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Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu. 

Norman Wirzba: First move of God's love is an erotic love, which is an outbound, want something other than God to be and to flourish. And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire to love.

For others to, to, to be beautiful, to be good, that's the basis of our lives, right? That we are founded in this erotic, divine movement. I guess the best way to put it is, there is no hope for people if they don't believe that they are cherishable, that their lives matter, that they are the unwavering divinity.

object of God's attention and care and delight. And that is so sorely missing in our world today where people really worry about whether they matter, whether this world matters, whether the work they do matters. And so you can have this curious phenomenon where people are more connected than ever, but also lonelier than they've ever been.

and feeling that they don't really matter. This is what Love's Braided Dance is precisely about. A braid doesn't just happen, it's something you have to commit to, it's something you have to learn, it's something you have to negotiate, because we're not simply who we always expect the other to be or how we expect ourselves to be.

And so this braiding is constantly negotiated. Between parties and between partners. And so the importance of love saturating that attempt is really paramount. And this is not a sentimental kind of love that I'm talking about. It's the kind of love which comes out of struggle, which comes out of surprise, which comes out of commitment and sadness, and also just jubilation and joy, right?

There's so many dimensions. That when you love somebody and stay to love them in the times of pain and suffering, that certainly can deepen the relationship, but also frustrate the relationship. 

Evan Rosa: This is for the life of the world, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa, with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, 

there's a way that crisis thinking kind of spirals into further crisis thinking.

This vicious loop. And while we rational creatures so desperately want to plan and strategize and think our way out of trouble, there's a kind of instrumentalization, it's transactional, this kind of calculative problem solving that even if it's efficient, it still leaves a remainder of emptiness. You can get through all sorts of solutions thinking and still wonder, does any of this matter?

Now, these are hopeless thoughts, but real. And a growing number of our species are noticing the need for something different. That it's our connection, dependence, our interwoven relatedness, and a fundamental rooting, that still offers a simple picture of hope. To see this human work as covenant and commitment, rather than a mere transaction.

It's a stable, patient hope, beautifully encapsulated in the life and work of Wendell Berry, but particularly his poem, In Rain. Let's start there. 

Norman Wirzba: So here's In Rain. I go in under foliage, light with rain light, in the hills cleft and climb, my steps silent as flight on the wet leaves. Where I go, stones are wearing away under the sky's flow.

The path I follow I can hardly see, it is so faintly trod and overgrown. At times, looking, I fail to find it among the dark trunks, leaves, living and dead. And then I am alone, the woods shapeless around me. I look away, my gaze at rest among leaves, and then I see the path again, a dark way going on through the light.

In a mist of light falling with the rain, I walk this ground of which dead men and women I have loved are part. As they are part of me, in earth, in blood, in mind, the dead and living into each other pass, as the living pass in and out of loves, as stepping to a song. The way I go is marriage to this place, grace beyond chance, love's braided dance covering the world.

Marriages to marriages are joined, husband and wife are plighted to all husbands and wives. Any life has all lives for its delight. Let the rain come, the sun, and then the dark, for I will rest in an easy bed tonight. 

Evan Rosa: Reading

that was my guest today, Norman Wirzba, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School and author of Love's Braided Dance, Hope in a Time of Crisis. He's also Director of Research at Duke University's Office of Climate and Sustainability. His other books include Agrarian Spirit, Cultivating Faith, Community, and the land, as well as this sacred life, humanity's place in a wounded world.

And not too long ago, we had him on the show to discuss God's Love Made Delicious about his wonderful book, Food and Faith, which you can find in episode 49. But in this episode, we discuss love and hope through the agrarian principles that acknowledge our physiology and materiality, how the crises of the moment boil down to one factor, whether young people want to have kids of their own.

Norman introduces God's love as erotic and how that impacts our sense of self worth and mattering. He introduces a quote, sympathetic attunement that comes from being loved by a community, a place, and a land. The difference between transactional and covenantal relationships, the meaning of giving and receiving forgiveness in an economy of mercy.

And finally, the difficult truth that transformation or the striving for moral perfection can never replace reconciliation. Thanks for listening.

And thanks so much for joining me on For the Life of the World.

Norman Wirzba: All really good to be with you, Evan. 

Evan Rosa: This new book, Love's Braided Dance, is a really evocative, wonderful title. It's a book about love. It's a book about hope. But the subtitle, it's a book about crisis. And I was hoping that you could kind of set the context for the crises that you're referring to and set forth the problem as you see it.

Not to over encourage the problem. anxiety mindset, worry or fear mentality. But what I find interesting about a lot of your work is the way that it looks out into the world and observes pain or brokenness or a problem, and then look for ways that, that. the gospel, that theology, that spirituality might present hope.

Well, I, you know, I, I teach in the areas of climate change and there's just so much depression going on in that space because the news is bad, right? The Anthropocene is another area of teaching that I've been doing a fair bit lately, but the way it really crystallizes for me is when I'm with students and when I'm with my, you know, adult children.

And many of them are telling me that their friends are not going to have children. And the reasons for not wanting to have children are various, but what it often comes down to is they can't imagine wanting to bring children into the future that they are anticipating. And so that's sort of a very sort of personal connectable way of stating what the crisis is.

And then if you probe a little further with that, you'll get to a whole lot of else behind the scenes that young people are worrying about. They're worried about, polarization in our political social spaces. They're worried about wealth and equality. They're worried about rising sea levels. I mean, the worries are legion, but I don't need to go into all of that and rehearse it every time because when you do that, it's, it just has a kind of numbing quality.

