Wendell Berry’s case for affection is an interesting and potent one, especially in light of a contemporary culture that seems content on consuming itself.  And because of its limited use, affection could be a term that helps reinvigorate something vital about life today.  He finds a strong presence of affection in E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End.  In it he gets the sense that

Knowledge without affection leads us astray every time. Affection leads, by way of good work, to authentic hope.

And affection, it seems, is ultimately rooted in the something like the household.  Berry takes a decidedly (James K. A.) Smithian approach to thinking about affection and “housekeeping” when he names something vital to “life in Howard’s End.”  Smith would talk of our daily, consistent practices as “habitations of the Spirit.”  Berry’s take:

The great reassurance of Forster’s novel is the wholeheartedness of his language. It is to begin with a language not disturbed by mystery, by things unseen. But Forster’s interest throughout is in soul-sustaining habitations: houses, households, earthly places where lives can be made and loved. In defense of such dwellings he uses, without irony or apology, the vocabulary that I have depended on in this talk: truth, nature, imagination, affection, love, hope, beauty, joy. Those words are hard to keep still within definitions; they make the dictionary hum like a beehive. But in such words, in their resonance within their histories and in their associations with one another, we find our indispensable humanity, without which we are lost and in danger.

“Soul-sustaining habitations,” he says, “places where lives can be made and loved.”  It’s a nice thought, and a true one, too.  Perhaps not for all of us, and perhaps not all of the time.  But some of us, I cannot help but believe, have a strong sense of what he’s talking about, either in the homes of our childhood or of our homes today.  I’d argue that you could extend the range of the concept to churches and schools and parks and any place frequented by those with soul enough for it.

In “It All Turns on Affection,” Berry speaks of the significance one the place of affection against the dominant mega- company, farm, culture.  It’s an argument that scales both down and up, I believe.  Affection reminds us to be mindful of any system that does not find some healthy root in the personal.

In the end, Berry gives us a good list of watchwords: truth, nature, imagination, affection, love, hope, beauty, joy.  They may be used often in our culture, but I cannot help but think that Berry views them differently.

(image from simpleandsereneliving.com)