A Republic of Front Porches
ALEXANDRIA, VA. Names are important, and few can be more significant than what a new publication calls itself. Perhaps at first greeting the name will give pause, causing the new reader to think momentarily about what it means, how it came about, what its creators intended. After a time its explicit meaning will fade into the backdrop, becoming a label that is rarely reflected upon, barely registered, but still confers meaning – increasingly implicit – for the undertaking, and for those who originally named it, or who write under its banner. A name such as this one – Front Porch Republic – deserves some reflection before it fades into that subconscious space.
I can think of no better text by which to explore the meaning of our publication’s name than an old essay – one few have encountered and even fewer still would remember – that I read during my freshman year of college in a course taught by the man who became my mentor and dearest companion still, though he has passed from this vale – Wilson Carey McWilliams. I’ve never forgotten the essay – it impacted me then, and remains with me still. It was written by a man named Richard Thomas, and was entitled “From Porch to Patio.” (Published in The Palimpsest, journal of the Iowa State Historical Society, in 1975). It had such an effect on me not only because of what it taught me, but because so much of my childhood and young adulthood had involved being in various ways on our big front porch where I grew up in Windsor, CT. It was more than merely theory – it taught me about who I was, and why that was so.
In this simple but profound essay, Thomas explores the social implications of the architectural practice of building porches on the front of homes and its eventual abandonment in favor of patios behind the house (I’ve discussed this transition in relation to the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” in comparing Bedford Falls to Bailey Park). As with any central feature in our built environment, this is more than merely a passing fashion trend or a meaningless design change: the transition from porch to patio was one of the clearest and significant manifestations the physical change from a society concerned with the relationship of private and public things – in the Latin, res publica – to one of increasing privacy. The porch, as a physical bridge between the private realm of the house and the public domain of the street and sidewalk, was the literal intermediate space between two worlds that have been increasingly separated in our time, and hence increasingly ungoverned in both forms.
Thomas expresses clearly some of the social dimensions of the porch, and contrasts them with the patio. The porch, he wrote, “presented opportunities for social intercourse at several levels.”
When a family member was on the porch it was possible to invite the passerby to stop and come onto the porch for extended conversation. The person on the porch was very much in control of this interaction, as the porch was seen as an extension of the living quarters of the family. Often, a hedge or fence separated the porch from the street or board sidewalk, providing a physical barrier for privacy, yet low enough to permit conversation. The porch served many important social functions in addition to advertising the availability of its inhabitants. A well-shaded porch provided a cool place in the heat of the day for the women to enjoy a rest from household chores. They could exchange gossip or share problems without having to arrange a “neighborhood coffee” or a “bridge party.” The porch also provided a courting space within earshot of protective parents [for more on this important aspect, see Beth Bailey's From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth Century America]. A boy and a girl could be close on a porch swing, yet still observed, and many a proposal of marriage was made on a porch swing. Older persons derived great pleasure from sitting on the porch, watching the world go by, or seeing the neighborhood children at play.
By contrast, the patio reflected both new settlement patterns and the increasing desire for privacy and withdrawal from interaction with one’s neighbors. “In communities with high rates of mobility, one did not often want to know his neighbor. The constant turn-over of neighbors worked against the long-term relationships which are essential to a sense of belonging.” The patio, it was believed, was a symbol and practical expression of our independence, our liberation from the niggling demands of neighbor and community. Yet, Thomas insightfully notes that it was just as much a symbol and reality of a new kind of bondage, the bondage especially to the automobile and to the grim necessities of mobility, including long commutes and increasing isolation from a wide variety of bonds. It was too soon, perhaps, to note that this form of living also symbolized our increasing bondage to “foreign oil,” though at the time he wrote it America had just recently passed the apogee of oil production and would forever become dependent on foreign powers for our purported liberation through energy – particularly tyrants – eventually fighting a series of wars in a region far from where we should have any real concerns. The house, he wryly noted, housed fewer people but more cars, and it was our new inanimate occupant that “both freed us and enslaved us.”
