Sometimes I knew in all my mind and heart why I had done what I had done, and I welcomed the sacrifice. But there were times too when I lived in a desert and felt no joy and saw no hope and could not remember my old feelings. Then I lived by faith alone, faith without hope. What good did I get from it? I got to have love in my heart.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexity of faith and sacrifice, emphasizing that love can persist even in times of despair.
Wendell Berry's quote delves into the dual nature of human experience, where one can find meaning in sacrifice and love despite the presence of loneliness and despair. It highlights a journey of fluctuating emotions, where moments of joy are overshadowed by periods of hopelessness, yet through these struggles, love remains a steadfast beacon that provides purpose and connection.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to illustrate the power of love during tough times.
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.
I know I was born and I know that I'll die... _x000D_ The in between is mine._x000D_ I Am Mine
India may be a land of over a 100 problems, but it is also a place for a billion solutions.
Justice is the grammar of things. Mercy is the poetry of things.
Demands for solidarity can quickly turn into demands for groupthink, making it difficult to express nuance.
He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.
Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.
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