Mourning With Those Who Mourn: Common Grief in Wendell Berry’s A Place On Earth

By Todd Edmondson

In a world marked
by an ever-increasing sense of alienation and the corresponding desire for true friendship, Christian theologians, pastors, and church members have taken up
the theme of community with a new urgency.
Fortunately, the best among their discussions arrive at a definition of
community that moves beyond the church carnival or ice cream social toward
something far more radical-the sharing of life with one another, in all its
messy glory. More than simply opening
one’s parlor to entertain company and perhaps sharing a freshly baked bundt
cake, Christian hospitality, as defined more and more frequently, involves the
opening of our lives and the sharing of our struggles with those whom God has
given us as neighbors. If we consult the
Christian Scriptures for guidance on this matter, one of the passages that most
simply but most powerfully recommends itself to us as a course of action is
Paul’s exhortation to the Romans:
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn (Romans
12:15, NIV). In the good, the bad, and
sometimes the ugly episodes of life, being Christians with and for one another
means a common experience, a common joy, and often a common burden. And it is in this regard, according to the
works of novelist, poet, and essayist Wendell Berry, that the modern Church,
and perhaps particularly the religious professional, is tried and found most
wanting.

A Place on Earth, Berry’s
second published novel, is the narrative of six months in the life of the "Port
William Membership," as the community that populates Berry’s fiction is often called. The setting is, of course, the town of Port William, Kentucky. The time is the final months of the Second
World War. The focus of this narrative
is not any one person or family, but rather the community as a whole, and the
changes it undergoes as it collectively struggles to answer the questions that
only something like total war can posit.
If the narrative has a center, it is the Feltner family-Mat and
Margaret, along with their daughter-in-law Hannah. Throughout the better part of the novel, the
family awaits news of Virgil, Mat and Margaret’s only son, husband to Hannah
and father of her unborn child. Virgil
has been pronounced missing in action, and in the wake of this news Berry chronicles the
anguish that so often accompanies the act of hoping for the best while
anticipating the worst.

As respected and
beloved members of the community, the Feltners are not alone in their
suffering. They are joined in their
hopes and their fears by friends, fellow laborers, and extended family, and the
presence of these companions bestows a grace upon the family that is as
powerful as it is authentic. As a foil
to these, Berry
presents the occasion of the pastoral visit.
A peripheral character in the novel, as well as a peripheral member of
the community, Brother Preston, the local preacher, "looked like a saint. But not a fisherman saint like Saint Peter or
a carpenter saint like Saint Joseph; his mild scrubbed face shone with a kind
of congenital goodness, as though, before birth, he ‘d washed his hands of the
whole world (32)." Like other clergymen
in Berry’s
fiction, Brother Preston has elevated the practice of being in Port William
without being of Port William to an art form.
He attempts to serve the community as its religious leader without ever
truly engaging in its common life, so that when the opportunity arises to speak
to the Feltners in their grief, he finds himself woefully out of his depth,
with little that is helpful to offer the hurting family.

Recounted in Berry’s prophetically
comic voice, the visit unfolds as a farce of the pastoral vocation, both subtly
funny and heartbreakingly sad at once.
From the moment that Brother Preston stands on the Feltner porch, every
move seems to be carefully measured, so as to give off the most sublime air of
purposeful importance:

He draws a small black
leather Testament out of his coat pocket and faces the door and knocks. His knock itself is an act of ministerial
discretion; the sound is perfectly modulated, both quiet and loud enough. As he waits he continues to face the door,
standing erect, lifting himself slightly forward now and then onto the balls of
his feet, patting the little Testament with a sort of correct casualness
against the palm of his hand (125).

Once inside, Brother Preston surveys his surroundings and
discovers, perhaps to his surprise, the "completeness of this household, the
belonging together of Mat and Margaret Feltner, the generosity of these people,
in which there’s maybe no concession at all to a need for him (127)." Nevertheless, he is unswayed in his
commitment, not so much to the people who may or may not need him, but rather
to the task he feels God has called him to fulfill, the awful task of bringing
a word of comfort to a family in pain.

Even as Mat comes
in from the barn where he had been working and shakes Brother Preston’s hand in
welcome, the preacher is still unable to feel at ease. The conversation that ensues focuses on the
immediate matters that occupy the Feltners’ thoughts-concerns about weather and
work, anxieties about the condition of the land and the hard farming ahead-but
Brother Preston hears little, if any, of what is being said. He is overwhelmed by the notion that he is
being "drawn again, helplessly, into the stream of pastime conversation, which
moves by no force or direction of its own but by a determination, in all of
them against silence (128)." Instead of
entering into the moment with the Feltners and sharing in their concerns, no
matter how mundane they might appear to his theologically trained
sensibilities, Brother Preston cannot escape the feeling that he should do
something to right this conversation’s course.
Because the Feltners are not going to acknowledge the matter of utmost
importance that has brought him to their door, thereby affording him the
opportunity to do what he came to do and to say what he came to say, Brother
Preston is forced to take this responsibility on himself: "My friends, I’ve
come because I know of your trouble (129)."
And in that moment of rhetorical violence, when Brother Preston wrests
the conversation from its natural course in order to steer it in the direction
he deems fitting, this preacher has completed the imposition of his will upon
this family. In his devotion to some
ill-advised idea about what a preacher should do in this situation, he has
managed to annihilate from the moment any potential for real grace, true
comfort, or authentic healing. The
conversation, as far as the Feltners are concerned, has come to an end. While Brother Preston goes on, "hastened,
like a man walking before a strong wind, moved no longer by his intention but
by the force of what he is saying," Mat "only half listens. He sits, staring out the window, like a boy
in church wishing the daylight and the open air against all the claims of
eternity (129)." The visit that could
have provided some measure of compassion for a family in pain has dissolved,
under the weight of an eager pastor’s words, into nothing more than another
sermon, to which the proper response, if there is anything like a proper
response, is merely half-hearted courtesy.

