Posted 575 days ago
Review of “The Gift of Good Land” by Wendell Berry
by Judy Naegeli, MSA team
Although I’ve been hearing the name Wendell Berry for years now, I confess that this essay is the first thing by him I have ever read. I don’t know if that makes me more or less qualified to review “The Gift of Good Land,” but I offer my thoughts on this small piece of writing humbly, knowing there are those among you who have read, admired, and reviewed Berry’s work for as long as he has been writing.
First published in 1979 in Sierra, the bulletin of the Sierra Club, “The Gift of Good Land” was written with two goals, stated in the first paragraph: 1) “to attempt a Biblical argument for ecological and agricultural responsibility” and 2) “to examine some of the practical implications of such an argument.” 1 And that first paragraph got me really excited. “Is this where it all started?” I thought. “Did this man really inspire the Christian ecological movement?”
He was at least very influential. I’ve seen Berry quoted or mentioned in so many of the books I’ve read— Deep Economy by Bill McKibben and Food and Faith, edited by Michael Schut of Earth Ministry, just to name a couple. The latter was the one that finally inspired me to actually read Berry’s work, and I chose this essay. I’ve read it again and again, and it’s well on its way to changing my life.
Berry starts his essay with Creation, when God pronounced the earth “good” and gave it to Adam and Eve. God said, according to certain translations, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:28). This subduing and dominance are where the problems start; the verse has been used to condone many instances of abuse of the earth. But Berry says that since the earth was “given to Adam and Eve in the time of their innocence,” that perhaps the words subdue and dominance “would have had a different intent and sense.” 2 So what is the proper use of the land?
Berry claims that the best description of the proper use of the earth is in the story of the gift of the Promised Land. Apparently, this story is more applicable to us in current times because the Promised Land was “a divine gift to a fallen people,” 3 as opposed to an innocent people. This made immediate sense to me. As a fallen people, we regularly need boundaries set up for us so we know how to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.4 Left to our own devices, we can mess things up pretty badly. So, when God gives the Israelites rules and regulations for distributing, planting, harvesting, and maintaining the land, he is giving them to us too. We, too, are “a stiff-necked people.”
The Promised Land, according to Berry, was “not a free or a deserved gift, but a gift given upon certain rigorous conditions”—most importantly, that “we must not use the world as though we created it ourselves.” 5 And so, as tenants of the earth with a Godly landlord, the Israelites (and we) were required to work hard to use the property well, as if we were getting a security deposit back. In Berry’s words, we must “prove worthy of” the gift of good land.
And how do we do that? By implementing “an elaborate understanding of charity”:
[…] all creatures are parts of a whole upon which each is dependent, and it is a contradiction to love your neighbor and despise the great inheritance on which his life depends. Charity even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator’s love for it. […] It is not allowable to love the Creation according to the purposes one has for it, any more than it is allowable to love one’s neighbor in order to borrow his tools. […] The requirements of this complex charity cannot be fulfilled by smiling in abstract beneficence on our neighbors and on the scenery. It must come to acts, which must come from skills.6
When reading these words the first time, they jarred me, especially at the mention of “skills” and the subsequent list of specific ones: “the study of agriculture, soil husbandry, engineering, architecture, mining, manufacturing, transportation […]” 7 I thought, “Is it really not enough for me to applaud “green” practices? Does this mean I actually have to educate myself and get training in sustainable practices for using the earth? That could be a full-time job!”
Upon further reading, I found that Berry is truly advocating a life transformation in favor of creation care, which I realized with some hopelessness. But past that initial feeling, Berry’s plan for “stewardship,” started to sound more and more exciting:
[…] stewardship is hopeless and meaningless unless it involves long-term courage, perseverance, devotion, and skill. This skill is not to be confused with any accomplishment or grace of spirit or of intellect. It has to do with everyday proprieties in the practical use and care of created things […].8
To use knowledge and tools in a particular place with good long-term results is not heroic. It is not a grand action visible for a long distance or a long time. It is small action, but more complex and difficult, more skillful and responsible, more whole and enduring, than most grand actions. It comes of a willingness to devote oneself to work that perhaps only the eye of Heaven will see in its full intricacy and excellence. Perhaps the real work, like real prayer and real charity, must be done in secret.9
Coming from a man who has worked a small farm in Kentucky for decades, this all seems so doable to me. Besides writing multiple books, essays, and poems that are quoted everywhere, Wendell Berry is not a hero. He is essentially a skillful farmer who has spent a lifetime simply trying to be a good steward. He has educated himself and practiced sustainable agriculture not to make a point or be an example for everyone else, but simply to devote himself to proving himself worthy of the gift of good land. Farming is something he would be doing whether he was a famous writer or not. That’s encouraging to me; I don’t have to save the world, I just have to work hard to be a good steward of the small amount I have. I have to choose to devote the time and energy to learning, practicing, discerning, and sacrificing. And if it turns into a full-time job, I have to choose to be ok with that.
Like I said, this essay is well on its way to changing my life. I’m still young; I don’t own much. If I start now, I can eventually prove worthy of the undeserved gifts God has given me and give him glory in doing so.
Notes
1. Wendell Berry, “The Gift of Good Land,” The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural (North Point Press, 1982), 267.
2. Ibid., 268.
3. Ibid., 269.
4. According to Micah 6:8.
5. Berry, Gift, 270.
6. Ibid., 273-274.
7. Ibid., 274.
8. Ibid., 275.
9. Ibid., 280-281.
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