Pundit Profile: Wendell Berry

While composing this post, I received a notification call for setting up the Collectibles Book Sale at our local library this coming Friday. It was a fitting interruption, as it was through these sales that I first discovered agrarian author and essayist Wendell Berry.

Berry writes in the noble Thoreauvian tradition, with a deep reverence for the land and an intense, spiritual appreciation for nature. He understands the subtle but rich delights found in hard work, ancient cycles, and the hearty smell of wet dirt and fresh sweat on a summer morning; and he has the courage and grace to put this profound understanding into words. This combination is a rare gift. Too much "poetry" is written by high-brow intellectuals who wouldn't know a hammer from a horseshoe. Show me hands with dirt beneath the fingernails flying furiously on a typewriter and I'll show you a truly educated man. As Berry, in his landmark essay Discipline and Hope, quotes from Thoreau's Journal:

Hard and steady and engrossing labor with the hands, especially out of doors, is invaluable to the literary man and serves him directly. Here I have been for six days surveying in the woods, and yet when I get home at evening, somewhat weary at last... I find myself more susceptible than usual to the finest influences, as music and poetry.

Berry's emphasis on personal awareness and self-sufficiency is a breath of fresh air, informed by his grassroots philosophy of life and healthy distrust for technology, which is summed up neatly in this pithy sentence about modern weather forecasting: "The farmer whose weather eye has been usurped by the radio has become less observant, has lost his old judicious fatalism with respect to the elements - and he is no more certain of the weather." That's a sad trade, and a heavy toll to pay for such a rutted road, but there are few who question it. Hence our great need for men like Berry and Hanson and Krenov to remind us of what is worth remembering - and preserving.

Issues involving the economy and environment seem difficult to get to the bottom of these days. Writers like Berry occupy a sane and reasonable middle-ground between fanatical conservationists who won't go outside for fear of stepping on a rare beetle, and reckless industrialists who rape their motherland every chance they get. For Berry, it is obvious that using and honoring the land go hand in hand. It is a sad indication of our long-standing cultural obtuseness that those who espouse this view are generally relegated to quoting from the Indians.

Lastly, Berry is a man who believes passionately in the value and necessity of literacy, and not the raise-your-hand-if-you-can-read-and-write type. Berry has in mind a deeper literacy, the type that knows how much it doesn't - and cannot - know.

We are dependent, for understanding, and for consolation and hope, upon what we learn from songs and stories. This has always been so, and it will not change.
Literacy - the mastery of language and the knowledge of books - is not an ornament, but a necessity. It is impractical only by the standards of quick profit and easy power. Longer perspective will show that it alone can preserve in us the possibility of an accurate judgment of ourselves, and the possibilities of correction and renewal. Without it, we are adrift in the present, in the wreckage of yesterday, in the nightmare of tomorrow.

(-In Defense of Literacy)

If you care about life beyond the rat race, beneath the veil of matter and materialism, you won't be disappointed in Berry. You might even be inspired to grab a shovel, get some blisters, and write a poem about it. Really, we might not turn back into dust so soon if we spent less time avoiding it.

Basic Blogging Tips and Tricks

I've been blogging for some time now, and I've discovered a few simple tools, techniques, and tricks that have made my life as a blogger (and blog reader) much easier. I've realized that a substantial number of my readers are only marginally tech-savvy, so I think some of this information may be helpful.

The first and most important item is probably Google Reader. Unless you use live bookmarks, a good RSS reader is imperative. What an RSS reader does, very simply, is monitor your favorite blogs and notify you when there is new content. No more wasting time checking blogs manually for new posts: with Google Reader, it's all delivered instantaneously to your doorstep. In addition, it's easy to add new blogs, keep track of your favorite posts, and share stuff with your friends. Try it out - the learning curve is negligible, and you'll thank me later.

[For more information, check out Garrett's excellent video and article about Google Reader.]

As regards blogging itself, there are a number of hacks I use to streamline the experience for myself and my readers.

When adding web pictures to blogs, always save the picture to your computer first, then upload it into blogger's system. This way, you never get into hosting issues. (Also, it's wise to upload your picture(s) early-on, before adding formatting to your post. Sometimes, adding a picture will inexplicably erase your formatting.) Another trick for pictures: there's a web-based image editor I use called Picnik that allows you to do quick edits without fussing with a slow, cumbersome application. Super handy.

