Wendell Berry, Poet, Essayist, Visionary

Wendell Berry's large body of writing is hard to read.  Hard, because he tells the truth and it can be gut wrenching.  I recently had to put down an essay because my eyes were blurred with tears.  Wendell Berry writes with personal knowledge of land and agriculture and what we, the humans of the 20th and 21st centuries, have done.  Ever since studying agriculture at the University of Connecticut in the 1970's and waking up, myself, to the destruction caused by industrial based agriculture, and corporate control of the planet's resources, I have been on a mission to change things.  All I've really accomplished has been in my own life and to influence a few friends and people who have listened to me. Even most in my own family don't really listen.  Wendell Berry has a superior gift to write and affect a large number of people.  I think people are waking up.  It's slow, but I know we are reaching a tipping point.  But is it too late for the planet?

Here is #1 of seventeen rules given by Wendell Berry, entitled "Seventeen Rules for a Sustainable Community"

Rule #1:  Always ask of any proposed change or innovation:  What will this do to our community?  How will this affect our common wealth?

Wendell Berry wrote this poem for The Progressive Magazine. Food for thought:

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.