"The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry
""When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
""When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
"The Peace of Wild Things"
I enjoyed “Summer School” immensely this year. The theme was ‘Doing Our Best’, inspired by a quote from Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I co-led an engagement group with the wonderful Rev. Tina Gandhi based on the following lines from Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese: “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” It was a deeply moving week and we explored with depth, creativity, music, and humour.
Something I wanted to explore was the fact that an awful lot of people think there is something fundamentally wrong with them. I certainly experienced this from an early age. Why so many feel this way isn’t always easy to explain, but it is a common one, and it has certainly been exploited by unhealthy religion and the secular world too. The advertising industry exploits the idea that you can purchase the perfect life.
There were many inspirational theme talks throughout Summer School. The talk by Raj and Emma from Leeds truly got to the heart of the whole week for me. They spoke about how Maya Angelou never actually uttered the words I quoted above to Oprah Winfrey. Instead in private, after Oprah shared something she was deeply ashamed of, Maya said, “You did then what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.” Maya wasn’t instructing Oprah to do better, but recognising Oprah’s humanity, her capacity to change, and the goodness at the heart of her.
‘Doing better’ is about experiencing what we are capable of becoming, and we need to go deeper to do so. It’s not just about knowing more, but bringing more of our shared humanity to life. It takes trusted community and friends to do this. It is not enough to simply learn about it - we need to experience it.
I believe there is a goodness at the heart of everything, including you and me. It doesn’t mean that we do no wrong, and never cause harm. Rather that this goodness can be brought alive through our humble, human being. I experienced this once again recently during a week in the hills of Derbyshire, with 60 or more folk sharing together and simply doing their best, to become what they were always born to be.
Sometimes it can be hard to see our capacity to be our best; sometimes it takes another to inspire us to do so, to become the best we can be, to do better. Sometimes it takes inspiration. We can all be inspirations, as I believe we all have that spirit within us.
But what does it mean to be an inspiration? You may well ask. Well the word inspiration is an interesting one, as so many are. We have, as is our way, reduced its meaning in power. It’s another one of those words that we have attempted to tame. Today it means someone or something that gives you an idea for doing something, but originally it meant “immediate influence of God or a god”. It comes from the old French word “inspiriacion” meaning “inhaling in or breathing in from the Latin “inspirare” meaning to blow into or breath upon so as to excite or inflame. This is the meaning in the following verse from Genesis Chapter 2 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” It really meant to infuse or animate to affect to rouse to guide to put life into the human soul. As you can see it meant something much more profoundly powerful in the past that it does today.
That said I believe that we can and do inspire in this way and in so doing we can bring the kingdom to life in our own hearts and lives. We can ignite that divine spark.
I believe that this is what Albert Schweitzer meant when he said:
“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.”
Those who rekindle the light are the inspirers amongst us.
Social media algorithms are mysterious things. My YouTube suggestions are a deeply eclectic mix. It recently popped up a short film exploring the origins of my favourite cartoon character “Foghorn Leghorn”. I suspect that this is because I had watched some of his cartoons recently and I also have an interest in the origins of things. Who knows what inspires such things.
I learnt that Foghorn Leghorn was inspired by the character Senator Claghorn who was a fiction southern politician on a popular American radio show. Foghorn adopted many of Claghorn's catchphrases, such as "I say..." and "That's a joke, son!"
"Foghorn Leghorn"
He was a large and larger than life character, far too confident in his own abilities. He would wander around singing “Campdown Races” etc and generally stepping over everything and making a mess. I am certain Foghorn leghorn was in turn the inspiration of the Coronation Street character Fred Elliott and his catchphrase “O say, I say, our Ashley”
Foghorn Leghorn is a caricature of a loud and brash southern American gentleman. Someone no doubt who is mocked and held up to ridicule. A Caricature is a caricature it is nothing more than that. Prejudice and stereotyping is never a good thing. Sometimes folks from that part of the USA are considered to be a certain way and displaying certain characteristics. Now while this maybe true of some people it is not true of all.
Two truly inspirational people born of the south of the USA have died in recent weeks. They were well loved and lived out their personal spiritually in their unique and individual styles. They embodied beautifully what it means to live by the spirit of love and deep empathy, an attribute that has become under some attack in recent years, something I find astonishing. In my view if we lose empathy we are done for.
One was a daughter of Tennessee Dolly Parton and the other a son of Kentucky Wendell Berry. They couldn’t have been more different in personality and the way they lived their lives. That said at the heart of them was that same spirit, it inspired their lives and their love and care. As Dolly said “I always just thought if you see somebody without a smile, give ’em yours!” and as Wendelly Berry said “Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, ‘the least of these my brethren.’ Love is not, by its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.”
