Wendell Berry - Essays on Thinking Green - Session 3 of 4

Amazon Link

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him." —The Washington Post Book World

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes—an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography—these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture.

Why is agriculture becoming culturally irrelevant, and at what cost? What are the forces of social disintegration and how might they be reversed? How might men and women live together in ways that benefit both? And, how does the corporate takeover of social institutions and economic practices contribute to the destruction of human and natural environments?

Through his staunch support of local economies, his defense of farming communities, and his call for family integrity, Berry emerges as the champion of responsibilities and priorities that serve the health, vitality and happiness of the whole community of creation.

 

Wendell Berry's Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

Sep 11, 2017

* * * * * * * * *

• Week 1 - 9/9: "A Native Hill," "The Unsettling of America," "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine," "Think Little"

• Week 2 - 9/16: "The Body and the Earth," "Men and Women in Search of Common Ground," "Health is Membership," "People, Land, and Community" 

• Week 3 - 9/23: "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community," "Conservation and Local Economy," "Economy and Pleasure," "Two Economies," "The Whole Horse" 

• Week 4 - 9/30: "The Idea of a Local Economy," "Solving for Pattern," "The Gift of the Good Land," "Christianity and the Survival of Creation," "The Pleasures of Eating"

* * * * * * * * *

Prof. Michael Stevens, Ph.D

SESSION 3

WENDELL BERRY'S AGRARIAN ESSAYS

by Michael Stevens

Course: #12-The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, with Michael Stevens, 

Professor Stevens has revised the essays we will discuss this week:

Week 3 - 9/23: "People, Land, and Community," "Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community," "Conservation and Local Economy," "Economy and Pleasure," "Two Economies," "The Whole Horse"

* * * * * * * * *

If any reader wishes to help me by editing the transcription below so that it may be

fitted into-and-around the graphics above it would be appreciated. Once done please 

email me with your work so that it may be published and replace what I have here

transcribed by actual lecture without edit. Thank you. - re slater

TRANSCRIPTION

by Michael Stevens

September 23, 2021

3.1

Unknown 0:04

So, you guys are wondering what I'm doing I'm hearing Sonia and my earpiece. So, the online, online students can hear me better and I'm going to be able to hear them but you may think I'm just talking randomly and it was like, weirdly, so this is the voice she has the little voice in my head at this, at this point today, which is a good, a good voice. So here we are in session three continuing to, as often happens with the syllabus, try to make up your own from Session Two while also looking ahead to portion of what was going to be a session for and somebody just, you know, it's all it's all of a piece in the best kind of way, so hopefully we can continue to just work on the different themes and see the different iterations and the different essays, and so I didn't want to leave the body in there, maybe I should have from for somewhat dangerous terrain this particular essay, but we've got a, we've got to go ahead and follow through on what we did in voting the earth and it's also super long and if you work through it we don't want to just skip over it and so we left off right at this point here where he's talking about the decay of the household.

Unknown 1:08

And, of, you know the economy or the household law that the economy of the family, and what it's how it's, how it's damaged the role for women, as well as for men and he's, he's, he's cautious and I think, why is to say, men had already kind of abandoned household economy but I think in that work was only about breadwinning out on the outside right and then and then through this long process. Any role within the household seems to have kind of like gotten blown up by cultural convention so you can see a couple of the phrases here and this is one of those saying them so whatever you kind of think about it, we're kind of laying that out there as kind of part of his argument degenerate husk housewifery is in indivisible from degenerate husbandry. So, and he has, he always uses husbandry not only being a husband in a household right, but it's also the word use for the farmer, animal husbandry, the husband being of the of the vines and so on.

Unknown 2:03

There's not escaped, both men and women would be found to be suffering for the same reason. They are in exile from the communion of men and women, which is their deeper connection with the communion of all creatures what's interesting, but an interesting idea that culturally, many people maybe most people are an exile from their communion with each other and from with the world at large, right. So we're living our lives we don't like I'm not an exile I'm here every day in this life and in my house and in my job and. And yet, the things that we should most attend to in our house were free and husbandry right in our, in our, in our tending to the household are not really part of our lives at all. Yeah.

Unknown 2:50

So this is at 111 of body and the earth, sorry about that we're selling about in the earth so yeah let's see my page numbers I don't know your screens are not here.

Unknown 2:58

So, I noticed Sonia that the big screen going up is that okay. But the focus here they can't really see my screen.

Unknown 3:05

I didn't notice that until you said that I just kind of like turned around. So that might be a technical difficulty.

Unknown 3:13

Okay, that's my

Unknown 3:18

like voices and.

Unknown 3:23

You're doing great. You're doing great.

Unknown 3:27

Oh, okay.

Unknown 3:31

Sure. Hold on, you got it. Sure. So I was just talking to the undergrads this morning you know that to understand, to understand household is something different than your house, or even just all the people living there and maybe a couple of pets and so on. But as the primary unit by which we live and engage with the world.

Unknown 3:55

Because I think that activation of household is, is kind of like a little bit disorienting sometimes because household seems very passive, it's, it's the place you go back to you retreat from life, you have your entertainment pods or something like that. And it's, it's not a plan. It's not a plan like way of approaching the world, household it's more, it's more retreat center and so I think he's got it sets as a fuller, richer vision of household and part of that is because the Farm Household and his household with farming and writing and everything that they did, they all do it together. At this point now both of his children and a number of his grandchildren are like farming and working together within the same county, and he sees it as this extended image of family and neighbor, doing, doing the work that they most deeply believe in tried to try to it's a little tough I was talking this morning I my own daughter is in the senior capstone class here so I talk about my visions for household. You always know when you got one of your kids you know that there's a little check upon your idealism, like so it's like there wasn't anything like what I just described your mission to master right.

Unknown 5:03

Yes, I think we're right on it. Thank you sister, so she was kind of like yeah I think that's kind of what you want it to do that, you know, so. But, once, once in a while having your own kids in class.

Unknown 5:46

This is quite strange.

Unknown 5:50

Some people think I'm show favoritism the claims have destroyed your GPA, I would have had them in English professor she sent me a few times my older son having a bunch of times. My youngest son has me right now for the one time who will ever have me in college, which he. I know he wanted to avoid but it was not, not to be avoided and there's a long conversation there but, you know, I'm always, I'm always aware of like I talked about the ideals of of household and trying to do things together, you know, we live in the city of Grand Rapids a little city land zone we've tried to approach things kind of kind of culturally. You got to check with your kids is that was that of your vibe of what was going on or did you just feel like you were denied things or something like that or denied TV or something but she was pretty informational this morning.

Unknown 6:30

She owes me auto insurance money so maybe she was just being nice to me because there's no okay so whatever. Okay. I'm not saying.

Unknown 6:36

So you seen without the household and hearing, hearing kind of parses it out, not just as a unifying ideal, but as as practical circumstances, mutual dependence and obligation, requiring skill moral discipline and work and mutual dependence and obligation okay that sounds like parents and kids independent each other as spouses and kids in their skill moral discipline work it's like, oh, in what way am I approaching, how we live together and do do our lives together in this in this place in space, am I. Is there, is there a sense of purpose, a sense of shared labors towards some end, do we practice hospitality, not as a random people in dating, because that's what we want to do and we have a we have a vision for how we want to be towards the other challenges we have championed for years to try to be more coherent at a household, and to build my skills and my disciplines as, as a husband. Husband.

Unknown 7:36

So, husband and wife find it less and less possible to imagine an inactive marriage when, when there's nothing like that there. When it's simply the place we go back to from our jobs and protect the kids from wherever it becomes I think

Unknown 7:51

walking around my neighborhood, especially after dark, which is coming pretty soon in my evening walks you know it was in bright sunlight a couple months ago and now it's like it's in the twilight, or in 30 dark out when I'm walking around, is that it seems like for a lot of a lot of homes, set that become large entertainment pods, you know the gigantic screen TV just rushing through the windows and so on, but maybe multiple TVs and kids going in the rooms and so on. And there's nobody who has teenagers who don't have the kids retreat to the room so I understand that completely right.

Unknown 8:19

And maybe the household is just become a place of mutual isolation, you know that's the thing you wouldn't want to happen.

Unknown 8:25

I love it. I don't like it but I love it when my youngest son who's into music and plays in the worship bands in the chapel is doing his drum kit restoration I'm still waiting for the Grenadines police to show up.

Unknown 8:38

Thank you, people across the street have not yet thought that it was a sufficient. I've had to shut him down a couple of times when it's past 11pm And everyone actually had already gone to bed, and it began to play up there, but you know I wanted to I like them. I like to hear what he's doing. I like to hear you know I enjoy I said I enjoyed hearing you play that I enjoyed the music I enjoy here and, you know what's going on that we're sort of here together.

Unknown 9:04

When that's not there then, a lot of other things kind of fall asunder. I don't think anybody needs to.

