WENDELL BERRY AND ME

I have just read some more essays by Wendell Berry (The Gift of Good Land). This extraordinary ordinary man, an academic who farms in Kentucky, grapples with the problems facing family farming and what we like to call subsistence farming elsewhere in the world. These problems are primarily caused by agribusiness and its governmental allies. Berry is concerned with agricultural and horticultural health. Ecology is long-term economics: farming and gardening based only upon economics can be short-sighted and destructive. A previous generation had fine individuals like Sir Albert Howard and Friend Sykes, leaders of a movement involving healthy farming, composting and soil associations. We have Wendell Berry.

I marvel at the fact that I enjoy reading Wendell Berry so much, a practical intelligent man who works in a way that I do not. Although I have had a persistent relation to working with the soil that is greater than the majority of people in my society it has also been a strange relation. I have done the work with enjoyment but also as if under duress. It is good work to think about other things when doing, whereas my inclination to plan and think about the soil work itself is weak. Men like Howard and Berry are philosophical toward working with the soil, whereas I shirk and try to be philosophical about other things.

Why have I been so involved with working with the soil? I remember helping my father with potatoes on his allotment. You planted them a certain way and then you dug them up and enjoyed eating them. He also grew berry bushes as well as other vegetables. Even in his day, although he belonged to an association of allotment growers, he was unusual in his application. Before him his father was an agricultural labourer before he married and had a large family and worked in a factory (although he then spent his evenings gardening), and before him my great-grandfather was an agricultural labourer.

At the age of about eleven I became employed on a local small-holding on Saturdays and during school holidays. It took only five minutes to walk from my Council house to what I experienced as countryside where this small-holding was situated. Here I worked very hard picking fruit, cleaning out the hen barn and pig styes, building the manure heap, watering the seedlings and tending to the vegetable plants (celery on frozen mornings), working in the glass-houses, sterilising soil with wood-fired steam, plucking chickens. Then close by there seemed to me to be an enormous field in which long rows of planted brassica had to be hoed in teams. This was all naturally organic. There was the camaraderie of work-mates but there was also the ability to think about other things, about the latest TV adaptation of a literary classic, and to foster my interest in literature.

Then there was New Zealand and choosing to leave university and work in Wellington parks and reserves department, tending to flowers and flower-beds in various parts of the city. Why I did this I cannot remember.

Then there was marriage and finishing university, Jacqueline and I wanting to have a garden, to compost and to grow our own vegetables, joining the local soil association and overseas research associations, subscribing to Rodale journals, visiting organic and bio-dynamic farms, meeting with other individuals, and reading, reading, reading. We kept bees and hens, which involved the whole paraphernalia of honey extraction in the kitchen, and an interest in and knowledge of the various hens. There were the truckloads of commercial compost delivered steaming on the front path, the trailer-loads of various manures - chicken, cow, horse and goat, the bales of hay or straw for mulching and the continual collection of firewood for the open fire-place in the living room. All this on a suburban section of one sixth of an acre. Jacqueline had even less previous experience but 100% motivation.

Now that we have fed our family and they have grown up physically healthy I take some pride in what Jacqueline and I have spent our time doing. We have been doing work that Wendell Berry advocates with such cogency. It is work that is becoming trendy, although often on a small and impractical scale, almost like a life-style accessory rather than a really necessary alternative life-style. It requires a certain philosophical input, lots of hard work and bears a certain spiritual fruit, regardless of the worker's personal qualities.

This way of living has felt like a compulsory training for me. It does not require the profit motive. It is no guarantee of a good or happy life, but it is perhaps legitimate to say that it has been a decent way of life.

ERASMUS. PRAISE OF FOLLY

I am going to be really childish and say that if there be any person in history I would have wished to have been in a previous life the primary candidate would have to be Erasmus. He possesses those qualities I wish I had, or more correctly which I believe are important in life. He is an independent thinker. He is a humanitarian Christian who is free of Christian institutions. He is a Christian humanist who places absolute emphasis upon the Gospels. He is respected on the European intellectual scene and has like-minded friends such as Thomas More and John Colet. He is civilised in the sense that he is moderate and middle-of-the-road, upsetting the Catholic hierarchy on the one hand and the crude Lutheran protestantism on the other. He is sharp and witty, honest and clear-sighted. The message of Christ is essentially a call for a charitable outlook and behaviour. We must act according to the spirit of the Gospels. To act according to the letter of the Law Erasmus terms Judaism.

I want to be childish again and say that if I had to choose one book to keep with me that book would be Praise of Folly. It is relevant for all times and places and circumstances where there is society. Folly makes the world go round. Sometimes it is wicked, sometimes it is charitable. A thoughtful person sees the folly that most others are subject to, but recognises also that it is very easy and disagreeable to be a wise fool. There is magnificent and justified satirical treatment of obvious targets such as rulers, politicians, lawyers, theologians and churchmen, including monks. Yet folly enables the world to go round, whereas intellectualism can be devastating.

