Greetings from North Carolina.
Last night was so lovely. After a very hot day, which required me to drink an absurd amount of water (you really have to keep up with it here!), I gathered with the Farm Church community and sat outside in our garden.
Farm Church has a plot of land on a corner lot at Watts & Green in Durham. Together, we grow about 3,000 pounds of food per year and give it away to address food insecurity. This community of beloved people has continued to call me back for frequent visits over the last decade. And from my home in Michigan, I lead the Farm Church weekly newsletter.
After doing some work in the garden, raking mulch and harvesting peppers, we sat outside together with cicadas sounding around us. It felt appropriate to pay attention to the surrounding nature because we spent time honoring the life and writings of Wendell Berry, who died this week.
He was the “Mad Farmer” behind his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front — my favorite of his writings. It’s interesting that I should call this my favorite, of course, as if I know even a small percentage of his immense volume of work. But I do love it. He spent 92 years listening, reflecting, and leaving beautiful words for us.
Last night, my friend Cole said, “We have so many of his writings to engage throughout our lifetimes.”
We’re not all writers or farmers or conservationists. But we are who we are, and we all will leave something. Sometimes, we just stumble into doing that. But other times, we are intentional, and it leaves a gift.
So how do you want to do that? What matters most to you? Maybe one of the greatest gifts is the occasion to do this together in community.
I’ll close with another Wendell Berry poem. Last night, we made it into a song, singing alongside the cicadas and admiring the beauty of flickering candles.
To Know the Dark
By Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 