Unknown 9:09

It needs to like make a surprising point that marriages in America and the United States in the developed world are problematic. A lot of households aren't even rooted in marriage and many marriages, half of marriages end in divorce and so you're, you're wondering okay what's the cause of that. He looks to household and if there's not a vision for that, what, what's the unifying idea, so that he keeps keeps rolling with this and that he is getting these things not through these next few like quickly and so on but he makes the claim and makes it you know this is trying to link together a bunch of things between our bodies, and the Earth itself and all human institutions between agriculture and

Unknown 10:27

culture. So I'm gonna kind of just follow him where he flies right where this, where this airplane is going to.

Unknown 10:35

And, you know, talking about I think we're aware also that sexual displacement or sexual sexual energy being used in ways that are not unified or not, not rooted in houses of commitment, going all kinds of wild directions. Here's what he said about the division of sexual energy from the functions of household and community that it ought to both Empower into grace, that was an interest I liked. I liked that sexual energy within household right you know brings forth life and it bonds spouses together but also graces the household is analogous to the other modern division between hunger and the earth, I'm not sure I understood that claim so I just am going to request that one. Okay. When it is no longer allied by proximity and analogy.

Unknown 11:18

Due to the nurturing disciplines that bound the household to the recycling of fertility and the seasons, life and death. Then sexual love loses its symbolic or ritualistic force its deepest solemnity and high highest joy. I had to step back from that sense for a long time and ponder what was going on there.

Unknown 11:38

And actually ran this one by my oldest son who was like in a conversation with a couple of young guys who are kind of like I've kind of left the faith and become kind of New Atheists or whatever agnostics. And one of the conversations about sex and sexuality and sexual identity that's being held there which is the conversation everywhere among young people.

Unknown 11:54

And I said, one of the things, it's interesting, is human sexuality within kind of a biblical framework. It seems to be rooted with life, they bring. That's how life. That's how human life comes into the world, although there might be like in vitro or test it, you know, there might be other, but human sexuality tied in with when that's divorced from life and divorce, I'm not sure about the seasons, because you may get different analogies there and so on and I'm not, I'm not exactly sure how far to run with it.

Unknown 12:25

But and when it loses its symbolic or ritualistic force that this is meaning of full of life, you can understand why he would, he would ponder, Human Sexuality, doing, doing any harm more than good. I spent three years in a Ph D program that a Roman Catholic institution done in Irving, Texas University of Dallas a Cistercian school.

Unknown 12:47

Great Ph D program I loved it.

Unknown 12:50

It was the first time I really got deeply engaged with Catholic social teaching.

Unknown 12:55

And then when you show up there and you're a young married couple. We just got married and moved to Texas A couple days later, we bought a K car without winning money we had no vehicle we had no furniture. We bought a K car in Berkshire in New York. Maybe I should have thought you're moving to Texas in August, it'd be good to have a vehicle to air conditioning but hey, the price was right. The price was right, we were also moving with a cat that was given to my wife as a wedding gift from one of our childhood friends. I wouldn't suggest that I like when I love cats and I still love cats but that move.

Unknown 13:26

And we drove down there and it but I remember being really intrigued by the teaching of, you know, teaching from Vatican to the Pepo encyclical humanity take about openness to life, not just against abortion and so on, but an openness to life and sort of Catholic teaching of the couple of a couple of weeks about being open to life, Rather than feeling like that's something that we should control, which, which we do, Christian and non Christian right through culture of contraception. So that was the first time that conversation was ever brought to me and, and I remain, remain intrigued by the conversation, I think there's a lot more thoughtfulness in Catholic circles about that concept in Protestant circles, frankly, about what what's going on with our sexuality and what's going on with fertility and what's going on with bringing, bringing life into the world. There's a lot of shared conversation about the pro life movement but it often simply is really aimed at the anti abortion movement, rather than.

Unknown 14:24

So anyway, say that what I was saying here, really sparked in my mind that conversation some of the things I had read about how sexuality has a kind of symbolic force of life given that is rooted in certainly Pope John Paul the Second was the most articulate person I think about that if you read even jelly and VJ some of his writings around the turn of the 20th century.

Unknown 14:51

I can't remember what were a couple or a couple folks cast him because Pope Benedict retired right so there's another pope and then in between that Pope Francis.

Unknown 14:58

It's an interesting thing. Each year I take students down to Notre Dame in November for the center of ethics and culture there.

Unknown 15:04

They have a fall conference I've done this probably 15 Out of the 20 years they've got the conference. And you get to you recognize they're in a in a think tank at the leading Catholic university in the country, maybe the world, that takes Catholicism seriously, you realize there's a whole nother set of conversations about human sexuality needs and what these kids have been heard in youth group, or from, you know, their whatever context. And it's kind of mind blowing and it leads to really great conversations, which obviously in describing that I'm trying to avoid those conversations in this context and just kind of move, you know, move around and run them but I think I think there's something in what he's saying, I'm not exactly sure I can parse out the full level of it. And the, the sort of farm. The farm season for imagery of it.

Unknown 15:47

But I find something. There's something probably to that and certainly when you hear someone say sexuality divorced from being life giving and simply about pleasure and so on actually changes the dynamic, even within marriage, that's an interesting, that's an interesting conversation to have. When I had many times in my, in my time it's interesting sometimes to be on the other side of things as a, as a Protestant and a Catholic University. In grad undergrad program, sort of trying to articulate my belief system and so on and so forth Oregon set. It was interesting to be in the minority right and try to understand what I was thinking and believing and so on. Also had a really great class called reformation thought taught from a Roman Catholic perspective, That sort of like, kind of thought Martin Luther was a good guy. At the time he thought Calvin was a good guy right and that's like what happened here.

Unknown 16:36

I will also say this just anecdotally because it kind of plays upon southern thinkers. If Windows a Southern writer, which we think he is right.

Unknown 16:47

The first, my first session at that graduate program was a debate, I showed up as a graduate student in the faculty there's a debate, and is the first time I heard somebody completely trashing Abraham Lincoln.

Unknown 16:59

I didn't think that was allowed, you're allowed to do that is the old Southern, he was his name is Melvin Bradford, a southern literary scholar, son of the Confederate veterans, you know this, and he's like Lincoln was a tyrant. He was a suspender habeas corpus so some of these things are true, they might but I like, is there going to be is this roof going to come down on our heads right now, or you let us say that about it. But anyway, different vantage points and perspectives as I said, kind of.

Unknown 17:26

So background to this let's keep, let's keep rolling with body and earth I think I'm more comfortable on this ground, I think, which is fun, sexual fidelity, one of one of the various most important words and it's actually the name of a set of historians called fidelity, five stories by Wendell Berry and fidelity is that, you know keeping to your covenant to your commitment.

Unknown 17:51

And so there within that context as he says here and maybe the difference, we'll have sexual fidelity. Once it is again fully understood, will provide us with as good

Unknown 18:32

examples we can find the responsible use of energy. That was one of those leaps were like are we talking about coal and oil here what do we get from there to there right so he's trying to piece together there's sexual energy to being faithful to that energy, are we faithfully utilizing the resources of other energies like okay, that's an interesting kind of analogy, by experiment. Sexuality is after all a form of energy, one of the most powerful.

Unknown 18:56

If we see sexuality as energy then it becomes impossible to see sexual fidelity as merely a duty of virtue for the sake of virtue or a superstition. So, obviously he's also, you know you're not just articulating this to people who are already fairly, You know, committed to the idea that too many for whom the idea of sexual fidelity is kind of an old fashioned notion that we are going to have much to do with right.

Unknown 19:20

So, and I think.

Unknown 19:22

Doesn't it feel like the Uber theme is there for him right irresponsible and reckless use of all different gifts and resources, whether it be our sexuality, or fossil fuels, or farmland is just the modern way to secure responsible reckless use sort of get what you can and don't expect a whole lot of relationship in that sort of use and use and move on, that use of resources of all sorts, gets to surprising places in his argument but I think that the big point is well taken.

Unknown 20:00

It's always also apparent his lament, as you see here, Irresponsible sexuality would undermine any possibility of culture, sets an implies a hierarchy based purely upon group strength cutting, regardless of value and consequence.

Unknown 20:14

I think probably know when you live in a culture that's, that's fairly just questions of responsibility with regard to sexuality are very broad and broad based and very kind of loose culturally, you can understand that things like household. Marriage household, local, local commitments neighborliness and so on, all gets sort of like compromised in the bargain and they all get sort of broken down and, and, yeah, it's, there's a, there's a lot of interesting sidelights to think about that, like I said I'm often in the presence of like 20 and 21 year olds who are not quite married don't really like to be married and start thinking about these issues and so on, it's kind of broadcasting sort of forward, why, why sexual fidelity is such a crucial aspect of life, and not simply just, you know one way to approach.

Unknown 21:16

Pleasure.

Unknown 21:18

You know, those are some novel and I think it's really important conversations to have.

Unknown 21:24

So we've made a lake I can't remember exactly where we started body America we've somewhere we have gone from the farm to farm lifes to marriage

Unknown 21:49

to sexuality to sexual energy to the energy crisis and we're making.

Unknown 21:55

I think we're connecting the body and the earth culture in agriculture in a number of disparate ways here.

