Author and blogger Rod Dreher has spent the last couple of weeks reflecting on and writing about the passing of his father.  Dreher returned home to Louisiana a few years ago (after a number of years abroad) because of the illness and passing of his sister.  He has, for me, joined the ranks of a handful of artists and writers who have connected me to the life I left by moving to Hawaii.  One reflection just after his father’s passing spoke of the feeling that he was living in a Wendell Berry story.  And while I haven’t read any of Berry’s fiction, I have become a great fan of his non-fiction.  His thoughts about “a life well-lived” from the essay “Quantity vs. Form” came to mind in light of Dreher’s loss, and I thought they were worth sharing.

The issue of the form of a lived life is difficult, for the form as opposed to the measurable extent of a life has as much to do with inward consciousness as with verifiable marks left on the world.  But we are already in the thick of the problem when we have noticed that there does seem to be such a thing as a good life; that a good life consists, in part at least, of doing well; and that this possibility is an ancient one, having apparently little to do with the progress of science or how much a person knows.  And so we must ask how it is that one does not have the know everything in order to do well.

The answer, apparently, is that one does so by accepting formal constraints.  We are excused from the necessity of creating the universe, and most of us will not have even to command a fleet in a great battle.  We come to form, we in-form our lives, by accepting the obvious limits imposed by our talents and circumstances, by nature and mortality, and thus by getting the scale right.  Form permits us to live and work gracefully within our limits. . .

What is or what should be the goal of our life and work?  This is a fearful question and it ought to be fearfully answered.  Probably it should not be answered for anybody in particular by anybody else in particular.  But the ancient norm or ideal seems to have been a life in which you perceived your calling, faithfully followed it, and did your work with satisfaction; married, made a home, and raised a family; associated generously with neighbors; ate and drank with pleasure the produce of your local landscape; grew old seeing yourself replaced by your children or younger neighbors, but continuing in old age to be useful; and finally died a good or a holy death surrounded by loved ones.

There’s more to Berry’s thinking, a reminder of how far so many of us have traveled from that norm.  So many things to mourn and remember and maybe even recover.  I am reminded of Psalm 131 (NIV), one of the psalms of ascent:

My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.

You can read Dreher’s reflections here.  The bottom of the post includes a list of all of the other reflections.