Dolly and Wendell Berry shone like two bright stars from opposite ends of universe, the spectrum of love in its many manifestations. They followed very different paths, but they followed their own stars, they were uniquely and authentically themselves. The Gospel according to Dolly was that the work of life is to “find out who you are, and then do it on purpose.” Dolly on the surface was rhinestone and hairspray whilst Wendell Berry was all about the earth and the plough and yet there was a soulfulness in their melodic language, they embodied love through their human being. They were both holy in their own unique ways.
Dolly was a prolific singer/songwriter and entrepreneur who lived her life her own way. She dedicated herself to causes that were close to her heart, particularly childhood education and literacy. This began in her home Sevier County in Tennessee, spread throughout America and all over the world. I saw a clip of her speaking and reading with children in Rotherham south Yorkshire while I was researching for this service. She has gifted something like 330 million books to under 5’s. This was inspired wholly by empathy and the pain of her own father’s illiteracy. Dolly’s world was a big welcoming tent, she accepted people as they were. In a 1997 Out Magazine interview, she was asked about embracing LGBTQ fans while maintaining a country audience that included the religious right. “It’s two different worlds, and I live in both and I love them both, and I understand and accept both.” Dolly Parton was deeply rooted in her own identity, but open and embracing of others. As she said to her God daughter Miley Cyrus whenever they got into discussion “You be you and I’ll be me.”
Dolly described "Coat of Many Colours as her favourite song
A story she wrote about her own childhood
In a world where anxiety, pessimism and loneliness appear to be on the increase Wedell Berry and Dolly Parton always lived by faith, hope and love. They always looked and saw the best in others, in ordinary people. Neither lived easy lives, without pain and struggle. Their hope grew from struggle and helped create a vision of love of how we could yet be. They both in their own way visioned that kin-dom of love right here and now.
"I will always love you"
"If you try and follow everyone else and be like everyone else, before you know it you're gone. You're not going to find yourself again; you'll be a version of what you might of hoped to be."
"Jolene"
Wendell Berry’s Christianity was certainly non-conformist, he strongly criticised institutional religion and dogma of many kinds, his faith was shaped by a love for the world we live in now. He recognised and celebrated our creatureliness, that humans are a part of this creation and that it is our task to take care of this world as we take care of one another; we are a part of the whole, of the beautiful creation.
Regardless of what they did and how they lived Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry will be remembered mostly for their creativity their ultimate gifts to life. Dolly for her songs that she both wrote and performed, as did many others, as well as her whole persona. Wendell Berry for his writing, his novels his essays and of course his poetry. It was through his poetry that he reached and inspired me. I am going to end with a piece of his prose, which I think speaks of both his love and his spirituality and then a favourite poem
This is taken from “What Are People For? Essays”
"For many years, my walks have taken me down an old fencerow in a wooded hollow on what was once my grandfather's farm. A battered galvanized bucket is hanging on a fence post near the head of the hollow, and I never go by it without stopping to look inside. For what is going on in that bucket is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth. The old bucket has hung there through many autumns, and the leaves have fallen around it and some have fallen into it. Rain and snow have fallen into it, and the fallen leaves have held the moisture and so have rotted. Nuts have fallen into it, or been carried into it by squirrels; mice and squirrels have eaten the meat of the nuts and left the shells; they and other animals have left their droppings; insects have flown into the bucket and died and decayed; bird have scratched in it and left their droppings or perhaps a feather or two. This slow work of growth and death, gravity and decay, which is the chief work of the world, has by now produced in the bottom of the bucket several inches of black humus. I look into that bucket with fascination because I am a farmer of sorts and an artist of sorts, and I recognize there an artistry and a farming far superior to mine, or to that of any human. I have seen the same process at work on the tops of boulders in a forest, and it has been at work immemorially over most of the land surface of the world. All creatures die into it, and they live by it."
There is Wendell Berry’s faith, his theology in that bucket.
Here is a final poem. A simple instruction on how to be a poet. It contains my favourite line ever “There are no unsacred places, there are only sacred and desecrated places. Again I believe that this speaks of Wendell Berry’s theology. That everything is sacred, everything matters and all is born from this sacred beginning. That the only thing that has been desecrated are those parts of the world that have been done so by the denial of this eternal sacredness of everything. That they have been damaged by we human beings have failed to recognise this very sacredness and desecrated this sacredness, whether that be nature or one another. It also recognises his rejection of modern technology and his embracement of simplicity, of feeling the earth at our feet, of being grounded in time and place, of humility, of the humus.
“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry
(To remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill -- more of each
than you have -- inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Dolly Parton and Wendell Berry were two inspirations who were rooted in their place. That lived their own unique lives authentically. They were inspired by the same love and the same a spirit. A love and spirit that lives on beyond their lives. A love and a spirit that I believe is at the heart of each of us and everything.
Thank you.
"9 to 5"
“If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.”
“the magic is inside you. there ain't no crystal ball”
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"
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