And so, you know, starting just with the idea that so many people don't want to have children because of the worry load that they're carrying, I think is enough for people to enter into that space 

of crisis. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, what kind of insights might you provide for someone who is really caught in the anxiety of, you know, climate apocalypse kind of fears?

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that I try to do in the book is really draw people to stories, to experiences that we can share with other people, because to simply come at the, the sense of crisis in an abstract way. Doesn't give people enough point of connection. And so when you can start to talk with people about how there are very particular kinds of things that you can actually engage to address a particular worry.

You do a number of things. On the one hand, you help people see their own agency, right? When I read stories about people who became inspiring in others because of the hope that they exuded through the way that they live, one of the things they say repeatedly is how they move from a position of depression or despair.

And so much of the depression and despair just magnified, grew and became much, much bigger, heavier because they were alone. Because they weren't using their abilities, their talents, their curiosity, whatever. And so the first thing that they say they did is they got off the couch and they started going to be with other people and started to express their worry and started to explore with other people, what can we do in the face of these things that we find so troubling and so anxiety causing in us?

And, and, and what that does, it addresses, I think, partly this question about, about how you overcome or not just overcome, but manage maybe the despair that we all feel and do it in a way so as not to believe that we have to solve it all. Right? So keeping it focused on particular actions that you can do because of your location, because of your skillset is really important.

Otherwise, if you just lay on the whole suite of problems that we're facing, man, that's, it's, like, incapacitating. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. I want to go to the inspiration of the title of the book, which is Wendell Berry. And I love Wendell Berry. I'm sure plenty of our listeners are familiar with his poetry and essays of criticism and his novels, Jaber crow.

Right. I'm picking up though, that there's a friendship here between you and Wendell. Yeah. And so far as I love Wendell Berry and many of our listeners love Wendell Berry. I think there's probably a lot of envy happening here. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a feature of circumstance. I had moved to Kentucky to start teaching and I was in a small liberal arts college and I'm from Western Canada.

I'm a farm kid and I knew nothing about Kentucky history or literary, cultural traditions. And so I asked a Kentucky native, who's a Kentucky writer I should read? And they said, well, based on what we know about you, I think you'd really like Wendell Berry. And I had no idea. So I looked them up and of course saw that there's poetry and there's stories and there's essays.

So I started to pick up some of these pieces and started reading them and then came to Unsettling of America and read that book. And it was the story of my upbringing about this tension between. Industrial ways of agriculture versus husbandry ways of agriculture. And I said, I have to meet this guy.

Where is he? And I learned he's an hour away. And I learned also that he doesn't do email, you know? And so they said, if you want to visit him and try to connect, you have to write him a letter. So I finally got the courage to write him a letter and you know, I knew that he wasn't especially eager to meet with especially philosophy faculty members, but that's what I was teaching.

And so I said, I'll play up my farming credentials and And he sent me a hand drawn map and came out there and got to meet him and Tanya and we became friends. And his friendship means so much to me because it was my major second education, right? I went through, you know, university, graduate school. And in all of that, never encountered a farmer.

And then I met Wendell, a farmer, but he was also a profound thinker, beautiful writer, and he said to me something so, so important, which was, you shouldn't forget the land and you shouldn't forget your grandfather who embodied this husbandry that he writes so much about. And so that really sort of set me on my heels to say, you know, I've been reading phenomenology and postmodern philosophy and all that kind of stuff.

And here was someone telling me, you need to return to what agricultural practice can teach us. Right. And that's the crucial thing. And this is also, I think, why, why, what Wendell has to say about hope is so important because the agrarian position is not a theoretical position. It's one that's born out of engagement with landed realities.

with more than human creatures, with fellow community members, with economic systems, political systems. And so when you come to the question of hope through this lens of practice and engagement, the world begins to look differently. You start to see different things, you start to feel different things.

And, and so I wanted to try to capture that somewhat in this book by giving two examples. You know, thicker descriptions about what kinds of encounters can happen in our engagement with each other, with our places, with our communities, that might be a basis for inspiring our involvement. Not because we're going to have.

The ability to fix everything, which we clearly won't, but we'll be drawn more deeply into the world. We'll be drawn more deeply into the presence of each other. So that first of all, we can appreciate how much these places and these people and these fellow creatures are first and foremost, sacred gifts.

And that's a huge first step, but when you get there, it launches you into a terrain which can be really transformative. 

Evan Rosa: Do you have in rain handy? Could I have you read it? Oh, I can get it. You know, this is where the inspiration for the title is coming from. And you do quote just a brief portion of it.

Yeah. But give us a little context as well for, you know, like even his being in the world and what he's come to symbolize, I think, in so many ways. Yeah. I'm sure he is, is perhaps, And I think that's what's so ambivalent about that feeling of being a symbol rather than the particular being Wendell Berry himself is.

But he symbolizes a lot to, I think, the audience of your book. People who do want to inhabit the world and want to take, His example in some important way, I think you want to be doers and beers and livers. So give us a little context for in rain or like, you know, maybe like what, what the poetry in particular kind of does for you.

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. Oh, that's a great question. I think there's, there's so many things that a poem like this does. And, and I think context here is so important because having gone through graduate school, being a philosophy professor in a college, it's so easy. For your life to lose touch with real things, and you immerse yourself in abstract discourses and texts, and because of the busyness of life, you only go through life, not into it, right?

