Wendell Berry at AAR

On the way home from Carrot's wedding, Francisco and I stopped in Baltimore to see some of our dear friends and Wendell Berry. It was an interview with him, which isn't my favorite format (I always just think that I could do the interview better).

Sadly, although he was speaking to the American Academy of Religion, he still didn't talk enough about religion, except to say that religion should be talking less about heaven and more about how to live while you're on earth--it's about receiving the earth as a divine gift and taking care of it, it's about having "humility in the face of the mystery of the world," it's about gratitude, and it's about loving your neighbor and faking that love when you don't feel it. He advocates particularizing love--"it has got to wear a face."

He's clearly informed by his Christian upbringing, and talks about things in Christian terms, but he always changes the meaning of those terms--original sin refers to the bad things done by our predecessors, religious faith has to do (primarily? exclusively?) with the household economy, church going happens in nature (sounds like Emily Dickinson) and sanctity has to do with the land.

I do fully agree with Berry on heaven: "I always wanted to go there if I could have some choice in my entertainment." Let's just say, some pictures I've been given of heaven are more appealing than others. One of the best parts of his talk were the poems that he read (I don't think I've heard him read his poems before). Here's one that he read that sums up his hopes for heaven (everyone was on the verge of tears as he read, including Berry):

O saints, if I am even eligible for this prayer,
though less than worthy of this dear desire,
and if your prayers have influence in Heaven,
let my place there be lower than your own.
I know how you longed, here where you lived
as exiles, for the presence of the essential
Being and Maker and Knower of all things.
But because of my unruliness, or some erring
virtue in me never rightly schooled,
some error clear and dear, my life
has not taught me your desire for flight:
dismattered, pure, and free. I long
instead for the Heaven of creatures, of seasons,
of day and night. Heaven enough for me
would be this world as I know it, but redeemed
of our abuse of it and one another. It would be
the Heaven of knowing again. There is no marrying
in Heaven, and I submit; even so, I would like
to know my wife again, both of us young again,
and I remembering always how I loved her
when she was old. I would like to know
my children again, all my family, all my dear ones,
to see, to hear, to hold, more carefully
than before, to study them lingeringly as one
studies old verses, committing them to heart
forever. I would like again to know my friends,
my old companions, men and women, horses
and dogs, in all the ages of our lives, here
in this place that I have watched over all my life
in all its moods and seasons, never enough.
I will be leaving how many beauties overlooked?
A painful Heaven this would be, for I would know
by it how far I have fallen short. I have not
paid enough attention, I have not been grateful
enough. And yet this pain would be the measure
of my love. In eternity’s once and now, pain would
place me surely in the Heaven of my earthly love.

This poem made me wonder how place and particularity relate to heaven.

He also talked about politics, particularly a new farm bill that he and others are working on. This bothered my friends because here is Berry, the quintessential localist advocating big government regulation and universally applicable laws. I was just excited that he was talking about politics. However, his appeal to politics seems to be only a remediation when things go wrong--there isn't a proactive appeal to politics. At the end of the day, though, his conservatism comes through--he thinks we oughtn't despair, we oughtn't look for radical changes, we oughtn't overstate our ability to change things our selves. Rather, we need patience in an emergency.


(Wendell Berry elsewhere on this blog: his Jefferson lecture, Nick Offerman on Berry, Jayber Crow, A World Lost)