Unknown 22:01

Here's a kind of what I call it grand Confluence if it if it's all coming together for Wendell, I think it all kind of comes together along these lines

Unknown 22:16

between our relationship.

Unknown 22:55

Bar on sexuality in relation to the productivity of the earth, for instance, okay. The resemblance is plain and strong and apparently inescapable by some connection we do not recognize the willingness to exploit one becomes a willingness to exploit the other so I think this is, I think we just kind of talked about this, if you're willing to just say this gift or whatever it is I don't see it as gift but just something to be used for pleasure, for the moment, without, without consequences or responsibility. If you do it over here, you'll do it with all kinds of different aspects of life. It's just a way of approaching life.

Unknown 23:27

To just see when he brings up this yes which I'm just doing in a couple of weeks and one of my other classes from the Odyssey.

Unknown 23:35

When he comes home, when Odysseus comes home to Africa. And that to his wife Penelope after 20 years away, that his homecoming was part of a complex practical circumstance involving in addition to husband and wife memory tradition countryside and earth, he comes back to his marriage but also to a whole a household, a way of life, a place, and, and the idea here is that Homer sees it as the marriage itself is one of a number of unfolding circles of commitments infidelities that Odysseus returns to along the way as to kill like 300 other guys who are who are trying to woo his wife and all kinds of all kinds of grim and bloody things happen.

Unknown 24:16

I did come up with a visual on that one. An extremely romanticized vision of a debt on this yes and Penelope having a kiss.

Unknown 24:25

And they don't look Middle Aged here but they must have met someone middle aged or he's been away for 20 years. And then, this version of the veteran member the way he actually clarifies his identity to her and she's quite suspicious, is that he knows that their bed is actually hewn from a living tree right in their bedroom and only he had ever been in the bedroom right. And so that image and I think Barry really likes that image as well the marriage bed is actually part of the agricultural landscape of the of the home right it's part of the tune from history.

Unknown 24:57

I'm not sure if this is exactly in front here this is the closest image I could find. I don't know if that's like some California executives bedroom or what that is, by the way, whose house that is somebody like the Odyssey at one point but it's like, I don't think an English professor can afford that.

Unknown 25:13

So, he says here and it's interesting talking about agriculture and culture and all these things where human beings are involved in using appropriate ways and often inappropriate ways, It comes back around to wildness, the boundary,

Unknown 25:38

beyond the human right.

Unknown 25:41

It just been reading through his great essay, walking, that was published after his death, and throw waxes, eloquent about going for a walk in the woods, life consists with wildness, the most alive is the wildness. In short, all good things are wild and free.

Unknown 25:59

Understand, he's not like at the edge of. He's not at the edge of the known world or anything he's in a he's at a pond, one mile from time, but to be out in nature of some sort. Outside of the human touch, good, bad or ugly strikes him as something extremely rejuvenated for throw it puts the human back into a place and it's one of the very great fan of throw suggests often that we, we want wilderness to be these national parks and things that we set aside and so on but we're always we humans always constrain those things in other words they only exist because they're inside the bandwidth of what humans have made them into a park and so on. Wendell often says the real wilderness you should think about is the hedgerow by your house and someone keep that part while keep the little standard woods behind your house wild but keep this little part of campus keep that little Nature Preserve wild all around you where you live, not just Glacier National Park which is a good place. But where you are.

Unknown 26:58

So he says, the most dangerous tendency in modern society now rapidly emerging as a scientific industrial ambition is the tendency toward encapsulation of human order.

Unknown 27:10

The severance once and for all of the umbilical cord fastening as to wilderness, and the creation you knew there was going to be an umbilical cord imagery coming in here somewhere because the nature of the conversation, right. So, why do we need the wilderness and it's an interesting question, why do we need the why, why do you need a little standard woods to walk it. Why do you need a little nature trail.

Unknown 27:31

Why do we still need trees around us, why do you still need a garden plot, You can crawl around and as I was doing the other day, you're not the last of the dried beans.

Unknown 27:41

Chuck, what does that do for us.

Unknown 27:45

Yeah.

Unknown 27:48

Yeah, and look how it goes to his last word wilderness orbit to the creation right and I think I was talking to another audience about window in a different context and not necessarily from a Christian background, and, like, What Is he is he an Eastern mystic or what exactly there's some elements of that right and where is he coming from and so on is definitely using the term creation, which implies creator right and which implies, at least an extent of this is, this is made on purpose, and whether to design.

Unknown 28:20

So that he's, he's consistent with that from the very beginning to the end of his writings, but it's creational.

Unknown 28:28

Does he have a vision of other aspects of the other essays might indicate you know that it's, you could call it what you wanted to call it that or, you know the great economy, whatever you want to say but it's clearly not a random occurrence for him. And I think you're right, it puts you.

Unknown 28:42

That's, that's the appropriate humility. I think that you get in the presence of oak trees or a forest, is that you are, you're part of something way bigger than yourself. Yes.

Unknown 28:55

Can you repeat questions to my repeat so I mentioned the image and what does it remind us of to go into wild and when one of our students said that it God's in control of these things and we talked about that it's really the created order.

Unknown 29:11

In other words, go ahead.

Unknown 29:19

Yeah.

Unknown 29:28

Yeah.

Unknown 29:31

Yeah. Why did you cut down all the rest of the white times. Yeah.

Unknown 29:36

Yeah, no I think so. Yeah, I think that you're right, I mean that's, That's one of the few standards so no Steve mentioned going to Hartwick pines and kind of encountering God among the way the last standard white pine trees.

Unknown 29:51

After the rats got clear cut for Michigan right for the lumber industry, you kind of recognize what's how God is present in such a magisterial thing and also why don't we cut the rest of them down. Right, so at the same figure on both sides of Wendell Berry's tension of this is glorious and splendid what happened to the rest of the world they built, Chicago or whatever. No, I think you're Hartwick pines and then I mentioned it last. Warren. Warren Woods State Park with the unblemished standard Eastern hardwood forest that was not cut down in the 19th century over by Warren dunes, those two places to go to Michigan.

Unknown 30:29

I don't know if God dwells in trees, but certainly God's splendor he originally shone through these forests but is still available in less than one micro form.

Unknown 30:39

And I've never been to the redwood forest or something like that but I can only imagine. You just are. I mean if you can even get your mind around it. The, the nature of what's, what is there and it's been alive for 1000 years or whatever and it's, it's best. I did, I did read my colleague is reading a book about fungus.

Unknown 30:58

Kelly got onto again I'll put in a blurb for its Frasca food class he's going to do with call which is really the largest living thing in the world, appears to be a gigantic underground fungus in Oregon. It's like a 300 square mile rhizomatic fungal growth that's all one living thing I don't think, but who discovered it, I have no idea. And how do you even know how big it is, I must use like sonar and so and so, put in a plug for fungus, you know that there's that's even miraculous even though it's not quite as pleasant as a beautiful pine tree that think about the fungus it's there's a, there's another miracle in there too, right. Yeah, the created order kind of brings us back in some way away from all that we've done to just what we are, which is both a little lower than the angels, but also small and humble within the great cosmos created order things.

Unknown 32:23

I'm gonna just, I just looked into contraception on just for today just for looking for.

Unknown 32:53

So I just skipped over I'm not just jump over that one.

Unknown 32:56

I think we're about.

Unknown 33:21

Yeah, I'm going to go here, And then we can talk about body inner

Unknown 34:09

by way of solutions so there's a lot of great stuff and obviously it was a great long essay, but I'm going to go here, as the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work.

Unknown 34:23

There is work that is isolated harsh destructive specialized or trivializing meaninglessness. Many of us have had those jobs, we often tell your teenagers hey that's, that's life. That's the job you have, okay just go do that.

Unknown 34:36

Get your kids really Marx's communist manifesto about wage slavery or something like that that's what's available to you. And there is work that is restorative convivial huge for him, shared with others joyfully dignified and dignified pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections but the act of conventions in his living. And a way of living.

Unknown 34:58

And then he says we are working well when we use ourselves as the fellow creatures. When we use ourselves as the fellow creatures of the plants, animals materials and other people were working with such work as unifying healing. What do you make of this distinction here. It's not just maintaining connections inax connections. It's, it's, it is living in a way of living, what's he, what's he getting.

Unknown 35:23

Why is it work that he comes back around to which he often does actually anybody. Yes.

Unknown 36:16

Yes.

Unknown 36:23

committee work committees that are good, that's a good healthy committee, there can also make committees do it for no apparent purpose maybe academic committees for no clear purpose that go on for years but I think. So the idea was being in the church and being on a committee with people and working on a task, you, you discover the nature of community with them and I think. Yeah, and shared labor towards some end instead of just, you know, culture of being judged in information and going our separate way right that we've done something together seems something really. I mean, literally essential in work when he says it is living. I mean that's as existential as you get right there. It's, I don't think he could separate our engagement with the world without some kind of laboring and laboring together in community, that brings satisfaction, which, which probably for a lot of people in the world. That is not what comes to mind when they talk of work, or think of work.