The world just passes us by, unnoticed, unengaged, and what I think an agricultural life can afford doesn't guarantee, I think, but it affords the opportunity for you to really handle the fundamentals of life, air, water, soil, plant. For tactile connection that has to at the same time be a practical connection, which means you have to bring into your handling of things, the attempt to understand what you're handling.

And I think the kind of casualness, the kind of anonymity of the many things that we handle in many sort of day to day contexts of call it urban suburban life or what have you. It's also the case that it's happening in rural communities because. Many of them have become urban too in their very character.

But what a poem does in rain is it brings you back into the presence of a world that is so tactile and auditory. And just the phenomenon of rain itself. Rain is something we try to escape by hiding under an umbrella and running to the car or into the house or something like this. And so this poem wants to draw you into the full sensual presence of the world, I think.

So here's In Rain. 

I go in under foliage, light with rain light, in the hills cleft and climb, my steps silent as flight on the wet leaves. Where I go, stones are wearing away under the sky's flow. The path I follow I can hardly see, it is so faintly trod and overgrown. At times, looking, I fail to find it among the dark trunks, leaves, living and dead.

And then I am alone, the woods shapeless around me. I look away, my gaze at rest among leaves, and then I see the path again, a dark way going on through the light. In a mist of light falling with the rain, I walk this ground of which dead men and women I have loved are part, as they are part of me, in earth, in blood, in mind, the dead and living into each other pass, as the living pass in and out of loves.

As stepping to a song, the way I go, is marriage to this place. Grace beyond chance, love's braided dance, covering the world. Marriages to marriages are joined. Husband and wife are plighted to all husbands and wives. Any life has all lives for its delight. Let the rain come, The sun and then the dark, for I will rest in an easy bed tonight.

Evan Rosa: Thank you. This picks up such familiar themes in Wendell's writing, and one of, one of the pieces that is from Sabbaths that I seem to carry with me and just won't leave me is this line, After all, there is a garden in our minds. And, and it is sort of like a drawing back and this use of plight as well, the word plight, and he uses in that similar, in that same poem, I'm referring to plighting a troth, the hard work of a promise and the strength of being braided into relationships with, something so unique, something so particular, something that is just purely individual and of its own in front of you and around you that you're a part of that.

And yet something so contingent and finite and the way he settles into that so peacefully is, I think is one of the comforts of, of reading his poetry. Yeah. As 

Norman Wirzba: I was thinking about writing this book, one of the real challenges was to figure out what's going to be the organizing vision for the book. And, and what became clear to me over time is this business of how do we actually connect in ways that are meaningful and transformative.

And one of the things I worry about is that there is so much hyper connectivity in our world through, for instance, social media, but those are connections that can stimulate, but they're not very much. you know, connections that really transform us, that reach us at the heart level. And so you can have this curious phenomenon where people are more connected than ever, but also lonelier than they've ever been and feeling that they don't really matter.

And so the kinds of connections that we really want Right. This is what love's braided dance is precisely about. Yeah. They need to be a braiding together, which is something that is constructed, right? A braid doesn't just happen. It's something you have to commit to. It's something you have to learn. It's something you have to negotiate because if I want to simply braid my life to someone like a spouse, a partner.

That in itself is a very difficult undergoing because on the one hand, yes, you can start with those wonderful romantic feelings in which it's all beautiful and bliss. But then you discover difficulty because we're not simply who we always expect the other to be or how we expect ourselves to be. And so this braiding is constantly negotiated between parties and between partners.

And so the, the importance of love saturating that attempt. is really paramount. And this is not a sentimental kind of love that I'm talking about. It's the kind of love which comes out of struggle, which comes out of surprise, which comes out of commitment and sadness, and also just jubilation and joy, right?

There's so many dimensions that when you love somebody and stay to love them in the times of pain and suffering, that certainly can deepen the relationship, but also frustrate the relationship. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. Complicate the relationship in so many ways. Yeah. I think that this is a good moment to kind of explore your view of love and to try to draw out, for instance, the erotic.

Yeah. And, and so give us a sketch for, I mean, and I, again, like it was a wonderful title. Love's braided dance. It's this dance of love, right? It's fascinating to think of love personified in some kind of way or, or the relationship, but this dance of love, I want to kind of set that kind of overarching metaphor that you use help orient us to your view of love and in particular with, with the erotic in mind.

Yeah. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. I think Love is such a powerful term, but it's also such an abused term. It's one of these core words we can't do without. But then the minute you start to speak it, you say, Oh, I'm just, I'm making a mess of the word because it's a term that is deployed in so many awful contexts. And so how do you rescue a term like that?

And I don't know how to do it. I think what I was trying to say by, first of all, talking about erotic hope, it is to sort of. Come away from that sort of straight off Christian way of saying it's all about compassion and it is about compassion for sure, but the first gesture, and this is a theological move, even though I don't really push it, is the first move of God's love is an erotic love, which is an outbound love that wants something other than God to be and to flourish.

And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire for others to, to, to be beautiful, to be good. And I think that's the, that's the basis of our lives, right? That we are founded in this erotic divine movement. And then of course, what we learn when you read scripture is that of course, people mess it up pretty quickly.

