Wendell Berry at Peace Camp
Last week, several people from Jeff Street and many from around the nation and world took part in the annual summer conference of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, better known as Peace Camp. As always, there were some powerful teachers, musicians and speakers taking part in the meetings, including Wendell Berry!
Some quotes from Berry on Peaceable Living:
The aim and result of war necessarily is not peace but victory, and any victory won by violence necessarily justifies the violence that won it and leads to further violence...
We have an inescapable duty to notice also that war is profitable, whereas the means of peaceableness, being cheap or free, make no money...
An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable by-product. We need a peaceable economy...
posted by Dan Trabue @ 4:54 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Thank you for sharing all of this.
I love Wendell Berry, Dan--as poet, novelist, and essayist. But I have to say that, of all the speakers at peace camp, I was most disappointed in Berry. He gave us, by his own admission, a recycled speech he had given to some society of Southern writers which focused on the evil of the Civil War. Duh! Then, in the Q & A, he was distracted and bored and asked to stop after 3 questions. He came in for the one appearance and left right after--not even joining us for lunch and seeming to resent signing books for folks.
Maybe we caught him on a bad day?
I've always enjoyed hearing Wendell speak and answer questions. Having said that, I also get the sense that he's sometimes less than comfortable doing so.
He certainly seemed uncomfortable this time. I got the impression that he wished he hadn't agreed to come speak and that he hadn't prepared for us at all. His was the only presentation at the entire event that didn't even much deal with our them of empire and the fall of the Powers.
I have heard him speak before--much more well prepared. At any rate, even in the midst of his half-hearted presentation, I learned a few things because he is a very insightful person, a true Kentucky treasure. But next time, I'll just read his books.
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