Festival of Faith and Writing – Wendell Berry

There were two sessions on Wendell Berry during the festival, Wendell Berry and the Life of the Church and Wendell Berry and the Life of the Academy. They were both moderated by Jason Peters, editor of the recently published Wendell Berry – Life and Work, a collection of essays about Berry’s work by a wide variety of writers. At the one I was able to attend, three guys, Jack Leax, David Crowe, and Darryl Hart, read papers they had written about Berry’s work and how it relates to the life of the church, all peppered with quotes from his different books and essays.

Jack Leax started things off, and a couple minutes into his paper read this quote: “To remember the past is not to remember how it was, but how it is.” And, “‘To hope’ is not ‘to expect’. ‘To expect’ is probably to get disappointment.” He mentioned that Berry frequently describes himself as a “bewildered reader of the Bible.”

David Crowe went next, describing his experience of introducing Berry to a church book club that he leads. The title of his paper was Annoying Faithful Readers. He said, “In my book group, they are always charmed by Berry’s fiction and upset and bewildered by his non-fiction.” “I think people like Berry’s fiction because they can ignore the practical implications they can’t get away from in his non-fiction.”

Explaining why he goes to the trouble of hosting a book club, David said, “We read to enter new worlds and be confronted by new ideas, perhaps even to have our lives changed.”

Darryl Hart, reading the last paper of the session, Berry’s argument for conservative religion, said, “Berry’s criticism of the institutionalized church cannot be missed.” He talked about how Eugene Peterson, author of The Message translation and many other books, says that when reading Berry’s essays, every time Berry writes “farm”, he substitutes “parish”, and it works every time. Darryl address what he thinks are the strengths and weaknesses of that particular reading of Berry, and went on to address other ways he sees Berry arguing for conservative religion.

Another thing I have written in my notes, and I can’t remember if Darryl Hart said it or if he was quoting Berry, is, “We get religion not in bulk but little by little.”

The last fifteen minutes of the session were reserved for a Q&A. After a question coming up as to whether it would be a good idea to start a church book club using one of Berry’s books (the answer an immediate and resounding ‘no’), one person asked what books they would recommend people start with, if they had never read Berry. A Place on Earth and A World Lost were both recommended. My favorite prose that I read last year, period, came from Berry’s book Remembering, so I was surprised to hear Jason Peters say, “I think Remembering may be his most difficult.” Remembering contains the best description I’ve ever read of first attraction, of the beginnings of a relationship – I think I memorized a page and a half of that chapter – so I do recommend it. You can buy it in a collection, along with Nathan Coulter and A World Lost, here.

Reading Berry, you constantly stumble across little gems like this one: “To trust is simply to give oneself; the giving is for the future, for which there is no evidence. And once given, the self cannot be taken back, whatever the evidence.”