Unknown 37:24

He talks about work is drudgery work is I hate my job, you know, just work in a job you hate just to get two weeks of vacation a year or whatever just can't wait to retire or where work that demeans as our work that we, you know, is a competitive kind of jungle of Darwinian all those other visions that we're in, I read his vision of work and I'm just like man I want that too. That sounds really awesome, and I was saying to the students this morning who are kind of like not really haven't begun their vocational journeys beyond being college students.

Unknown 37:51

You can, you can discover find help to create work that's really satisfying.

Unknown 37:58

You don't have to just grind it out.

Unknown 38:01

Sometimes you do have to grind it out I said that's the dad and me talking to them right yeah sometimes you do have to grind it out right. But you can discover or be a part of that and if you can't find it help to create professions jobs, nonprofit organizations service, whatever it could be because there's always tasks that need to be done for the sake of the other. Yeah.

Unknown 38:34

Yeah. Interesting, so highly. So mentioned of the Amish. The Amish, looking at work as the fabric of existence right and the thing to be embraced rather than disdained as you kind of go on to have pleasure. And I know, I know window, he's got several essays about Amish farmers one family David Klein's family and their his, his sons are Amish guys who do a podcast I didn't know that was happening when those been on their podcast they have German accent and so on. It's like what are they doing a fuckup. But he's written about David Klein who who wrote about the Amish life and was a friend of Windows.

Unknown 39:09

He says the 60 acre Amish farm kind of broken up property so that the parents and the different kids and son in law's daughter's in laws will have these like 60 Acre Farms adjoining he sees as the perfect scope and scale for shared work and labor that is self sufficient.

Unknown 39:28

I think you need, you need a whole family of those smaller farms and maybe some people who achieve in some doing this over here, but together creating, And the workers shared the labor issue.

Unknown 39:39

We went to do my mom's trailer up on the hillside in rural upstate New York was like she the skirting of the trailer was all messed up and so on. So I went out there and I got some of my kids and different nephews and nieces, and we were going to do Tyvek wrap all around the big data for trailer. You're in the country so you can just have it say tied back on the side of it you just leave it there, Nobody cares right so doesn't have to be.

3.2

Unknown 0:06

care. We want to do my mom's trailer up on the hillside in rural upstate New York was like she the skirting of the trailer was all messed up and so and so went out there and I got some of my kids and different nephews and nieces, and we were going to do tight back wrap all around the base of her trailer, you're in the country so you can just have it say tight back on the side of it and just leave it there and nobody cares right so doesn't have to be in a call that are on another Amish Amish barn raising but our Amish trailer wrapping party, right, so we're going to do this together and somebody put me in charge, which led to great chaos and then let's talk about using tools, even a stapler or a power stapler could get crazy. So yeah, it was in the shared labor was the joy, and I haven't seen these puppies nephews and nieces who are all grown up and have like boyfriends and you're like, what's going on here. You know, and the awkward Uncle, you can use the nicknames that the kids had like five years ago because that's what uncles do right you're using the nickname when they were 12 and they're like, don't call me, said I just thought that's what I always do, but we shared that labor. It was good for my mom's trailer but if we felt good to just with with my family, etc, eating and bingeing on all this home ground beef and so on to my, my brother in law. But in the meantime we got to do this work together. It was good, yes.

Unknown 1:30

Yeah, family drama. Yeah, we're like family owned business drama or something like that. Yeah, I definitely, I know my daughter worked for a long time, family owned business here in Grand Rapids and the some of the daughter's at her age are just like I'm getting out of this place right now too much family drama. I want to separate family from from working so Okay, so, yeah, how do you find that it's interesting with the farm life. Everybody had their own farm. They would come together to work at certain seasons tobacco crop being when he talks about, and then they had their own kind of private labors and there was kind of, he never I don't ever hear Wendell Berry talking about like the commune, I just met a couple folks from a Bruderhof in New York State, who are here in Grand Rapids over the weekend, you live in, you know, it's a very honorable Christian community, all his work all the work is shared, of all things are held in common, and it's like a big collective community farm labor usually, you can see a lot more strife and you can't retreat anywhere. And I don't know if like, everybody raises everyone else's kids you could just see different things, possibly because I do think there's a certain amount of private space that's needed, I mean marriage household has its own kind of Nexus, apart from the whole farm community you don't all live in the same house together. So I think there's, there's a wisdom in there it'd be interesting to parse that out or ask him what what do you think about why is it that your son and your daughter and son in law his son and daughter in law and your grandkids have separate farms and come together once in a while that may apply. So that's a good thing, right, because they need their own space as well but I'm not against family on businesses and so on, it always, It always seems like it works for some members of the family and others are like I want to get as far away from that as possible so I you know that's that'd be an interesting challenge maybe there's certainly an ideal that's being articulated here. I talked to a guy about Wendell Berry once who's like, I did tobacco harvesting once and got the tobacco poisoning on my arms, which apparently it's very, very toxic resins and was like unconscious and so on and I hate to his view of the tobacco harvest was this horrifying, it was like wait a minute I was reading the story. How can that be, how can that be true. So, yeah I hear you and that's it, that's a great question, Jerry, it's, it can sometimes. Is there such a thing as too much community. Possibly because it stops being community to a certain point and becomes something different just kind of like stepping on each other's toes. Yes, yes, go ahead. So in this image on.

Unknown 4:18

Yeah, I'd like to comment from Bob reitsma Regarding community, he says, very returns again and again to connections and it seems for him, that we've lost essential connections to ourselves, each other in the world so the main focus in work marriage farming etc, is maintaining the connections we have and restoring the connections we have lost.

Unknown 4:38

Yeah that's a good, everybody here that was I just found that everybody heard that okay so yeah, um, connection, kind of his to loot several times that the created order of things as a web of connections that humans have done a pretty good job of like putting the web and this crushing it down and so, to our own detriment, and two together connections to be connected with play place with a neighbor with the natural order of things, dare I even say with the skunk that appears to live under my basement right now, or under my activated basement and to be connected with the order of how things work and the birds that come in here and birds that drive your other birds away from the bird feeder right and I know there's invasive species. And I know starlings aren't supposed to be here or how sparrows are garlic mustard or kudzu vines and I don't know what to do with that necessarily that's displacement things, things in a place where they weren't meant to be, but, but, yeah, to get to regain connections, which is incredibly hard to do in America I found, I've a pretty congenial guy who really is interested in neighborliness, and I've been part of my neighborhood association so I'm just there's some people just don't want you to be like this. Keep your space for me, please. And you feel thwarted, even in efforts in the neighborhood association level the Northeast neighborhood association I've been part of for many years. Nika, up on the northeast side of Grand Rapids, you'll try to do, no matter what you try to do neighborly always some percentage will just be like we hate what you're doing. Why are you doing this, they're just said wait a minute, but you know, 80% of people love this, this was a great year. Well, we hate it. Please never do it again right so you, you get a little bit of the feeling of the difficulty of of connecting in a highly individualistic culture but you got to keep trying. This is the volume, I love the cover of the book, it's a book that came out from the very center, a couple years ago. It was a set of photographs taken by Mrs Barry Tania, in the late 70s, maybe early 70s at a, at their hog killing, which is the time I believe in November when it's cold enough outside and they bring all the hogs together, And they started in eighth and they basically process the port for the winter. In the book is called for the hacking, that's actually Wendell Berry son then holding the butcher knife. I just thought it looks like it's a, it looks like a cover of like a seven B's B grade horror movie, you know, Texas Chainsaw Texas how killing massacre or something like this, but it's fun, I only got a couple of images on here but it's full of photographs of shared work, especially among the intergenerational. Here you see a bunch of the old farmers. As you begin to think about Windows fiction you know he kind of basis a lot of characters, you're wondering who is that guy is that they're they're really cool, you know, is this guy over here is that would that be helpful, but it shows them but not only do the hogs, but there's a couple of other sticky, if you get a chance to look through the images in the book, they sit down to dinner after washing up granted after washing up afterwards. The whole thing is a day long event shit with shared dinner the, the, there's different tasks for different people, kids are doing it, men, men are doing some things the ladies are doing some things the kids are doing some things everyone's involved with fixing he's got like a 1946 Chevy parked out back there right. And there's a sense of, I mean, we all, I mean many people like bacon. I think too much about her bacon count, you know, they kind of like, it's the work that allows us to get to baking, but we also enjoy doing it together in a set of photographs and then mando wrote an essay for the book actually something that you would think nobody wouldn't like to do and is really gross and has ever called Reading. Laura Ingalls Wilder, or maybe Rose Wilder Lane laying her daughter's novels. She was super grossed out by this actual event and putting the sausage together right which I can understand that. But there's something communal in it the shared work is something he seems to be getting at. Alright, that's kind of, we're sort of at the end of the body of the Earth, I don't know if we should even ask the question Did he bring the body on the earth together but he brought a lot of interesting things together I still go to the essay has some of his great lines I think he's his most earnest, maybe the closest thing for window trying to do a philosophy, which he says I can't do philosophy I don't, I don't have a system, I'm not a systematic thinker. Maybe that's an error. It's a philosophy without a system but I do a lot of good in there. Any ideas or questions, you know keep bringing bring them forward I thought we'd go into health this membership this next essay. I really love this one. I love that name of it. I'm sure like don't judge a book by its cover, sometimes you judge an essay just by its cover, you know her by its title writer or novelist. This one goes into health much on our minds as we get older, health was not much on my mind when I was 20