And so God, you know, demonstrates the many ways in which we are. needing to be, you know, merciful with each other, forgiving of each other, correcting each other when we misstep or mistake each other. But the foundational thing is erotic. And what that does is here, I guess the best way to put it is there is no hope for people if they don't believe that they are cherishable, that their lives matter, that they are the unwavering object of God's attention and care.

And that is so sorely missing in our world today, where people really worry about whether they matter, whether this world matters, whether the work they do matters. We're in this. Time I think where we've so gotten used to utilitarian calculation or instrumental approaches to everyone and every place that the question of our mattering in and of ourselves, or to put it in different language, that we are loved unconditionally.

I think that's the foundation. And what we need to figure out is how do we activate that in each other? And I found Audrey to be so helpful in this respect because she talks about how cultures And especially cultures of racism and patriarchy, how they diminish, degrade, even destroy, especially in women, the capacity to sense in themselves the goodness and the beauty of their existence, which ought to then inspire in people a kind of exuberance to want to engage the world and share in its goodness and beauty.

And then once that can happen, of course, Life is transformed, but it's often hard for people to even get to that stage. And so I thought starting with this erotic movement, first of all, which is an affirmation of the goodness of who you are and the goodness of your place, the goodness of your world, that's going to be sort of the foundation that makes other things possible.

Evan Rosa: Yeah. The movement in it is fascinating the way that it activates. And that's something to contrast, I think, from the kind of popularly understood erotic love, which is just going to refer to sex and lust. Yeah. 

Norman Wirzba: And it turns out that the pornographic gesture is the exact opposite of a true eroticism.

Because what a pornographic gaze does is it says you are an object that is made to serve whatever pleasure or fantasy I might have. But the erotic movement that God displays in creating a world and sustaining and loving the world is the goodness of what is created in and of itself with no strings attached.

And that's a profoundly different approach to the world. Very difficult to realize in practice, I know, but it's such a counter to what I would say is. a pornographic gaze that doesn't just saturate, you know, human sexuality, but so many of the ways that we have of relating 

Evan Rosa: to the world and to each other.

Well, the way that it pushes one inward really, and instead of a movement that results in any kind of relationship at all, that's a helpful distinction for that reason, but the movement and activity. And I think we could replace that. Well, I think you replace it. with the concept of dancing movement and the way that, that those things braid together.

I mean, you get this dance that doesn't even feel like it's between a couple. It feels more like it's a kind of communal dance. I wonder if you could kind of look at this, the kind of jump ahead a little bit into the, to the dancing element and do some connective tissue here for the erotic and the movement and just identifying the goodness in, in the other, not an objectifying But one that is beheld as beloved.

Yeah. I mean, I think 

Norman Wirzba: an example might help bring this to light. I remember when, um, my. Now spouse and I were getting to know each other and we took a dance class together and how incredibly awkward I felt because I didn't know how to hold and how to step and be in sort of not just synchronous movement with my partner but In sympathetic movement with my partner.

Evan Rosa: I need to interrupt you to ask, are we talking ballroom? Are we talking salsa? It was like, 

Norman Wirzba: we're just trying to do wall singing, like nothing fancy, right? Nothing like the Tango or anything really life threatening in my case. But just 

Evan Rosa: doing a waltz 

Norman Wirzba: which is so scripted, but even that, right? I mean, do you feel like, is my hand being.

you know, inappropriate, or are my feet going to step on her feet? Or am I going to trip? And am I going to embarrass her? Am I going to embarrass myself? I mean, there's so many things. that you worry about so that you're not even with the other person. You're so locked in yourself. And that's not a way that you can do a good dance, right?

A good dance happens in the context of deep sympathy, deep anticipation, understanding of where your partner is coming from. And it allows you to have this movement, which is fluid, responsive, and it's all based on trust. Right? Knowing that your partner isn't thinking about you as someone who can damage or wants to damage them, but as someone who wants to be doing something with you so that the result is beautiful, right?

That's the kind of movement we're talking about. And, you know, I describe it in the last chapter of the epilogue as a kind of improvisational movement where we learn to accept, where we learn to have the confidence to step out, knowing that we can make mistakes and we learn from the mistakes and we then carry on and we're constantly again.

Now, that's obviously human dancing that we're talking about here, but I'm saying so much of that movement happens with the world, especially if you engage in any of the activities that we associate with making things, right? So I, for instance, I love to work with wood and make things like tables and chairs and various things like that.

And, you know, learning how to work with wood. takes time, right? You have to learn the properties of the wood. You have to learn that when you've got a particular piece, you have to improvise because the piece you thought you had is not the piece you actually have. And so suddenly you're constantly negotiating the terms.

And if you simply try to force your thing, your idea upon the medium, it's not going to work very well. Right, so it's a kind of sympathetic attunement that we're talking about, that you're aiming to develop, that you trust the goodness of the wood to be revealed in whatever efforts you bring to it. And could we learn to exist in our neighborhoods in this sympathetic, improvisational way where we learn to accept and respond in ways that are courteous, that are curious, that are compassionate, that are patient and attentive, right?

These are some of the traits. 

Evan Rosa: of what good dance will do. This improvisation and sympathetic attunement. I love that phrase. I mean, you point out it's, this is not a do whatever you want kind of improvisation. It's not a, it's not, it has to be attentive. It has to listen. It has to be in conversation. There is a fit.

to improvisation. Even if you look at jazz, right, you can improvise poorly. And, and then of course, there's like the, the rules of, you know, comedy improv or improv, you know, like saying yes, and just being in the moment. Well, what I'd like to ask you is about the unpredictable side of things. You say improvisation and the sympathetic attunement can help with managing the unpredictable nature of our world and experience.

