Think little

Read through Wendell Berry’s “Think Little” essay a couple of days ago. He published this essay way back in 1969, but his encouragement and advice to live against the consumeristic age are evergreen: Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. This kind of thinking always reminds me of what Gandalf said to the men of Gondor when they were tempted to despair: It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. Focus on the here and now. Tend to the fields that we know. My friend Steve Simkins also had a similar thought related to this idea in his…