"The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable.... It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter in… - Wendell Berry

"God loves Port William as it is... Why else should He want it to be better than it is?
All my life I had heard preachers quoting John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish by have everlasting life." They would preach on the second part of the verse, to show the easiness of being saved ("only believe"). Where I hung now was the first part. If God loved the world even before the event at Bethlehem, that meant He loved it as it was, with all its faults. That would be Hell itself, in part. He would be like a father with a wayward child, whom He can't help and can't forget. But it would be even worse than that, for He would also know the wayward child and the course of its waywardness and its suffering. That His love contains all the world does not show that the world does not matter, or that He and we do not suffer it unto death; it shows that the world is Hell only in part. But His love can contain it only by compassion and mercy, which, if not Hell entirely, would be at least a crucifixion."

Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

...the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.