When someone I meet mentions with affection the name Wendell Berry, my heart immediately thrills that we will have much in common, much to talk about. I realize now that no other contemporary name has such an effect on me.

This might seem odd, especially given that Berry–who died on Monday–was in no normal sense a ‘religious’ writer and that certain features of his worldview diverge from mine. Yet his place in twentieth and twenty-first century America is simply unique. And I feel almost boundless gratitude and affection for the man whose writings changed who I am, and on whose porch I had occasion to sit.

I think the heart of what he has done is this: Wendell Berry helped me and countless others discover deep desires we didn’t know we had. Whether it was his essays, his fiction, or his poetry—and each has its unique power and appeal—we felt something stir and come to life within us. What stirred within was never alien, even if it was frightening, novel or new.

What was coming alive was our very self. Like the sprouting of a seed. What was speaking to us was nature; more, human nature. It was astounding, most of all because it was real; palpably real. And it was us; our inheritance: an inheritance we have been robbed of in significant ways. Wendell Berry gently but firmly told it like it is.

His railings against governments, corporations, and other institutions were the fruit of clear convictions about human flourishing, and of a sorrow born of love for people who have been served a mess of pottage. He knew from experience—eye-opening, heart-rending, and hard-won—what human relationships and community can look like. And he leaned into sharing what he saw. Because he cared.

His characters are unforgettable, whether it’s Matt Feltner or Burley Coulter, Jayber Crow or Hannah Coulter, or Old Jack Beechum—who like his creator lived to 92. In these characters we see so much about ourselves, and who we want to be, or not be. Though they seem to be from a different time, I suggest that these characters are precisely for our time.

Why? One of the most subversive aspects of life today is how our common practices obscure what should be obvious. Berry excels in pointing to precisely those features of human life and happiness that we tend to miss. He is the prophet of the extraordinary beauty of the ordinary. Membership in a community. Marriage. Home. Friendship. Family ties. Physical place. Working with our hands. Sitting on the porch. Cultivating the earth. Belonging to one another.

The autumn afternoon years ago I spent sitting on his porch with Wendell and his wife Tanya reinforced what already seemed clear in his writings. Here is a man who speaks and writes from convictions that he lives.

A few quotations cannot do justice. But I offer a couple from his essays and a few from his fiction:

“Work is the health of love. To last, love must enflesh itself in the materiality of the world—produce food, shelter, warmth or shade, surround itself with careful acts, well-made things.” (The Unsettling of America)

“I do not believe that there is anything better to do than to make one’s marriage and household, whether one is a man or a woman.” (What are People For?)

Of a married couple: “What if they endured and suffered through so many years because, even failing each other, they loved each other?” (Jayber Crow)

“When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.” (Hannah Coulter)

“Sometimes too I could see that love is a great room with a lot of doors, where we are invited to knock and come in… Some come in and stay, until they die, and after… I am there with all the others, most of them gone but some who are still here, who gave me love and called forth love from me.” (Hannah Coulter)

And then we have Jayber Crow give voice to a conviction that runs through everything Berry saw and wrote:
“But earth speaks to us of Heaven, or why would we want to go there?”

Berry fanned the flame of our desire to live life to the full, here today, in the oh so ordinary. I think what moves me most is that his love for the things of this life did not obscure the bigger picture. These amazing words are on the lips of Jayber Crow:

“I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead. One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time. One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts. Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost. Finally a man stands up alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go. Now I am ready.”

Wendell, may you now know the full reality behind your words. I hope and pray you are ready. I like so many will miss your voice, even as I treasure it yet with us, calling us to remember. Who we are. Calling us back home. ~ ~ ~

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: DYING, DEATH, and LIFE in the HOME. Home is the natural place to die. (Happily, Wendell Berry died at his home.) How the elderly need us, and we need them, should give form and direction to every household—even if the elderly do not live with us right now. This lecture explores the amazing and surprising gift of God’s plan for growing old, dying, and death in the household. Find and share all our podcasts HERE.

Photo credit: detail from photo by Guy Mendes from a piece in The New Yorker

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.