God and Earth

In response to both some of the discussion that occurred over the Iceland post and in regard to my endless preoccupation with the geographical place where I currently reside (and its stark contrast to the place where I am from), I re-picked up one of my favorite essay collections, Wendell Berry's What are People For?. This short volume has much to say that is helpful about how we ought to live in relationship to the earth as well as the concept of having a sense-of-place (a love for and connection to the place/environment/land where one is from). With that in mind, here are a few nice Berry quotes:

The subject of Christianity and ecology is endlessly, perhaps infinitely, fascinating. . . . (It) is politically fascinating to those of us who are devoted both to biblical tradition and to the the defense of the earth, because we are always hankering for the support of the churches, which seems to us to belong, properly and logically, to our cause. This latter fascination, though not the most difficult and fearful, is certainly the most frustrating, for the fact simply is that the churches, which claim to honor God as the "maker of heaven and earth," have lately shown little inclination to honor the earth or to protect it from those who would dishonor it. (95)

Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on "the economy"; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect--indeed, has already elected--to save the building fund. The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as the creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences. (96)

The industrial nations are now divided, almost entirely, into a professional or executive class that has not the least intention of working in truth, beauty, and righteousness, as God's servants, or to the benefit of their fellow men, and an underclass that has no choice in the matter. Truth, beauty, and righteousness now have, and can have, nothing to do with the economic life of most people. This alone, I think, is sufficient to account for the orientation of most churches to religious feeling, increasingly feckless, as opposed to religious thought or religious behavior. . . . "There is . . . a price to be paid," Philip Sherrard says, "for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and as mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment." We all, obviously, are to some extent guilty of this damnable adaptation. We are all undergoing this punishment. But as Philip Sherrard well knows, it is a punishment that we can set our hearts against, an adaptation that we can try with all our might to undo. We can ally ourselves with those things that are worthy: light, air, water, earth; plants and animals; human families and communities; the traditions of decent life, good work, and responsible thought; the religious traditions; the essential stories and songs. (101-102)

There is more I had intended to include, but if I do so the end result will likely be that nobody will actually read any of it. But the above selections, taken from the essay God and Country, more or less summarizes the way I have thought about the intersection between my faith and the land, as well as hints at my hopes for my family's future lifestyle. The photo, by the way, was taken from the home where I was fortunate enough to grow up. It is probably superfluous to say that it was not difficult to cultivate a love for that place.