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Wendell Berry

The Gift of Good Land

by fred on July 6, 2009

Gentle Earth: Grayson Grazing

Gentle Earth: Grayson Grazing

None of the 100 directions my brain is going this morning seem suitable for a 300 word blog post. And so I resort to the thousand words a picture can conjure–in this case, one from last October’s Land Trust photo-sessions in Grayson County.

This shot was a peripheral–not intended for the piece we hoped to produce on the donation of land along the New River. But it grabbed my eye, more for the shadow than for the light, the way the umbra of a copse of trees spilled down across the meadow, like moon shadows on the snow. (Click for larger image and possible desktop picture!)

I had not worked on this image last fall, so discovering its untapped potential in July brought both the AHA! of discovery and the AH! of deep satisfaction–two strongly emotive reasons to keep one’s eyes open, to learn to see the compositions around us every hour, and to carry the camera, ready!

Title for this post is the title of one of the first books I ever read by Wendell Berry, who therein said among so many other things that grabbed my attention:

“I want to deal directly at last with my own long held belief that Christianity, as usually presented by its organizations, in not earthly enough . . . I want to see if there is not at least implicit in the Judeo-Christian heritage a doctrine such as that the Buddhists call ‘right livelihood’ or ‘right occupation.’

Being there on that gentle Grayson County pastureside with a camera, a good story of good Earth to be told and a beautiful October afternoon seemed very like “right occupation.” Still does.

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On Finding and Loving Nameless Creeks

by fred on April 15, 2009

Window View on Bowen Island near Vancouver, BC

Window View on Bowen Island near Vancouver, BC

I can be gratified, I suppose, that anyone half my age is thinking about what it means to belong to or in a place and why that matters, taking guidance from the South’s Mr. Wendell Berry.

It is especially a comfort and blessing when that someone who finds his own nameless creek is your son, now living in Missouri. Excerpt below is from Nathan’s blog, People’s Green. Some of you will understand his wondering and wandering and want to read it all.

…I realize that for the first time in a good while, I see relationship here: if not permanence, longevity.

I’m not used to seeing this in the Healing Spots I find.  Often enough I find Truth and Beauty in these places — Sublimity, even.  but never longevity.  Moving as much as I have, with my eye as fixated as it’s been on the Future (always elsewhere), my Healing Spots were places to be, but not to settle.

Wendell Berry would have a thing or two to say to me.  I have no doubt he would have some stern, fatherly words to share about my promiscuity of place these last twenty years — how quick I’ve been to say I “loved” the far-away nooks to which I’ve traveled or the communities I’ve dabbled in for a month or two, a year or two, at a time.   Like Bonhoeffer’s distaste for cheap grace, Berry has suffered little patience for cheap place or its shareholders.

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