I take your Scotch but please make mine a Speyside. =)

Keep an eye out for incoming though, As a fair warning, I was raised under the martial law of a lower forty rockpile. As Camus suggests, “imagine Sisyphus Happy”.

DW: After a rocky start, it seems we’ve become virtual compadres. I hope we’ll have a chance to make it real over scotch some day.

It’s really great having you two as commenters on this site.

Staring at that gargantuan moment of immanence in a surprisingly intimate (if unfortunately crowded) Sistine chapel, when the finger of God is near that of Adam should disabuse anyone of their doubts for mankind’s potential and responsibility as a steward of the precious gift of life. Though we have established a long career as both giver and destroyer of life, the magic of life is not lost on any of us, not even the most hidebound exploiter. The current Berlin Wall of edited logic regarding the environment that separates Conservatives and Liberals must be breached so that a common calling of stewardship, without the escape hatch of “external costs” can finally come into existence. I’m glad to have had the chance to see this.

Thank you for the tip on the Frick Collection. If I ever get to New York other than the airport I will take time to look at the collection.

Next,I think even reading my responses twice does not always make what I say clearer (and in fact it just means that they are a little clearer). What I meant by “Full Model” is that while farming is one model of showing love through renewable reasources it does not deal with destructive forces such as strip mining or strip foresting. I believe the comprehensive or full model would somehow include man’s responsibility for resources that are not so renewable. Love for the creator should include love for all that he has created not just what we can get to grow back.

Brett: “Full model” is a bit ambiguous. In one sense I think it is the fullest model of a wholly integrated life of family, work, property, relation to nature and community. On the other hand, it certainly takes more than farms to make up an economy and a civilization, and there are distinctive and important aspects of sociability and local responsibility that small businesses embody better.

The painting is Bellini’s “St. Francis in the Wilderness” which you should see for yourself at the Frick Collection if business takes you to New York. Something to be said too for the kind of philanthropy possible for a tycoon like Frick.

-a husband, daddy, orchardist, gardener, Episcopal priest and sometime urban chicken farmer in Los Angeles

Very very well stated and argued. I know that there will be some who disagree but I think you have made a very persuasive argument for conservationism.

Having said that I am not so sure though that your statement “The model for this love is the trans-generational tending of agricultural tilling and keeping.“ is correct or better stated is not the full model. I think that Benedict is also speaking to insatiable consumption as you mention in your quote of him “Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are also scars which mark the surface of our earth: erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world’s mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption.” This is followed by Benedict’s quote “Past, present and future must encounter and penetrate one another in every human life. Our age is the first to experience that hideous narcissism that cuts itself off from both past and future and that is preoccupied exclusively with its own present.”

I hope I am not missing your argument but I think trans-generational farming (and for me that could be accomplished through small or large farms) is a step in the right direction but it is just part of a larger model of love for the Creator.

Finally, I love the picture for your article.