Walking With Wendell Berry (1934-2026)

Wendell Berry's greatest gift, among a riotous wildflower meadow of them, was his indefatigable hope.

Which is why his leaving us is especially hard. He and hope were traveling companions to the end. Which means we lost more than a great man on Sunday. We also lost a lantern of hope that lit the way for so many of us.

Weak flames go out and we expect them to. But Wendell Berry lived incandescently. And so his death leaves us feeling more alone than we might have expected, given how long he lived and how much he shared.

His memory and his works will never stop serving us, which is a solace, but he lives among us no more, which is a bitter lament.

Because living is what he did best of all.

Better than writing. Better than farming. And he was a damn fine farmer and a nearly perfect writer.

His essays mapped out the grounds of a legitimate, authentic hope for all of us. He said if you can find one good example, then you've got the grounds for hope.

He shared the good ways he found, and he knew where to look for them. In regular people and abandoned places. In the damages. In the wake of violent policies and violent people whose violence was barely known to them.

But he knew. He saw. And he testified to another way. Again and again, he showed us the good examples that proved we could use this world nonviolently.

He taught us how to find this other way ourselves, wherever we are. Slow down, stay put, pay attention. Joyfully he demonstrated how doing these things makes for a happier life anyway. Makes for better neighbors. If you're lucky, makes for a happy marriage.

But something extraordinary happened as he was pointing us to better practices, possibilities and ideas: he became, himself, the one good example.

Not of how to nurture a farm, forest, family, neighborhood, intellect or spiritual urge. But of all of it. The one good example of how a human life should be lived.

He was fearless; undaunted by rejection, powerlessness, toil, discomfort, and the siren calls of technology.

He proved that a life of complete integrity is not impossible.

He put the lie to every distraction. His was the life that revealed what can happen when screens are ignored and art, food, books, imagination, relationships and repair are given the attention they fully deserve.

He argued and never belittled.

He befriended animals, plants, strangers. He made time for his admirers.

He stared down losses -- the death of friends, his parents and brother, native species, neighboring farms, university appointments. He did not flinch. He kept imagining and writing and growing.

He was religious in the best possible way. Comfortably at home with God. Never astride or beside His creation. Instead, enthralled by it. That was his practice.

He was political in the best possible way too, so far to the left and right simultaneously that he blew apart the ideological spectrum (delighting him greatly, contrariness his chosen party).

He was, he would tell you often, fully human: quick to own his flaws, willing to share his doubts, and cranky about things carelessly made and unmade.

Most of all, he put love in the first position and held it there fast, guarding it from the whipping forces that would tear it away. In doing this, he proved to all of us who are desperate for a more peaceful world that it can be had. That there is a way.

As is the man, so too this world.

***

I have read so many beautiful and moving tributes to Wendell over the past three days. I hope and believe his legacy will grow through his posterity. He has given us more than enough lessons to figure this out. More than enough truth to fight for.

In my grief, I've had a comforting image of all his fans and admirers coming together to form a country of our own. I know it would be ruled by kindness.

One of those fans wrote something that I will repeat here: "Wendell has gone back to the ground. Which is the place he loved most of all." I wish for him, his family, and all of us, an everlasting peace.

***

I am including a link to my first Walking With Wendell post below. It might be interesting to anyone new to this blog, but more importantly, it is the origin point of my public study with him, my unwitting teacher.

People came to Wendell with a million questions about what to do. Always what to do. His advice was consistent: "Do something. Do what you can. Do a little bit. Get to work." Ten years ago, I finally took that advice in the best way I knew how.

I started Walking With Wendell after the 2016 US presidential election. I decided I needed to do something, even if it wasn't much.

I write to work through my pain at how the powerful are destroying everything I love and believe in. But I also write to honor Wendell Berry, who showed me, from when I was very young, what was happening and why. And how to write. And where to find hope.

***

What's Preposterous Now?