The thinking of Erasmus is flexible and unconditioned, the language sophisticated yet clear and uncluttered. His expression is remarkably timeless, unlike other writers of his period (early 16th century). Here in a short and unique satirical work of literature is the essence of how life works.

DONNE, JOHN. NO MAN IS AN ISLAND : A SELECTION FROM THE PROSE

Unlike Seneca, John Donne appears to be subject to no controversy about his honesty and integrity. This could be due to the fact that he patently is a hypocrite. Or it could be because very few would be interested in his prose nowadays. It is shite. He is very lucky indeed that without his knowledge and consent someone published the verse of his earlier years for which he is now justifiably known.

When he was down on his luck, having misjudged the reaction of his rich father-in-law to his secret marriage, he wrote abject prose for about fifteen years to those who could help him. When he was given a job in the Anglican Church he becomes somewhat unctuous. Reading his letters it becomes obvious when this job occurs because they suddenly become full of holy sentiments and references to God and Our Saviour.

The tortuous turn of phrase which is an asset in his poetry is diabolical in his prose. He uses many tortured phrases to say very little. He invents arguments which have no cogency. He is a boring clever-dick.

As he rises in the Anglican Church and becomes known for his public sermons the reader gets a sense of the showmanship and grandstanding implicit in the performance, while the substance of the sermons can be trite and common-place. There is absolutely no originality of thought. Given that he is now a leading figure in a Christian church, the references to Christ are few and far between and when they occur there is a complete lack of grappling with the meaning of this spiritual individuality. It is all God and the Old Testament, fearfulness and death. His sermons, which are fearfully dated to death now, have no timeless value whatsoever.

Donne is the archetype for all mountebank preachers. From young man to elder church-man who staged his own funeral, from first to last, he is a complete tosser and toady.

SENECA. LETTERS FROM A STOIC

Seneca has a bit of a mixed press. Some of it brands him a hypocrite. Here we have a millionaire talking of the value of simplicity and poverty. How did he amass his wealth? Individuals I respect, such as Coleridge and Milton, do not think much of him. Others equally eminent throughout history look back to him with respect.

I can only think that if a hypocrite writes as much as Seneca he ought to be found out in his writings. All the hypocrites of our contemporary political life can be found out in their writings in a moment or two, quite apart from the fact that they would be incapable of even beginning to write with the cogent thoughtfulness of Seneca. Can you get hypocrites of a deeply philosophical nature? Would they exist more in the religious or esoteric arena?

In one letter Seneca arrives home to his country estate unannounced and the servants have not made preparations for him. He stoically maintains his equilibrium until they can attend to him. He does not criticise them. This is an uncomfortable example. Quite clearly if he maintains a spare diet and lives simply it is within a setting of material comfort.

On the other hand, when Seneca effectively ruled Rome for five years during Nero's childhood, it has been described as one of the finest periods in Rome's history. Perhaps he made his money because of his position in a way considered appropriate. Then he retires to lead a philosophical life.

Do I have to know whether or not Seneca was a hypocrite, whether or not I like him, in order to appreciate the thoughts he expresses? These thoughts fail to be self-serving or inhumane. I am left with the impression that the individuality which incarnated as Seneca around the time of the birth of Jesus is one of the most significant in the history of humanity. And this is despite the fact that for Seneca the emerging Christians were just one of a number of foreign religious cults. They meant nothing to him.

His significance is reinforced when I read his plays, which are so powerful and unique they seem to point to a future theatrical art form which in part finds its expression in Shakespeare and other Elizabethans. It seems inconceivable that Shakespeare did not know Seneca's work, there is just too much corresponding resonance. Then in the modern era Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, in part, seems to pick up on Seneca's techniques although full development still awaits some knowledgeable and able esoteric dramatist.

GOSPEL HALL

From the ages of 3-13 I was sent to Sunday School by my parents so that they could have Sunday afternoon to themselves. The walk from Council house to Gospel Hall would have been a good mile which included crossing a main arterial road. The Gospel Hall was in no way evangelical. Its superindendent was a caricature of a Church of England Sunday School superintendent: benevolent, elderly, white-haired and kindly Mr Fryor. His 2IC was a large rotund man who fittingly arrived in a Humber. We called him Jumbo. Both men in their ways were well-intentioned comfortable middle class administrants to the children, some of whom came from the wrong side of the arterial road.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. If anyone should believe in Me he shall have eternal Life.

I learned two things from this benevolent Sunday education, despite my rebellion. I came to know the Bible stories inside out and probably still remember them. And I learned that Christian life was all about the New Testament. The stories of the New Testament are completely different in tone from those in the Old.

