Creation Care - “Wendell Berry and Local Place” with Jeff Bilbro
Shownotes:
God’s creation is a direct reflection of God’s glory, and Christians are called to be faithful stewards of the earth. While global issues of climate and environment can seem out of reach, our local communities give us space to learn and take action in small and large ways. How can we partner with our creator to build a better, more sustainable living environment? What simple, practical changes can we make to responsibly care for our local communities and our world?
Chris and Eddie are joined by Jeff Bilbro, author of Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms and Loving God's Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature. Bilbro’s work on ecology and theology has been heavily influenced by Wendell Berry, an environmental activist and author best known for his book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Bilbro calls his readers to a greater ecological and cultural imagination based in the idea of shalom, a vision of relational and community healing in the context of our environment. This episode explores the deep wisdom of Wendell Berry across his literary forms, the idea of interrelatedness within God’s creation, and how to hold onto hope while enacting hope in our communities.
Series Info:
God’s creation is a direct reflection of God’s glory, and Christians are called to be faithful stewards of the earth. While global issues of climate and environment can seem out of reach, our local communities give us space to learn and take action in small and large ways. How can we partner with our creator to build a better, more sustainable living environment? What simple, practical changes can we make to responsibly care for our local communities and our world?
In this series, we will discuss the relationship between humanity and creation with leaders in agriculture, government, and the church. These guests equip us with the knowledge we need to honor God through creation care. Join us as we seek to make environmental issues less intimidating and more inviting, rooted in love for God’s very good creation and honor for the image of God woven throughout it all.
Resources:
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Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 0:02
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight. Today we have Dr. Jeff Bilbro with us. He is a professor. He is moving to Grove City University, leaving Spring Arbor University. He is one who writes a lot about, gosh, Chris, I can't remember the name of the guy. Who does he really talk about?
Chris McAlilly 0:20
You can't remember after all that? His name is Wendell Berry, man.
Eddie Rester 0:23
Wendell Berry. Chris has been looking forward to this one. He talks a lot about Wendell Berry, place, and creation.
Chris McAlilly 0:31
Wendell Berry was a Kentucky farmer, an essayist and novelist and poet, and this is an extension of this conversation we're having about creation and the relationships that we have with the natural world. And Berry is interesting, because he has this kind of fraught relationship with the church and is very much aware of and has written about the ways in which Christian theology and the church in America has been a part of the exploitation of the land. But also, one of the things that comes out in the conversation is how there are resources within the Christian tradition to critique and to seek renewal in our relationship with the environment and the world around us.
Eddie Rester 1:15
One of the words that Jeff brought up was "shalom," it really sparked my imagination about what does it mean for us to understand shalom, not just as the absence of violence or conflict, but actually a seeking of wholeness in the world, and we don't have to do all that seeking, that God is with us. God is healing and bringing wholeness and healing to creation.
Chris McAlilly 1:39
Yeah, it's easy to listen to the news or to look out at the world and feel like everything's going to hell in a handbasket. But one of the things about Wendell Berry's writing and then also one of the things about the Christian scripture and theological tradition, it gives us a vision of a good end and a way to participate in God's healing and renewal and redemption, even now. And that comes through in the way that Jeff talks about Berry's work and the way that he talks about his own life as well.
Eddie Rester 2:11
I think you're gonna enjoy this one, particularly, but not necessarily if you're a fan of Wendell Berry, as my friend Chris McAlilly is.
Chris McAlilly 2:18
The hope would be that Wendell Berry ends up troubling your thoughts.
Chris McAlilly 2:21
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 2:28
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 2:31
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 2:38
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 2:51
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 3:06
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 3:08
Well, we're here today with Jeff Bilbro. Jeff, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today.
Jeff Bilbro 3:14
Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to talk about Wendell Berry.
Chris McAlilly 3:17
No doubt. Yeah. So Wendell Berry came on my radar. I didn't read him growing up. But when I left Mississippi, I intended never to come back and move to bigger cities and thought I was moving on to bigger and better places. And thank God, I came across Wendell Berry and his work. And it kind of gave me a new imagination for place and community and my home. I wonder, Jeff, how did you come across Wendell Berry's work? And for those that maybe don't know Wendell Berry's work, maybe you kind of give a snapshot of who he has been and some of his writing.
