I chatted with a friend about inspiring women in the religious realm, and since he doesn’t have any experience with the world I work in, I showed him some pictures.
He lives in Manhattan, keeps up with the fashion industry, and can spot a celebrity a mile away. He looked at the authors and pastors smiling from their airbrushed bio pics and said, “Wow. It must be nice to work in an environment where you don’t have to worry about your looks.”
How can we live well after 40? asks Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She could have consulted the wisdom traditions.
Wendell Berry continues to spend Sunday mornings in the Kentucky woods, and his readers will be rewarded. At age 82, he notes that “life does not relent or become easier as death approaches.” He asks, “How then may you come yet alive to right-mindedness and right prayer?” Although grief and “nightmares of the age” interrupt his sleep, he is eased by nature’s “numinous and exalted” presence. Each day is precious to Berry, and in poem XII he explains his refusal to be filmed working on his land.