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I'll be on that hill

Stuff I dig, stuff I think, stuff I've seen
  • O'Donnell
  • I'll be on that hill
  • Whiskey and Ice Cream
  • Ken Myers: The True and the Beautiful
  • Contact
  • © Copyright Notice
“

If you understand your own place and its intricacy and the possibility of affection and good care of it, then imaginatively you recognize that possibility for other places and other people, so that if you wish well to your own place, and you recognize that your own place is a part of the world, then this requires a well-wishing toward the whole world.



In return you hope for the world’s well-wishing toward your place.



And this is a different impulse from the impulse of nationalism. This is what I would call patriotism: the love of a home country that’s usually much smaller than a nation.

”
— Wendell Berry, discovered via Front Porch Republic, who provided this link to an interview with the man himself. Lots of conservative Christians try to make a case for a principled “Christian patriotism”, but it rarely amounts to more than a “principled” defense of modern idols and abstractions—like “nations”. But “the love of a home country that’s usually much smaller than a nation”… this is beautiful. This sweeps away the abstractions, the inhuman scale of the modern nation, and puts in its place something that can be comprehended, understood, embraced, and truly loved for what it actually is. It replaces abstract notions of “patriotism” and “nations” with the relations among your land, your neighbor, yourself—and, implicitly, your God.

December 19, 2011
Tags: God, Hm., land, writing
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