off So Easily, For They Are All Farming By Proxy.

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.

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

The Ecological Principle In Agriculture Is To Connect The Genius Of The Place, To Fit The Farming To The Farm.

It Would Take Me Years Of Reading, Thought, And Experience To Learn Again That In This World Limits Are Not Only Inescapable But Indispensable.

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.

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")

We Are Alive Within Mystery, By Miracle... We Have More Than We Can Know. We Know More Than We Can Say.

The Mind That Is Not Baffled, Is Unemployed

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.

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

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

People Need To Feed Themselves, Next They Need To Feed Their Own Communities.

Laughter Is Immeasurable. Be Joyful

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.

The Mercy Of The World Is Time. Time Does Not Stop For Love, But It Does Not Stop For Death And Grief, Either.

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.

Categorical Condemnation Is The Hatred Of The Mob. It Makes Cowards Brave. And There Is Nothing More Fearful Than A Religious Mob, A Mob Overflowing With Righteousness – As At The Crucifixion And Before And Since. This Can Happen Only After We Have Made A Categorical Refusal To Kindness: To Heretics, Foreigners, Enemies Or Any Other Group Different From Ourselves.

This Curious Faith Is Predicated On The Notion That We Will Soon Develop Unlimited New Sources Of Energy: Domestic Oil Fields, Shale Oil, Gasified Coal, Nuclear Power, Solar Energy, And So On. This Is Fantastical Because The Basic Cause Of The Energy Crisis Is Not Scarcity: It Is Moral Ignorance And Weakness Of Character. We Don't Know How To Use Energy Or What To Use It For. And We Cannot Restrain Ourselves. Our Time Is Characterized As Much By The Abuse And Waste Of Human Energy As It Is By The Abuse And Waste Of Fossil Fuel Energy.

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.

True Solitude Is Found In The Wild Places, Where One Is Without Human Obligation. One's Inner Voices Become Audible... In Consequence, One Responds More Clearly To Other Lives.

An Art That Heals And Protects Its Subject Is A Geography Of Scars.

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

It Is Easy For Me To Imagine That The Next Great Division Of The World Will Be Between People Who Wish To Live As Creatures And People Who Wish To Live As Machines.

Men May Dam It And Say That They Have Made A Lake, But It Will Still Be A River. It Will Keep Its Nature And Bide Its Time, Like A Caged Animal Alert For The Slightest Opening. In Time, It Will Have Its Way; The Dam, Like The Ancient Cliffs, Will Be Carried Away Piecemeal In The Currents.

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.

When Going Back Makes Sense, You Are Going Ahead.

You Have To Be Able To Imagine Lives That Are Not Yours.

We Cannot Hope To Be Secure When Our Government Has Declared, By Its Readiness To Act Alone, Its Willingness To Be Everybody's Enemy.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Individualism Is Going Around These Days In Uniform, Handing Out The Party Line On Individualism.

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.

Physical Health Doesn't Exist Apart From The Health Of Other Things. Health Ultimately Involves The Community, And The Community Ultimately Involves The Place And Natural Life Of That Place, So That Real Health Is Harmony With The World.

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.

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