Thinking about Death

It was early on February 15 that I started writing this article, for it turned out that my wife June and I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about death on Valentine’s Day.

Our Sunday School class discussion that morning as well as the movie we watched that evening were both about death. We also were sad to hear that two people in our circle of acquaintances had died that day.  

Death in “Fidelity”

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, the Sunday School class had a long and fruitful discussion of “Fidelity,” Wendell Berry’s short story first published in 1992. It centers around the death of an 82-year-old man—the very age I am now.

In that intriguing story, Burley is seriously ill, so his family and neighbors, wanting to do something for him, take him, without him being able to give his assent, to a hospital in Louisville where he is hooked up to all sorts of life-lengthening devices. But he was deprived of his right to die with dignity.

Death in Blackbird

That evening we happened upon Blackbird, a 2019 Prime Video movie that we had never heard of—and which was panned by the movie reviewers we read after we watched it. But we thought it dealt with the planned death of Lily, the central character, in a thought-provoking way.

Lily has a serious degenerative disease. It seems that soon she will lose all ability to function as a normal human being, likely even to lose the ability to swallow. Before that happens, she wants to have an enjoyable weekend with her family and then drink the lethal potion procured by her doctor husband.

Choosing death with dignity rather than having to suffer and/or to exist in a prolonged vegetative state is the issue in this movie, similar to that of “Fidelity.”

Death Control as Well as Birth Control?

Contraception, commonly called birth control, has long and consistently been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church—and in recent decades by an increasing number of conservative evangelicals. But birth control is legal and widely practiced in the U.S. and Europe.

Has the time now come for wider acceptance of, and more legal provision for, what might be called death control? Note that whereas birth control is taking means to prevent pregnancy/birth, death control as I am using the term here is taking means to hasten death.

Death control is not a widely used term—and sometimes it is employed to refer to efforts to prevent death just as birth control is a term used to prevent pregnancy/birth. But I am using the term to refer to suffering, terminally ill people taking the initiative to end their lives.

Of course, there are strong religious and ethical arguments against all forms of death control. Again, the Roman Catholic Church and conservative evangelicals are at the forefront of that opposition. Birth and death should be completely left to God, they say, and humans should yield to God’s will.

Similarly, there was a time when it was widely thought that vaccines interfered with the natural order, or the divine order, of things and should be spurned. For that reason, in the 18^th century U.S., some religious people saw vaccines as “the devil’s work.”

In much the same way, birth control opponents through the years have also seen using “artificial means” to prevent pregnancy to be attempts to usurp God’s work in creating new human life.

The Roman Catholic Church, for example, teaches that using contraception is "intrinsically evil," for it gives human beings the power to decide when a new life should begin whereas that power really belongs to God.

Death control is staunchly opposed for the same reason: the power to decide when life should end, they declare, also belongs only to God.

But for those who see no ethical problem with birth control, or vaccines, shouldn’t the prudent use of death control also be considered ethically permissible?

(I am planning to post more about this controversial topic on March 5.)

My Favorite Farmer

Wendell Berry, the inimitable farmer, who is also a novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, and cultural critic, is celebrating his 85^th birthday today. Please join me in wishing Mr. Berry a Happy Birthday. 

Photo of Berry by Steve Hebert of the NY Times

Favorite Farmers?

I now refer to Berry as “my favorite farmer.” Why would I do that? (And who would even have a list of favorite farmers?!)

Well, I am the son of a farmer, and I would have to say that my father (1915~2007) was my favorite farmer—even though my appreciation for him, of course, was for far more than his being a farmer.

Another of my favorite farmers was Clarence Jordan, the founder of Koinonia Farm in Georgia. I have long had great admiration for Jordan, and in commemoration of the 100^th anniversary of his birth, in July 2012 I posted a blog article titled “In Praise of Clarence Jordan.”

My appreciation for Jordan (d. 1969), though, was primarily because of his public words and actions rather than because of how he farmed.

Wendell Berry is now my favorite living farmer—but just as for my father and Clarence Jordan, it is for far more than his being a farmer that I admire him and seek to honor him today on his birthday. Still, his being a farmer is also of significance.

Becoming a Farmer

In the summer of 1964, Berry moved back to Kentucky, to a small acreage on the Kentucky River near where he was born in 1934. In the 1964-65 academic year, I lived in east Kentucky, serving as pastor of the Clay City Baptist Church and making numerous trips to Louisville where I was a graduate student.

As I regularly crossed the Kentucky River south of Frankfort on I-64, I didn’t know the man whom I would later call my favorite farmer lived downstream, not far from where that river flows into the Ohio River. In fact, it would be several years before I would even hear the name Wendell Berry.

Through the years, however, I began to hear more and more about Berry and became increasingly impressed with him as a farmer, as a writer/poet, and as an environmentalist. His is truly a prophetic voice that needs to be heard and heeded today.

Small Farmer, Large Influence

Since from back in the 1970s, many of us have used what we thought was a good slogan: “Think globally, act locally.” It was with some consternation, then, that I recently discovered that Berry did not particularly like that slogan.

Berry emphasizes the importance of thinking locally as well as acting locally. One of his essays is titled “Think Little.” In that 1970 essay he writes, “For most of the history of this country our motto, implied or spoken, has been Think Big. A better motto, and an essential one now, is Think Little.”

Thinking little, in part, means seeking to change one’s own lifestyle and consumption habits for the sake of the environment rather than trying to change the world.

Berry writes in that essay, now republished in The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry (2017),  

If you are concerned about air pollution, help push for government controls, but drive your car less, use less fuel in your home. . . . if you are fearful of the destruction of the environment, then learn to quit being an environmental parasite. . . . To have a healthy environment we will all have to give up things we like; we may even have to give up things we have come to think of as necessities (p. 55).

Through the decades Berry has lived out his ideals on his small Kentucky acreage. He has farmed with horses rather than with tractors. And one of his well-known essays is “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” (1987).

In this modern world, there probably can’t be many people who think like and especially who live like Wendell Berry. Nevertheless, the world is certainly better off because of the way he thinks and lives—and because of the way he has been able to share his wisdom so widely, despite not using a computer.

Berry’s is not the final word on the issues he addresses. But his is, indeed, a good and important word that needs to be considered with utmost seriousness.