The incarnate Word is with us, is still speaking, is present always, yet leaves no sign but everything that is.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the divine or meaningful presence is always around us, yet it manifests subtly through the world itself.
Wendell Berry's quote reflects the idea that profound truths and divine presence are constantly present in our lives, though they are not always visible or directly indicated. Instead of overt signs, we can find meaning and connection through our surroundings and experiences, reminding us to be mindful of the subtleties in life that illustrate deeper truths.
In practice
In a speech about mindfulness, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of noticing the beauty in everyday life.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
There is only one way by which I can get right with God, and that is through the death of Jesus Christ. I must get rid of the underlying idea that I can ever be right with God because of my obedience. Who of us could ever obey God to absolute perfection!
To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.
Everything is just now. Your existence is just now. Just timeless Now. All the rest is just a dream due to conditioning and memory.
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.
Charity is that with which no man is lost, and without which no man is saved.
The minor choices we make are themselves a kind of vote. Our words and gestures, or their absence, count very much.
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