In a microcosm, the forces that led to the decline of the porch as a place of transition between the private and the public realm have eviscerated both those domains of their capacity to educate a citizenry for self-government. The porch – as an intermediate space, even a sphere of “civil society” – was the symbolic and practical place where we learned that there is not, strictly speaking, a total separation between the public and private worlds. Our actions in private are not merely “private,” but have, in toto, profound public implications. The decline of courtship and marriage proposals within earshot of kin, for one instance, has led to ever greater “privatization” of our intimate lives, and a proportionate decline of the societal and public investment in undergirding families and the communities that foster them. Our private actions of driving ever greater distances in our automobiles have fostered devastated landscapes, deep dependence of foreign powers and tract housing devoid of real community. Meanwhile, our “public” world is increasingly shorn of the voices of citizens, wholly attenuated in the decline of the capacity of localities to govern their fates. For me, there is nothing more symbolic of this fact than the rush of Governors to serve the Obama administration, a sad, pathetic revelation that governing a State is less significant for most of our leaders than becoming a functionary in the national bureaucracy. Our States, not to mention our localities, are ever-less a kind of “porch,” that transition from the world of the home to the public realm of community and eventually State and nation. Instead, as wholly “private citizens” – or, to invoke the preferred term, “consumers” – accustomed to houses that are places of private retreat, we see only one public entity of significance – the national State – but find it difficult to see ourselves a part of it. We regard the State as a distant and mysterious entity, occupied either by our team or their team but in either event an organization so vast, complex and dizzying that we regard it as anything but the locus of our practice of shared self-governance. We are daily less a republic because we daily perceive less of what are common or public things – res publica. Without the literal spaces where we come to know what we have in common through speech, habit and memory, we regard politics as a competitive spectator sport and government as a distant imposition – but in any event, anything but self-rule.
Tocqueville already anticipated the forces that would lead simultaneously to the retreat of individuals into a “small circle” of friends and family, on the one hand, and the rise of the “tutelary State” on the other. Tracing the logic of democracy, he foresaw a time when “no man is obliged to put his powers at the disposal of another, and no one has any claim of right to substantial support from his fellow man, [then] each is both independent and weak. These two conditions, which must be neither seen quite separately nor confused, give the citizen of democracy extremely contradictory instincts. He is full of confidence and pride in his independence from his equals, but from time to time his weakness makes him feel the need for some outside help which he cannot expect from any of his fellows, for they are both impotent and cold. In this extremity he naturally turns his eyes toward that huge entity which alone stands out above the universal level of abasement. His needs, and even more his longings, continually put him in mind of that entity, and he ends by regarding it as the sole and necessary support for his individual weakness” (Democracy in America, II.iv.3).
We rarely consider the ways that our built environment – even something so simple as a front porch – constitutes some of the necessary conditions for self-government. Thinking of ourselves in ways that can only be described as simultaneously disembodied (by means of our technology) and wholly embodied (albeit only as monadic individuals), we ignore the way spaces shape us, even prepare us for lives of responsible citizenship, community, and the proprieties of private life. Instead we simultaneously crave a retreat into the purported liberties of the private realm, yet regard the only public entity worthy of our attention to be a distant and inaccessible government. For those who would stand and defend the future of the Republic, a good place to start would be to revive our tradition of building and owning homes with front porches, and to be upon them where we can both see our neighbors and be seen by them, speak and listen to one another, and, above all, be in a place between, but firmly in place.
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Excellent article! I knew there was a reason I always wanted a large front porch with a swing… : ) Love the Tocqueville quote.
The front porch as “an extension of the living quarters of the family”. Perhaps that is why we have given it up: Who wants to live their life in the plain view of others? We might be in a lot less trouble if we did just that. Thank you for your thoughts. Now to add a front porch.
My wife and I are looking at purchasing our first home and have made a porch one of our requirements. Thank you for demonstrating how important they are for a neighborhood.
I think I first cottoned onto the importance of porches in Jane Jacobs’ great *Life and Death of Great American Cities*. I’m glad to see that this idea is getting greater discussion, and look forward to more such good ideas on your website.
