“To the faithful,” John Milton writes, “Death [is] the Gate of Life.” Yesterday our friend Wendell Berry walked through this gate. He was indeed a faithful man.
In the coming days, I’m sure we’ll publish many essay reflecting on Berry and the legacy his public writing leaves. But today I simply want to open up this post for those Porchers who might want to share anecdotes and memories of their encounters with Wendell and the way his writing altered their lives. Wendell has obviously been a friend to many here since FPR began, and in a letter he wrote me two years ago, he expressed how much FPR had come to mean to him:
The existence of Front Porch Republic and Local Culture is a comfort to me, and I am grateful. I don’t so far foresee triumph as the result of this local effort, of which I’m glad and proud to be a part, but I think it gives substantial help to the survival of necessary things.
If FPR has been a comfort to Wendell, he has certainly been a comfort to many of us. So feel free to comment below with any specific instances you’d care to share as we grieve his death.
I’ll start: when I lost my job several years ago, a mutual friend informed Wendell, and a few days after I myself had heard the news, I received a kind letter of encouragement from him. This is simply the kind of generous man he was. His quiet support meant a great deal as we went through that difficult season. And one of his poems, “Going Dark,” heartened me during that time of uncertainty.
16 comments
Casey Spinks
I met him at the Front Porch Republic Conference in Louisville in 2019. I asked him if he’d ever read Heidegger. He said, “no, but I’ve read a lot of Plato.” I told him, “well, you’ve written a lot of what Heidegger thought, but better and in better language. I’ve tried to get it across to my professors somehow.” He smiled and replied, “well, for their sake, let’s keep it between us and not tell your professors.”
Andrew
I attended a conference at Baylor University as a sophomore in college, at which a less well-known Patrick Deneen was a keynote. I’d never heard the name Wendell Berry, but many people referenced his work, including Deneen. I bought a copy of What Are Humans For? And read it. I have read more since.
The next year, I heard from a friend that Mr. Berry would be giving a lecture a few hours away, at a public library. I drove there with a group of friends. I remember his lecture well and I think of it often: his seriousness, his candor, his good humor, his humble, generous, and thoughtful responses. The way he spoke eloquently but understandably, straightforwardly, simply (not typical in my own thinking and writing at the time, not typical in my Academic environment generally).
This past fall, I had the pleasure of traveling to Port Royal for Paul Kingsnorth’s lecture. Mr. Berry did not attend, but his wife, Tanya, lead us all in the singing of a hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth.” That hymn is a cherished memory, as is the view of Port Royal, and the brief drive my wife and I took along Cane Run–a road mentioned in a favorite poem that hangs above my desk.
Mine is, surely, the least significant of memorials. Many have actually known him. Many have more important things to say. But my marginal life is lived contentedly in the margins mostly because of his work. I see clearly because of his light, even in the midst of our great darkness. I sweep my corner and stay home, as he advised. And I suspect, in an angelic sense, my name is legion–How many have been so quietly moved?
Praise God for the life of Wendell Berry. May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace and rise in glory.
Justin K Patterson
I was first introduced to Wendell Berry at 17, in high school, through the book What Are People For. I remember nothing of that first encounter. But at 23 a roommate handed me the essay Compromise, Hell!. A good age for idealism and probably a little later than ideal for tempering. I reread it this morning and his comments on the difference between good community and corporate outskirts rings true today in the battle between rural communities and data centers. And I think it helps explain a little deeper why so many people are instinctively against them.
“What is the difference?” The difference is that the old town centers were built by people who were proud of their place and who realized a particular value in living there. The old buildings look good because they were built by people who respected themselves and wanted the respect of their neighbors. The corporate outskirts, on the contrary, were built by people who manifestly take no pride in the place, see no value in the lives lived there, and recognize no neighbors. The only value they see in the place is the money that can be siphoned out of it to more fortunate places, that is, to the wealthier suburbs of the larger cities.”
