I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that love is the fundamental force behind the creation and sustenance of the world.
Wendell Berry's quote highlights the essential role that love plays in the existence and continuity of the world. It suggests that love is not only the creative power behind our universe but also the glue that holds it together, and that redemption, both of individuals and society, is only possible through love. This perspective encourages us to recognize the transformative and redemptive qualities of love in overcoming challenges and fostering connection.
In practice
In a speech about forgiveness, I quoted Berry to emphasize the need for love to heal relationships.
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.
You try to be faithful And sometimes you're cruel. You are mine. Then, you leave. Without you, I can't cope. And when you take the lead, I become your footstep. Your absence leaves a void. Without you, I can't cope. You have disturbed my sleep, You have wrecked my image. You have set me apart. Without you, I can't cope.
From moment then to moment their desire Gained strength, and wisdom fled before love's fire; Passion engulfed them, and these lovers lay Entwined together till the break of day.
Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.
Come away, come away, death,_x000D_ _x000D_ And in sad cypres let me be laid;_x000D_ _x000D_ Fly away, fly away, breath;_x000D_ _x000D_ I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
The whole truth... sings only - and all lovers are the song.
Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.
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