In contrast to
this encounter between a family’s need and a religious professional’s
obligation, Berry
crafts a later episode. After the birth
of her daughter, Margaret, Hannah returns with the child to the Feltner house. It is, of course, a bittersweet homecoming,
full of both the joy that new life brings and the lingering questions, now all
but answered, about the fate of the child’s father. As a gentle calm begins to settle over the
scene, a knock at the kitchen door signals that a visitor has arrived. It is Uncle Jack, or "Old Jack" as he is
sometimes called, a sort of elder statesman of the Port William Membership; and
although there is little about him that might be deemed "stately," there is
nevertheless a great deal in his person that demands respect. His visit to the Feltner home on this
occasion is, in his mind, "a formal social call" (383), yet everything about
the visit, from the point of entry-the kitchen door rather than the front
door-to his clumsy but reverent hesitancy toward stating his purpose, signifies
that this event is markedly different from Brother Preston’s earlier
intrusion.

This distinction is
nowhere more evident than in the time that Jack spends with Hannah. After entering the room and seeing the baby,
he asks how Hannah is feeling. The
reader understands, along with Hannah, that although this may appear to be
"small talk," there is a genuine concern in Jack’s question. After the opening exchange, Berry tells us that "Hannah changes the
subject. She makes the sort of bright
conversation with him now that she usually does, asking him questions talking
of pleasant inconsequential things".
Through it all, Jack "stands beside her, nodding, answering, smiling,
admiring-utterly happy (384)." Absent is
the burden of obligation that Berry
conveyed so precisely in his earlier description of Brother Preston. Absent is any sense at all that Jack has to
do or say something in order to make this moment significant. Instead, "he has come because he wants very
much to be there. This room, redolent of
mothering and birth and renewal, though he can’t approach it in words, draws
him to be in it, to lighten and warm
himself in the idea of it (384)." This, one assumes, is what it means to
"rejoice with those who rejoice". It is
simply to exist in a moment with one who has been blessed, and to demand
nothing of that moment but what it is willing to give.

What follows,
however, is even more remarkable, both to the reader and to Hannah. Margaret, ever the vigilant caregiver, hints
that Hannah needs to sleep, evidently assuming that Jack will take that as a
signal that his visit has come to a close.
Instead of leaving, however, Jack promises that he will be quiet and
encourages Hannah to rest. This simple
gesture, which is on the one hand inappropriate but on the other so wholly
fitting to the occasion, amuses Hannah, and she nods to Margaret, indicating
that Jack can stay. In the moments that
follow, Jack essentially makes himself invisible. He is careful "not to look at her or make a
sound," because "It wasn’t, anyhow, to make conversation that he came. He has come in Hannah’s honor (385)." Even more significant, though, is the notion that Jack has come because

there has been building in him a sense of the absence of Virgil Feltner. He has come aware of the vacancy surrounding Hannah’s life and the child’s. And he stays now because of that, sitting in that vacancy, though he knows that his presence there will never fit or fill it. He sits there, willingly bearing his love for the woman and child, and the knowledge that it’s neither the right love nor enough (385).

This, the reader is invited to understand, is what it means to "mourn with those who mourn." Jack has neither the intention nor the capability of manipulating the moment in any way. He cannot bend this experience to his will, through practiced rhetoric or through rehearsed actions. He seems to apprehend the truth that has eluded Brother Preston: that grief, like joy, is bigger than he is. It is not meant to be fixed or analyzed or expounded upon, but merely shared.

Throughout the remainder of their time together, the awkwardness of Jack’s actions only underscores the notion that he is neither a professional counselor nor one trained in pastoral ministry. His manner is unpolished, even to the point of embarrassment; yet his presence is all the more profound because of it. Though unspoken, Hannah becomes aware "of the greatness of his caring for her." She realizes that he has not come "because he’s flattered by her small attentions, but that he has come to offer himself (386)."

Hannah is not the only one moved by this display. As readers, we are also touched by the enormity of this man’s generosity, and by the depth of his simple, unselfish love for this young mother. Berry uses this moment to convey to his readers that community, hospitality, and compassion are not something that one learns in a seminary. These things can only be truly learned, and practiced by one, like Uncle Jack, who is willing to share himself with others. And so, with the closing of this scene, when Margaret peeks into the room to find Hannah sleeping and Jack sitting silently and thoughtfully, his hands folded as he stares out the window, Berry brings his reader, as he has so many of his characters, to a moment of epiphany: This old man, who has seen more of life than anyone else in Port William, has become-not just by virtue of his age, but by virtue of his humility, his simplicity, and his righteous love-a priestly figure, a man who may be unlettered in the ways of theology, but is nevertheless the pastor that Port William needs and deserves.

All quotes from A Place on Earth, by
Wendell Berry. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.