The Old Testament stories formed an historical context only to the coming of the Son of God in the New Testament. The values of the New Testament given through Jesus Christ were an advance and improvement on the values of the Old Testament. A studious Christian can live without reference to the Old Testament but of course cannot do so without the New.

So when I hear high profile Christian leaders emphasising God and the Old Testament in the content of their sermons I believe that I am listening to someone who should belong to another religion. Literature of the 19th century, especially Dickens, is littered with cold and loveless individuals who in the name of God insist they are Christians performing some form of necessary tyranny against others. If they are not self-professed Christians they are rank materialists who believe in the over-riding power of mechanical science and industry. The segue between the two is minimal.

So long as Bishop Tamaki of Destiny Church spouts the Old Testament he can justify his tyranny and his materialistic success. He can think he deserves to become comfortable after all his industry. But he has to steer clear of the Spiritual Being Who after His hard work was very uncomfortably nailed to a Cross for His pains.

In the Gospel Jesus Christ comes incognito, isolated and homeless into Galilee and begins gathering His disciples. I can assure Bishop Tamaki that if He came today He would not arrive on a Harley Davidson taken from the garage of His material mansion. The unpretentious education of the Gospel Hall fifty years ago allows me to guess that the man Jesus would come from the nondescript people, and that his non-violent radicalism would be too much for the Tamakis and politicians of this world. He would be seen as a troublemaker, a dangerous loner gathering together a dangerous group, leading to only one inevitable outcome.

I thank the humble Gospel Hall for helping me to see clearly without effort the false prophets of our times, whether they come from within the Christian establishment, or from some supposed alternative, or from political circles. What allows Blair of the maniac glare to consciously carry out a crusade and criminally invade other countries belongs to the medieval Catholic Church just as much as to any petty Tamaki tyrant. And they all belong to the ethos of the Old Testament.

It is when I see odd individuals - and some of them may be odd - carrying out loving actions without beating any drum that I feel myself in the presence of the New Testament, in the presence of a true Christian.

JEWS FOR JESUS

I recently made the mistake of purchasing a DVD entitled 'Dylan: Busy Being Born Again - inside Bob Dylan's Jesus years. Dylan is neither a contributor nor a feature. Instead, a number of individuals chunder on about the topic, talking as much about themselves as the supposed feature, and presumably making money out of associating themselves with Dylan.

Most of the contributors appear to be Jewish, including Mitch Glaser who speaks for Jews for Jesus. On the face of it I assumed I was going to hear Jews indicate how they came to Christianity in some form, including their associate Bob Dylan, because it enhanced the limitations of Judaism. Not a bit of it. Their emphasis was on the fact that Jesus and his disciples were Jewish and that therefore it was not they who needed converting but the Gentiles.

What can I say? Without appearing anti-Semitic?

When the man Jesus was baptised in the Jordan something important happened. The spirit of the Christ descended into him. From that moment for the next three years of his life (and his mission) he was no longer Jewish Jesus but the universal Christ on earth. And it showed. The Jewish establishment did not like what he said and what he did at all and became the primary instruments of his crucifixion. They and their followers and descendants certainly needed conversion.

Paul began taking the universal Christ to the world which also needed conversion, and Christianity ceased to be a Jewish cult.

By concentrating on the man Jesus, Jews for Jesus and others are taking a superficial and materialistic view of Christ. The spiritual Christ is non-personal, but so long as you emphasise Jesus you can talk to him with closed eyes as if he is listening in the room next door ready to respond to all your ridiculous and ambitious expectations. To emphasise Jesus rather than the Christ is to emphasise the subjective feeling life of the soul instead of the objective thought-filled life of the spirit.

I can fully understand the wish not to be involved in Christian institutions and the Christian establishment, but this is not solved by ditching Christ.

Update. I have since found in the local library a new book on Dylan by a Jewish-American academic which is yet another fanciful manipulation of the subject in the author's own image. This one is a bit too distasteful. The author is intent upon turning Dylan into a fanatic orthodox Jew conversant with the mysteries of Judaism. Is there a movement to claim him before the man dies? The book is not worth reading in full, but on the principle of a drop giving a taste of the whole ocean, there is a wilful manipulation of complex facts to produce a limited ideological purpose and consciousness in the artist. So despite Dylan writing and speaking of his significant connection to Woody Guthrie, for example, who must not be Jewish, the Jewish academic sets out to destroy this fact with absurd and superficial argument. Gentile that I am, I like and admire Dylan on the basis of his being an unpredictable and independent artist whose stature in modern life is truly outstanding. Behind ethnicity, or nationality, or gender, or religion, or culture stands the individual human spirit and the true artist works from this and the individuality of the other responds. If either Dylan or any other wants to see his work in the conditioned terms of religion, etc. then the work will be rendered barren.