Patrick,
Great stuff! I’ve long thought that some tenets of the new urbanist movement (front porches, walkable communities, etc.) could be some of the missing clues to rebuilding a more localized, self-governed nation. Strong communities are not wrought of moral certitude alone, but also made up of aesthetics as well as practical infrastructure. I’ve lived in walkable communities and the suburbs, and I can attest to the difference in my soul in both places. In one I felt as though I were part of the world around me, and even the superficial interactions with my neighbors were acts that infused me with a greater sense of belonging. In the other I felt detached, alone, separate – essentially, far less human…
Thanks…
Dr. Deneen,
You could not be more correct in your assessment. You are articulating what most of our contemporaries would call “cultural” concerns but of course they are eminently political (at least in the classical sense of the term)! Many, if not most, conservatives would dismiss your critique of the modern built environment as mere “personal preference,” probably because they associate opposition to sprawl with political liberalism. What they fail to see is that our cities and towns are not just reflections of our virtues and vices but active influences upon our actual souls. Our houses, streets, and public spaces actually mold our character!
Lovely new site, Patrick. Glad to have followed the link from Crunchy Con.
Two quick queries:
1. How can all of the built infrastructure of the burbs be redeemed for a more sociable lifestyle? Certainly walkable developments can be built for today’s yuppie “gentry,” but what can be done to encourage the revitalization of all the already-existing burbs?
2. If patios are bad for the Republic, was the peristylium a contributor to the loss of liberty in Rome?
Great article. Building houses close enough to front walk to have porches near enough to talk to people would eliminate a lot of useless lawn area too. Older neighborhoods had their lawn mostly in the back, where the garden, chickens, etc,were put where most self respecting folk knew they belonged. Maybe a house would become something more than a big box to store people in, between work.
Reminds me of something I hadn’t thought about in a while … My father, who grew up in Depression-era Oklahoma, had a real hatred of porches. He saw them as a sign of rural backwardness, a pure waste of square feet, a hindrance to modern sophistication. Each house he bought was porchless; each had a rear deck or patio. We never used the decks and patios, but they apparently satisfied his need for an upwardly-mobile architectural symbol.
Beautiful article. Very interesting web site.
I live in Houston, in a neighborhood built in the 50’s. No front porches to peak of, though some, like us, have an extension of the slab big enough for a few lawn chairs. After Hurricane Ike, when the power was out and the neighbors got together to clear the streets, people began sitting on their little front “porches”, having spontaneous front yard barbecues, and getting to know each other. It was a very special time, for those of us that didn’t suffer more than a power outage and a few tree limbs down, Our little “porch” became very important to us as a way to interact with our neighbors, to keep watch over the neighborhood, and to share food, drinks, batteries and stories. I experienced community in a way I haven’t since my childhood in a small town in the late 60’s-early 70’s.
I don’t wish for another hurricane any time soon, but I long for another ten days like the ones following Ike.
Ah, this makes me miss my last home, which had a front porch. Nothing was better than coming home from work on a summer’s day and seeing my husband already on the porch, with a drink and a book or crossword puzzle. Plus, we could chat with all the passing neighbors and watch the neighborhood kids and dogs go by . . .
We’ve since moved across the country, and no longer have a front porch. We sometimes hang out on our front stoop, but it’s not the same.
I agree that the front porch acted as an excellent transitional space between public and private. Human psyche feels more comforatble with these types of subtle transitions. However, I think that the disappearance of the porch in favor of the patio has more to do with technology and the democratization of America.
Up until WWII, the back of the house was where the kitchen was, where the horses were, where the out-house was, were the trash burning pit was, and all the other smelly, not-so-nice realities of life. It was also (but very importantly) where all servants entered and services were delivered. We forget that the social classes were much more discriminate, and servants (“the help”) did not come through the front door. Likewise, deliveries were made to the kitchen or the back of the house where servants could handle them.
Around mid-century the back yard was freed from the mees. Indoor plumbing became common; clean cars replaced horss; trash was collected by government; and the kitchen became the central focus of the house. Likewise, the distincition between social classes began to erode and society became much more egalitarian in it’s treatment of others.
