Today I was cleaning out a drawer, searching for some paperwork, when I stumbled upon a piece of paper where these words were written. It's part of the forward to Gene Logsdon's book, "The Contrary Farmer," written by none other than Wendell Berry.
Sometimes, when I forget why I'm here on this earth, in this lifetime, these words help me remember.
"Maybe we continue to need to think of Paradise, and of making Paradise, because the earth as it was given to us (as we realize from time to time) was so nearly paradisal, and we are so talented at making a Hell of it.
On the contrary, surely there is something wondrous and redemptive about a mind that can confront this definitive work of Hell on Earth Enterprises, Inc., and imagine the opposite story: How a member of the same species, out of his own horror at what has been done and his mere personal refusal to accept Hell as an acceptable human product, might begin the restoration of what has been destroyed; and how this singular effort might inspire the efforts of others to do the same thing; and how finally a whole community of people might ally themselves with the inherent goodwill of any place to heal itself and become the Paradise it once was.
-- Wendell Berry
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