Thoughts on Berry's Hannah Coulter

In the booth at the cafe I sat, crying my eyes out as I read Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter. Hannah told me about her gratitude in having a community surrounding her for her whole life. She told me of the trials and joys, and gave thanks to God for all of it. As I bawled, I thought of all the dying farms, the broken communities, the people dying alone and forsaken, the strip malls, the brokenness of our society that plans for things to break down so it can sell us something new. And it is right to cry for it.

Though the book is Hannah's recollections covered in gratitude, it is a lament. In chapter 22, she considers the changes wrought in her farming community, once so tightly-knit, but now,

The old neighborliness has about gone from it [...]. The old harvest crews and their talk and laughter at kitchen tables loaded with food have been replaced by machines, and by migrant laborers who eat at the store. The old thrift that once kept us alive has been replaced by extravagance and waste. People are living as if they think they are in a movie. They are all looking in one direction, toward "a better place," and what they see is no thicker than a screen.

Hannah laments for all of us, for she finds the old, communal ways to be the more fulfilling, though they cost more sweat. She is one who has made this transition from the sweat, grit, and teamwork of farm life to

... [A] new century, also a new millennium, and it is the same world still. Here in Port William, it seems, we are waiting. For what? For the last of the old rememberers and the old memories to disappear forever? For the coming of knowledge that will make us a community again? For the catastrophe that will force us to become a community again? For the catastrophe that will end everything? For the Second Coming?

Berry has said it well. He is shouting it through Hannah's quiet reflections out her kitchen window, dishtowel in hand. We wait for some catastrophe to knock the phones out of our hands. We wait for the electricity to go out so that I can stop writing this post, and go out into the 72°-non-humid weather and LIVE. We wait for rescue from our insularity, because we can't extricate ourselves. We love shows like Revolution, and books like The Hunger Games because they show what we hope we really are inside: clever survivors, courageous fighters, people who matter. We hope we can make our own way when it comes down to it: kill our own meat, raise our own crops, carry our own water. But it rarely seems to "come down to it" when we have grocery stores and water taps. And we fear the loss of it all quite deeply. Did I say "we"? I meant me.

Not only was Hannah Coulter thought-provoking, it was at times simply provoking, for I can't quite feel satisfied with his farm utopia. He speaks of membership as if it were something everyone had but doesn't have anymore. He speaks of landowning as its own heaven, farming and housework as if they were their own salvation. He speaks of death as if people used to be quite comfortable dying, but are not anymore.

He speaks of education as though it were un-redemptive--and he's not just talking about the educational system in the U.S., but any education that requires a person to go away from home. Well, a job might as easily do that if there were a drought in the farmland. Education can bring you away from home, yes, but education only empowers a person to do what's in his or her heart. There's the test.

And so Hannah was entirely satisfied with the simple life? Maybe she was. Or maybe she's just a hope that Berry cherishes: that silence and hard work alone will feed our souls all they need. So much so. But Christ is all. And I am certain that he calls us to silence and hard work more often than I hear; but it is his call.