Jayber Crow, born in Goforth, Kentucky, orphaned at age ten, began his search as a "pre-ministerial student" at Pigeonville College. There, freedom met with new burdens and a young man needed more than a mirror to find himself. But the beginning of that finding was a short conversation with "Old Grit," his profound professor of New Testament Greek. "You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time."
"And how long is that going to take?"
"I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps."
"That could be...

Sabbath is one day a week when we should rest from our otherwise harried lives, right? In Living the Sabbath, Norman Wirzba leads us to a much more holistic and rewarding understanding of Sabbath-keeping. Wirzba shows how Sabbath is ultimately about delight in the goodness that God has made--in everything we do, every day of the week. With practical examples, Wirzba unpacks what that means for our daily lives at work, in our homes, in our economies, in school, in our treatment of creation, and in church. This book will appeal to clergy and laypeople alike and to all who are seeking...

That Distant Land includes twenty-three stories from Wendell Berry's Port William membership. Arranged in their fictional chronology, the book shines forth as a single sustained work, not simply an anthology. It reveals Wendell Berry as a literary master capable of managing an imaginative integrity over decades of writing with a multitude of characters followed over several generations. Combining The Wild Birds (1985), Fidelity (1992), and Watch With Me (1994), and including four never-before-collected stories and a map of Port William, this book offers rest for...

"Ignorant boys, killing each other," is just about all Nathan Coulter would tell his wife, friends, and family about the Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Life carried on for the community of Port William, Kentucky, as some boys returned from the war and the lives of others were mourned. In her seventies, Nathan's wife, Hannah, has time now to tell of the years since the war. In Wendell Berry's unforgettable prose, we learn of the Coulter's children, of the Feltners and Branches, and how survivors "live right on."

If the concept of divine unity dominates the mind, it is the principle of divine compassion that rules the heart in Islam. Contrary to the harsh stereotypes of Islam-fostered both by fanatics within the religion itself, and by biased critics-the culture of this religion is steeped in the ambience generated by mercy and compassion, expressions of divine love. This spiritual culture issues from heartfelt conviction that God is to be taken absolutely seriously when he declares in the seventh chapter of the Koran, "My mercy encompasses all."

Drawn from his own translations of the text,...

Andy Catlett is the latest installment in Wendell Berry's Port William series, a distinct set of stories that Berry has been telling now for 50 years. Set during the Christmas of 1943, nine-year-old Andy Catlett sets off to visit his grandparents in Port William by bus, by himself for the first time. For Andy this is a rite of passage, his first step into manhood. His experiences on this solitary voyage become pivotal points in the entire Port William epic. The old ways are in retreat, modern life is crowding everything in its path, and as Andy looks back many years later, he...

This groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction exposes how radical strip mining is destroying one of America's most precious natural resources and the communities--particularly in Appalachia--that depend upon it.

In these poems written over the past decade Wendell Berry combines plainspoken elegance with deeply felt emotion--this is work of both remembrance and regeneration. Whether writing as son of a dying father or as father of a daughter about to be wed, Berry plumbs the complexities of conflict, grief, loss, and love. He celebrates life from the domestic to the eternal, finding in the everyday that which is everlasting.

This, the first title in the Port William series, introduces the rural section of Kentucky with which novelist Wendell Berry has had a lifelong fascination. When young Nathan loses his grandfather, Berry guides readers through the process of Nathan's grief, endearing the reader to the simple humanity through which Nathan views the world. Echoing Berry's own strongly held beliefs, Nathan tells us that his grandfather's life -couldn't be divided from the days he'd spent at work in his fields.- Berry has long been compared to Faulkner for his ability to erect entire communities in his fiction,...

Remembering takes place in a single day in 1976. Andy Catlett, at the bottom of a deep dark depression since losing his hand in a farming accident, is alone in San Francisco, and takes a long walt through the walking street ofthe city. By the end ofthe day, when he has flown home to Port William, Kentucky, Andy is on his way to becoming whole again.