Week 1 Discussion
In preparation for this weeks discussion please read Chapter 1 of The Serviceberry. While you read be attentive to how you feel. What are your initial reactions, what piques your interest, what sticks out as new and novel?
Scripture Reading:
Suggested Additional readings:
Two Excerpts from The Gift of Good Land the final chapter in The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural By Wendell Berry.
“The Creator’s love for the Creation is mysterious precisely because it does not conform to human purposes. The wild ass and the wild lilies are loved by God for their own sake and yet they are part of a pattern that we must love because it includes us. This pattern that humans can understand well enough to respect and preserve, though they cannot “control” it or hope to understand it completely. The mysterious and the practical, the Heavenly and the earthly, are thus joined. Charity is a theological virtue and is prompted, no doubt, by a theological emotion, but it is also a practical virtue because it must be practiced. The requirements of this complex charity cannot be fulfilled by smiling in abstract beneficence on our neighbors and on the scenery. It must come to acts, which must come from skill. Real charity calls for the study of agriculture, soil husbandry, engineering, architecture, mining, transportation, the making of monuments and pictures, songs and stories. It calls not just for skills but for the study and criticism of skills, because in all of them a choice must be made: they can be used either charitably or uncharitably.”
“The Divine mandate to use the world justly and charitably, then, defines every person’s moral predicament as that of a steward. But this predicament is hopeless and meaningless unless it produces an appropriate discipline: stewardship. And stewardship is hopeless and meaningless unless it involves long-term courage, perseverance, devotion, and skill. This skill is not to be confused with any accomplishment or grace of spirit or of intellect. It has to do with everyday proprieties in the practical use and care of created things—with “right livelihood”
In preparation for this weeks discussion please read Chapter 1 of The Serviceberry. While you read be attentive to how you feel. What are your initial reactions, what piques your interest, what sticks out as new and novel?
Scripture Reading:
- Matthew 6:24-34
Suggested Additional readings:
Two Excerpts from The Gift of Good Land the final chapter in The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural By Wendell Berry.
“The Creator’s love for the Creation is mysterious precisely because it does not conform to human purposes. The wild ass and the wild lilies are loved by God for their own sake and yet they are part of a pattern that we must love because it includes us. This pattern that humans can understand well enough to respect and preserve, though they cannot “control” it or hope to understand it completely. The mysterious and the practical, the Heavenly and the earthly, are thus joined. Charity is a theological virtue and is prompted, no doubt, by a theological emotion, but it is also a practical virtue because it must be practiced. The requirements of this complex charity cannot be fulfilled by smiling in abstract beneficence on our neighbors and on the scenery. It must come to acts, which must come from skill. Real charity calls for the study of agriculture, soil husbandry, engineering, architecture, mining, transportation, the making of monuments and pictures, songs and stories. It calls not just for skills but for the study and criticism of skills, because in all of them a choice must be made: they can be used either charitably or uncharitably.”
“The Divine mandate to use the world justly and charitably, then, defines every person’s moral predicament as that of a steward. But this predicament is hopeless and meaningless unless it produces an appropriate discipline: stewardship. And stewardship is hopeless and meaningless unless it involves long-term courage, perseverance, devotion, and skill. This skill is not to be confused with any accomplishment or grace of spirit or of intellect. It has to do with everyday proprieties in the practical use and care of created things—with “right livelihood”