Jeff Bilbro 3:55
Sure. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and always enjoyed outdoor activities and fishing and hiking and we spent some time in our rural community in the eastern part of the state. And so when I was an undergrad at the George Fox University, one of my professors kind of got, you know, got to know me a little bit and suggested that I should check out this author called Wendell Berry. So I got "A Place on Earth" in the library that Christmas break and read that novel and was deeply moved by it, and went on to read a lot more of his fiction at that time and then gradually moved on to the essays and the poetry and kind of got hooked. And so when I was in grad school, I contemplated just writing about Berry and some of my advisors suggested, oh, you know, be a little bit more broad. So I did, but I have since come back, kept coming back to Berry and worked on various projects related to him.
Jeff Bilbro 4:59
I think one of the reasons that he so moved me when I read him was that he seemed to kind of put together these two worlds that often are kept apart, which is a concern for the goodness of creation and environmental concerns--although from an agrarian perspective, rather than a wilderness preservation perspective--and theology--a Christian perspective. And so he really helped kind of articulate some of these things that I valued, but didn't necessarily know why or how, and he gave me a framework and an imaginative and theological vision for understanding why creation is important and why it matters how humans live and work in creation, and what we do with it.
Jeff Bilbro 5:50
So maybe his best known essay is "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," which makes the argument that the title sets out. And he made that back in the 90s and hasn't changed his mind since. So he's quite pugnacious sometimes, but he's also just funny and winsome, and I think is his fiction, in particular, is quite profound and moving.
Chris McAlilly 6:19
Yeah, his "A Place on Earth" is one of the the Port William novels. And there's a range of them. My favorite, I think, is probably Jayber Crow." And it writes about a similar set of characters at a particular moment, where this small community--it's a fictionalized community, but it very much is rooted in a real place and time--that is being lost. And part of the reason it's being lost in Kentucky is that there's a particular form of agrarian economy that's going away and giving way to a more industrialized economy. Talk a little bit about why Berry's voice I think has been so interesting for Christians, as Christians have tried to understand their role and place within kind of the larger American conversation around environmentalism and wilderness preservation and an agrarian communal life.
Jeff Bilbro 7:26
Oh, good question. I mean, I guess I'll start by saying Berry's own relationship to Christianity is certainly fraught. He calls himself a forced Christian or elsewhere he calls himself a bad weather churchgoer. So he grew up a Baptist and his wife, Tanya, has been involved in a Baptist seminary in Kentucky, and they attend the Fort Royal church, well, I guess he only goes when the weather's bad. But he's kind of a back pew type of character. And he's got a lot of critiques of institutional Christianity. And I think one of the interesting things about him personally is that early on in the 60s and 70s, he seemed much more uncomfortable outside the church, and he explored other traditions.
Jeff Bilbro 8:23
He had a long friendship and correspondence with Gary Snyder, who is, I guess, Buddhist. And he kind of experimented with these other religious traditions and thought, well, maybe these traditions will have the solutions that Christianity doesn't. And then, in the late 70s, early 80s, I think he gradually came back to his childhood faith. And then a recognition of the softening of the critiques of its institutional forms or its failings, but didn't become more convinced that the Christian tradition had the resources within it to correct its own abuses. And also, I think, became convinced that it had the vocabulary and the framework that you needed to make sense of his experience and his understanding of creation.
Jeff Bilbro 9:17
And I think part of the reason, I mean, your broader question about the role of, or the relationship between the American church and creation or environment is obviously quite complicated, right? One way that I found helpful for thinking about this in very broad terms is that when you know, in the 18th, 19th century in America, whenever one was sort of culturally Christian, a lot of times people who cared about creation and were critical of environmental degradation kind of positioned themselves as critics of religion and Christianity, in part because it seemed that institutional Christianity sanctioned exploitative economic modes of relating to the earth. And as America became less culturally Christian over the course of the 20th century, I think it's interesting that more and more people who care about creation, people who want to sort of criticize extractive economies find the church to be an important ally, because the Church says that making money is not the most important thing, you know.
Jeff Bilbro 10:37
And the church has a moral, theological, obviously vocabulary for talking about why we shouldn't just make all the money we can, whatever natural resource is under discussion. So I think Berry is kind of part of this, maybe in the last 20 or 30 or 40 years, this return to religious critiques of extractive economies more broadly and Christian critiques in particular. So, you know, Lynn White Jr's famous thesis about Christianity being responsible for Western culture's abusive relationship with creation, that has been challenged in both scholarly journals and other journals. But I think it's interesting that you probably wouldn't make that same argument. That argument would be less plausible today, because a lot of the people who care about creation and are active in those conversations are influenced by the church or are drawn by Christian life to do so.
