thought for the day

Quote

Posted on December 12, 2013 by sarahwbartlett

thanks to Orion Magazine, whose writing is always enlightening and thought-provoking

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear | Wendell Berry | Orion Magazine

Posted on September 12, 2013 by sarahwbartlett

One of the most thoughtful writers of our time offers a compelling essay. In one of the most compelling magazines out there. Written in 2001. So critical today.

We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes…
This is why the substitution of rhetoric for thought, always a temptation in a national crisis, must be resisted by officials and citizens alike…
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…
What leads to peace is not violence but peaceableness, which is not passivity, but an alert, informed, practiced, and active state of being… The key to peaceableness is continuous practice…

Read on, contemplate, and join in the conversation. How do you fare in the face of fear? Why are we so reluctant to practice peace? Where do you stand on these issues?

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear | Wendell Berry | Orion Magazine.

“The two foundational myths of Western consciousness are:
1. We are all separate – from each other and from everything else in existence.
2. Scarcity is the nature of the universe.
Such a consciousness unavoidably creates the world in which we live – hypercompetitive and fear based.

Western physics has arrived where metaphysics (East and West) has been for millenia – everything in existence is connected with everything else. . . “ Lloyd Hansen commenting on David Sobel’s “Feed the Hunger,” Orion Magazine, November/December 2012.

Sobel’s article discusses the heroic quest in today’s context of a changing and unpredictable environment – the ‘changed enemy’ of ancient archetypal rites of passage. Weaving themes from currently-popular The Hunger Games and Life as we Knew It, he leads us through the tangle of dystopian literature, including how it feeds our hunger for resilience and hope.

As one who only recently – and, I’ll admit, reluctantly – consented to watch “The Hunger Games,” I highly recommend this provocative article for its timeliness on so many levels.