As I have gotten older, 42 now, at times I have found Mr. Berry too convicting to read. But I return. We have to. Wendell Berry asks us to be better citizens to our places, neighbors and ourselves. This is the good hard work, seen and unseen. Or as he says in his Sabbath Poem X 1979
“Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work…”
Russell Arben Fox
I was never lucky enough to visit Berry’s porch and talk with him at length as some FPR folk have, but I was lucky enough to meet him twice: once, briefly, at The Land Institute in Salina, KS, back in 2010, and another time, slightly (but only slightly) less briefly, at the 2019 FPR conference in Louisville, KY. In the NYT obituary of the man (gift link here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/31/us/wendell-berry-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.91A.kuzF.XY-VP26kXbmC&smid=url-share), Berry is quoted as saying that “if you subtracted the Gospels and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence from my work, there wouldn’t be very much left.” I am not quite the hedgehog that Berry was, but if you subtracted his writings from my own thought, the hole would be very large indeed. He was, in the strictest sense of the word, a prophet, and struggling with his ideas over the past 25 years has been an enormous blessing to me. As I walked around Wichita’s Buffalo Park early this morning, trying to beat the heat, I thought of a poem of his. I’ll share it in my Simplicity and Sustainability class this morning; most won’t get it, as most people don’t get most of what prophets have to say. But fortunately, every once in a while, some are lucky enough to have ears to hear:
A Timbered Choir (Prologue)
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.
Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.
The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.
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.
Spencer Carter
I am eternally grateful to be introduced to Mr. Berry by a group of college students I was working with in 2005. When I started to read his work he always seemed to speak what I had been feeling. Growing up in a small town on the coast of Maine, I knew people very similar to those in Port William. I love, and loved, those people and that place. Mr. Berry confirmed in beautiful, respectful language that I could never quite pin down what I felt and thought about those people, and the place that could never quite get my hands around. His poetry spoke to my heart. His essays give me words to speak when I saw the beautiful land being used so poorly. I am thankful to have found someone who could help me express my love of people and of place which such a wholesome love. We never met, and I am sorry for that. I will miss him, and mourn along with his friends and family. I trust that his love will buoy us all.
Ryan Davis
I never met him, but always hoped to if only to thank him for the impact his life had on me if nothing else. No writer, thinker, or man has taught me more, or helped show me through his living, the beauty of care and love; the same care and love I hope to embody with whatever years are left to me. I am what I am in large part to his faithful character and humble wisdom.
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” ― John Steinbeck
I will truly miss his steady integrity and good voice in this increasingly unsteady and sad world.
Landon Frye
To Wendell’s likely disapproval, there are days like today when the social platforms pull you back in, and the entire feed is a wellspring of inspiration reminding you why you yearn to open it up and see what interesting words await. Either Elon has the “for you” algorithm dialed or the bulk of the people I follow are rooted in Wendell’s influence.
I have loved seeing all the quotes posted and can’t pick which of mine are his favorite. Instead, because I am among the fortunate to have had the chance to meet him and talk at his farm, I’ll share the insights gleaned from that holy afternoon that I haven’t seen or read elsewhere.
In 2022, after finishing Jayber Crow, I wrote to him to thank him. I told him I was a full-on son of Troy Chatham, born on Midwest row crop farm, land grant grad, corporate agribusiness-salesman through and through and his stories illuminated the transgressions of land and community I had inklings about. I embodied the entirety of his antagonists and his work had put a crack in the facade of my life in a virtuous way. I asked to visit so that I may be a disciple to others like myself in modern ag. He wrote back within days and said I could come talk whenever I was free, though he preferred if we could arrange it at a time when maybe I was passing through.
A few highlights worth sharing:
Tanya greeted me when I arrived at the house and we waited for Wendell to come. In sharing pleasantries and what I knew of her background, she at one point said, “heavens no, I’m not a farm girl!”
No Ag College or Land Grant ever asked him to speak. English and Literature departments certainly, but no Ag Schools. He corrected himself and said that my alma mater U of Illinois did invite him once, but they wouldn’t let him talk to students, so he declined.
He nor Tanya thought there had ever been too many “sons of Midwest row crop farms” come to their kitchen table.
As I’ve read more of his work since visiting, I realized how nearly everything he spoke to me, he’d already written down and published. Indeed, the power of writing to clarify thinking.
When you read his words about the concerns for modernity they feel dismal, when he speaks them to you in person, they sound more like a slight annoyance which Christ will also overcome in the New Heaven and the New Earth.
When the conversation moves to Faith and Christ and Resurrection his entire face lights up and the energy bursts out as if he’s been waiting the whole time to get to the topic.
He was confident and cheerfully sure the tide had turned. At the beginning of his journey, he had just a handful of friends aligned with him, but now it seemed to me he felt both his work had broken through to enough people and that the clock on the industrial ag system was coming to a renewal.
Seeing the flurry of activity today, I would say so.