Just take a look at what has happened to the Living Room since Victorian times! It is the perfect example of how the democratization of society has changes the way we lived. Because of strict social conventions, Victorian houses had front palors and back palors, men’s palors and women’s palors. If you were lucky enough to get past the entry hall, you were invited to the palor, but never to the other (family) parts of the house. The parlor was a place to show the rest of society your riches and social status.
Mid Century America still had the formal living room, but who entered it became less restricted. Today, the living room has become the “great room”, with kitchen, family room, living room, and dining room all in one. Now parties are more likely than not to be centered around the kitchen than a formal space. The change in the living room really exemplifies the changes to social structure over the past century.
I’ll Take My Stand (For Decks and Patios)
I have nothing constitutionally against front porches in urban neighborhoods. They used to be very frequent, as one can see from certain sections of cities like Washington and Richmond, and they have definitely come back into vogue. Last week, I was conducted on a tour of Harbor town in Memphis by the Rhodes College political theorist Daniel Cullen. It is a famous example of what is called the new urbanism, and many of the homes had a quaint kind of older look, replete with porches. Many of the new homes being within the city limits of Charlottesville (that is in the age when new homes were still being built) have porches and resemble neighborhoods of the pre-war (not the Iraq War) period. Professor Deneen can take some solace in the movement of the new urbanism, which seems very friendly to his idea of a res publica of porches.
And yet, I am also mindful of the sound advice of a New Englander—and that counts because New England is commune friendly—who told us something to the effect that good fences make good neighbors. I take this as kind of an endorsement of decks and patios, where one can take one’s air without having to fraternize too intimately with one’s neighbors. This reflects the old law that while you can pick your friends and spouse, you can’t always pick your neighbors. I have an impressive strand of Leyland Cypresses on my property sealing me hermetically from my neighbors. I like my current neighbors, enough sometimes even to say hello, but I am not confident that this will always be the case. Ever since Jefferson got rid of primogeniture laws in Virginia, property has been changing hands very rapidly.
Two other reflections. The first is that the agrarian movement among conservatives, dating back to Jefferson and continuing with the Southern Agrarians and W. Berry were not front porch folks, as far as I know. They liked their privacy. And even if a farm house has a front porch, you often have no neighbors. That’s the kind of front porch that makes sense to me. The larger point is that the conservative agrarian movement, hostile to much of modern overdone capitalism, should be kept distinct from the republic of front porches.
Which bring me to the second point. There can be a good deal of public participation and civic mindedness without sharing front porches. Front porches may be an ok thing, but to combat what one fellow called “individualism,” it is more important to have opportunities for important civic participation. A front porch does not a citizen make. And in that regard, I have a two cheers for some suburbs. True they honor the patio over the front porch, but many of them still provide opportunities for fairly robust political participation. Suburbs have gotten a bad rap. A private home that is your castle (with a moat and cannon to fend off hostile neighbors) and a public square for participation—that’s my kind of republic.
Many newer homes built in denser developments with back decks are in close proximity. Townhouses are similar too. The key is for communities to require walking and biking paths behind these denser developments and the building of local trails and bike paths near to existing homes. Also encourage local and walkable shopping and amenities.
I built a house that had a great terrace in back. When it burned down, I rebuilt it with a huge front porch, and kept the great terrace in back. Of course I am in the woods so the only interaction I get is with nature. The house is unfinished but I made sure the porch was completed and we live on it in the summer (not literally, but that time may come). There is not a soul who comes to the house who does not love the porch and I will never live without one again. And…we hardly ever use the terrace!
Patrick, I would have sent this off-list had there been an obvious way to contact you directly, but check out this blog post, which references A Republic of Front Porches:
http://www.originalgreen.org/OG/Blog/Entries/2009/3/17_Porches%2C_Walkability%2C_and_Sustainability.html
Thanks so much for this post and for starting the blog. I’m thrilled to find a kindred spirit working to build “neighborhood social capital.” My blog, called Playborhood.com, is about bringing kids’ play back to neighborhoods. I’m writing a book on this topic as well.