Unknown 9:38

health becomes more on your mind and your engagement with the world of industrialized healthcare becomes more profound. Once you have to see medical doctors and go to hospitals and do different things. And we've all felt some of the things that he describes here I thought it was. It was, it was a profound take on not just medical health but all the other things that are involved in what, what it means to be healthier whole our sense of wholeness is not just the sense of completeness in ourselves, but also the sense of belonging to others into our place that could have come out of like a modern psychology cast. Right. It is an unconscious awareness of community of having in common I think it sounds like something you would say to like you know 15 year old kid who's just on Instagram all day feels isolated and depressed. It's like you need community, you need other people around you and so on, but it's true for all of us. I mean, if there's, it's impossible to pinpoint the worst things that are the COVID crisis, I mean people dying, obviously, that should not have to die dying on time, it is the greatest tragedy, but the isolation of people in nursing homes unable to see family or spouses, talked to a guy in his late 80s The grandfather of my kids friends. He wasn't able to see his wife in the nursing home they had dementia for like eight months. And then he did get to see her but she passed soon soon thereafter and who knows what exactly goes. But clearly, that kind of isolation is a crisis. And to me the most, the most tragic thing that I hear about when I think about what's happening with Puppet, or things like that. So, it's not healthy at a fundamental level, right, it is not healthy. What follows of course is a sharp critique of the narrow vision and of course he's gone. He's, he's going after anything that smacks of kind of mechanization of health and mechanism you know the way of the machine rather than the way of sorting organic. It is to begin with, almost spent test fanatically individualistic. The body is seen as a defective or potentially defective machine. Singular solitary displaced without love solace or pleasure when may presumably be healthy in a disintegrated family or community or in a destroyed or poisoned ecosystem obviously being ironic their health is like, you know, my diet and my jogging routine which there is none. By the way, and has not been an entrepreneur but many modes, trying to do my push ups in the kitchen floor every morning or whatever that that's health and, and I could, I could live in a car, we talked about health all the time or cultures obsessed with health and so on. Even though we live among all this disintegration of families human systems. The water is all messed up. The air is messed up but we go to the gym right and try to make our bodies, or keep them sustain them from falling apart maybe or whatever. And it strikes him that that's, like, extremely myopic vision of what is healthy for a couple of these things and see what you think. Have another visual in here too. So, one of his great one of his great lines and I've used it a lot, talking with students and other people is that he gets technology. And he's okay he says provocatively I am I am Moreover a Luddite in what I take to be the true and appropriate sense, I'm not against technology so much as I am for community. It's a quote that I often use a window varies like okay, technology, or does it does it damage community. Your human connections in that way yeah I'm against that. Yeah, that's bad. If I'm just on the iPhone, all day and don't talk to anyone around me right and we just live in. That's problematic that's a problematic technology but when the choice is between the health of a community and technological innovation, I choose the health of the community. I would unhesitatingly destroy a machine before I would allow the machine to destroy my community. I mentioned, when my other two kids went with me down to Louisville and we got to meet Wendell, I got to introduce them to him, and my daughter is going to take a picture of window night together. And he's like, Oh honey, something's something, just don't you just get rid of the damn phone that's it I just remember her statement, she's like I always remember his statement to me. So she was taking a picture of us at that moment when he said that, I was like, well take it with a grain of salt because I really want that picture. Okay, so don't throw the thing away. Yeah. So, I'm not happy think he's shorter than it may seem, you know he's got granddaughters of that, he kind of remember meeting several of his grandkids one time when we were down at his daughter's farm and they're kind of like teenager he grandpa had like iPhones, and you're just like, wait a minute, are they related to Wendell Berry, how can this, but they didn't know you had a scrapper, they don't know he's like this amazing writer of that, I've certainly gone into the end of the, some of them had really gotten into it later on and it made it part of their life. But at the time I was just kind of like, what's up, grandpa.

Unknown 14:37

So, he's a Luddite and here the metaphor of the machine bears heavily on the question of what we mean by health and healing. Anything that says mechanized is a mechanism, the body has machine, that's a problem for him. Speaking of being a Luddite. I got some imagery of Ned Ludd. Okay, so the Luddites famously in the, you know, I think the 1810s or 20s Industrial Revolution in England. This guy Ned Ludd or Edward Ludlum with another group of cottage, people who did cottage weaving. You know in their homes, dressed as women, and went to some of these early mills and on the right side, they're not just the the six month old Sons of Liberty over here though this is supposed to be a group of Luddites as well. They went in and smashed the mills the the primitive machines, not so primitive actually that were the weaving machines and so on. Not only took away their home industry, but also trapped themselves and even their children in like 12 hour a day work, you know the brutality of of child labor. Remember my son Ethan Sankey read some proceedings from Parliament and like the 1830s that it's a good thing for us to have children working 12 hours a day, six days a week, or they might get in trouble on the on the streets like that ironic that ironic statement so let him work 70 hours and if you had a teenager, sometimes you feel that way, I just want you to work 70 hours a week. Okay, because you're just, you know, just, but so here's the Luddites and when it was like Yeah, well I would what I destroyed technology, if it was if it was destroying community. You start to ask yourself then. Oh well, how much technology well we end up destroying in that regard because that could, that could encompass quite. If you ever read the novel jayber Crow Jaber the barber. The Barber of Fort William the bald Barber, so much mocked by the women of town for being a bald garter but he, he survives. He has a car for a while it goes to the city goes to the town nearby and does the dance halls and stuff, and then realize it's it's destroying his connection with, so he gets rid of the car is a great displacing it anyone who had a kid get a driver's license and then what happened to that child as a child still live here, you know, or where's my vehicle. Actually when I look at it. Where's my car. So, cars, you know, any kind of screen right which is screen is mediated and the longer people but the screen right that we end up, we end up talking about a lot of our technology but a lot of other things. Maybe just the way that we've, you know, our workplaces where so many people work with technology but there's what about the shared work and labor he talked about I don't feel any of that. It's nothing like that it's more like Dilbert where everyone's in a pot somewhere right. So I think if, if we're if we're for community it radically alters our sense of technology. Now the profit is without honor in his own country. So my son, my youngest kid would just say gather data all the good things you iPhone can do. You can always connect with you. I text you yeah but can you just come downstairs and talk to me, and vice texting better than that. Why not give me money etc to Venmo money to me and I'm worried about my bank account being hacked because you only do like computerized Venmo but they're so, but you can see that there's, there's a commitment to health can only come about when community is sustained. So anything that mechanize is or industrialize is or technology. Technology rises and breaks community is not going to make us healthy. We won't be home, and we can kind of look at our culture and wonder about the severe crisis of mental health you know I spent all my career working with 18 to 22 year olds. I don't know that I have a student right now who hasn't struggled with anxiety of some sort is not writing me every week I have a student who's like I had said a mental health crisis I've had this, it's, it's, it's literally everywhere. It can't be unrelated to hyper to handheld technology. This generations complete like immersion with handheld technology since childhood they don't know of another world and that it can't be unrelated to this crisis of health.

Unknown 18:44

Go ahead. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I like showed great comment was, go ahead, share more.