Eddie Rester 11:51
I know you, as you think about theology and ecology, theology and creation, how do we read scripture, our Christian scriptures? Or where do you read scriptures that really help us have these conversations about how we care for creation? What are some of those places that kind of, for you, call us into that deeper relationship with the world around us?
Jeff Bilbro 12:18
Wow, the whole thing. I think, Ellen Davis, I mean, Berry himself has written about this in several essays, things like "Gifts of Good Lands," which focuses on God's covenant with Israel and the role that the land plays and the sort of laws about agriculture and its relationship to the nation's relationship with the earth. Ellen Davis, her book, "Scripture, Culture, Agriculture," I think. I may get that totally wrong. But Ellen Davis's book on this is quite good. And she focuses a lot on the beginning of Genesis, but also other passages. I really, I like Job a lot. I think Job is quite powerful. You know, in terms of God's voice in the whirlwind sort of corrective to Job's rather self-centered view of creation. And God doesn't answer Joe's particular questions the way they might want an answer. But he does insist that creation is bigger than human, an individual human or even humans in general, that God has larger purposes for his creation that we can understand right now.
Chris McAlilly 13:39
Yeah, I think...
Jeff Bilbro 13:41
Right.
Chris McAlilly 13:41
Sorry. No, sorry to interrupt you. I think the question I find it very provocative at the beginning of your book, "Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry's Sustainable Forms," that I think puts scripture and Berry's writing and other novelists or poets who're writing about the natural world. The question is, does poetry make anything happen? When we're confronted with environmental crises, you know, we tend to reach for or devote our energy and resources towards science and technology and engineering, whereas Berry takes a different approach. Scripture takes a different approach. It's really the approach of a poetic... It's cultivating the kind of contemplative habits that would allow you to interact with the world around you with a kind of moral imagination. What is your argument in "Virtues of Renewal?" What are you hoping for in kind of digging into Berry's work and bringing that forward?
Jeff Bilbro 14:47
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think you know, that question that I tried to, kind of, the reframing I'm after there is very Jobian, right. Job wants, in some ways, a concrete answer. And God says I'm going to give you a different, imaginative way of inhabiting creation. And the "Virtues of Renewal" came out of a couple different things. In part, it was my own curiosity regarding why Berry writes fiction and poetry and essays, why work in these three genres? Is he doing something, each of those is unique, and what is shaping or motivating him in that particular work he's doing?
Jeff Bilbro 15:33
And as I thought about that question, what I came to think or to realize is that what's at stake for Baery is he's trying to invite readers to, yeah, as you put it, there's a sort of different way of being in the world, and that each of these genres allows him to kind of draw out particular facets of that attitude or that posture. And in particular, he is inviting us to undertake a kind of moral formation in regard to these virtues that might participate in God's redemption of creation.
Jeff Bilbro 16:16
One of Berry's famous poems "Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front" concludes with this line, "practice resurrection." And I think Berry is pushing us to think well, what would it actually look like, in real terms, for us in our material lives is equalized, to practice for the resurrection that we think, you know, has been promised to us. Christ has already been resurrected. But the final resurrection, what would it mean for us in our lives now to practice that? And so thinking through some of the both literary forms that Berry employs to model that, but also the forms of life that might enable us to participate in that redemptive patterns that Christians think undergirds creation.
Eddie Rester 17:11
So what are some of those patterns of life? What gets offered to us about these patterns that allow us to practice resurrection? I think particularly in terms of our relationship with our communities, and with the land.
Chris McAlilly 17:25
With specific places, too, it's not just land generally, but with a specific place, a patch of earth that is yours to inhabit.
Jeff Bilbro 17:34
Yeah, well, I, you know, I talked about what, maybe seven or so in that book, there's probably other ones I could have talked about, but maybe just to the direction you took, again there in that question. One of my favorite ones is what I talk about near the end, Berry's term "convocation," I think is quite evocative, which just means, you know, we might use that term, I guess, most often, in higher ed, as a, you know, a particular event or ceremony, but convocation really just means called together. And he uses that often, in terms of the way that our very identity, the way that our sort of mental space is constituted by the voices, the conversations that we participate in.
