Giving Thanks, Rain, Neighbors

I delivered ORVF Herd Shares to Marion Saturday morning while Amy delivered shares and set up at the Abingdon Farmers Market. Amy’s parents came up to the market from Knoxville and took 3 of the 4 kids with them back to Tennessee for the weekend leaving us with Carter Lynn and a much quieter weekend than we have been used to. Amy delivered Herd Shares and pre-orders to Knoxville on Monday and brought the kids back with her on Tuesday morning. 

This weekend will be a lot less quiet than last. Amy’s brother and his family, along with Amy’s parents came to the valley yesterday and will be here through the weekend. We also have lots of cousins and extended family in the valley for the Thanksgiving weekend, so as the noise and chaos rises, so does the fun! Good times. And good eating. Friends and family rank pretty near the top of the list of things we are thankful for. 

Tuesday’s steady soaking rain was a blessing we, and I’m sure many more, were thankful for. Rain. A blessing often taken for granted. As with most things, the greater the thirst, the greater the thanksgiving for its quenching. So many things to be thankful for. Things I don’t deserve. Things that are not guaranteed for tomorrow. 

Neighbors and community are at the top of our thankful list as well. We live in a special place surrounded by good people. Community and neighborly love have been a common themes in “THE NEED TO BE WHOLE: Patriotism and the History of Prejudice” by Wendell Berry. Referring to Jesus teaching us to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” Berry says, “How can we love our neighbors by abusing or destroying the watershed or the ecosystem or the ecosphere on which we and they mutually depend?”

“If God is at the top of the chain or hierarchy of beings, then the order of the world cannot be anthropocentric, a pretentious ugly word that means man-centered. Our place is in the middle, which only means that we have both powers and limits, are both subordinate and responsible, are expected to be both obedient and magnanimous. Our position, we may say, requires us to love God and our neighbors and to be good and faithful servants to both. As we are obliged now to accept the implications of our knowledge of ecosystems and the ecosphere or a recovery of the primitive knowledge of those things, then our word ‘neighbor’ begins to refer not only to humans but also to creatures that are not human: the plants and animals, the rocks, the light, the water, and the air. And so, we must occupy our place with gratitude for its privileges but also with care and some uneasiness.”

“Neighbors are to love one another by work as well as by kindness. If one takes that commandment seriously, one cannot replace one’s neighbor and one’s neighbor’s help with a machine or a chemical. Thus the neighborhood becomes an economic asset, unaccounted and untaxed, belonging to each of its members.”

This is what Wendell Berry says of his own community and of the different views had by their neighbors in it, “That reduces our interest in who voted for whom. Often we have no idea. Almost never do we try to find out. When on our visits to town we meet our neighbors face to face, it does not occur to us to question if they may be our political opposites. We are asking how they are, and how are they’re families, and did they get enough rain. Somebody tells a joke, and we laugh. Our one store, which sells farm supplies, hardware, and some groceries also serves breakfast and lunch. At the long table in the back where mostly men sit and there is much talk and laughter, both political sides surely are represented, but there is almost no talk of politics… All of us have had engine trouble or been stuck in mud or snow out on the road somewhere, and who was there to help us, but one of our neighbors?”

Berry speaks of life as a whole. Living things both depending on other living things and contributing to other living things. That’s how life works and how community should work. People both needing others and helping others. Our consumerism has interfered with our community. Instead of a community trusting and depending on neighbors that we know, as consumers we have opted to become dependent on systems we don’t know and don’t understand. This dependance on things outside of our knowing and controlling becomes enslaving. What’s the solution to this culture of consumerism that’s eating away at communities?

“The rest of us can choose against it by refusing to buy anything we don’t need. Speaking of course just for myself, I have gained far more happiness from my refusal to buy a television set and a computer than from anything I have ever bought.”

“Money is inflatable and is continuously inflating, another normality of our time, whereas the real value of the land, however we may price it, is never more or less than our absolute dependance on it.” 

“He who is free is responsible for his work. He who is not responsible for his work is not free.”

“We understand that we cannot live except by the sacrifice of other life, but we know that we cannot know either the portion of life that we may allowably take or the worth or significance of the taken life.”

Have a good week.

Will