Little Patch of Ground, Little Patch of Time: Lessons from Wendell Berry

Much will be written about Wendell Berry (1934–2026) in these days and weeks following his death. (Hopefully none of it will be AI-written . . . Berry would hate that.)

His writing has shaped my soul in profound ways. Other than C. S. Lewis and Marilynne Robinson (and Terrence Malick if we can count poet-filmmakers), no artist-thinker has influenced me more.

Beyond the fact that Berry was a Christian and an artist—taking both seriously, integrating them seamlessly and unapologetically—what looms largest in his influence on me is how he cherished place. The local. The land and the people in his immediate vicinity.

He wisely recognized that the grand mysteries of God’s vast cosmos, and the sweetest graces, are best grasped in the immediate and tangible, not the distant and abstract. Humans knew this intuitively for most of history. But modern technology—which constantly beckons our attention far beyond the place where we are, and hurries us to point of missing what’s in front of us—has made us forget.

Remembering What We Forgot

Berry helps us remember. He helps us resist the spirit of the age, which is restlessness and placelessness and loneliness. In his essays, Sabbath poems, and Port William fiction, he presents an alternate, altogether more human vision.

He celebrates the beauty of hard work, replenishing rest, rootedness in place, and embeddedness in community. He savors the soil in which we work and harvest and build—and die. He pushes us to be more attentive with our senses to the wonders of where we are: syncing our hearts to the seasons’ rhythms, recognizing birdsong as nature’s doxology, and gladly linking arms with the others in our place as a “membership” of lives intertwined and buttressing one another.

Berry pushes us to be more attentive with our senses to the wonders of where we are.

The Port William series captures all of this so simply and beautifully. One might read these novels (like Hannah Coulter or Jayber Crow, perhaps the two most beloved) as idealistic or aspirational, or maybe sentimental and nostalgic for a past that was never as perfect as Port William is presented. But I rather see them as mostly eschatological.

What I mean is they’re stories that inflame our hearts for heaven. Pleasant as the series is to read, its chief conflict and antagonist is time. Mortality. We give so much to one another, and to the land, and we receive from both. This giving and receiving—especially when in harmonious balance (not more taking than giving, or more giving than taking)—is the thumping heartbeat of life. But eventually our heart stops. Our ability to give and receive ends. And in a few generations, we’re forgotten, dust to dust. What’s the point of this painful ephemerality?

I think the point is eternity—or rather, the longing for eternity that time-bound life creates.

Eternal Beings Living in Time

You see this theme everywhere in the Port William novels. One of my favorites is this passage from Jayber Crow:

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

Elsewhere in Jayber is this gem about the wisdom, peace, and contentment that comes with embracing your life rather than restlessly seeking another:

I have got to the age now where I can see how short a time we have to be here. And when I think about it, it can seem strange beyond telling that this particular bunch of us should be here on this little patch of ground in this little patch of time, and I can think of the other times and places I might have lived, the other kinds of man I might have been. But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

This echoes a beloved section of Hannah Coulter:

You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.”

This is timeless wisdom. But perhaps it’s extra timely in our contemporary world.

Countercultural Freedom

Wanting to be somebody else is a desire fueled by highly online life. Social media and the internet condition us to the restless pursuit of an idealized (but unreal) life. The ability (or mandate) to be whomever you want to be, live wherever you want to live, acquire whatever you can acquire, is pitched as peak freedom. But is it? Somehow contemporary life feels more stifling and oppressive because of these promises of limitlessness.

In contrast, Berry’s poetic imagination shapes us to love the limits and simplicity of the real life we have, even if it’s not the perfect life.

What does this look like in practice? Maybe it looks like spending less time in virtual spaces and more time in tangible spaces, exerting less energy fanning digital flames and more energy putting out fires in our own backyard. Less time scrolling and swiping—liturgies of restlessness—and more time touching grass, communing with real people over a table, and partnering locally (especially in our church) to build, tend, and cultivate in constructive ways.

His poetic imagination shapes us to love the limits and simplicity of the real life we have.

I try to practice this even (probably especially) as someone who works in a highly online vocation. Berry’s wisdom has helped root me in the real, reminding me that too much time online warps my perspective and leaves me less human.

My work through screens does bring me joy, and I hope it blesses others. But what I do off screens grounds me and guards my heart: being present with my wife and my kids, pruning our fruit trees and bushes, serving in our local church, communing with flesh-and-blood people in my local coffee shop. I didn’t choose all these things. But they’re my given portion. They’re the preciously real context of my life—disparate threads sovereignly woven, making me who I am.

Our “little patch of ground in this little patch of time” can feel limiting and claustrophobic. In our flesh, we’re prone to wanderlust. And in a modern world that constantly advertises “more, bigger, better!” opportunities, discontentment becomes the norm. There’s always more of the world to see, more to consume, more to conquer, more to do.

Not all of that is bad. Ambition can be godly. Expansion can be missional. But true contentment and freedom come when we see our “little patch,” however small and wherever placed, as a gift: more generous than we deserve, more spacious than we need, more intentionally chosen for us than we could ever know.