A Voice for my Generation

In many ways, I am probably among the least qualified of people to write any sort of public tribute to the late Wendell Berry.

Our families both come from Kentucky; aside from that, the farmer and I share very little in common. Berry spent most of his life in rural Henry County, the place of his childhood. My childhood was spent in a central Asian city of 2 million people, about as suburban as any childhood in Asia can get. Throughout his life, Berry expressed deep satisfaction in his journey of return to his “native hill,” of becoming more rooted in the place where his family had farmed for generations. I, on the other hand, am what is sometimes called a “Third Culture Kid,” a person who spent the majority of my upbringing in a culture different from my parents’. Home for me has often been an elusive, abstract concept, as is notoriously the case for many people in this category.

I could go on about our differences. Berry was born in 1934, at a time when an agrarian way of life, though at the cusp of decline, was still commonplace. I am, dare I say it, a Zoomer, born in 1998; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that I do not know a single person my age who grew up with an agrarian lifestyle. Berry lived off the work of his land; up until recently I rarely knew, much less cared, where my food came from. Throughout his life Berry made radical commitments to the habits and virtues passed down to him for generations, even famously foregoing purchasing a computer back in 1987. I, on the other hand, am a digital native, as are most in my generation. If Berry spent his childhood comfortable and conversant with the fields and woods, my generation grew up inhabiting the wilderness of screens.

I hate to admit this, but on paper, I am a candidate for being Berry’s foil. At first glance, there’s no reason a person like Berry should have had a person like me within his audience.

So it may come as a surprise to everyone, myself included, that a Gen Z-er like me should now take up the pen and make a feeble attempt to pay tribute to Berry. But I think that’s exactly the point: that Berry’s writing and influence could cut through the noise and speak to someone like me—a Zoomer, a digital native, a person who could hardly define “home” even if I tried—reveals more than anything the prophetic nature of his work. There’s no reason an agrarian writer’s voice should have found its way into my ears. But it did, and it does, and I guarantee it will continue to do so until the day I die. Because we aren’t just talking about any agrarian writer, after all, we’re talking about Wendell Berry—the cranky essayist, the gentle poet, the Mad Farmer, the imaginative visionary behind Port William. He was not just one voice but a dozen different voices, all harmoniously singing the same tune.

It is only by God’s grace that his melody ever caught my ear. The conditions were just right for me to be receptive to him. I was in my early twenties, on an urbanism kick, when I first encountered his work. I had moved to the United States only a few years before, and I was wrestling with some of the discomforts of my new life in this strange land. Chief among them was the reality that in order to go anywhere in America, you need to drive a car. This bugged me at first, and then that annoyance turned into genuine grief. I was frustrated to discover how the entire American landscape had been flattened and reshaped by an expensive, dangerous, polluting machine. I felt restricted in my ability to enjoy the pleasures of walking. I hated to see what it had done to our common life as Americans.

And then I began reading Berry. I don’t remember exactly where I started, but I do remember encountering these lines from him early on:

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

As they have done for so many, these words opened up to me a world of wonder. They made me slow down and take notice, not only to the condition of our roads and buildings like an urbanist would, but to the fullness of the places we inhabit. For the first time that I could remember, I was called on to pay attention to the particularities of my capital-P Place, and to see what kind of enchantment or desecration was embodied therein.

From that point on, I was hooked. By 2023, I was reading, or listening to, anything from him that I could get my hands on.

His words came as both a comfort and a confrontation. I have often been asked by friends to explain what Berry’s writings are about, or why I’ve taken hold of them as stubbornly as I have. To this day I’m still not sure if I have an explanation. His thoughts and ideas transcend categories, and yet there remains a sort of coherence—a “wholeness”—to his entire project. He writes about the importance of place, but not in an abstract sense. He writes about the significance of people and membership, but not in a way that feels nostalgic or sentimental. He defends the need to save and preserve creation and community, but never “the environment” or “civilization.”

Overall, it’s not simply Berry’s words that have had an effect on my life—though I do thank God for them. Rather, it’s his way of seeing the world that has made all the difference for me. Rare is the writer who changes a person’s mind; Berry is the kind of writer who changes what one pays attention to. After reading Berry, I find that questions I ask myself are now Berry-shaped, so to speak: Where am I? What do I find here? What is my responsibility in and to this place? What are people like me even for? Questions such as these are Berry’s doing, I am sure of it.