And this I think comes back even to the ways in which, you know, The climate crisis feels overwhelming in this kind of obliterating way. Yeah. And yet we can appreciate our own abilities to improvise. with the conversation or the dance that we find ourselves in. Yeah. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. That's a really good question. I want to coach it first in terms of the, the idea of, of revelation.

All right. And I don't mean theological revelation. I mean the revelation of where you are, who you are, who you're with. All right. So for you to be in a profoundly sympathetic relationship with somebody else, you want to know who they are and they want to know who you are, which means you need to come into the presence of each other.

Without trying to withhold and without trying to distort in a posture of availability, or as Marcel described, the disponsibilité, or something of that sort, where we take the risk to trust another. with our own vulnerability, with our expectations, our desires, but also our failures. And that opens up a kind of honesty and a kind of depth that I think is missing in so much of our connections with others and with our places.

And, you know, obviously with non humans or with You know, plants and ecosystems is going to be vastly different when I'm talking about. But what I'm worried about, first of all, is that when we are in relationship, we stay at this very superficial level where we don't really reveal ourselves and others don't really reveal themselves to us.

And so we can't go very deeply into this relationship building where we're going to be able to be with each other in the moments of pain and trouble, but also in the moments of joy and celebration. Right? And so what I'm hoping happens when you commit to coming into the presence of each other in this improvisational way is that we learn these skills of self revealing, these skills of wanting and welcoming other people in their vulnerability.

So that we can then go into these next stages where we say, you feel scared about this, so do I now together, what are we going to do in the face of this fear or this anxiety or whatever the issue may be in your particular context, because, you know, one of the things that's so hard, I think, for us to even realize in ourselves, let alone in each other, are these sort of subterranean fears and anxieties that are circulating through us.

And if hope is going to have a future, it's going to require that we have. a more honest estimation of each other and ourselves and of our world and what's possible and 

Evan Rosa: what's to be avoided. And I think in that honesty, it's honesty in a way that if we've been deceived, it's probably been a deception that we are far worse than we actually are.

Quite likely. Yeah. Everyone's different. Of course, some people need an honest estimation that does ground them and keep them humble. Yeah. And yet others need to be lifted up to believe, as you point out with improvisation, that They do matter and that they have something valuable to give and they feel they belong.

I'm quoting you and they must know they will be forgiven when they fail or make mistakes. And that requires a level of honest connection with oneself and an acceptance as the object of that erotic divine love. Yeah. I mean, that is, it can't be assumed that everyone has that. Yeah, I know. I think that's 

Norman Wirzba: absolutely right.

And I think when I talk with younger people in particular, you know, we hear often how they describe the hypocrisy that they see around them. I think it's deeper. I think they just sense a fundamental dishonesty in which the people who, especially those wielding power are simply not being honest with themselves about what's driving them to do the things that they do, or that they're not honest with the context in which they're doing the things that they're doing.

They're lying. Right? That they're not being clear about what are the personal deficiencies that they're struggling with, right? I mean, I, I elevate at one point in the chapter on belonging. I think it is, um, Robin Kimberer's observation that one of the real sort of catastrophes, a psychic catastrophe really that happened when You know, Europeans came and conquered this new land and decided that it's all about accumulation, privatization of land is that they never came into the presence of the land to see what was possible there.

How the land could not only be a source of their livelihood, but that the land could be the source of the feeling that they are loved by the land. Right, that would be an honest description of this land that they have come to because the land is the place that is constantly producing more life, that is producing the beauty that can be so inspirational in our world, in our living, if we attended to it.

But in the desire to privatize and commodify, we're oblivious to this world. We have a dishonest relationship with the world. And she says, just as in an interhuman relationship, if you don't feel that you are loved by the person, you're going to develop all kinds of compensatory strategies to show that you matter to them, that you're, you should have been thinking of me as worthy of your love, but you clearly don't see me as worthy of love.

And, and so this lack of A honesty about what's driving us to do the things that we do that we know are damaging, but we pretend they're not, uh, is the source of so much trouble. 

Evan Rosa: I want to stick with Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass. She's a botanist. Indigenous woman. She, you quote her, knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate.

But when you feel the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one way street into a sacred bond. And I think that's very much the direction that you are pointing in here. And I mean, I'm fascinated by it at the biological level, even. about how this really goes the whole way down.

It's in biology. It's in, it's in our psychology. It's in our spirituality. And you kind of see this like top to bottom kind of knitting. And I'm really appreciating the way that Love's Braided Dance is going to be operating at each of these levels. Yeah. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah, and I think it's, it's so important to stress how this is a physiological, very material kind of reality.

So that when you think about how our human life begins in a womb, right, which means umbilical cord, which means warmth and protection, which means nurture, which means the sound of hearts beating with each other, right? This is a body That is, I describe it as tuned for resonance, to be with others in such a way as to feel them inside of you.

Evan Rosa: Right. But also made from this other body in such a way that the materials thereof are delivered through that body of the 

Norman Wirzba: mother. That's right. Yeah. And so the illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone. is so dishonest about our living, right? To bring it back to this honesty question.