I’m working on something very relevant to front porches in particular – I’m redoing my front yard to make it into a “front yard family room.” The idea is to create a “third place” for my neighborhood.
The idea that a porch is not quite public, not quite private space is very important. Richard Sennett called what we have now “polarized intimacy.” This condition makes getting to know neighbors difficult. To spend time with a neighbor, you need to invite them inside your house, and they have to agree to be sequestered in there for an hour or more. It’s not a casual invitation, and for the neighbor, leaving is difficult. Contrast this with what I envision at our front yard family room. We’d be dining or snacking on our picnic table next to the sidewalk, and a neighbor and kid will walk by. I’d ask the kid if he wants a piece of fruit, and before you know it, the neighbor would be sitting down, talking to us.
I’ll be able to test this hypothesis when the front yard family room is ready within two months.
Finally, I’m also a kindred spirit politically. Thank you so much for articulating this “front porch” point of view. I often feel lost politically when I advocate community because people then assume I’m into all the other lefty stuff. For instance, I shocked some colleagues when I wrote this article recommending that Congress vote “no” on an environmental education bill. I’m also butting heads with my local school because they’re adopting a new math program that’s pro-calculator and anti-mental calculation called “Everyday Math.”
Long Live the Republic
front porch:patio::front bench seat:bucket seat
but when we’re driving in my malibu,
it’s easy to get right next to you.
i say, “baby, scoot over, please.”
and then she’s right there next to me.
i need you here with me,
not way over in a bucket seat.
i need you to be here with me,
not way over in a bucket seat.
I live in an old neighborhood full of so many different styles of homes, yet almost every one has a front porch. Kids play outside and grown ups are seen outside talking, relaxing and enjoying the view from their porches. Last night as I walked home from the park with my kids I saw a friend on his porch – we stopped to chat and soon enough there was a group of us on the porch (ages ranging from 16-92!) watching the kids run up and down the yard and sidewalk. What I thought would be a few minute visit turned into an hour of no worries or rushing. Until I read this essay just now I did not think about the implications of porches vs. patios and what it means for a community. Thank you for sharing your insight!
I’ve longed for the days of my childhood when we spent lots of time playing in the front yard and seeing people on their porches.
My wife & I live on a very busy street, so we spend very little time out there. Appropriately, our front yard is fairly small with the house set forward on the lot to make the most of the back yard. We do spend a LOT of time out in the backyard and our newly upgraded Veranda is an incredibly comfortable, relaxing place to be. We often have meals out there with just the three of us but we also hold quite a few BBQs, birthday parties, and all sorts of other large social gatherings there. Yet it is, at the same time, an isolating environment too.
rather too late to be in the dialogue now, but I find it kinda humorous that james ceaser above is referencing, I assume Frost in his comment “And yet, I am also mindful of the sound advice of a New Englander—and that counts because New England is commune friendly—who told us something to the effect that good fences make good neighbors.”
Would that be Mending Wall?
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast….”
“…He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’”
Patrick,
I happened upon this blog today, July 4th, while thinking of my dear, departed grandmother.
We spent hours, upon hours on her front porch. She read me fairy tales as a young child, the milkman would leave his milk, I was spanked with a plastic ukulele, we would eat our hot blueberry pie smothered in homemade vanilla ice cream, and most delightfully of all, listen to my grandmother’s delighted cackle reverberate around the neighborhood, all from this front porch.
Today, we are in our pool/patio area, secluded from our neighbors, and I feel loss not having a front porch in my life.
Thanks for sharing this.
i remember once i am in patio swings, i realize relaxation is needed by our body. yes, we have so many activities to do, it’s important to have time to relax. our body need to relax, in order fot it to work well.
Prof. Deneen,
If I built a front porch and sat on it, all I’d see is cars driving by or joggers trotting by. Nobody walks in suburbia, save to empty the nether organs of his dog; there’s nothing to walk to. The only way to change this, I suspect, would be to triple the post-tax price of gasoline, for which other good reasons also come to mind.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When my family moved into our house, not one neighbor came to say hello. That was twelve years ago, and we still don’t know half the people living within three houses of us. And raising the gasoline price won’t help this; it’s much worse in Manhattan, where nobody drives anywhere. Community simply is now almost entirely on elective; this seems to be the wage of valuing individual freedom above all else.
