How do you learn the lessons of mortality before mortality forces you to?
After Wendell Berry’s death, Russell Moore gathered with friends to talk about Berry’s life and work. During that conversation, pastor and author Russ Ramsey brought up Remembering, Berry’s novel about Andy Catlett, a farmer who loses his right hand—and, with it, his old way of holding on to the world.Years earlier, Ramsey had nearly died from a bacterial infection that required open-heart surgery. Reading Remembering during his recovery gave him language for what was happening to him: the disorientation of suddenly knowing life will not go back to what it was, the temptation to take our pain out on those closest to us, and the strange clarity that can come from confronting death.Dr. Moore wanted to continue that conversation here. He and Ramsey talk about whether it is possible to learn some of mortality’s lessons without first being “struck”; why suffering sometimes makes us freer and sometimes makes us harder; and what happens when a culture responds to death not with resurrection hope but with attempts to outrun mortality altogether. Yes, the tech bros come up. They also turn to Ramsey’s books Rembrandt Is in the Wind and Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart. What initially seems like a different subject turns out not to be different at all. Ramsey’s writing about mortality and his writing about art are both concerned with learning to see—to pay attention to beauty, to other people, and to the life in front of us while we still have it.Along the way, Ramsey walks us through how to look at a painting, why you don’t have to like every great work of art, and how to know when it’s time to leave a museum—which, as it turns out, may be a lesson about mortality too.Plus, stay to the end to hear Ramsey’s song “The Ballad of Andy Catlett,” inspired by Berry’s Remembering.
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