Jeff Bilbro 18:21
You know, in our contemporary culture, oftentimes, young people are told, be whoever you want to be, follow your dreams, you know, you kind of look into your inner self, and intuit what it will take to satisfy and make yourself happy. And Berry flips that on its head and suggests that we might find our calling, our vocation, and our true identity in attending more carefully to the voices of those around us. And one of my favorite examples of this is in the sort of character arc of his beloved character, Burley Coulter. If anybody's read the Port William fiction, they'll know Burley. He is a very... he himself says he's a wayward character. He, early on as a young man, he, you know, followed his own appetites and desires. And there's---I won't go through all this--but there's a couple of key moments in his life where that begins to shift.
Jeff Bilbro 19:19
One of them is when his, I want to make sure I get this right, his sister-in-law dies young and leaves two nephews. And his brother's not really able, emotionally, to be a good father to them. So Burley ends up raising these two boys. Pretty much the last thing that he wants to do, right, to get stuck with these two boys. And yet as he submits to that burden and helps to raise them, he finds himself changed and ends up loving them and loving the person that loving them has made him into. So I think, you know, that's just one very concrete example of how this reorientation to the world might have very practical consequences for how we live our lives. And I guess that's maybe not just material creation, but it's certainly the human community that we find ourselves part of and learn to listen to the needs and voices of those around us.
Chris McAlilly 20:27
Yeah, I love what Burley Coulter says in "The Wild Birds." "We are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain't in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don't."
Jeff Bilbro 20:37
Amen. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 20:38
Yeah.
Jeff Bilbro 20:39
Of course, it's a riff on St. Paul. Right. And this idea of the church, all Christians being members of Christ's body.
Eddie Rester 20:49
Whether they know it or not, yeah,
Jeff Bilbro 20:51
Yeah, yeah.
Chris McAlilly 20:52
Yeah, it's a deep, deep sense of interrelatedness and connection within the context of the community and to the earth itself. And I do think that... You know, our last conversation was with a friend of ours, Will Reed, who has a an organic vegetable farm here in North Mississippi. And what I see him doing, he's been at it for about a decade, is trying to re-stitch the community that has been fragmented and kind of torn apart. And he described, particularly the time when the strawberry harvest is in and he has a strawberry picking. And folks from across the community come out, and there are strawberry juices all over.
Eddie Rester 21:40
Kids with red stains on their faces.
Chris McAlilly 21:42
Yeah, on the mouths and faces of children. And for him, that is iconic of a certain kind of moment within the community where it's coming together, participating in a certain kind of shared joy and life. And I do think that Berry does give voice to that. I wonder, as you've continued to think about your own life and work and kind of taking some of the lessons you learned in Wendell Berry's work in other directions. I guess, how do you view the problem right now in the broader American culture? And what are some of the antidotes that you see as important for both Christians and folks beyond the church to be thinking about right now?
Jeff Bilbro 22:34
Well, there are many problems. Right? I don't know.
Eddie Rester 22:37
That's a big question.
Jeff Bilbro 22:38
Yeah. One thing that I've been spending some time thinking about, both with Berry and others, is this question of social atomization or loneliness and how it contributes to political polarization and all sorts of attendant problems. And, you know, I see, back to this notion of identity, I see a lot of my students, you know, they don't have the resources to answer this question that people often ask about who am I and what am I called to do. Because the culture feeds them kind of trite answers, and they aren't satisfied about how to answer those questions.
Jeff Bilbro 23:29
So I think this sort of, you know, this breakdown of community and this sense that we no longer know that we are members of one another has all kinds of problems, or produces all kinds of symptoms, I guess. But I don't think there's one easy answer, right? There's not one simple solution. But I think it's encouraging and hope giving to see people, you know, like your friend there who was finding ways to grow strawberries and invite people to come gather and pick them. And I think there's lots of good examples.
Jeff Bilbro 24:05
Berry says that hope depends on a vision of Shalom, a vision of fullness, and particular examples. And if we see one person doing good work, then that sustains hope. So, you know, if there's ways in my church that I can gather and have some good conversation with the people, that gives hope, right. If there's opportunities I have to meet and serve my neighbors, that gives hope. And so I think that sometimes the kind of apparent asymmetry between those practices and the, you know, huge problems in our culture can be discouraging. And that's where it's good to remember that as Christians, we think that redemption ultimately is a gift given by God, not something that we have to to achieve or bring about on our own.
