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Witherspoon Society hosts Wendell Berry
03136
March 11, 2003

Witherspoon Society hosts Wendell Berry

Poet-philosopher reflects on world's embrace of 'violent solutions'

by Eva Stimson 

LOUISVILLE - War with Iraq, struggling farmers, fragmented families - in the
mind of Kentucky farmer-philosopher Wendell Berry, they're all related, all
symptoms of a world in which "people have selected violent solutions as the
norm."
	
Berry, an award-winning poet and essayist and author of more than 30 books,
was the featured speaker during a March 6-8 gathering here sponsored by the
Witherspoon Society. The meeting, billed as "a major conference on the future
of the progressive witness in the Presbyterian Church (USA)," marked the 30th
anniversary of this organization of Presbyterians at the liberal end of the
theological spectrum. 
	
More than 120 people crowded into a 12th-floor hotel meeting room downtown to
hear Berry, a tall, white-haired gentleman with elegant diction, respond to
questions and share pithy comments on religion, economics and sustainable
living. 
	
A few excerpts: 
	
On shopping at supermarket chains: "We live in an age of divorce, and not
just of husbands and wives. We're divorced from our groceries. If you buy
your food from Kroger, you don't know where it came from and at what human
cost. We're willing to go into this intimate situation in which we eat
creatures we don't know."
	
On developing local food supply systems: "We've got to reassume economic
responsibility. Quit living by proxy. Ask a neighbor, 'What can I do for
you?' Ask a farmer, 'Can I get food from you?' Begin to replace abstract
services with actual people. Replace unknown substances that we eat with
known substances."
	
On the divorce of utility and beauty: "We are a society that thinks if a
thing is useful, it has a right to be ugly. In this hotel we have picture
windows so we can look out on a scene of rather startling ugliness."
	
On technology that dominates contemporary life: "It's inescapable. It's like
original sin; we're in it. The best we can do is hope for grace and
forgiveness." Berry, who lives on a farm in eastern Kentucky, admitted that
he and his wife each have a vehicle, "because everything we want is far away.
We have to drive 20 to 30 miles to get a haircut. ... You're always going to
be involved in compromises."
	
On television: "If you would welcome a seducer, a known swindler, a liar, and
a person convicted of violent crimes into your living room, then you'll be
completely comfortable having a television." (Berry doesn't.) 
	
On the need for forgiveness: "I'm a man who enjoys animosity. I like the high
you get from feeling wronged and above somebody else. But it's a hole you get
into - and when you get to the bottom, there's nobody there." 
	
On the importance of community: "You can't have community among people who
don't need each other for anything. If you believe it's better not to be
known, for people not to know your business, you will suffer the
consequences. Nobody will know if you're sick or hungry." 
	
Interfaith relations was the topic of another speaker at the conference. Joe
Hough, the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, made an
address on "a Christian theology of religious pluralism."
	
Participants also heard Jack Rogers' reflections on his experience as
moderator of the 2001 General Assembly, and presentations by Doug Ottati, a
professor at Union/PSCE in Richmond, VA, and Mary Fulkerson, a professor at
Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, TN, on the vigor of the progressive,
prophetic vision in the Presbyterian Church.
	

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