09/02/2026
🌿 Thank you, Wendell Berry. 🌿
This week, we lost writer, poet, farmer, teacher, activist, and truth-teller Wendell Berry at the age of 92.
Rather than say goodbye, today we simply want to say thank you.
Thank you for reminding us that the way we treat the land and the way we treat one another cannot be separated.
Thank you for asking us to reconsider what we call progress—and to recognize the true costs of greed, consumption, war, and our disconnection from the natural world.
Thank you for showing us the value of staying rooted: in a place, in a community, in our responsibilities to one another and to the generations who will come after us.
And thank you for having the courage, again and again, to ask us to live differently.
The words Robert Shetterly painted alongside Wendell's portrait feel especially powerful today:
“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 have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and wasteful.”
Wendell Berry spent a lifetime asking us to pay attention—to the soil beneath our feet, to our neighbors, to the consequences of our choices, and to what is worth protecting.
His work continues in every person who chooses to care for a piece of land, strengthen a community, question what we've been told is inevitable, and imagine a more peaceful and sustainable way of living.
For the words, the wisdom, the questions, and the example:
Thank you, Wendell.
Your courage was contagious. 🌱
