An Afternoon With Wendell Berry

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of Wendell Berry, though I know I must have lived without his wisdom, his images, his stability, and his earthiness for some part of my early life.

I do know it was his novels that first introduced me to him. Even today, Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter still feel like distant relatives who I might call on at any time with a visit to my bookshelf.

His writing set for me a theological foundation, as well as a motivation to pursue science and environmental studies. That’s why in 2013, just a few days before the graduation ceremony for my Master’s program in environmental management, I hit the road.

I packed all my things into the back of my truck and started driving west—through North Carolina, across the eastern tip of Tennessee, and into Berry’s home state of Kentucky.

Weeks earlier, I’d learned that Berry received visitors on Sunday afternoons. I’d sent him a handwritten letter asking if I could pay a visit. “Come by the farm at 3 o’clock on Sunday,” came the short, typed response.

A Great Jangling and Wrangling of Questions

Jayber Crow, the eponymous main character in one of Berry’s novels, feels called to be a preacher.

But he encounters a problem as he enters divinity school. Jayber finds that he can’t read the Bible without “setting off a great jangling and wrangling of questions that almost deafened [him].”

When he goes to his teachers for guidance, they simply tell him to give up his questioning (a line that will surely sound familiar to some BioLogos readers!)

But giving up the questions was no good. Of course it wasn’t—they had a hold of him.

Eventually, he finds his way to the door of Professor Ardmire, the strict and curmudgeonly teacher whom everyone fears. Despite this, Jayber lets fly his questions about everything from theology to prayer to biblical interpretation.

The old teacher doesn’t answer them or ask him to give them up. He waits for Jayber to come to his own conclusions, which are that he has no answers, that he can’t continue pursuing preaching, and that he will leave school.

Feeling ashamed, Jayber says, “I had this feeling maybe I had been called.”

Finally, Professor Ardmire gives Jayber something he isn’t able to find on his own—

“And you may have been right. But not to what you thought. Not to what you think. You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out—perhaps a little at a time.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

You Will Have to Live Them Out

I have often thought about Wendell Berry as a stand-in for Jayber Crow in this moment of the story.

Berry left his hometown in Kentucky to pursue a career in writing. Out west, he studied under Wallace Stegner and alongside Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey.

But just when the world would’ve expected him to grab hold of his future, Berry did something unexpected. He bought a 12-acre farm and started growing food and raising animals. It was his own way of living out the answers to perpetual questions.

At some point all of us become Jayber Crow, deafened by the questions that take hold of us. If we are courageous, we too will go to the door of that teacher who we know will tell us the truth or help us to find our way there on our own.

That’s how I ended up in Wendell Berry’s kitchen that Sunday afternoon.

I had so many questions for this sage. What was I to do with this new degree I had just earned? What difference could I make? What would become of the world when no one seemed to care a lick for it?

That afternoon stays with me, but not in the details of the conversation or any answers he gave me. What really lingers now is the memory of his sturdy presence. There in the room, yes, but more than that—a presence like the ground beneath our feet. It was one that resisted easy answers and unearned hope, one built with careful attention and slow knowledge of the place he was in.

I didn’t take notes—in the moment, doing so somehow felt sacrilegious. Today, I am left with the wood grain of the table, the books lining the walls, and the example of a life well lived.

A Further Mystery

“As long as you live, perhaps.”

That’s what the teacher tells Jayber Crow after Jayber asks him how long it would take to live out the questions. But that isn’t quite the end of their exchange.

“That could be a long time,” Jayber says.

For Wendell Berry, it was 92 years. It was enough time to get to know a little bit of land in northern Kentucky, enough time to tell stories of that land, and enough time to inspire generations of farmers, environmentalists, activists, and questioners.