I had listened to his debate with Earl Butz a dozen times and he knew it like the debate was yesterday – so many of our comments came in and out of that. Berry & Butz Debate – 1977
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_zCCy46QXo&t=6616s
All my grandparents farmed, but they passed before I could have meaningful conversations with them. My visit with Wendell and Tanya was like collecting some of what I never got to say and hear from them.
He invited me back, so long as I could bring my wife and children.
All I can think about are the last few pages of Remembering and the eternity he is now in, the community of saints with whom he has made us all more familiar and long for.
Zach Neece
When I wrote Mr. Berry for permission to set “The Peace of Wild Things” for voice and harp he replied “Yes,” and thanked me for asking. Wendell Berry’s life and his writings are a shining star for all time.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1HdXX0gFBI
Ben Hancock
Beautiful. Thank you.
Matthew Erickson
I wrote about Wendell Berry and his influence on me a little longer than would fit in this comment section, but you can find it here: https://mwerickson.substack.com/p/one-must-begin-in-ones-own-life.
Colin Gillette
Thank you for this, Jeff. I never met Wendell Berry. I was introduced to his work as an undergraduate, and something took root that kept growing over the next couple of decades, often without my noticing. By the time I came upon The Unsettling of America, I was living and working inside his diagnosis. As a therapist, I recognized much of what he described in the lives of the people sitting across from me, and in my own.
I also found something of myself in Jayber Crow: a man who had known displacement and shame, and who came to understand that love could be faithful even when it could not possess or fix what it loved. Berry helped me find words for things I had struggled to name, and helped me recognize how much I owed to the people and places that had sustained me.
What you say here about the love beneath his criticism rings true. He could name the damage and still help me see what remained worth tending. “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” I’m grateful for the seed planted so long ago, and for the growth that followed. I wish I’d had the chance to sit with him and thank him.
J.T. Edelblut
I never met Wendell Berry but I heard of his ideas as far back as high school and college (even reading FPR in the early days!). I first read Hannah Coulter after I moved to the DC area after college. I had transplanted from New England to the city of transplants for my first ‘real’ job, doing what I thought I was supposed to do in following a career path without a care wheresoever it led me. Missing home and my then-girlfriend (now wife), I started reading along with her American Lit. class curriculum she was taking in her senior year. Hannah Coulter hit like a ton of bricks. My wife and I lasted one year more in DC after getting married, and then scampered back to central New England where we haven’t left in 10 years and don’t plan to.
Linda Trumbo
My last two decades have been spent caregiving (I’m in my 70s now), and Wendell Berry’s writing has helped transform my view of living a life of love. I wrote a short poem in tribute to him as I was gazing out our window into the woods recently and reflecting on the goodness and faithfulness of his life.
This day given;
This day received –
the heat that leaves me breathless,
the light bedazzling the air,
the leaves gently dancing
to the motion of the wind that moves where-so-ere it will.
Green abundant and ubiquitous
yet –
tiny hints of crimson and gold
tentative
tell of different days
to be given
to be received.
Neil D Peterson
I first encountered his writing as a recently repatriated Iowan in 2018. Upon returning with my family to my native land, after many years of living amongst peasant farmers in Asia, there was much of life and farming in Iowa that felt very foreign. Why are the fields so big? Why is everyone trying to outdo each other all the time? Why are there so few people? And why aren’t there any cows, water buffalos, pigs, and chickens wandering about?
Mr. Berry had similar questions (he was more of a draft-horse kind of guy, not as interested in water buffalos). He didn’t always have answers but wasn’t afraid to grapple with complex ideas. I normally understood his biblical references but often got lost when he started into Homer and old English poets. That’s ok, his writing challenged my thinking.
I also appreciated his refusal to be boxed politically. He was at home condemning both the “liberal freedom of unrestrained personal behavior, and the conservative freedom of unrestrained economic behavior.” I enjoyed his writing because he spoke as a Christian who cared about God’s creation.
Most of all, I appreciated his love of family, farm, and the local community.
Kevin Kredit
If Berry was a living symbol of a lost world and sensibility, his loss makes it feel even more lost now. It was a comfort knowing he was still here. But I enjoyed reading all the comments here — thank you FPR for carrying on Berry’s work and reminding us it’s not as lost as it seems.
“Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story” was a perfect ending to his Port William novels, to my reading. On the last few pages, he wrote to the feelings I have now: “As he has come to know, Andy’s grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.”
Austin Jepsky
I exchanged letters with Mr. Berry about 5 years ago. The time and care he took in answering my inquiry was touching and demonstrated to me that he was the genuine gentleman so many have described. May he find the rest he deserves, and may we find the will to carry on his work and legacy.