Unknown 19:11

Yeah. Yeah, no it's, I mean, even though the statement about the committee, you know, health, health has to involve community and not just individualism and things like social media is really militate against. I remember when I even saw like former child actor and now kind of young star Selena Gomez say I had to leave Instagram because I felt like I'm going to kill myself. It's like a movie star woman, young lady 21 year old Justin Bieber's former girlfriend or whatever, just like I couldn't I felt like I couldn't measure applicant Instagrams like whoa, you've actually done damage to your car, your health is being devastated by that. Yeah. Yeah. No, do it. Yeah. So many charity, use of technology in redemptive ways and that's where I wonder what's it I want to destroy that technology because look, we're not going to destroy the zoom, or maybe he'll destroy Microsoft Teams, just joking. Sonia, he's not going to destroy zoom, because a lot of churches in Sunday school, I mean we saw church but you wouldn't have seen these people for a year and a half. And we all know that some people just dropped away completely from churches because they just felt totally detached so that was one way. So I think there there's where you draw the line, here's technology that helps. By the way, one of my kids I've just I've had kids with tick tock, don't understand that tick tock is now like middle aged people doing like recipes. Tick Tock is not cool anymore if we're going to be. I just heard about it, right, it's already like press it, we already knew Facebook was for old people right now we have people in the space that's the old people stuff right now Instagram has a bunch of moms doing like that now tick tock has been taken over by middle aged people doing recipes, that's what my daughter does. I don't know and I didn't even ask that question where are the kids now, what they've turned to because there's always something I mean, what you do know is there's definitely about five or 10 new things every moment, to try to grab ahold of that audience, then you can tell your kids you know guys, it's all about trying to sell you things and no it's not just about like ads and average I you know you're just a, you're a consumer unit and your kids would just study all day long. No it's not, that's not what it's about. That's kind of why social media exists. Now it's about us getting together and hanging out together until Okay, so he wouldn't destroy it, he would. And maybe we should wonder about things that isolate people and people get depressed using social media, but we'd also say, if you're able to correspond with or spend time FaceTime literally see somebody who you not would not have been able to see or speak to. There's a good right so here's what goes on in hospitals. Okay. Hospitals are great places and some of us, you owe a lot to hospitals and certainly to doctors and nurses. On the other hand they're not really pleasant places to be. That's That's obvious. Unless you've ever had a kid and I've had it happen although you would never want you wouldn't want to do it because you wouldn't want your children sick but if you had a child bill I had a son who had an appendix issue. I got to go over to Helen DeVos Children's Hospital. That was like staying in a retreat, like a spa. They were taking care of him and taking care of me right. If I didn't have an ill child, it would have been one of the best kind of two day retreats of my life. So, says anyone who stayed in the hospital knows that no ordinary any ordinary person would assume that a place of healing would put a premium on rest. Hospitals are notoriously difficult to sleep in, they're noisy all night, the routine interventions go on relentlessly, the body is treated as a machine that does not need to rest. Nobody has gotten in hospital has not had that experience. I was just falling asleep and somebody needed my, my vital vitals again, and more blood or you had to do that you just, I'm always reminded of the great movie. Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce when he's, he's struggling with, I guess this trip to something, and his friend wakes him up and he's like you've waken to me, you've awakened me to give me medication to make me sleep. What have you done, there might have been a hospital right now. Then that leads into this reflection, why should rest and food and ecological health, not be the basic principles of our art and science of healing. Is it because the same basic principles are already technology and drugs. Are we confronting some fundamental incompatibility between mechanical efficiency and organic health. I don't know but he kind of, he does, he does know right because he's, you said that he's not just asking the questions right he's making the statement and you wonder about that right because

Unknown 23:51

we're all glad that medical technology and pharmaceuticals exist right for some of us it's life getting right or that it's saved lives or for those we love. On the other hand, that can't be the only basis of health. Just take this pill right just just cook to this machine right there has to be a more organic vision, and those are just the fail safes right those are the, that's the, that's the backup plan. But maybe it's, it's the foremost plan in other places Wendell Berry will talk at length about the billions of dollars in medical technology the billions of dollars in the pharmaceutical industry. It's big business, that's kind of scary. That makes you wonder about the ethics of medicine so and when pharmaceutical companies come and talk with your doctor and offer incentives and concert tickets and so on. If they will prescribe this particular medication. That seems like a conflict of interest can the doctor really be objective at that point, when this pharmaceutical company is offering all these incentives to prescribe this to this person is that is it always the best thing for that person or is it kind of the most convenient so you don't. I mean doctors have to face all kinds of all kinds of issues. That's a tough life. And we're all glad that pharmaceuticals exist and that Pfizer exists and so on or whoever you know whoever it is in, in Battle Creek and in Kalamazoo we're really glad. On the other hand, we can't define health by drugs. And by buying machines. I guess that's his that's his argument but we, we tend to look to those things, anybody, any other takes on the medical hospital as a because this is the kind of health hits pretty close to home right for all of us because we've all engaged with the medical industry at length right and you can't avoid it and you shouldn't avoid it. If you can't avoid it. That's a really good thing. And pretty less expensive, much less expensive but I was struck by that and what what we think of when we start to talk about health, where do we immediately defer to or go to and on to something. Yeah.

Unknown 26:01

Right. Right. Yeah, there's, there's way, you know, recognition that there was over intervention in the past, maybe formula was supposed to heavily. My mom talked about the Twilight sleep and so on how even my wife and I did, we did. She did. I was there I did home birthing. Turns out my daughter is 21 has a boyfriend, they were both delivered by the same midwife. That's a weird adult as a first day conversation or eventually that was discovered right I know when you talk about hey, oh you born. Yeah and it's a whole different world. And you're yeah it's, I think what he would say well there's where your organic approach of letting things up and so on and you go into the midwife said if I if I tell you we have to go to a hospital, you cannot say no to me or I will not do this, you have to sign that you will do that and give me your written assurance. Just in case, that makes sense to me, the backup is there, but then they were getting. So, I think for one day, a lot of his solutions are wasted let's let's restore ways, while also not repudiating ways that might actually be life giving the if it was the 19th century, people, right, or whatever, you know, so let's find a way to kind of balance out those, those worlds, even with farming I mean he would, he would suggest that there are a lot of things that remember reading all creatures great and small my kids you know the James, James area the veterinarian books, you know, he, he lamented in those books, this was still before the time of penicillin. So this dog was gonna die or this car was gonna die, you know, the frustration of, you know, and I always think there are some, these things are good things, anybody who's ever had somebody with an infection right, It can be cleared up now we know that always gets over prescribed right and kids, pretty much kind of still on in our revenue job when they're five years old. Now you have a problem and it will not be solved with technology and more pharmaceutical and that's where he has the question. So, good, but be careful with it boundaries. Yes.

Unknown 28:28

Right. Right. Right. Yeah, talking about Eastern medical Eastern medicine and different things, acupuncture, acupressure or biology versus what certainly Western medicine if you've ever even had this talk to your doctor about getting a chiropractor, versus, versus back surgery and physical therapy, you know, there's two different approaches, whichever way you want to go with that right. It's like a way that we'll deal with, let alone back surgery now I'm going to go to an acupuncturist instead right or someone who does. I'm gonna start doing some kind of Feng Shui or yoga. So, one would seem like we can solve this technologically and by the way you might need back surgery right and it's a good thing if it can get some of that, you know, if you had to have it. There it is. But on the other hand, these other ways seem to kind of try to work with the body some more. I don't know a whole lot about it i don't i No wonder it was pretty well read, especially in the 60s and 70s on Eastern thought, I don't, it's hard to imagine him doing yoga. I don't know if you ever did that, I think I mentioned you guys before reading a biography of Thoreau, he's probably the first American to do yoga, Henry David Thoreau, he'd read about it in like the, the Bhagavad Gita or something like that, so he's probably doing yoga by Walden Pond, which is a whole nother vision of, but he was more it was more like he turned it because he felt like even the Western ways of his own way of doing things were sort of about stress and so on and he wanted to retreat from that. And you're like, wow, that's something that whatever you think of yoga which has all kinds of wild and I, I've just tried doing it, there's a Christian version of yoga that was doing in my church. I was crying out with every stretch and she's like, are you okay I'm just like I'm going to be doing this with every stretch, it's all up. Okay so dad I needed a medical apart I just that's just me. Yeah so I think that's an interesting point to make that there's, there are different kinds of things we all know there's multiple sorts of nuts and the frustration right is when they have totally contradictory opinions of what you should do words your kid, which is much tougher than deciding for yourself and you're deciding for your child. What do I do, or grandkid, what are you supposed to do. And I think he would, I think he'd say, there's a place for the technology and judgment if that's always leading the way and seeing the body as machine. That's probably going to be a zero sum game eventually. Yeah, there's five extended questions that I'm just going to skip over you can look at him on 152 I was gonna look maybe the last one on 152 I didn't touch them all out there the last one. How can adequate medical and health care including disease prevention be included in the structure and economy of the community, that's a question that's a question we've all heard before. It's a question what's on our minds, actually, all, for example, can a community and its doctors be included in the same culture the same knowledge the same fate so that they will live as fellow citizens, chairs in a Commonwealth members of one another. That's a tough question. You know it's tough on doctors to you mentioned, someone mentioning their daughter growing up with a doctor. Isn't that it's tough on doctors as well right because you, you have to participate with patients in a way that's both theatre and sound but also that it's, it's a business arrangement, it's a, it's a vocational clothing. It's not the same thing as, as, going through and suffering alongside all of their needs and showcases is trying to help people get out of those situations and so on. But I think he's got a point here, of the medical industry getting so specialized and parsed out that there's no. We all know that insurance companies and doctors are don't appear to be in communication with one another in any clear fashion, Like what's going on here. And as I learned early on, you have to become your own advocate when you're in that when you're on that world between the two. How come, those are different hospitals don't talk to each other. Wait, how come you're constantly trying to figure out how I thought this test was done at this urgent care that the hospital didn't know about it or giving it to me again. So I think what does it, how does this become like is termed a commonwealth, like the Commonwealth like the like everyone's dwelling together. How can the health world be that, that's, that's tough. In some ways it's the most fragmented and if you've ever been on the phone with the insurance company for three hours, the least healthy place to go to like terms of stress levels and economically, you know, financially, also extremely tough I mean I took a guy from our church who's a older guy he's got love disabilities down to Cherry Street Clinic. It's tough to get appointments there. It's tough to get in there, it takes a long time to get his glasses and so on, it was, it's tough for people in the financial underclass to get services, I know that you could conceivably go into a hospital and if you're dying they would help you but like getting glasses or dental work. That's not easy. And it how can that happen to be on the same page with that as a question I don't know that question has been answered the question might be more problematic now than when he wrote,