And I think that’s exactly why Berry has hit the right notes for a digital native, Gen Z-er like me. As so many within my generation grapple with the temptation to bury ourselves inside of the digital world, into disembodiment and disenchantment, reading Berry has forced me to get out of my car, off my smartphone and “walk over the ground.” Here, with Berry’s help, I’ve discovered the joys of a life on earth—the joys of dark humus; of white oaks and black tupelos; of hummingbirds and blue herons; of good gardens and good farmers; of true membership and neighborliness; of good stories with real friends in screen-free spaces; of the “three-dimensional life” so many of us long for.

A glimpse at one of his Sabbath Poems from 2011 perfectly captures how he’s brought—and continues to bring—people like me into a state of attentiveness and delight:

I saw a hummingbird stand

in midair and scratch his cheek

vigorously with his left foot,

as he might have done perched

at ease upon a tree. “Wonderful!”

I said to myself. “I never dreamed

of such a thing before, and now

after seventy-seven years

of watching, I have seen it!”

But it hasn’t all been pleasantries when reading Berry. For every joy he introduced me to, there was also grief, an arrangement of chords played in the minor key. I remember waking up one morning with a newfound anguish over the state of our topsoil, having just read The Unsettling of America the days before. Before Berry, the word “topsoil” was barely on my radar. But he prompted me to pay attention, to look and see the reality of our condition. To read Berry is to grapple with the horrors affecting our places: Greed, violence, wastefulness, hatred, pride. It’s all there, in plain sight even within our own hearts, if only we have the eyes to notice:

Every place had been displaced, every love

unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant

to make way for the passage of the crowd

of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless

with their many eyes opened toward the objective

which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,

having never known where they were going,

having never known where they came from.

As a reader, I wasn’t allowed to gloss over the grim issues we face—in no way could Berry ever be considered an emblem of the picturesque, homesteading, “trad-life” movement you may sometimes see on social media. His voice cuts far deeper than that; it stings people on all sides of the political spectrum. You don’t get far into reading Berry without experiencing an uncomfortable feeling that you, he, all of us may be complicit in the unraveling of the world.

But this is not to say he’s a preacher of total, inescapable gloom. Grief is there, yes, and certainly urgency. But what he does not do is let us fall into despair. Time and again Berry called me to look at this world not as a sphere of chaos, but as a gift granted to us by the joy of our Creator:

Learn by little the desire for all things

which perhaps is not desire at all

but undying love which perhaps

is not love at all but gratitude

for the being of all things which

perhaps is not gratitude at all

but the maker’s joy in what is made,

the joy in which we come to rest.

To see life as a gift, as a miracle—that’s where Berry wants us to end. That’s where he wanted me, his reader, to end. Our attentiveness to the world is not a game we play for its own sake, simply to make us happy or outraged. The journey Berry leads us on is one toward radical gratefulness and humility, encouraging us to recognize that we are creatures who have been given unfathomable gifts even within the limits of our own creatureliness. By observing and resting in the joy of our given life, we come to a place of affection for all that has been given to us. It’s here that we can find the seedbeds of gratitude and hope:

Shall we do without hope? Some days

there will be none. But now

to the dry and dead woods floor

they come again, the first

flowers of the year, the assembly

of the faithful, the beautiful,

wholly given to being.

And in this long season

of machines and mechanical

will there have been small human acts

of compassion, acts of care, work

flowerlike in selfless loveliness.

Leaving hope to the dark

and to a better day,

receive these beauties freely

given, and give thanks.

In biblical literature, the messages of prophets often contain a mixture of timeliness and timelessness. I think in this way, it is apt to consider the words of Berry prophetic—timely, because he has given us a vision that resonates with the needs of my generation, a tune that many my age are longing to hear. Timeless, because he has given us a way of seeing invaluable to any generation, not just my own.

It’s up to us in the days and years to come to decide whether we will heed his prophetic call. But today, I will only work more on paying attention. I’ll work on receiving these beauties freely given to us. And, above all, I’ll work on giving thanks.