Our Real Work And Our Real Journey

I confess that I do not know as much Wendell Berry as I should.  That strikes me as a bit of shame, as the works of his that I have read (The Gift of Good Land, The Long-Legged House, The Unsettling of America) has resonated with me when I have read them.  I have not read his fiction, of which it seems there is nothing but good things written (Gene Logsdon spoke highly of him).

Berry can haunt me, the way that Gene Logsdon does when I read him, a combination of life as it is, a sort of wistful remembering of life as it was, an adaptation to life as it is, and a hopeful belief in live as it could be.  It is the sort of combination that very much seems at odds with so much of what pass for information exchange, entertainment, and knowledge in the modern world.  Too often only one of those things is mentioned or perhaps two, all with the strident clarion of an ill-tuned trumpet rather than the careful plucking of a harmony on strings.

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I have to confess that here, at the end of 2025, I feel a bit lost, looking for that harmony.

There are multiple contributory parts; there always are of course, at last for the big problems.  One, rather simply, is that with the eventual pending sale of The Ranch and the effective relocation to New Home 2.0, there is a very odd sense of not having a "home" like I have in years past.  Home was as much of a geographic location as it was a place that my people were; now, for the first time, it is very much a nomadic concept based almost entirely on people who themselves are prone to move.

Another factor is simply the changing roles of life.  I remain a son, but in the remnant of my parents' existence, not an active role.  I remain a family member to an extended family that is moving farther apart as time goes on.  In my close family, I hold the role of father although in an advisory role instead of a parenting role - the same role, as it turns out, as in my job, where I give advice and experience with the tacit acknowledgement that this role could very well be my last one.

In my activities, I have the sudden realization that old things that I used to enjoy are just as enjoyable as they ever were, combined with the finite sense that there is only so much that I can do in a day, a week, a month, a year.  And that, like it or not, choices now have to made in some cases.

God?  Yes and no.  No, in the sense that this place, this church that we now attend, is one that I am meant to be at.  Yes in the sense that I do not know where my role is meant to be.

Even my writing, of late, has seemed more of a chore than a genuine pleasure.  It is not that there are not things to write about; perhaps it is simply that finding things to write about that are non-controversial becomes harder and harder.

Last perhaps, is simply my relationship with the the larger social and political world.  I find now, almost daily, that I truly belong nowhere and to no belief.  I often find myself in disagreement with one side, yet now more and more find myself in disagreement with the other.  There is a harsh rancor which fills too much of almost everything, print and video and audio. The edge in people's voices, whether verbal or written, becomes more evident almost daily.  

Berry's words ring true to me.

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There is a sense - originally quiet, but growing louder as time goes on - that I am a turning a corner into 2026, a corner that has taken almost two years to manifest itself.

To use a hiking analogy, I have the equipment, I have a guide - but I have no known destination and no idea of what I will do along the way or when I arrive.  To be clear, that is a terrible way to hike. 

Strangely enough, this does not bother me as much as I might think that it would.

In some ways, the world is filled with possibilities again, the sorts of possibilities that have not appeared since maybe I was in college and "the future" was something to be defined, not a track that I had stumbled into and could now not escape due to the multitude of invisible threads that tied me to it.  There is a sense in which, for the first time in a long time, I can "choose".

And perhaps, as Berry suggests, I have finally arrived at my real work and real journey.  

What a remarkable thing, to in some ways be starting over.