You may have noticed, especially if you've done much photo-blogging, that blogger's compose window is rather small. Ok, very small. The small size makes it difficult to format your post efficiently, because you're constantly scrolling up and down. Needless to say, when I discovered how to make the window bigger, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Here's how to do it.

First, start using Firefox. Next, get the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. (I know it's a strange name, but you'll get over it. I did.) After you've installed the add-on, you need to install the Blogger Large Post Editor script. That's all there is to it. Now, when you login to blogger, your compose window will be full screen. Perfect ecstasy.

[For more information, check out Garrett's excellent video and article about Greasemonkey.]

Special thanks to Garrett for his great instructional material for the technologically challenged. If you haven't checked out his newest product about How to Buy a Computer, be sure to do so. The guy knows his stuff.

While we're on boring stuff and technicalities, I'd like to get some feedback on What Susan Said, my daily quotation blog. If you read it and like it, please either leave a comment on this post or send me an email and let me know. If enough people are reading and benefiting from it, I'll keep it going; otherwise, I might drop it. (If you don't know about What Susan Said, visit the link above or read my introductory post.)

As always, thanks for reading.

On Working Heartily

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

- Ecclesiastes 9:10

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men." - Colossians 3:23

I'm tempted to begin this post with some raw romanticism and declare passionately that I love working. On second thought, I think I will borrow a wiser and more subtle sentiment from the archetypical craftsman James Krenov: "I don't love working. It is working well that I love."

We live in a culture in which everything is just something on the way to something else. Few things are loved and enjoyed for their own sake. This is especially true of anything related to work, and particularly labor (seeing as they are no longer synonymous terms.)

Work is - or rather ought to be - sacramental. You may hold whatever theory you like regarding work as an evil result of the Fall - I do not intend to explore the matter here, preferring to deal with the innate human inspiration toward creativity and craftsmanship, which I hold to be plain empirical reality. (If you don't regard this internal fire as plain empirical reality, you may as well stop reading right now.)

In the early chapters of The Silmarillion, Tolkien describes the Valar; immortal, small-g gods, equivalent to high angels or spirits of heaven. They each have particular passions and powers, and it is with difficulty that I refrain from describing all of them to you in detail. Scarcely in time do I remember that is not what I am writing about. I am here concerned with only one.

Aule was nigh to the noblest of the Valar, and he it was who took thought for "the fabric of Earth":

"The delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making and in the thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work."

-J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, Houghton Mifflin (1977), p. 19

That is the ultimate romantic ideal: the pure joy of making, unspoiled by materialism. That is what I'm talking about. And that is precisely the thing that is being lost, because, after all, it is impractical, and everyone knows that impracticality is the cardinal sin of our times.

I was encouraged a few days ago to read an excellent secular article on working soulfully, probably among the best writing ever published on the subject. In it, the author makes a vigorous case for competence and "connectedness" - spiritual dimensions of satisfying work that are now being ruthlessly sacrificed on the altar of social efficiency. It is quite worthwhile to read the whole thing - print it out if you prefer - and spend a quiet moment pondering how we think about the things we do.

In the late summer of 2005, something started to change in my work habits and bearing as a tradesman. My knowledge began to reach a critical mass, and the result was an entirely new feeling of confidence and security. I began to work with the material, rather than against it, and to enjoy the way it acquiesced to my will beneath knife and blade. I began to cherish the emotional delight hidden in the most minute and menial details of the job. It felt something like having your own small renaissance.

"The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away."

- Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

I've fired millions of nails, laid miles of decking, shimmed a few hundred doors, and carried thousands of pounds of concrete. I've broken tools, fixed them again, made mistakes, gotten hurt, gotten scared, improvised, and even invented a time or two.

It gives you a sense of history; a sense of having "been there." Your eye is sharper, your hands are steadier, and your thought processes are cool and weighted with experience. There is much higher to go, to be sure, but there is a marked and welcome difference between the sultry air of the valley and the bracing breeze of the mountainside.

Of course, it's not just about sniffing sawdust with a dreamy look on your face. My family will tell you that I am fond of quoting David Brown's stoical maxim, "Work is difficult - that's why it's called work." Fatigue, the foreshadowing presence of death, is built into the universe. The Preacher of Ecclesiastes understood perhaps best of all the grim implications of mortality: "All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it." It cannot be expressed in words. It is a groan.