Ever wonder how the Mormons keep such strong communities? It’s not their doctrines. It’s their restriction of individual choice of congregation. A Mormon is required to attend the LDS church nearest his residence – any other LDS congregation will boot him out if he starts showing up regularly. In order to change congregations, he must move house. There’s a lesson in that somewhere …
Merry Christmas anyhow!
Good points, Robin. The entire neighborhood must be designed right, otherwise one single porch doesn’t matter. Everything about suburbia is designed to discourage walking… from the average lot width to the design speed of the traffic to the public frontage types… I could go on, but you get the picture. As a result, your move-in experience is typical. But they’re not bad people… rather, their physical environment sets the stage for them to act withdrawn and insular. Take the very same people and put them in a neighborhood designed to be walkable and engaging, and they’ll behave like neighbors used to behave. It’s hard to overstate the importance of setting the stage for people to engage.
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Let’s just go all the way, folks.
Random Post
achievement. Your parents, I’m sure, think I am talking to them, and while their
accomplishment is likely the greater one, tonight our congratulations go to you graduates.
You have completed a course of study that will serve you well for the rest of your lives.
The plaudits and praise you will receive tonight and through this season are well earned
and you should enjoy them to the fullest. Let me also, however, be the first the burst your bubble. Most of the failures of your life,
your most heartbreaking regrets, and your worst mistakes lie ahead of you. Take heart
though, for most of your triumphs, large and small, lie in front of you as well. Which is
just to say that you stand at a grand beginning, the cusp of possibility. It has been exactly twenty years since I sat where you are now and I can still clearly
recall the feeling of that tremendous and daunting possibility stretching ahead of me.
And as I reflect back on those twenty years, I can report that I have had my share of
triumphs, and I don’t mind sharing them with you. I have had the unsurpassed joy of
raising five wonderful sons with the bride of my youth. I have been blessed with
meaningful work that has carried me into the crucible of some of the most vexing
arguments at the highest levels about who we should be as a people. I have been quoted
on the front pages from Topeka to New York City and lots of places in between. Which
is not to say I have been listened to in any of those places. The failures, mistakes, and regrets are all there too. From personal and painful mistakes
to business failure to dashed hopes. For some reason I have a hankering to be a farmer—
and as my boys can tell you (they take great glee in this), I am a terrible farmer. My
fences fall apart, my livestock dies, my pastures grow more rocks than grass. Why do I share this with you? Just to say that through this all, and above all, I have
hoped to become a student of the human heart. This is at once the easiest and most
difficult apprenticeship you can undertake. Easy, if you choose to submit yourself to the
study, because you will carry a human heart with you always, wherever you are.
Difficult because the human heart is the most complex, wondrous, fascinating, and
surprising instrument in the universe. The real vista of endless possibility lies in the
human heart, for you will never exhaust its highways and byways. So you have graduated. Now the real course of study begins, and this is the study I
would call you to tonight. And if you are attentive, you will not be alone. The poets and
philosophers have all made the human heart their one great study—from David the
Hebrew poet king (“What is Man, O God, that you should care for him?”) to Walt
Whitman, the tramp poet of New England (“There is this in me—I do not know what it
is—but I know it is in me.”) to the whole of human culture in between. They are there
for you if you will have them, as are your friends, your mentors, and those who will come
after you. But for tonight, I’m all you have. So I have distilled a few things that I think are true;
things that are true about the human heart; things that I want to share with you tonight.
And the most basic truth—most basic for us in this time and place because it is the one
most obscured by the society we inhabit—is the truth articulated most poignantly by
Booker T. Washington. Washinton was born into slavery and rose to prominence after
the Civil War as a leader of Southern blacks. In 1895, speaking to an American South
still struggling with Reconstruction, Washington wanted to urge blacks to stop looking to
the North for their needs and for their future, so he told this story. There was a ship lost at sea for many days which suddenly sighted a friendly vessel.
