! !! ! ! Review by James Jenkins August 2015 Book Review The Art of

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Book Review
Review by James Jenkins
August 2015
The Art of the
Commonplace: The
Agrarian Essays of
Wendell Berry
"A valid spiritual life must have a practice and a practicality--it must
have a material result," Wendell Berry writes in "The Gift of Good
Land," one of twenty-one essays in The Art of the Commonplace:
The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, edited by Norman
Wirzba. While this collection first introduced me to Berry's ideas
and life, it eventually planted me at Yale Divinity School in pursuit of
that vision and then at New Haven Farms, a not-for-profit
promoting health and community development through urban
agriculture.
Norman Wirzba
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“Native Hill,” the first essay, models what homecoming means later
in life—either to physical geography or other identity terrains. What
better step for our culture’s busy, detached, restless pace than to
walk with this prophetic guide. “Growing up and growing older…can
only instruct us painfully in division and disintegration,” Berry
reflects. “But if our culture works in us as it should…that very
experience begins our education, leading us into knowledge of
wholeness and holiness.” To me, Berry’s values seem inherent to
Grace Farms, and are a timely parallel to Pope Francis’s watershed
encyclical, Laudato Si’. The Art of the Commonplace offers
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meditations to regenerate our culture’s soul and call us together
toward practical care.
About the Reviewer
James Jenkins is an alumnus of Yale Divinity School and Director of
New Haven Farms, a non-profit that promotes health and
community development through urban agriculture. He
contributed this title and more to the Grace Farms library
collection.