If you have not read Berry ’s essay “The Body and the Earth,” why are you reading this. Stop. Go and at least purchase it (why not just get the entire book The Unsettling of America just to be safe). This essay is something to be thankful for during this Thanksgiving season. Here are a couple of choice quotes to intersperse with your turkey along with my own little summaries (his quotes are in italics):
On a Summary of a Christian Stewardship of the Earth Violence against one is violence against all. The willingness to abuse other bodies is willingness to abuse one’s own. To damage the earth is to damage your children. To despise the ground is to despise its fruit; to despise it’s fruit is to despise it’s eaters. The wholeness of health is broken by despite.
On the Fallacious Separation of Our Bodies and Souls Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our “marginal” land because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.
Ok, these quotes might make your holiday less festive, but they should not.
Berry is a prude begging us to avoid indulgence and feasting. He is a brother simply reminding us that feasting should come at the end of season of good hard work and that for work to satisfy us fully as a human it should involve both our bodies and our minds—in unison.
Enjoy your turkey, chop some wood, play some tag (or tackle) football and have a happy thanksgiving.