From the mast of the stranded ship was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.”
The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket where
you are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressed
vessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourth
signal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of
the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up
full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. Cast down your bucket where you are! In less poetic language, this is what I have sometimes called practicing the discipline of
place. To practice this discipline is to believe that to suffer one’s place and one’s people
in the particularity of its and their needs is the primary basis for finding love, friendship,
and an authentic, meaningful life. This is nothing less, I would argue, than the key to the
pursuit of Christian holiness, which is the whole of the Christian adventure: to live in
love with the frailty and limits of one’s existence, suffering the places, customs, rites,
joys, and sorrows of the people who are in close relation to you by family, friendship, and
community—all in service of the truth, goodness, and beauty that is best experienced
directly. Now, what am I saying? Does this mean that I think you should always stay in one place,
that you cannot be called elsewhere, or that you ought to forever limit your own horizons.
No. I am neither foolish nor naïve enough to think that this is either possible or even a
good thing. What it does mean is that the human heart, your heart, will never flourish
and blossom if it is forever pining after the next thing, or captured by the false promise of
something better just out of grasp, always seeking satisfaction somewhere other than
where it is. Rather, it is that marriage between the endless internal horizon of your heart
and the limited, restrained, concrete life of geography and community that has borne the
most delightful and satisfying fruits of human history. So cast down your bucket where you are. This is at once the most radical and the most conservative thing you can do with your life.
Yet you are heading out into a very conventional, middling, controlled world. Oh, they
will tell you that their marches for progress and rights are daring, that they are radical.
Or they will tell you that their religious revivals are conservative, that they are the moral
center. You will hear it all, but the truth is that for the most part, people are in the grips
of a boring, lifeless ideology of personal fulfillment, choice, and upward mobility. We
live in a society of tourists—and if tourists have one thing in common it is this—that they
are not at home. Many if not all of you are off to college somewhere to further your education. This is not
a bad thing, and may become a very good thing for you, but I am here tonight with a
warning. The world of higher education is a strip mining operation, plain and simple, and
you will become the raw resource being mined. This is the result of a system designed to
discover and refine the most meritorious among you and ship you off to whatever spot in
the world you will be most “productive.” You will hear over and over and over again, in many different forms, that nothing must
get in the way of making the most of your social and economic opportunities. No ancient
bonds of tradition must hold you back (look to the Future, they will say); no loyalties to
your home, to the place of your memory and your belonging must interfere (you can be a
Jayhawk anywhere, they will say); no sentimental attachment to those who have
befriended and loved you can count (think of all the diverse experiences you will miss,
they will say). I say, resist! Resist the spirit of the age. It does not have your welfare in mind. Cast
down your bucket. If you do, they will say you are crazy, or foolish, or worse. You will be a heretic in the
church of convenience and exploitation and false freedom which feeds at a trough of
waste and ruin. Remember and take heart from the words of the poet farmer Wendell Berry: To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. And this: As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction. Let me take time out for a short war story, one that, I confess, gives me great pleasure.
For you may be thinking right now that, geez, this guy is a real downer. He wants me
stuck in some backwater the rest of my life. Nothing could be further from the truth! It
is my hope tonight, if nothing else, to at least awake within you a glimmering possibility.
