Wendell Berry

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.

Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly.
Live a three-dimensional life;
stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come out of the silence,

The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can't do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute...Give your approval to all you cannot understand...Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. ...Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts...Practice resurrection.

We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward
That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

When I was a young man,
grown up at last, how large
I seemed to myself! I was a tree,
tall already, and what I had not
yet reached, I would yet grow
to reach. Now, thirty more years
added on, I have reached much
I did not expect, in a direction
unexpected. I am growing downward,
smaller, one among the grasses.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me please to carry
this candle against the wind.

If you provided a marriage feast
and the thankless guests crowded
at the table, gobbling the food
without tasting it, and shoving
one another away, so that some ate
too much and some ate nothing,
would you not be offended?

Or if, seated at your bountiful table,
your guests picked and finicked
over the food, eating only a little,
refusing the wine and the dessert,
claiming that to fill their bellies
and rejoice would impair their souls,
would you not be offended?