Wendell Berry

I'm in love with an old farmer dude. Well, with his literary voice, actually. I recently read "Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community" by Wendell Berry, and I don't mind saying that by the time I was done I was in love.

His writing is so freakin' packed. Not in the dense, obfuscational sense of people who invent new ways of obscuring their meaning (like with words such as "obfuscational") so that no one will figure out they're just scared little chickens with big vocabularies. No, his writing is packed so full of wholesome juicy goodness that I just want to laugh with joy. And I do, often.

All the things you might have liked to hear me say in my own little way, he says better. About Christianity, about God, about dualism and the warped idiot-stick way that all of that gets envisioned. Wendell Berry arranges words in a way that is simultaneously precise and expansive.

To give you a more informed opinion, the New York Times Book Review says: "Read [him] with pencil in hand, make notes and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told here."

I concur.

Don't take our words for it, though. Here's a link to my favorite essay from the book, entitled "Christianity and the Survival of Creation". Read him and weep. Or laugh. Or sing. Or all of it.