Wendell Berry, by Robert Shetterly

Americans Who Tell the Truth Collection

Dear Mr. Wendell Berry, 

As I write you this letter, the New Year has barely started, yet it’s already ripe with questions: What is becoming of nature? Of human nature? Of our power—to heal and be real? 

I am thinking here of all these natural disasters. How, in the face of death and fragility, these tragedies translate into politics, big business and black markets.

I am thinking, too, of all these wars, televised or forgotten, collective or intimate. Against others, other ideas, other ways of life. Against freedom and mystery. Against homemaking and fidelity. Against time. Against life. Against ourselves, our common sense and our integrity. 

But, most of all, I am thinking of this plague that so easily reaches every corner of our public and private lives, that is, the lost of faith in our caretaking role and powers. Or, turned around but one and the same: the taking for granted of the world within and outside us – our health and senses, our loved ones and loved places, our democracies and communities, and, most of all, our humaneness.

Yet, refreshing questions seem to be sprouting from all this sterility. Questions we seem to be asking ourselves more and more. Questions I truly feel have the power to move mountains inside our hearts and communities. Questions working like fertile soil, nourishing the seed of our conscience and will power. Truly inspiring questions about what to do and especially how to be in this world, with this world. Spiritual and practical questions.

And I wanted to thank you for asking these questions. Finding the courage, the faith and the care to do so. The more I read your work, the better I seem to understand the words wealth, health, knowledge, faith, culture, agriculture. And, the more I recognize the full meaning of these words under your pen, the more I realize how often these words are used, elsewhere, to mean exactly their opposite. 

Thank you for your caring use of words. Thank your for your generous heart and art. You have this way of working like the earth, taking in all that is inspiring, beautiful, sacred but also all that is rotten, empty, destructive and transforming it all, refertilizing it into conscience, poetry and hope. Your words inspire me to garden these troubled times and to sow in them dreams and details of joy, of care, of hope, no matter what.