Wendell Berry talks with a reporter at his home in Port Royal, Ky., March 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Ed Reinke, File)
\n\nKentucky author and poet Wendell Berry reads about himself, Feb. 14, 2011, in Frankfort, Ky. (AP Photo/The Independent, John Flavell, File)
\n\nFor Kentucky author Wendell Berry, the environmental crisis he lamented to such great effect in his essays, poetry and fiction was also a human crisis — a deeply spiritual one.
\n\nBerry, who died Monday at home at age 92, drew that connection in poignant writings across many decades.
\n\n“Persons cannot be whole alone,” Berry wrote in “The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture,” his classic 1977 work. “It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil.”
\n\nWhile Berry inspired writers, artists, local-food activists, environmentalists, agrarians and many others, some of his deepest admirers were moved by his spiritual vision.
\n\nThat’s despite — or maybe because of — Berry’s skepticism of organized religion. He called himself a “bad-weather churchgoer” because in finer weather, he often skipped church to spend Sundays in what he called nature’s “timbered choir.”
\n\nHe was too steeped in the Bible…
Original source: https://apnews.com/business