As a novelist, poet, environmentalist and farmer, Wendell Berry is well known for his scathing critiques of the industrial economy and corporate agriculture, as well as his support for ecologically sustainable farming. Much less well known is his four-decades-long spiritual practice of writing poetry inspired by his experience of Sabbath. Berry’s poetry and his Sabbath practice offer a glimpse into the spiritual heart of his agricultural and intellectual endeavors.

Our instructor for tonight, Joelle Hathaway, is an assistant professor of theological studies at Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana. In her research and teaching, she examines the intersections among Christian theology, the arts, ecology and the built environment.

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And if you arrived here after seeing our Instagram post, here is the full text of Wendell Berry’s Sabbath poem “1985, V”:

How long does it take to make the woods?
As long as it takes to make the world.
The woods is present as the world is, the presence
of all its past, and of all its time to come.
It is always finished, it is always being made, the act
of its making forever greater than the act of its destruction.
It is a part of eternity, for its end and beginning
belong to the end and beginning of all things,
the beginning lost in the end, the end in the beginning.

What is the way to the woods, how do you go there?
By climbing up through the six days’ field,
kept in all the body’s years, the body’s
sorrow, weariness, and joy. By passing through
the narrow gate on the far side of that field
where the pasture grass of the body’s life gives way
to the high, original standing of the trees.
By coming into the shadow, the shadow
of the grace of the strait way’s ending,
the shadow of the mercy of light.

Why must the gate be narrow?
Because you cannot pass beyond it burdened.
To come in among these trees you must leave behind
the six days’ world, all of it, all of its plans and hopes.
You must come without weapon or tool, alone,
expecting nothing, remembering nothing,
into the ease of sight, the brotherhood [and sisterhood!] of eye and leaf.

+ Wendell Berry