Articles for tag: Wendell Berry

March 7, 2016

Christian Standard

I Look to Stay

By Casey Tygrett In 2007, I encountered a book that changed my life. The book was Hannah Coulter, a novel by Wendell Berry. I had previously read a Berry poem called “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” With a title like that, how could you forget? In fact, one line stays with me even today: “Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.” Even with that poem in mind, I wasn”t prepared for Hannah Coulter. The characters, the life, the unspoken but ever present faith””Berry”s book drew me in, and I couldn”t put it down. Once

February 1, 2016

Christian Standard

Dear Aspiring Minister . . .

By Jennifer Johnson You may be attending a Bible college, a Christian college, or a Christian university. That school may be affiliated with the Restoration Movement, with a mainline denomination, or with no particular group at all. And you may dream of someday serving as a preacher, a youth pastor, or a worship leader. No matter where you are in school, no matter what your background, and no matter what your dream, consider this letter my virtual attempt to shove all five feet and two inches of myself in your face (or your shoulder) and demand you stop saying things

October 22, 2015

Christian Standard

New Testament Church, New Insights on Ministry

By LeRoy Lawson Renewal for Mission: A Concise History of Christian Churches and Churches of Christ W. Dennis Helsabeck Jr., Gary Holloway, Douglas A. Foster Abilene: Abilene Christian University Press, 2009 A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry Garret Keizer HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, 1993 Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim: Types and Distortions of Spiritual Vocation in the Fiction of Wendell Berry and Cormac McCarthy Todd Edmonds Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2014 When I was 9 years old, I made my nervous way down the aisle of my home church. I confessed my faith to our minister in front of all those people.

July 13, 2015

Christian Standard

Laura Buffington’s Thought Leaders

We asked 35 Christian leaders, “Who is the influencer with the biggest impact on your life and ministry?” Most of these leaders listed several influential thinkers, writers, innovators, and leaders more of us should get to know. This response is from Laura Buffington, teaching pastor with SouthBrook Christian Church, Miamisburg, Ohio. ________ Wendell Berry: His poetry, stories, and essays on knowing our place and living in place reshape the world for me every time I read him. Christena Cleveland: Her work on loving through differences is truthful and painful in all the correct ways. Lee Magness: I”m indebted to many teachers

February 26, 2015

Christian Standard

Paradise Lost, Maybe

By Jay Engelbrecht Is there a link between the way we care for the earth and our closeness to the creator? Put another way, can we serve Christ and sully his creation? The link between mankind”s spiritual health and the vitality of the earth courses through Scripture. John Milton, though blind, saw the connection. In his classic Paradise Lost, Eve, seduced by the idea of becoming a god, disobeys her creator, and nature “gave signs of woe.” A short time later, Adam opts to defy his creator and follow Eve. The rebel couple “fancy that they feel Divinity within them

February 15, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Wisdom from a Hayseed”s Hayseed

By LeRoy Lawson Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005). Sometimes when life gets too complicated you just need to sit a spell with somebody who doesn”t need to keep up, who looks askance at modern society”s frenetic pace and, drawing a grateful breath of unpolluted air, simply can”t be bothered trying to be cool. That someone is Wendell Berry. This Kentucky gentleman farmer/poet/philosopher and author of more than 30 books is a hayseed”s hayseed. His fictional Port William, Kentucky, like William Faulkner”s fictional Yoknapatawpha County and Garrison Keillor”s fictional Lake Wobegon, reminds me

February 12, 2006

Christian Standard

The Hidden Wound and the Healing Table

By Robert F. Hull Jr. The Hidden Wound is a wonderful book by Wendell Berry.1 It’s really an extended essay he wrote in 1969 during a fellowship at Stanford University. The reflections in the book were touched off by protests going on around him during the racial unrest of that era. He came to realize his family and community in rural Kentucky had inflicted a wound on him, hidden until he became old enough and experienced enough to give that wound a name. And then he knew that the wound was called racism. His parents and grandparents were not bad

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