However, the imminent reality of death should not be used to negate the value of passionate work; indeed, this is the only sane response. Those who understand are easy to recognize: you can see it burning in their eyes. They are tired, yes, but smiling.


"There was so much work left to do / but so much you'd already done" - Rich Mullins, Sometimes By Step

Image courtesy of polandpoland.com

The Dangers of Digitalization

We are living in a digital age. Companies are scrambling to package technology into new devices that will continue to make digital entertainment and communication ever more convenient, and ever more pervasive in people's lives. Indeed, society itself is driving this innovation.

The iPod is an obvious example. All of a sudden, everyone needs one. Companies have even talked people into paying for video capability, as if anyone really wants to watch videos on a little 2" screen. Businessmen depend on their Blackberry's ability to keep them up-to-date and on schedule. Cell phones are as plentiful as those once-important telephone poles, (which will no doubt appear to future civilizations as some remarkable, continent-wide Stonehenge.)

The headquarters for all of this multimedia is, of course, the ubiquitous PC (or Mac, if you prefer). Here, everything is updated, charged, and "synced." And you have email. And blogs. And news. And forums. And chat. And shopping. And school. And music. And games.

You have a whole other world.

Listen to what Eric Lidow, the 94-year-old CEO of International Rectifier, had to say in a recent interview with EETimes:

I'm very impressed by the advances in computers, but there's a tremendous danger to our education because of the availability of computers and the place they take in children's lives. They're spending too much time in front of the screen and not enough time relating to other kids. I think it's very serious, actually. You don't want Internet kids growing up to be antisocial - because that's what's happening. And I really pity those people who try to get married on the Internet.

The subtle snare in technology is that it leads you to believe that you are doing something truly meaningful. It seduces you into buying an alternate reality. It is a fantasy, not in the worst sense, but neither in the most noble.

It flatters us that we can connect so well with other "people." It fascinates us to have access to so much news and information. We feel as if we're really apprehending the world.

The obvious and startling truth is that we're really not apprehending the world at all. Look at you! You're sitting at a desk somewhere, totally absorbed by a sterile, unblinking array of colored pixels. And the more you "apprehend the world," the more you return to this very spot. The whole thing is really quite ludicrous. It's not broadening you and opening you up; it's narrowing you down, gluing you to the screen, systematically stripping you of your autonomous self.

This is not to say that there is no value in technology. There is. However, as useful as technological tools may be, we must remember that they are just that: tools.

The problem is that technology is not satisfied to be a mere tool. It wants to be regarded as a lifestyle, just as Caesar wasn't content to be a king and demanded that he be worshipped as a god. Society is in real danger of unknowingly making this quiet mental adjustment. Indeed, it may already be too late. However, if you're reading this, it probably isn't - at least not for you.

Will we rise up against the dehumanization, or will we just be "one of the dominoes"? I'm not talking about going to war, I'm just talking about stopping to think. If we don't, one day we may wake up and find that our paradise has become a prison.

The headlines in the dailies
Are the horses in a race
They lead you to believe
Life and death are commonplace
Some believe it
And I'm crying again

I've heard some good intentions
Not all were secondhand
But bravado and pretension
Will not feed a hungry man
It's been said before
And I'm crying again

Very quietly
The world loses blood overnight
Without a fight
And in the morning
The sickness will hide in the light
Out of sight

Running from a world
That they will never understand
The masses ride their passions
With the throttle in their hands
Nobody knows
What is waiting around the bend

Now and then the criminal
In my skin lets out a sigh
He'd like to think he's innocent
But he cannot tell a lie
Truth is like a knife
And I'm crying again

-Mark Heard

Image courtesy of geeksontime.com

The World Is Flat

Courtesy of a generous friend who shares my interests in reading and current affairs, I recently had the opportunity to read The World Is Flat, by New York Times Op-Ed contributor Thomas L. Friedman (website).

Friedman is a foreign affairs columnist with a nose for the globalization trail. His extensive travel, respect for other cultures, and immersion in the issues of the day make him well-qualified to author this sort of work, as attested by both The New York Times Bestseller List and Amazon's Top Sellers List.

The subtitle, A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, is somewhat misleading: a "Brief History" of a five-year period shouldn't require 600 pages. Only a journalist would get away with that. However, caloric composition aside, Friedman's style skims along, bursting with stories and statistics. He seamlessly blends brisk reporting with somber social/ethical analysis, and obviously understands the average English reader rather well.

