Several principles that shape how I live I learned from Wendell Berry. He has an astounding share of common sense and an ability to cut through to what matters. He finds extraordinary beauty in the ordinary—often an ordinary that as a people we have set aside or lost.

These days, ever darkening shadows in the world along with our own sufferings and those of the people closest to us can start to crush and overwhelm us. I want my first response to be one of faith. I believe, I trust that, despite certain appearances, the Person who loves me most, and whom I try to love most, has all of this very much in his hand.

And a significant aspect of how he has this in hand, and how he makes his care and presence known and felt to us, (I think) is in how the ordinary remains itself. The ordinary remains ordinary. Right here at hand. My hands.

“Where is our comfort but in the free, uninvolved, finally mysterious beauty and grace of this world that we did not make, that has no price? Where is our sanity but there? Where is our pleasure but in working and resting kindly in the presence of this world?”

These extraordinary words from Berry’s essay ‘Economy and Pleasure’ could be asserted apart from a religious context. But a religious context is in fact their only true home. Ordinary human pleasures are what they are because they are an expression of God’s pleasure: first in himself and then in us—a pleasure that in him is ultimately one. And it can become as one in us too.

Working and resting kindly: the adverb modifies both verbal nouns. Good work and true leisure can sound lofty and far away. They are lofty, but they need not be far away. They can be right outside our window, and of course inside it too. Every day. But we must learn—whether again or for the first time—to work and to rest kindly.

Berry’s Hannah Coulter says it so well: “Love in this world doesn’t come out of thin air. It is not something thought up. Like ourselves, it grows out of the ground. It has a body and a place. We lived here by our work. Our life and our work were not the same thing maybe, but they were close. The children would grow up knowing how to work, and would have the satisfaction of knowing they were useful… But sometimes too our life in this place was purely our pleasure. Those times would usually be Sundays. Sunday was the day God rested, and except for the chores we too could feel free of work… Of all the times with the children, those are the ones I love best to remember…”

Some of us don’t have such memories, while some of us do. Yet what are good memories but pointers to what can be? …what can be for all of us, for whom the best should be yet to come: if we are willing to believe, and to trust, and to love. And to suffer.

Whoever and wherever we are, we can choose to take pleasure in working and resting kindly, in the ordinary things, in the this extraordinary home God has crafted for us.~ ~ ~

NEW PODCAST! PLEASURES of the BODY for TRAINING in CHASTITY. Bodily pleasures are more important and chastity is more profound than we realize. Plato sagely noted that most people are inexperienced in pleasure, including pleasures of the body. Join Sofia and me as we seek to open a new window onto the beauty of daily bodily pleasures in the home, and how they can be an essential training in chastity, and in spiritual pleasures, for young and old alike. Please check out and share our podcasts HERE, on youtube and wherever you get your podcasts.

John Cuddeback

Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.