Jeff Bilbro 25:03
I think Berry's quite, quite good about not succumbing to the temptation to think that we have to fix the world on our own. That's impossible, right? I mean, one of his essays is called "Think Little," right. And that's kind of the burden of the essay, that we don't have to fix, in that context, climate change. We just have to find good work to do and do it.
Eddie Rester 25:30
I'm glad you brought up shalom. I think that's such an important word that we've missed or misread in Christianity, or forgotten in some ways, that shalom is not just peace, which is how it's often talked about. But it's this wholeness, this full sense of redemption, and healing that includes not just personal healing, but involves relational healing, and community healing, and even healing our relationship with the land around us, with all of creation.
Eddie Rester 26:05
One of your earlier writings, "Loving God's Wildness," you talk a lot about the Christians who came to America, I think, the Puritans and kind of their relationship and how they viewed the land, and how important that's been for how Christians have engaged conversations around the land and creation over the years. Can you offer a little bit of kind of that history that you offer in that book for us?
Jeff Bilbro 26:35
Yeah, yeah. The way I started that book is by acknowledging that Christians have a fraught relationship with understanding the land and creation. And, you know, I think we can see that in the Puritans, who on the one hand, are committed Christians, very, very enthusiastic in their faith, and on the other hand, are kind of settler colonists. And so you see in their writings and in the theology about creation, both of those strains. On the one hand, you see, you know, someone like Cotton Mather, who says, Well, this sort of New England wilderness, this uninhabited wasteland is the devil's territories. And Christians are called to come in here and fix it, and plant the divine of God's order. And, you know, in that context, material prosperity and finding God was the blessing. But on the other hand, Mather also talks about creation as God's temple and looks to creation as a source of revelation about who God is, and seems to, you know, to also recognize that Christian theology provides reasons to value all of creation and to care for it, not just extract resources.
Jeff Bilbro 28:01
So I think we have to acknowledge that, you know, sometimes Christian theology has been used to justify damaging modes of economic modes, or civilizational modes. But that doesn't mean that that tradition is useless. And in fact, I think it has the resources that we need to critique abusive relationships with creation and help us imagine more convivial ways of relating to the land that do contribute to or participate in shalom or flourishing, or, yeah, this kind of broader vision of peace, not just as the absence of violence, but as the condition of the flourishing of all the members.
Eddie Rester 28:57
He talked about the fraught relationship. And, you know, we feel that. I think all of us feel that when we turn on the news, and there's any conversation about climate change, or there's any conversation, you know, about global warming or things like that. How can Christians engage in that conversation in a way that maybe is unique or helpful or faithful to that long tradition that we have?
Jeff Bilbro 29:30
Yeah, I mean, I'll just say, I'll give you a sort of Wendell Berry answer. I don't want to pretend like this is the only possible Christian response to climate change or pollution or, you know, the broader challenges right now. But one of the reasons that I've really been encouraged by Berry and I think he's really helpful,--and this gets back to what we talked about earlier regarding the tendency to approach big problems like climate change with big technological solutions, and that we think the only way we can address climate change is if we can come up with awesome, massive carbon capture technology or, you know, if we all get electric cars and solar panels, we all get this thing. And the danger, and I'm not, you know, maybe some of the technologies are good and some aren't good. But the danger with that whole mode of thinking about the problem is that it tends to absolve individuals of any responsibility.
Jeff Bilbro 30:30
So most of us are not going to participate in developing new, you know, solar energy, technology, whatever. And yet, I think we all have an obligation, and not just to put it in onerous terms, but in terms of delight, we have the opportunity to participate in more convivial modes of relating to creation and to the places where we live. So that's where I think, you know, Berry's recommendation to grow a garden, or, you know, change, maybe, you still have to buy some food from the grocery store, you know, because of the price and your income. But you can buy some of the local farmer. You can start small where you are, and look for ways to adjust your way of being in that place, so that you have the opportunity to directly participate in a glimpse, even a little bit of that flourishing, that God invites us to partake.
Jeff Bilbro 31:39
So I think seeing it as as an opportunity for delight. You know, one of Berry's essays is "The Pleasures of Eating," where he talks about just the delight of eating a fresh tomato that you've grown. Or, maybe this is more controversial, I guess, but sitting down to a meal, and you eat an animal that you've raised and butchered yourself, or that your friend has, and that you are participating in an economy based on affection and love, rather than just, you know, monetary exchange.