So much of what we do, or so much of what many people do, I think, is they start by wanting to deny that they need. And insofar as we deny the fact that we need each other, we don't put ourselves in a position to recognize the need of each other. Recognize the needs in others, recognize the needs in ourselves, and then have enough trust.

that we can speak those to each other so that we might then be able to address for each other the needs that we have. It's not about solutions, right? It's not that you express your need and I can say, Oh yeah, I'll take care of that. No, I mean, maybe there will be that occasion, right? You say I'm hungry and I can give you a meal, but some of the needs are profound and deep and they take time and they are never fully resolved.

But it's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for. You'll be nurtured and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough. 

Evan Rosa: So we've been looking at sort of the communal facets of the hope that you're describing.

And I think the physical nature of that community is really important. How do you try to introduce this to people? I'm thinking even of Cameron or suggestion, just plant a garden, just plant a small garden, Share it with your kids. You know, I've got my six year old excited about the carrots that might be coming up in a, in about a month or two.

You know, we were surprised when the tomato plant came up from within the lettuce in a particular bed. You know, there's a kind of harvesting experience there and a small connection. And, but what, besides planting a garden, I think what you're Introducing here at the level of community, physical community and belonging is directly at odds with what you, if you point this out somewhere, the lifeless bodies of the system that Silicon Valley, the transhumanism of that, and living in the digital world is pushing.

This is to exist in some small physical and embodied way. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. I mean, I think one way to put it is to say that we live in a world that is so transactional That it's about negotiating units of production, units of consumption, and nobody, as far as I can tell, wants to be treated as simply a unit of production or a unit of consumption.

And so this transactional way or contractual way that we might have of ordering our world, which is apparent. I mean, it's everywhere. I mean, even in the university where I'm at. I mean, I can understand. Yeah, that sometimes I'm being treated as just an employee, just a staff member, get it done, maximize your output.

Because if you publish lots, you know, better for us, that kind of thing. But I think what hope depends upon is not this contractual way of thinking about the world, but a covenantal way of thinking about the world in which we come into this new way of seeing our relationships as ones that we don't just do to optimize for ourselves, but we do So as to experience others in ourselves and ourselves in others, because the transformation that happens is not just a stimulation, as I said earlier, it's something that comes inside of us so that, for example, I have a granddaughter, my first grandchild, I tell you she gets into me.

in the sense that I feel her joy, of course not as she feels it, but I feel her joy and nothing makes me happier than to contribute to her joy. It's not about my maximizing pleasurable experiences. It's simply being in the presence of a child who in their smiling, in their laughter, makes the world appear different, makes the world appear precious again.

And I think we want to have those kinds of encounters in lots of diverse settings, right? I think about, you know, when I have a student who comes into my office who describes some real difficult, that difficulty that they've been facing and their inability to address the difficulty, overcome the difficulty, and we sit and we take time, more than the allotted office hour time, perhaps, and we say, let's figure this out together, we get to know each other a little bit, and it may not happen in one session, but then, when the moment comes and the student can say, this has been so, so good, I've made this transformation, it's a transformation that goes into you at the same time, because what covenants are about.

is seeing how our lives are indissolubly tied to each other. So that as Paul says, you know, when you rejoice, I rejoice. When you suffer, I suffer. When you feel pain, I feel pain. And that kind of intimacy, that kind of proximity, which is born out of something more than just a transactional relationship, but is born out of a commitment to be with each other in, you know, to use matrimonial language in sickness and health.

Right. That's the kind of thing that people crave, not just to receive, but to 

Evan Rosa: also give. Yeah. I think we need to hit forgiveness in this way is that like you have these two sibling chapters in the middle of the book around the hope that seeks forgiveness and the hope that grants forgiveness. And something that, that hit me that it was a sort of was maybe just from the place that I'm in currently, but like the idea that transformation is so different from reconciliation.

And there is a very rightful call right now for there to be transformation that, or transformation or improvement, growth that comes along with lament or reconciliation or just an apology and with matters of justice, without the desire to transform and grow, um, it, it, it doesn't make much sense of, um, any kind of repentance for past wrongs.

As you rightly point out, forgiveness is a sort of like permanent condition of, of our scenario here. And transformation is not reconciliation and it can't replace reconciliation. And it keeps us humble to think of that as being the case that, and so in, in the terms of seeking forgiveness, draw us into the hope of seeking forgiveness.

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. You know, if you start with the realization that the world is so much more dynamic and mysterious than we often take it to be, you realize that navigating a relationship requires us to acknowledge how we are constantly in a position of misunderstanding who we are with or where we are, that we can make quick assumptions about who we are.

another person, about a place, about a fellow creature. As soon as we make that assumption, we realize, oh, that assumption has gotten us into trouble where we've actually wounded or hurt another. And we don't do this often intentionally, right? And I think that's so important to underscore. And if you've got a really strong, good relationship with another, the other will tell you, this is not working.

You need to stop this. But we're afraid much of the time to say that because we are always in fear of losing a relationship. And so I think, you know, It takes time in a relationship to come to the place where we can say, I trust you to tell me when I've screwed up and that you're not going to walk away when I screw up.

And I need you to tell me, when do I need to change? When do I need to do something different? When do I need to apologize? And, and I think the fact that we've got so many folks around today, you know, public figures who, you know, just are so hesitant to even say the possibility of wrongdoing exists in their being is already a delusion.

It's a fundamental dishonesty. that I think people are just tired of. Because it doesn't take much reflection to see how we can say things wrongly, we can do things badly, we can have postures that are inappropriate. I mean, that's just part of who we are. And what we ought to be doing is, you know, learning to be merciful with each other, you know, gentle with each other, right?

