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On the mere input/output analysis, I should give up the convivial evenings in many-storied, oak-raftered pubs, where my friends and I, and often strangers who are welcomed into the circle of conversation, sit for a while and set the world to rights. I should give up the pipes I have collected and smoked over the years, each with its own beautiful pattern of grain, each with its own cluster of stories and memories of solitary musing or wonderful conversation. My body might be technically healthier for the loss, but I contend my whole being, my personhood, my sense of community, of participating in something immemorial, hallowed by the poets, endorsed by the sages, celebrated by almost all my favorite writers, my life, taken as a whole, would be poorer. And if I gave these things up as part of an obsession with my own health, then my attention would have been diverted from others to self, from community to individual, from soul to body, and I would be enclosed in a solipsistic cubicle, constantly taking my own pulse.
But the biblical understanding of health is quite different.. In the West, we tend to frame health in terms of the absence of illness. With this way...
Continue ReadingHis health obviously wasn’t that of a well-functioning body; it was the kind of health Wendell Berry describes as wholeness. . One of my...
Continue ReadingLet’s love nature for itself, not for what it gives us.. The nature cure is only another iteration of the ways in which we exploit our environment...
Continue ReadingWhen my father got cancer, we prayed desperately. No answer came. Or did it?. In front of us, our empty plates. “Kids,” Dad said. He...
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