Unknown 33:45

says here the push back toward mystery, and then maybe this protect a little bit what you said about the Eastern mystical realm and a little bit or, or just more, the more organic round. The body love insists is neither a spirit nor a machine. It's not a picture a diagram a chart and anatomy. It's not an explanation, it's not a law. It is precisely and uniquely what it belongs to the world of love, which is a world of living creatures, natural orders and cycles. Many small fragile lights and dark. It got a little bit poetic there at the end like what is my body, what, what am I okay. But, I mean, I like the idea that it's not something that gets solved. All of us know, everybody's unique and responds very differently to someone centric, every one of us would respond differently. Some people like that is a great that medicine is great, that was horrible, horrible response to it I was a virgin. The surgery was amazing for me, oh I debilitated, What's going on here right. So, the uniqueness the particularity to take those things into account which is also his way of wanting to think about the world at large right everything is at John particular no mass solutions to the problems of particularity. I don't know, I don't start thinking about my body as many smells not small and fragile fragility is very unknown to me right with body lights in the dark, that it's, it's something like nothing else in the world, it's beautiful, it's wonderful it's deserving of unique treatment unique care unique nurture maybe. I'm going to skip test the development of SR Naugatuck by the nurse after There you can read that it's quite great. It's a great book if you're looking for a book to read. Give ultius went to Calvin in the 50s and then he was a professor at the Institute of Christian studies in Toronto for like 30 or 40 years my colleague Matt Botha, this was his mentor taught there with Kelsier belt the bay park. Park philosopher and others Boethius was a, he's a philosophy professor who's also a licensed therapist concert. He wrote this book called The beautiful risk. The new psychology of loving and being loved it, his, his, his thesis was care not pure. It's it's all l, tu. I'm sorry, LTH you buy S, which looks like old foods to me but he told me the Dutch pronunciation is Boethius, so he's of that generation at Calvin with Wolterstorff and necessity rebelled all the guys in the 50s who were brilliant figures The Good Brothers, and he talks about being vulnerable as a counselor, as the as the, as the medical professional as the therapist, I'm having a bad day, I myself and feeling done and so on. And, and it's interesting exchange it's almost counterintuitive, and that this is not going to be a cure, we're going to do care here, remember when the various one poem if you've ever read Tom marriage. It is healing that has never hold. So we seek an approach that's vulnerable approach that recognizes is too complex to solve, but we will be alongside each other and care for each other. I know Matt bonza my colleague is like the one thing I could never get used to is that we always want to kiss you on the cheek. Sorry I just touch the thing guys, and or hold your hand like when you're doing a thing like a conference, let's hold hands up on stage and he's very much. If you remember the Oba Scalia from the 70s Let's do HAC therapy, it's not a little bit of that like, well, what's going on. But he, but there's a sense in which he, he understood the rigidity of care that we're not seeking but sometimes you're seeking.

3.3

Unknown 0:07
Cure, you want there to be a cure, but we certainly want his care.

Unknown 0:13
On the way to the. So that's maybe it's some, some reading thing maybe maybe get into the conservation of local economy really briefly, I'll just do a thing or two here and just open it up again,

Unknown 0:25
another, another essay where I see a tragedy. But I believe there might be hope but mostly like tragedy, like, big and small. But still they're a little, little late.

Unknown 0:41
So he did a bunch of these rules and limits that we should do, none of which none of which we're doing right with local, local, county but he says, a nation will destroy its land and therefore itself. If it does not Foster, in every possible way the sort of thrifty prosperous permanent rural households and communities that have the desire, skills and means to care properly for the land they're using, that's a huge fixed sentence right.

Unknown 1:08
It's kind of a vision that everybody has some place that they can care for and attend to, it's the it's the vision of Chesterton's Distributism immediate a middle way between socialism and capitalism, whereby everybody is offered some private property that they will then tend to, and care for and so on, which gets both, both socialist and capitalist really mad when you talk about distributed in my sub debate down at the FT Institute and that sounds like a really good idea to me and Chesterton I really like so. But that you'd have something there for him that he would learn to care and love that and have some property, I was talking earlier about growing up in rural America, which he's talking about here in a rural trailer park of which I lived in multiple river drill trailer park. I lived in five different trailers and one of the chatbox have no idea why we moved from here to there all the same.

Unknown 2:00
And you, you were in this beautiful dairy farming country, you had no relation to the land where he lived there. They live in a trailer park you don't own a home or anything or no property, and you could run around in the fields and destroy them which we often get a teenagers right or kids, but none of it was yours to tap you learn nothing about that is such a different vision from what he kind of like speaks up here where you learn to 10 there you just wanted to kind of, well, maybe to, kind of like explain a little bit.

Unknown 2:34
And here's, here's what he says about rural America. This is a very bleak place to end our talk today and I guess, give us something to like shoot for for next week for a long time the news from everywhere in rural America has been almost unbelievably bad, and I didn't know if I should even put this whole list in here but once you start, you got to put it all in there, bankruptcy, foreclosure depression, suicide, the departure of the young, the loneliness of the old soil loss so degradation chemical pollution. The loss of genetic and specific diversity, the extinction or threatened extinction of species, the depletion of aquifers stream degradation. The loss of wilderness strip mining clear cutting population loss. The loss of supporting economies. The death of towns we're talking a little bit about Northern Michigan instead of so many rural towns are in better shape 100 years ago 150 years ago than they are now.

Unknown 3:26
You know, what used to be a building 43 trailer parks and horrible heroin.

Unknown 3:33
Right, domestic abuse, or child abuse just everything you get what happened, displacement from land you have no stake in anything was going on.

Unknown 3:44
But, okay, let's let's. Is there some hope yes there is what will end with this and I'll give you something. So it's one of his kids, grandkids and now great grandkids are starting to work on it under his kind of wing, he laments the deranged food economy of Northern Kentucky and says this, we in Port Royal are part of an agricultural region surrounded by cities that import much of their food from distant places that we urgently need crops that can be substituted for tobacco he knew that even back then in 1988 or whatever, right and then even more so, we produce practically no vegetables or foods for consumption in our region, so it's like we live by tobacco. We enjoy during the crops together we can't eat tobacco and it actually gives people cancer. What are we doing next, no solution. But the very center will enter the moment of hope has begun an initiative over the last several years to encourage local farmers, who used to do tobacco to do grass fed beef for local markets.

Unknown 4:43
It's called.

Unknown 4:45
Here's a direct quote from the very center website by the way, in the hopes of putting the lessons of the tobacco economy to work ensuring parity prices for farmers because tobacco apparently had a really good plan, governmental plan and privatized plan for how they did their sell of the crops, the very center is home to our home place need a big program patterned after the tobacco cooperative model, which ensured farmers made healthy profits and kept money in local economies.

Unknown 5:15
And if you're looking for something to order in September that the beef, this is from the homeplace meets the September Box of the Month can be ordered right now this is not a paid endorsement by the way, I'm not saying they do advertise it as veal, which I thought that doesn't feel doesn't have a very good leg.

Unknown 5:35
I think they're trying to revive the notion of veal. To me, veal is like little calves that are just an occasion where, but they raise young I guess they, I don't know what the definition of deal is, if they're slotted within the first year as ears are exactly but they, in an ethical fashion they're trying to revive, what they call rose veal a kind of pinkish meat from the grass that's, that's probably naked vegetarians everyone's kind of, They don't care about that they're just like, whatever. But it's interesting that some of the questions are actually getting answered and there's been great success in not only selling this locally but also selling it in the markets around Louisville in a variety of places restaurants and so on. and talking about the good that technology offers which can't deny online marketing, because you can now flash freeze these meats and mail them through the mail. They've gained that kind of nationwide market.

Unknown 6:30
It's, it's local.

Unknown 6:34
It's National local economy, if you will, a local economy that has a national spread at the money state level.

Unknown 6:41
And I would say find a local farmer around Grand Rapids or front meats in Greenville or something instead of ordering from there because that's your sustaining a neighbor. On the other hand, sort of sentimentally, getting it from Wendell Berry's extended family sounds pretty cool to me as well so if someone doesn't there's there's hope to turn some things around if we if we get innovative and I think that's one of the lessons that we take.

Unknown 7:09
So we're going to have half of our lesson today, And then whatever we're going to kind of pick up that's from week four, and I'll have to let me know we're, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna make it to a grand finale of some sort.

Unknown 7:21
Any final questions or anything anyone has

Unknown 7:27
moving towards hope. But the crisis is always with us, that's I guess the urgency of it.

Unknown 7:33
And the crisis is probably sharpened in a number of ways from when he was writing these essays.

Unknown 7:40
Anything else Sonia.

Unknown 7:44
It's gonna leave the cow on the screen is our kind of feel bad for that cause.

Unknown 7:50
Okay, sorry about that. No, no more questions on the Send. Okay.