These words, gentleness, kindness, that don't get talked about very much, but they're so crucial. in the life of a good relationship. And when we can be the kinds of people who remind each other of the need for these kinds of mercy and gentleness and kindness and the kind of skills of listening that are going to be required to move into that kind of a posture, the whole scenario of forgiveness looks different, right?

Instead of this being a huge production where, you know, we stand up, I need to apologize. And it becomes part of a rhythm, actually. where you realize that, you know, we're, we're both or three or however many are in the group, we're going to learn to be a little bit more generous with each other because we know what's going to happen eventually.

But we've got enough love for each other that when that happens, we can still carry on. And, you know, sometimes obviously the situation can be pretty bad. And then, you know, if it gets really bad, you know, sometimes it's got to be the situation where we stay apart for a while. Because being in the presence is just mutually destructive.

And so, you know, granting forgiveness doesn't mean that we always end up in a group hug. That's not always guaranteed. It's not always desirable, in fact. But what should not happen is that we say that we don't need to ask for forgiveness or that we should not try to adopt postures of repentance and confession and trying to make right.

And sometimes that trying to make right is something we do directly with another, but sometimes because mutual presence is mutually destructive, we have to find other ways to try to make right. So these things are always going to have to be navigated, they often have to be navigated, I think, in a process of community discernment, because we can fool ourselves, I think, too easily about.

What is in our power to do, or what is in our power to know? 

Evan Rosa: So there's two chapters also that I wanna ask you about. Architecture and economy. Yeah. And these are, I mean, the way I was reading them, two of the more systemic kinds of chapters with some fascinating takes on the role of the built environment and economic considerations and how the sort of atmosphere that they create.

either pushes for or against, uh, a genuine loving, hopeful dance together, or a kind of conflict pushing apart. So not, yeah, either a conflict or alienation. Yeah. And so, um, draw these things together. I know there's two chapters, but, um, but the use of the architecture was in particular, really important. And I know that this is, you know, this is a call back to Barry as well, but the, The severe destruction of the land that we do to create buildings and to create metropolises and I mean the devastation that we lay.

I mean, it is, I mean, yeah, irretrievable in some ways. Yeah. And it's all economic, I would say. Yeah, sure. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, there's so many levels to enter into this, right? I mean, you mentioned the question about the land itself, which has been so degraded in many contexts, right? So how is the land supposed to love you back if it has in fact been turned into a toxic dumping zone where coming into the presence of the land actually can harm you?

Right? So what you see in the land is not the land loving you back, but what you find in the land is your, what, appropriation of it, your destruction of it, which then of course becomes so debilitating. Or think of another register. Think about the child who's in a public school building that has no window, that has all the feel of a prison complex, rather than a place that communicates to the child.

You are beloved and you are worthy of being in a place of beauty, a place that makes you feel safe, right? I mean, think about how much fear is now in our architecture because schools are being designed with, you know, what gun detectors before you come in the building, right? Communicating again, how, you know, You should expect not to be loved here, but potentially to be attacked here and killed, right?

So these very practical, lived, embodied, material, physiological, often built structures already communicate so much to us, whether as adults or as children. about whether we cherish the world, whether we cherish each other, whether we think the full development and flowering of each other are the primary objectives.

I mean, just think about housing. Another example where the housing that so many people are in, whether it's, you know, apartment complexes or public housing or, you know, whatever that these are homes that do not reflect that you should be surrounded by beauty. Or that you should be surrounded by spaces that make you feel more alive.

What's reflected in these built environments is so much a financial interest of the developer or the financer who is going to, uh, make a lot of money from shoddy construction, quickly made construction. So that's the built environment side of things. But of course, what's driving a lot of this is the economic foundations for how we build our environments.

Because what we've learned in, especially in sort of history of architecture is that for many centuries and across cultures, building was vernacular, meaning that the building was done by the people who are going to work and inhabit those spaces. And so they would have built with an eye to trying to figure out how do I create a workspace that I actually want to work in over the long term, because my work will be best.

If I build it this way, my work will be most pleasurable if I build this workspace this way. And instead, what we see are buildings that reflect or that create workspaces in which the workers in them immediately feel degraded. And those are economic decisions that get made. You know, economies determine what kinds of relationships are going to be possible, right?

We can talk about, you know, work economies, we can talk about financial constraints, right. We talk a little bit in the book about how the desire to not just have a small profit margin, but massive. And so how we've developed these new financial instruments to maximize return on a very short turnaround period.

What that has done to our work environments, the kinds of stresses it has unleashed on people. And the kind of competitive nature of these worlds, these kinds of things do not promote our coming into the presence of each other. They do not promote the care of each other, the care of our places, because we're so stressed, we're so anxious about whether we're going to succeed or make it.

And that has the effect of making us lonely and desperate. And neither of those are going to be recipes for having a life of, you know, the braided dance that we've been talking about. Yeah. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. One of the associations I had. In this architecture and economy, the way you kind of land the land of the book is actually, maybe it's just because I've been reading it to my son recently, but in Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, where you have this alternation between the kind of technological prowess and dismantling and destruction of the land that Saruman, uh, just sort of wields as opposed to the rootedness of the Ents.

And the trees and the, the way that there really is that, that severe conflict between each of those two camps. And the reason I pulled that away, of course, is you describe a rooted economy and the metaphor of a tree. And we recently had a woman named Joy Clarkson on the show. Her book is called you are a tree.