Eddie Rester 32:14
Just consumption.
Jeff Bilbro 32:16
Yeah, exactly.
Chris McAlilly 32:17
Yeah, I think that for me, Berry's ability, both to look at the world squarely as it is--"Expect the end of the world," he writes, you know, "be joyful, though you've considered all the facts." But you can be joyful, you know. You can consider all the facts, but there's still the possibility for joy, for laughter, for delight. And I do think that the key is that you can live small and locally and do that, if you have the right kind of imaginative frame that says that, you know, you're participating in this larger story that is ultimately redemptive, that does have the capacity for rehabilitation and healing and restoration in the end. It kind of gives you an opportunity to engage now in the larger work of renewal and resurrection. And holding those two things together, I think, is part of what's unique about Berry's strength as an essayist, as a poet, and as anomalous,
Jeff Bilbro 33:20
I think, too, what's really crucial for--and this is where it matters that he's a Christian, right--what's really crucial, too, is that we don't have to expect, based on projections or our read of current conditions, expect that things are gonna get better or expect that, you know, climate change is gonna get solved, because we have been told that Christ is going to come and make all things new. And sometimes Christian eschatology has been used to justify environmental exploitation. But the way that Barry articulates that, it's an ability that frees us from the impossible burden of fixing the world on our own, and invites us into this relationship of delight and of participating now in the deposit of the redemption that God has promised.
Jeff Bilbro 34:20
So I think that eschatological dimension is really crucial for freeing us, because so often this climate change discussion and environmental degradation discussions can be really depressing, right. And then some people kind of enjoy that Doomsday feeling, but most people would prefer to ignore it because it's too depressing. And then we don't do anything.
Eddie Rester 34:43
Right.
Jeff Bilbro 34:44
So it's really counterproductive all the way around. And I think getting the theology right is actually crucial to giving people the sense that they have opportunity to do good things right now.
Chris McAlilly 34:57
I think the other thing about his approach that's so delightful to me is that it doesn't fit easily within the way the culture wars in the broader American conversation are kind of laid out because some of the things that he says sound fairly progressive, you know, kind of like your West Coast environmental activists, but at the heart of what he's offering is both a lament for the death of a particular form of rural life and communitarian localism and but there's a form of farming and community that really is at the heart of the center of this country that's deeply conservative. And I think that, you know, that to me is just part of what makes him just sing when he comes off the page.
Eddie Rester 35:50
Yeah, he can speak without being pigeon holed somewhere. He has this voice that is his voice, I think. And, you know, you're talking a minute ago about getting our eschatology, right. And I think that's so helpful, because so often we feel like we've got, either we have to ignore it because it's too big, or we have to just participate. You know, I grew up in the 80s, when Jesus was coming back at any moment, and therefore, it doesn't matter how you treat the world around you. But to get our eschatology right, I like what you said there, reflecting what Berry said, that it just frees us to do what we're called to do, and to live how we're called to live, not bound by the constraints of apathy or Doomsday at all.
Jeff Bilbro 36:40
Yeah, I think that's a good example of the ways that he does kind of baffle, you know, baffle people in the American context, because he doesn't fit into the political or religious categories, right. I mean, he leans into Christian theology, at the same time that he says stuff that would offend or at least provoke a lot of typical American Christian. So that's why I think it's pretty fun. Because when I talk about Berry, you know, I'm often talking to people whose politics and way of looking at the world are often totally bifurcate. You know, the people on the far left and the far right, both admire and appreciate Berry, and I think that's a little bit of hope that the political landscape in the US doesn't have to be stuck in the way that it's stuck right now.
Eddie Rester 37:34
And probably because he doesn't have a computer, so he doesn't know that he's supposed to fit into one side or the other.
Chris McAlilly 37:39
Yeah, I think that was one of the things for me that I wonder about. For you, as you've done a deep dive into his writing, but I wonder what are some of the ways in which your immersion in Berry, how has that affected choices that you've made about how you live your life?
