Archive for September, 2026

“In an age of brutal philosophies, shrieking media, cold arts, lying politicians, and devouring institutions, Wendell Berry was a hero of an entirely human way of being. He was willing to make art which let the soul peek out from hiding in a culture of sarcasm, ensouled art as quiet and fragile as a small bird, seeing and loving. He became a light because he was willing to accept the responsibilities of love.”

—Tara Thieke

Each time I prepare to write my first article for The Record in September, having taking a summer break to garden and to sit beside and swim in my pond to reflect, it seems to me that the integrity of Nature has further deteriorated. And with the coming of summer a dread materializes: will there be more and increasingly intense catastrophes around the world, characterized by wars, wildfires, floods, searing heatwaves, wildlife annihilation  and human suffering—all created by humans?

On September 10, Le Devoir devoted a page to the rapidly disappearing bird populations in Québec. Titled “More and more bird species disappear from the sky: the decline of many groups lies directly with the destruction of natural habitats” (especially in southern Québec), it is a damning indictment of human activity, ranging from those who profess a love of birds but support the expansion of factory farming through their consumption of chickens and other animals to the destruction of wetlands near Montréal for the construction of a Northvolt battery factory (fortunately now cancelled). The worldwide massive decline in insects and accompanying desecration of wetlands further exacerbates the precipitous drop in bird populations. It is not only insects and birds who are being decimated: a recent report shows that almost 50 percent of the world’s farmers have been made ill from pesticides. Pesticides considered too unsafe to be used in North America are often sold to the poorest regions of the world. I have witnessed this first-hand.

The huge tragedy still unfolding in Nepal alone underlines the ongoing refusal to accept what is fuelling the already volatile predicament of the natural  world. The cataclysmic flooding high in the Himalayas that caused the deaths of so many people is directly linked to climate breakdown, scientists say.  It has been widely documented that the Nepalese people themselves are responsible for an infinitesimally small percentage of greenhouse gas emissions. 

The water level in the longest river in the European Union, the Danube, continues to drop because of drought, and all of Europe is suffering. Farming, river transportation and even nuclear power plants that produce electricity are severely impacted. Meanwhile, the green spaces of England have turned brown while trees drop leaves through lack of water, and many ancient oaks are dying because of the record-breaking extreme heat.

Coral reefs are also being affected by the ninth consecutive year of increased ocean heat. This July the world’s seas were the warmest on record. Let’s not forget that coral reefs are home to 25% of all marine life and support the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

It doesn’t help that one of the most insightful people on the planet died recently. Wendell Berry particularly embodied what is meaningful for humans. If we take his writings to heart, I have no doubt that humanity will flourish more intensely. For the last forty years I have read Berry’s poetry and essays and observed his sweet interactions as a farmer with Earth’s life forms. I believe that if every young person’s required reading list included his works, the world would find itself on the path to being healed.

Renowned climate writer Bill McKibben has called Berry “the prophet of responsibility” for his eloquent decades-long quest to create communities that are attuned to keeping humanity happily entwined with the rest of Nature. Contemporary society, including farming—Berry was above all else a traditional farmer in Kentucky—has lost its way. His essay “The Unsettling of America: culture and agriculture” is regarded as a powerful critique of corporate farming. But his novels are also beloved. I particularly enjoyed, The Memory of Old Jack, which retells the life of  a man who lives out his life on a farm and becomes a pillar of his community, just as Berry himself did.

The best way for me to introduce Wendell Berry or to reacquaint those who have read his essays and poems with his wonderful writing is to share some of his words:

“You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.”

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use is the gardener’s own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

“Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years… Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts… Practice resurrection.”

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”

“There are no unsacred places; 
there are only sacred places 
and desecrated places.”

“Let us have the candour to acknowledge that what we call ‘the economy’ or ‘the free market’ is less and less distinguishable from warfare.”

“What does the Earth ask of us if we are to continue to live on it?”

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

“I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.”

An interview with Wendell Berry:

https://tinyurl.com/Wendell-interview

Besides the encouragement and insights that Wendell Berry’s works give us to be steadfast in our resolve to forge on if this world is not to crumble in the face of political, technological and unethical forces, we must re-establish our own ethical fortitude and courage.

Need some positive news on how we can turn around what sometimes appears to be an unrelenting negative trajectory? You may wish to read Tim Lenton’s Positive Tipping Points: How to Fix the Climate Crisis https://tinyurl.com/positive-points-lenton

See also https://tinyurl.com/news-positive

I’d like to end this article with one of Wendell Berry’s best-loved poems:

The Peace of Wild Things

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.