Unknown 7:56
Well, I am so appreciative of everybody and I think, try to make it through those next couple of essays that we had for this week and then I'll just add a couple of, it's a bunch of shorter essays at the end of the book, I'll add a couple of those short ones on there but we will find a place to come down that recognizes the nature of the crisis and its severity but also sees a place for, for, for hope and possibilities for the future. Next Generation so next for next for today and look forward to our finale.

Unknown 8:30
Supposed to be nice and like 70 degrees again, this was like an aberration day that felt like automate complex, let's get nice again next week.

Unknown 8:37
Thank you. Thanks everybody.

What Does It Mean to be Human? - Pachyderms, Podcasts & Process

Imago Dei:

Pachyderms, Podcasts & Process

The question was raised in class "What Does It Mean to be Human?" Certainly an appropriate question given that we were studying the evolution of man from a theistic-anthropological perspective. But next came the ready answer, "Man has podcasts, has built towering edifices across the face of the earth, has transcended into the skies, moon, planets and beyond. Elephants do not give podcasts. They eat grass, wander about, and are elephants doing elephant things."

"Well," I thought, "What is the truer imago dei of God? Man or Elephants?"

From the classical Christian definition and predominant human outlook of science and mankind in general, it seems God has only designated man in His image:

Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that [ak]moves on the earth.” 29 Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every animal of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to everything that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. 31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Now from what I gather in the verses above, man, like the animals, are to be vegetarians, sire progeny, and be what they are. More specifically, God made man and woman in His own image, which is the typical Christian understanding of humanity.

But I wonder, how is God's image in man alone and not in the earth and cosmos He created? It feels like an unnatural distinction to simply conclude God's image can only be found in mankind.

"Well," says the teacher, "And why not? We have been given morality, language, and culture!" This makes us superior to all other created things. It is our natural right to rule over the heavens and the earth!"

And again I wonder, "If man is so high on the scale of morality then why have so many cruel, murderous, and hellish, things been done in God's image? Is God cruel, murderous, and hellish in who He is?" It seems that if the earth becomes any more full of us it will perish under our weight. Is God the kind of God who is destructive and known as the "Destroyer of All Things?" I thought God was good, and kind, and loving. But in man's image God seems to be just the opposite.

And what about this language thing? Can man sing like the songbird in the morning? Can he whisper like the wind through the early morning boughs of spring? Can he call his children together as the ptarmigan her brood on the mountain top? Where is man's speech in the rainstorm, the fire, the deeps of the ocean, or the smallest mews of the kitten under the warmth of its mother? Are these not God's image too?

And finally, man is said to have the ability of culture... but in my experience it has been because of cultural differences we dislike each other, ostracize and discriminate against one another, even go to war with each other under the banners of personal rights, liberties, and holy destruction... all in the name of God though in all cases its in the name of ourselves claiming divine power in the face of human greed, sin and evil.

No sooner had I thought this things another speaks up in class blaming sin and evil on all things - that God's imago in man is marred by sin, distorted by evil, unmirroring the Divine One Himself!

"My, my," I thought, "Here's comes the old Christian canard of blaming sin for the want of God's image become an ugly thing in the transfer." Christianity makes convenient excuses for its theologies. This one runs to the top of the list for many. It gives every ready reason for every ugly thing done by humanity to one another and to this earth we were to caretake.

And so, I thought, "If God's image in man of morality, language, and culture is the highest achievable image of God in creation, then we're all screwed. God must admit a catastrophic FAIL in His divine modus operandi, back up, reset the clock (the Christian teaching of Tribulation, Armageddon, and fiery end of the earth), start over (a new heavens and earth), and learn from his mistake that love and freewill just don't go together. The equation was prejudiced to failure from the start."

All questions of the future aside, I don't think God made a mistake. It is our failure to hear God so one-sidely in Genesis as to think that man alone was created in God's image and none other. Tell me of one artist who paints, sculpts, welds, or builds, who doesn't put their whole self into a project? If it comes from the hand of the artist, then it comes all without division of character.

I don't think of God as dipolar, bipolar, or bearing a personality disorder of some kind. But I do think of man as always hearing things in a selfish, prideful, haughty way. To only think in Genesis that man alone bears God image is to put to fine a touch on the brush of the Master. God's painting of the cosmos does include His imago dei... ALL of it. From the least quark to the largest star. From the smallest cell to the largest biological organism. Man is not alone in God's image. God's image is everywhere we look.

So let us redefine the Imago Dei once and for all from a process Christian outlook rather than by the tired Christian outlook of morality, speech, and culture. Let us see God's image in terms of:

• creativity
• novelty
• relationship and relationality
• connectivity to all and all back to its parts
• feelings of connection to one and all
• feelings of relationship and relationality
• the ability to respond, react, readjust to external stimuli
• the ability to affect and be affected by environment
• to change, to continue forward, to remember the past

In all these attitudes one may find the qualities of creation throughout the qualities of God. A God who is impassable in character but passable in relationship to creation. A God who is deemed Sovereign of the universe but in the ways of partnering with His creation towards divine outcome rather than coercive determination and breaking His own "rules" as set by classical thinking.

And less we have missed the obvious, the limitation of Christian philosophy has always been it's human centric view of the world rather than its process-centered thought of seeing creation - of which we are a part - in its fullness together granting us no greater distinction than any of its parts. We all, as a creative organism, are part of God's imago dei with none of its parts any greater or less greater than the rest of its parts, stamped by God's image.

And like the elephant which does not speak on podcasts but just is in its beingness to what it is in relation to its environment, I don't think man has yet to learn how to be like the elephant. To be. To be content in who we are. To live in relation to nature in a way that is restorative, natural, and unharming.

As evolutionary "superior" creatures I suspect our pride and me-centeredness only sees elephants and trees, colonies of ants and pods of whales, as aspects of isolated normalcies rather than as integral necessities to one another living in balance with the earth's entropy.

We take away from all when we lift our species up higher than it really is. But if, like God, we are generative, good, kind, partnering with each other and creation around us, we might just learn how to be. How to become. How to relax, contribute, and discover purpose in place.

R.E. Slater
September 23, 2021

Related Article

FOUND: Interstellar Pre-Biotic, Pre-RNA Molecular Clouds

Residing Throughout the Milky Way

"Elephants don't listen to Podcasts; they have better things to do"

* * * * * * * *

The Majesty of the Elephant

Episode 2: The Gentle Giants,

The Elephant

https://www.allcreaturespod.com/episodes/episode-2-elephant/

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-z8684-91da37 

Elephants are the largest land mammal currently in existence. There are two main species of elephant:

• African elephant (Loxodonta Africana)
• Asian elephant (Elephant maximus)

History

Both species of elephant can trace their lineage back approximately 7 million years ago when they branched out from the mammoth to the two species we know today. Another ancient elephant-like species, the American mastodon, branched off the elephant family tree over 26 million years ago.

African elephants once roamed the entire African continent and number over 27 million. Today, the African elephant is isolated in small pockets in Central and Southern Africa and number less than 500,000.

CURRENT RANGE OF AFRICAN ELEPHANTS

Asian elephants historically have had smaller populations, but once roamed most of Southern Asia. In 1900 it was estimated there were over 100,000 Asian elephants. Today, Asian elephants are isolated in small pockets within Southern Asia and number around 40,000 animals.

Facts

There are many physical differences between African and Asian elephants (see infographic).

Elephants are incredibly intelligent creatures. They have a wide range of emotions and their intellect is comparable to dolphins and primates other than humans. They have been documented in grieving for their dead, to showing joy, love, anger and other complex behaviors. Typically, elephants are found in a matriarchal society, or those dominated by females. Mature males typically are isolated or live in small bachelor groups and only venture into a family group during the breeding season.

Male elephants enter a periodic condition called musth. During this period, secretions are running down along the sides of the elephant’s head, out of their temporal glands, and is a time when the bull elephant is highly aggressive. The causes of musth are currently not known, and everyone should take extra cautious around an elephant in musth.

MALE ASIAN ELEPHANT IN MUSTH

A large male elephant can eat up to 150 lb (70 kg) of food per day. Both species are herbivores and eat a variety of plants, branches, leaves, and even tree bark. Tusks are used to help dig up roots are strip trees of their foliage. The elephant’s trunk has over 60,000 muscles and is used to help eat, drink, communicate, bathe, amongst other uses. Elephants are crucial for local ecosystems and have been known to spread seeds father than most any other animal.

Elephant Conservation

Asian elephants are classified as endangered with a decreasing population. African elephants are listed as vulnerable and on their way to endangered status. Both species are under threat mainly from human encroachment. African elephants are under severe threat due to poaching and now almost 27,000 elephants are killed a year for their ivory tusks.

POACHING STATISTICS

What Can You Do?

• Support the World Wildlife Fund https://www.worldwildlife.org/

• Never buy ivory. Never!

• Support our show, help spread the word https://www.patreon.com/allcreaturespod

• Great read about Mr. Lawrence Anthony, the Elephant Whisperer mentioned at the end of the podcast here.

• Black Ivory Coffee (if you dare)