Jeff Bilbro 37:59
Yeah, I mean, when I lost my job last year, he wrote me a really nice letter. And, you know, said, I'm so sorry you lost your job, and then when I got a job, and moved to Grove City, I wrote him back. And so I feel like I, in spite of my best intentions, I am in danger of becoming one of these ruthless professors that Eric Clancy, who was a academic in the 80s, kind of warned about--the tendency of academic professionals to be wedded to a career rather than a place. And personally, you know, having to write Berry and been convinced, I wanted to avoid that tendency, right.
Jeff Bilbro 38:41
So, imperfectly. How have I applied Berry's ideas? Very imperfectly. And I think, and he recognizes that, you know, he had a very nice letter back. I mean, when people write to Berry and say, I want to buy a farm, because I've read your novels, he writes back and says, Don't do it. It's a bad idea. So I think you have to be careful not to assume that, like, the only way to be a quote, unquote, faithful reader of Berry's is to become an organic farmer, although that's certainly a fine thing to do.
Jeff Bilbro 39:16
So, more broadly, you know, I think... I do own a computer. I kind of have to for my job and the kind of work I do, but I don't own a smartphone. And I think in large part that's because of Berry's warnings about the need to set very physical, concrete limits around our relationships with technology. You know, he has this great essay, I can't remember which one it is, but one of his essays he concludes, he says, there, way that various farming technology he uses and he had mentioned he had a chainsaw. And then he said, but I am now a man who only uses an axe, and I let his memory trouble my thoughts. Because I think it's so unfortunate that we don't think that we... It's inevitable that we use x technology or that we buy our food in this way, right. That there's always choices, even if our culture constrains those in many regards.
Jeff Bilbro 40:17
So, you know, I think I can list any number of sort of food practices or transportation practices or technologies. But I should also just say, you know, of course, I participate in many economic practices that I don't admire, right. We're all complicit in systems that are unjust in many ways, and kind of wrestling with that complicity and looking for creative ways to opt out is is an ongoing challenge.
Eddie Rester 40:51
One other thing that I discovered, I was doing some research on your writing and your work, is that you also do some work with a website, a blog called Front Porch Republic. It's frontporchrepublic.com. Tell us a little bit about that, that work that you do there and why that's important to you.
Jeff Bilbro 41:11
Yeah, that's another example of the sort of ironies, right? FPR folks have always embraced, I guess, the irony that it's a website advocating localism, you know. As Jason, one of my friend says, you got to eat with a long handed spoon. But yeah, when I was a grad student, I was very, very moved by Berry and very eager to find people who were trying to apply his ideas. And, you know, Berry is so interdisciplinary, right. He's a creative author. He writes novels, and essays and poetry. But he's also writing about economics and agriculture and theology and race and sex and all kinds of stuff, right. And so people in the kind of English literature silo that I was in didn't really talk about Berry, or if they did, it was on these kind of aesthetic, limited terms that I felt didn't really do justice to the richness of his thought.
Jeff Bilbro 42:16
So when I stumbled upon the FPR website, it was really helpful in introducing me to a community of people who are trying to apply Berrry's ideas and approach to a wider variety of cultural concerns. And then after I graduated and attended a bunch of their conferences, and got to meet various people, I took over the website editing role, I don't know, three or four years ago. So yeah, it's been a really meaningful... I mean, on the one hand, it's a website, right. But on the other hand, it's been an occasion for fostering really meaningful friendships with people from many walks of life--academics, but a lot of farmers, a lot of people committed to, you know, new urbanism or community revitalization or all kinds of projects and approaches to tending the health of their local places. And so that's been a source of encouragement and good friendship, which I think is always needed.
Chris McAlilly 43:18
And I think it's just a sign, right? It's a small one but an important one of a way to participate in the work of redemption and the cultivating of health and shalom locally and through friendship and in the places where we find ourselves. I think it's a good word to read Wendell Berry, to allow him to trouble our thoughts, and to know that there are new conversations that are popping up around the country and around the world that give new ways to engage in the conversation around Christianity and religious traditions and in a care for the earth and the environment.
Chris McAlilly 43:59
Jeff, we're so, so grateful for your time today. Thanks. Thanks for coming on The Weight.
Jeff Bilbro 44:04
Yeah, thanks for good questions and for your work to host these conversations. Obviously, I think they're important. And so it's always encouraging when people want to have these conversations and want to think about how how Berry can help us think through these issues.
Eddie Rester 44:20
We appreciate, very much appreciate your time today.
Eddie Rester 44:22
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 44:28
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Eddie Rester 44:39
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]