An American poet, essayist and novelist, Wendell Berry offers hope to the modern American, a hope that they can re-achieve a connection to Creation by the source of agriculture. To align oneself in relationship to land, imitating nature in agriculture, one can simultaneously align himself to a spiritual goal. This thought travels through Berry’s poetry, whose focus on nature and agriculture run with themes of grace, redemption and transformation. Not only images of farming line up with these themes, but through these connections Berry honors his food. His poem, “Prayer after Eating” encompasses his attitude toward food- “I have taken in the light/ that quickened eye and leaf./ May my brain be bright with praise/ of what I eat, in the brief braze/ of motion and of thought./ May I be worthy of my meat” (Collected Poems 148). The light referenced in this poem could allude to the light of God as incarnation in the Bible. As a popular Christian worship song eludes Jesus Christ in the words “light of the world/you stepped down into darkness/opened my eyes/let me see beauty that made my heart adore you (Hughes),” Berry sees Creation as the light stepping into darkness to expose the eye’s attraction to the leaf, a sign of new life, triggering the mind to see the beauty of his food, in order to honor and adore it, and hope that he might be transformed to be worthy of his meat.
First American spiritual perspectives complement Berry’s thought. The First American sees his relationship to a God force through his relationship with nature. Judeo-Christian tradition does not contradict this notion, but establishes it from the beginning of humankind:
Then the Lord God formed the human from the soil of the ground and breathed breath into its nostrils the breath of life and the human became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in theeast and there God put the human whom God had formed (Gen. 2:7-2:8).
This scripture shows that humanity is intimately related to the rest of the creation. Like all other creatures, we are also formed from the earth. If humans are related to the rest of the earth, it is no wonder that Great Mam scolds her great-granddaughter, Gloria, informing her that flowers are her cousins when the girl picks flowers in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Homeland.” Great Mam, a Cherokee Indian, lives with her anglicized grandchildren on a Kentucky farm, and struggles to retain her dying culture in an environment which does not approve of it. Gloria does not intrinsically understand, like her great-grandmother, the value of other living things in their relationship to human beings. Great Mam tries to explain:
Sometimes a person has to take a life, like a chicken’s or a hog’s when you need it. If you’re hungry, then they’re happy to give their flesh up to you because they’re your relatives. But nobody is so hungry they need to kill a flower (Kingsolver 11).Gloria does not accept this teaching, defending that she only picked weeds which no one cared about. At that point, Great Mam gently rebukes her, telling her that it is a bad thing to take for one self something that belongs to everybody. “It is a sin (Kingsolver 12).” In this scene, Great Mam unites Christian and Cherokee notions of relationships and sin to correct her great-granddaughter.
Not only are humans part of creation, but Wendell Berry contends from an ancient perspective, we are small in the scheme of the rest of Creation. We are not greater than nature, nor are we its equal. Primal art displays this notion; on a painted wall in a Lascaux cave a small, childish stick figure is surrounded by vibrant drawings of shaped, shaded and colored animals. The stick figure who had cast his only spear into the guts of bison is now without weapon, revealing him to be vulnerable, frail and incomplete against the magnificent animals surrounding him (“Unsettling” 98). The Bible illustrates the smallness of man in the book of Job, when God speaks to his suffering servant Job from a ferocious whirlwind. Job questioning of God’s sovereignty triggers this storm which God uses to show his subject his full bounty and mystery next to Job’s mere humanity (Job 38). If we are but small creatures in the big scheme of things, we need to be good stewards of the environment. We are no bigger than our land, but we act so in the way we treat it. Berry contends that we can be redeemed from our anthropocentric point of view. In the past, we have focused upon rituals of return to the human condition. A man would go into the wilderness and after measuring himself against Creation, will recognize his true place and as a result, will be saved from pride and despair.(“Unsettling” 99). The man went hungry and therefore had to kill animals and pluck plants, but as he killed and ate with care, he became a restorer of order, a preserver of life.
The ethic of reverence for life was set at precedence in Judaic law codes, established early Genesis, and then in Exodus. Richard H. Hiers, professor of Religion at University of Florida, points out that before the Great Flood, humans along with birds and all other land creatures, were vegetarians. In Genesis 1:29-30, God addresses human and animal needs respectively:
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground- everything that has the breath of life in it – I give every green plant for food.”After the fall of man in Genesis 3, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, humanity eventually faced their downfall. The earth was full of corruption and violence and God saw all man and that every inclination in their heart was evil (Gen 6:5). He sent a flood which would wipe out all of creation, except for Noah, his family, seven of every kind of clean animal and two of every kind of unclean animal, and seven of every kind of bird, to maintain biodiversity throughout the earth. After the flood, God gave Noah’s family animal for food: “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything” (Gen 9:3). With the initial shalom obtained in the Garden of Eden at the end, human beings were still expected the respect the life of animals and birds killed for food (Hiers 134), as stated in God’s following commandment, “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood, I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal” (Gen 9:4-5). Because the life of each animal was contained by their blood, human beings were to express a reverence for life, by not eating it. Similar provisions appeared later in Judaic law, and is the reason why many gentile converts to early Christianity had to agree not to eat blood of the meat of animals that had been strangled (Hiers 134). Judaic law codes were set up to restore human beings back to God and the Earth, however human beings failed to get the point.
Berry, Wendell. A Part. San Francisco: North Point P, 1980. 5.
Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977.
Hiers, Richard H. "Reverance for Life and Environmental Ethics in Biblical Law and
Covenant." Journal of Law and Religion: 127-157. JSTOR.
Hughes, Tim. "Here I Am to Worship." By Tim Hughes. Rec. 2001. Here I Am to
Worship.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Homeland and Other Stories. New York: Perennial, 1989. 1-22.
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