What if maybe, just maybe, it is they who are stuck in a backwater of their own delusions
and that the real adventure lies at your very feet—wherever they happen to be? As many of you know, I had the privilege of serving as the lead
attorney in what was one of the most important courtroom battles over abortion in many
years. At the crux of the case was whether laws restricting abortion could ever actually
be enforced. My client was a man named Phill Kline, the former Attorney General of
Kansas, and arrayed against him were the whole forces of the abortion industry
nationwide and virtually all of the powers of the State Government. We had been
ordered by the Kansas Supreme Court to a secret trial which would end up stretching
over several grueling weeks, and during which, many of the most powerful men in the
State would be called to testify. Suffice it to say, this was a big deal, and was being
watched closely by activists across the country, by the major national media outlets, and
by the United States Congress. At the first conference of all the lawyers before the judge, the other side was represented
by eight or nine lawyers, some from the State, and several from both New York and
Washington D.C., brought in to this troublesome little state in fly-over country to protect
the abortion industry. On the other side was me. Upon passing out my card which
identified me as a lawyer practicing in Perry, KS (if you don’t know, Perry is a little town
of 900 people just north of here—just a few miles from my ramshackle fences and failing
farm), one of the big city lawyers turned to his colleague and said with more shock than
condescension in his voice, “Where the heck is Perry, Kansas?” Only he used more
colorful language. Cast down your bucket! I promise you, they’ll never see you coming. Such a creature
cannot exist in the impoverished realm of their imagination. I have heard that only two things are certain to happen at a graduation. First, the
graduation speaker will speak, and second, the graduating class will stop listening at
some point. So let me conclude with one last truth that I have arrived at about the human heart.
What is the most important characteristic for resisting this spirit of the age, as I’ve called
it? Many things are necessary—courage certainly, strength, patience—but most important,
and I have hinted at this already, is love. Specifically, it is to love the world and your life
in it. “This world has a spiritual life possible in it,” wrote the moral philosopher George
Santayana, “which looks not to another world but to the beauty and perfection that this
world suggests, approaches, and misses.” The world and your life in it are not yours. They are a gift—wholly gratuitous and
bountiful. They are not that kind of thing which begins as a gift and becomes yours once
given—instead they bear within them the enduring character of givenness, given to the
point of being so basic that their grace cannot be fully wiped away, even from the hearts
of those who turn against them. You are wholly dependent on this grace of givenness.
From these headwaters springs love. Love for your place and its beauty and heartbreaks and strands of memory; love for the
people and customs of your place and their brokenness and the sheer glory of their
existence. And love for your life in that place—note, I did not say love of yourself, but
of your life; and by extension, the lives of those around you. There is no wealth but life,
said John Ruskin, and your life lies at your feet. Cast down your bucket where you are! And where and wherever you are will be full of its own particular version of humanity’s
one song—a chorus of sin and rot and suffering and pain, and hope and joy and
triumph. You must learn to love both. The Greek Gods were said to envy men their mortality. You have studied Homer, I am
sure, and if you recall, in Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus faces many trials as he is returning
home after many years away at war. The final trial Odysseus faces is his encounter with
the beautiful Calypso who offers Odysseus immortality if he will stay with her as her
lover. Wendell Berry writes that the reader of Homer’s Odyssey knows—”as Odysseus
undoubtedly does also—the extent of his love for Penelope because he can return to her
only by choosing her at the price of death.” On his return Odysseus must have felt the
thrill and the pang of knowing that Penelope was more beautiful in that moment than she
had ever been, or would ever be again in this life. The Greeks understood that all things pass away, and that this is what makes life
infinitely sweet. The poets have always understood this truth as well. “Leaf subsides to
leaf” and “dawn goes down to day.” Or another: “Time hurries on, and the leaves that
are green turn to brown.” There is a sweetness that is nearly unbearable in those words. You, at this very moment, with new faces turned towards the world, are as fresh and
eager as you will ever be. If you don’t know this now, I assure you that your parents do.
And we can only know this because, like Odysseus and the poets, we understand that
time hurries on and leaf subsides to leaf and everyone owes a death. It is a sweet
understanding laced with a sadness that is itself, a species of sweetness. Saint John, exiled on the Island of Patmos at the end of his life had a vision of the great
marriage feast after the end of time when Christ would call his Bride, the Church, home
to him—the wedding supper of the Lamb. The sweetness of mortality is bearable
because the Greeks didn’t know the end of the story, that there was one coming who
would, after the end, make new all that has passed away. So cast down your bucket where you are. Understand that you are graced. Learn to love
the sweetness of a world that is passing away—a world that suggests yet misses
perfection. And persevere through the tragedy with faith in the comic finish of the
marriage feast when yes, all things will be made new. So I wish you and each of your hearts the bounty of every flourishing in this life, and
God’s blessing now, and in the everafter. Thank you.…
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