The book traces the development of the internet, discusses new economic forces, and weighs the pros and cons of globalization, along with interspersed essays on education, environmentalism, and ethics. In more ways than one, this is a big book.

Because of the technology available today, the playing field is being leveled. Adolescent countries, such as China and India, are taking advantage of the new tools and infrastructure and entering the global economy en masse. This unprecedented talent pool and capability to network and collaborate is dismantling geographic, political, and social boundaries faster than you can say "horizontal". The world is flat.

Overall, Friedman views globalization in a positive light, although he is careful to point out the less attractive side-effects. I applauded his appraisal of America's lazy, elitist mentality as he states "flatly" that "You cannot protect your way to prosperity." Later on, however, he seemed to retreat on this point, arguing for at least some degree of social sugar-coating - "compassionate flatism" - to soften the healthy but harsh effects of a global economic meritocracy.

When I was first looking into the subject, I watched this Charlie Rose interview with Thomas about the book that provides an excellent synopsis of Friedman's findings, feelings, and fears. (The interview forced Friedman to overcome his drafty journalistic tendencies and cut to the point, making for a very effective presentation of the big picture. If you're not going to read the book, this is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the main ideas.) There is another interview here, again with Charlie Rose, following up on the success of the book and surveying the road ahead.

It does not take a prophet to say that 50 years from now, should the Lord tarry, 2007 will be cemented in the iron grip of history. Our dreams and decisions are directly linked to our awareness of our world and the trends, truths, and tragedies that shape it. Are we building a legacy of astute attentiveness, or altruistic apathy?


Image courtesy of amazon.com and kanthak.net

Cream and Sugar?

I've had a growing urge to disseminate some of the miscellaneous interesting information that I pick up around the web, but the last thing I want to do is turn Sojourner's Song into a news heap. So, to resolve the dilemma I launched a simple aggregator blog - probably not amounting to much more than an RSS feed - that will host the shallow, colorful nonsense that doesn't belong in a serious blog. It just helps to maintain a sense of place and a semblance of order, kind of like the "No Wal-Marts in San Diego" idea.

See you at the grind.

Blogging or Globbing?

I developed early on a sort of unspoken rule that I would not spend too much time blogging about blogging, as it seemed to me a rather circular endeavor. Besides, I'm largely unqualified to sermonize on the subject, being somewhat of a muddled milksop when it comes to cybernetics. But never mind; just think of this post as "Mr. Bean goes to Blogville."

I am thoroughly fascinated with blogging as a both personal and information-rich medium. There is a staggering quantity of ideas, news, and research that is available to anyone, anytime. I am starting to feel that this budding technology, for all it's flukes and flaws, will be playing a significant role in the immediate future of Christianity.

About a week ago I was invited to join Christian Bloggers. Whether they found me by pure accident or were tipped off, it earned me another button on the sidebar and possibly a few more daily hits, (not that either has any meaning). This network stops far short of embodying what I see as the medium's Kingdom potential, but it appears to be hardboiled and harmless. (If you happen to be interested, it is simple to join on your own initiative.)

In the reading department, I recently plowed through BLOG to try to bring myself up to speed a little and stop blogging by torchlight. Written by Hugh Hewitt, a Christian radio talk show host and blogger, the book describes how the blogosphere is dismantling the Mainstream Media monopoly on information, and describes some statistics and stories that are quite interesting.

According to BLOG, a full two-thirds of blogs that are started are ultimately deserted by their bloggers: the average abandoned blog lasts about four months before trailing off into the cold oblivion of outer-cyberspace. I guess that means I am either safely out of danger or inescapably hooked.

The book has a decided political emphasis, and commercialized blogging is preached as a matter of course. For myself, I can't help but hope that there remains a remnant who see advertising as the distasteful distraction it is. Blogging may be a marvelous tool, but much of it remains grossly and unquestionably materialistic.

The Economist has some interesting things to say about Web 2.0, the budding internet standard devoted to new media such as blogs and podcasts. (Speaking of the Economist, you may want to check out this recent article from Mercator.net about the magazine. I don't agree with all of Mercator's conclusions, but it's an informative third-party overview nonetheless.)

As I have intimated in previous posts, the whole affair is a good bit trickier than it looks. There is a fine line between blogging and globbing. Mud is easy to find. Diamonds are not.


Image courtesy of hovedetpaabloggen.dk