The Earth is Not a Machine
Wendell Berry – What Are People For?
Land, Limits, and Living Truly
Wendell Berry – Summer of Radical Expression
"The world is not given by our fathers, but borrowed from our children."
Berry reorients time. The land isn’t an inheritance — it’s a responsibility forward. What we do now echoes ahead.
What are you shaping today that your children will have to live with?
"People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are healed by the health industry, which pays no attention to food."
He saw the absurdity plainly: disconnection between systems leads to dysfunction. Healing begins with wholeness.
Where in your life have you accepted division that needs to be reunited?
"To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd."
Consumption without participation breeds ignorance. Berry invites us back to the soil — to rejoin the cycles that sustain us.
What part of your life are you consuming without contributing to?
"There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."
For Berry, the land is holy by default. It is our carelessness — not its nature — that strips its dignity.
What sacredness have you overlooked simply because it’s familiar?
"We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist."
He elevates skill over spectacle. Beauty is not just painted — it is planted, tended, and harvested.
What part of your craft do you need to stop underestimating?
"The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding to it."
Escape doesn’t mean erasure. To move forward, Berry says, we must contribute — not cut off — from where we’ve been.
How can you build on your past instead of trying to run from it?
"The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful."
He measures courage differently. Real bravery isn’t in violence — it’s in restraint, honesty, and limits.
What truth must you speak, even if it costs you comfort?
"If we do not live where we work, and when we work, we are wasting our lives, and our work too."
Berry calls for integration. To separate life and labor is to fracture the soul. Wholeness requires overlap.
Where is your work out of alignment with your life?
"We must learn to prefer quality over quantity, service over profit, neighborliness over competition."
He names the better way — one that trades speed for sustainability, and selfish gain for shared good.
Which value are you ready to restore to first place?
"The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility."
This isn’t just an obligation — it’s a joy. The land responds to love. Our role is not ruler, but gardener.
What would change if you treated your environment as a relationship, not a resource?
Gsry D. 
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Julie L. B. 
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