The Kentucky Farmer Who Taught Me How To Live

Wendell Berry died on Monday. Even though he wasn't a Catholic, he had a lot to teach us about the Catholic ideas of distributism and subsidiarity.

From Aleteia

By Theresa Civantos Barber

We honor the message and witness of writer and farmer Wendell Berry, who championed human dignity and strong community in a fragmented age.

“It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” That sounds like it could have been inspired by Pope Leo XIV’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, or Pope Francis’ 2015 work Laudato Si’, but they were the words of a humble farmer and writer from Kentucky — the great Wendell Berry, who passed away August 31 at age 92. His family shared the news on social media:

The Berry Center and Berry family are heartbroken to announce the death of Wendell Erdman Berry, writer and farmer of Port Royal, Henry County, Kentucky. He passed suddenly and peacefully at home yesterday afternoon, August 31st. His work continues, here and in every place where people aim to live according to nature’s measure, on and with and of their beloved home place.

Berry’s lifelong defense of rural communities and the land — manifested in more than 80 books of poetry, essays, and fiction, and in his outspoken activism — influenced modern life in ways we might not even realize, as he shaped everything from sustainable agriculture and the local food movement to modern literature. One of the greatest modern writers, and certainly one of the best-known voices speaking out against industrialization and consumerism, his works and his life offer a witness to subsidiarity and distributism — the Catholic social-teaching principle that decisions are best made at the smallest, most local scale.

While not Catholic (he was Baptist), Berry’s consistent advocacy for human dignity and against greed often brought him into close alliance with Catholic beliefs and the writings of modern popes. Pope Francis, for example, criticized what he called “the throwaway culture” that “idolizes money,” while Pope Leo XIV urges “the pressing duty to remain profoundly human,” bearing in mind that “true progress always stems from a heart open to others.” Berry’s call for a more human and sustainable world, one in which human dignity isn’t reliant on utility or productivity, echoes their messages.

Poured out

The openhanded approach to life Berry championed also aligned with a Christian mindset. “So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute,” he urged in one of his best-known poems, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, and I think of this line whenever I’m explaining to my children why we are taking time out of our busy day to make a meal for a newly postpartum friend. The saints poured themselves out with an extravagant generosity that baffles economic and utilitarian calculations, and Berry understood just how much a strong community relies on repeated kindness that doesn’t keep score.

Encountering Berry’s works at university changed my life, motivating me to move back to where I grew up instead of embarking on the rootless lifestyle more common among my peers. He continues to change my life, as I read and re-read his beloved novels and ponder how to live up to his slow-living ideals as a suburban mom whose closest foray into farming was managing not to kill a few zinnias. But I’m going to keep trying, because I believe in the things he championed—cultivating thriving communities built on a deep affection for our own “home place” with all its eccentricities, honoring elders and the wisdom of the past, and being genuinely grateful for what we have instead of constantly searching for “the next best thing.” I'm never going to move to a small farm like he did, but Berry inspires me to care for my community and the place and people around me.

Curious about Wendell Berry? If you’d like to get started reading his works, we recommend his best poems, his seminal nonfiction work The Unsettling of America, and his elegiac and lyrical novels Hannah Coulter and Jayber Crow.  

If you’d like to honor his memory, here are a few simple ways to “live as a creature, not as a machine”—to embrace his ethic of hands-on work, rooted community, and simple dignity. 

• Plant a garden, or even just a flower in a pot
• Pray
• Talk to your neighbors, even if you don’t seem to have much in common
• Fix something broken instead of immediately throwing it away
• Make something with your hands—bread, a scarf, a house—whatever you can
• Shop from your farmers’ market or CSA
• Do something kind for someone who won’t return the favor
• Buy something you need secondhand
• Read Wendell Berry's works
• Put down deep roots, in your hometown or wherever you are
• “Practice resurrection.”