And, and so that came up with that as well. But this idea of a rooted economy It's such a fascinating alternative to sort of structuralized transactional and I would say devastating kind of obliterating lifeless kind of economy that sadly much of our world is being paved in. 

Norman Wirzba: Yeah. No, that's a, it's a really important point.

I think You know, it comes back to something we were talking about earlier about, you know, agrarian ways of thinking and practicing. And the fundamental agrarian principle is you nurture the places and the communities that nurture you. That's the basic rule. And that's so important, not just because it creates spaces that are going to be more fertile, more fecund, more beautiful, but you In that activity, communicate to yourself and to each other that the world, and all that depends upon it, are worthy of nurture.

And I think what's so sad for people today is, whether it's young people or older people, they don't see that kind of nurture being exercised in many places. It might be that it happens in a garden because it's a very visible expression of taking care of some land, taking care of some plants, or if you're on a farm, taking care of some animals.

yale. edu How that can teach the people who are there about how this act of care is first and foremost, a demonstration of how they are worthy of our care. And I think that's something people desperately want to know. Is anything worthy of our care? And I think right now, when you look at so many built environments, you think, I don't think so, right?

When you look at workplaces, you can say, I don't think so. And so this contrast between a world that is built in such a way as to glorify the position and the power and the wealth of certain individuals, how that has become the go to vision that we all want to try to live to. I think the contrast would be so easy to draw by taking people out of that sort of world and putting them in a different one.

Do you want to live in Silicon Valley mindset or do you want to live in the mindset of someone who's taking care, patiently, gently, of other living beings? I think for people to experience these two. We'll be pretty, pretty clear pretty quickly about which of the options most people will choose. I mean, it's sort of the other day I was in our Sarah Duke garden and it was a beautiful day and there was a dad with his three kids and they were running around the kids where they had a soccer ball and they were like little guys, you know, they were, you know, three and five and seven, I would guess.

And they were having a grand time and they're shouting at their dad, you know, come on, dad, we're so excited. And what's the dad doing? Dad's looking at his phone the whole time. And I felt so badly for those kids because what those kids really wanted, of course, was to have a kid, a dad playing with them.

Because in doing such a thing, the dad would be communicating, you're worth playing with, you're worth delighting in and cherishing this moment. And I think what a whole Silicon Valley approach to life does is it builds a kind of anxiety in us so that we're never enough, we never do enough, we never have enough.

And that makes us so, so afraid and anxious and insecure. And that's the space that many of us inhabit. And so figuring out how to move from that kind of a world into this world of presence, shared life, shared responsibility, shared nurture, shared celebration. I think for people to see those two side 

Evan Rosa: by side, it's a no brainer.

When you think about your granddaughter and when you think about future generations, what would you say to the living now about, and I'm going to quote and pull from one of your past books about this sacred life? Yeah. One of the things I really appreciate about you Norman is. your attention to the sacredness and blessing worthiness of life.

You know, humans are evolved so that we can see how our eyes pay attention, right? Like our eyes are so we can see where others are looking. And the way that you look at the world is the kind of thing that I'm paying attention to and appreciating. And so what kind of benediction would you offer?

Norman Wirzba: Yeah, I think I would start by going to somebody who loves you and that you love and saying, I want to try to be better at being in the presence of those around me.

Because I can make a claim and say, yeah, I'm going to work on this. I can easily get off course because, you know, like so many people. It's too easy to get off course. You can make a plan and decide this is what you want to do and discover that, oh man, some insecurity or some arrogance just pulls you again where you're on that rat race or this relentless optimization strategy or whatever.

And then you lose the ability to be in presence of another. So tell somebody this is what you want to do and then practice it. And sometimes it can be a bit wooden. It can mean, okay, I'm putting the phone away. I'm closing the laptop. I'm going outside. And I'm going to go with somebody, or I'm going to go outside and I'm going to make it my deliberate aim to notice trees in a way that I never have before, and I might even do something so crazy as to just Lay down under an oak and just look at it for 20 minutes.

Totally useless endeavor. And then have somebody say, make sure I don't come back in the house because I thought I may forgot to send an email or whatever. Right. That it takes a kind of deliberateness, which is sometimes hard to sustain just by yourself. But when you can get into some of those modalities and then they don't become so difficult.

Afterwards, because You know, when you decide I'm going to, I'm going to leave the gadgets away, aside, and I'm going to, I'm going to go for a walk with my granddaughter and we're going to play in a stream or, you know, we're going to learn how to throw a ball back and forth to each other. Or, you know, I'm going to say, I'm going to, I'm going to get a friend and I'm going to say, come to my house.

I want to cook a meal with you. Yeah. Right. We'll open up some wine. We'll play some, I don't know, some really great music, and then we're gonna cook, and we're gonna eat, and that's it. And we're going to let happen whatever happens, right? Those sort of deliberate things that you say you're going to do are sometimes exactly what we need to get us out of the rut that we would otherwise be in.

Because ruts, they are often deep and they're hard to get out of. And so sometimes you really need a kick to get out.

Evan Rosa: Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for this book and appreciate you talking to me about it. 

Norman Wirzba: Well, thank you. Evan. Really good to talk with you.

Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured Norman Worsba, production assistants by Alexa Rallow, Kacie Barrett, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë Halaban. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu, where you can find past episodes, articles, books, and other educational resources that help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity.

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