For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

Problem-solving the crises of the modern world is often characterized by an economy and architecture of exploitation and instrumentalization, viewing relationships as transactional, efficient, and calculative. But this sort of thinking leaves a remainder of emptiness.

Finding hope in a time of crises requires a more human work of covenant and commitment. Based in agrarian principles of stability, place, connection, dependence, interwoven relatedness, and a rooted economy, we can find hope in “Love’s Braided Dance” of telling the truth, keeping our promises, showing mercy, and bearing with one another.

In this episode, Evan Rosa welcomes Norman Wirzba, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, to discuss his recent book Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis.

Together they discuss love and hope through the agrarian principles that acknowledge our physiology and materiality; how the crises of the moment boil down to one factor: whether young people want to have kids of their own; God’s love as erotic and how that impacts our sense of self-worth; the “sympathetic attunement” that comes from being loved by a community, a place, and a land; transactional versus covenantal relationships; the meaning of giving and receiving forgiveness in an economy of mercy; and finally the difficult truth that transformation or moral perfection can never replace reconciliation.

About Norman Wirzba

Norman Wirzba is the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Christian Theology at Duke Divinity School, as well as director of research at Duke University’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. His books include Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis, Agrarian Spirit: Cultivating Faith, Community, and the Land;This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World; and Food & Faith.

Listen to Norman Wirzba on Food & Faith in Episode 49: "God's Love Made Delicious"

Show Notes

• Norman Wirzba, Love’s Braided Dance: Hope in a Time of Crisis
• How the crises of the moment boil down to one expression: whether young people want to have kids of their own.
• How Norman Wirzba became friends with Wendell Berry
• Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
• “Love’s Braided Dance” from “In Rain”, a poem by Wendell Berry
• “You shouldn’t forget the land, and you shouldn’t forget your grandfather.”
• Return to agricultural practices
• Sacred gifts
• “An agricultural life can afford doesn't guarantee, I think, but it affords the opportunity for you to really handle the fundamentals of life, air, water, soil, plant, tactile  connection that has to, at the same time, be  a practical connection, which means you have to to bring into your handling of things the attempt to understand what you're handling.”
• Anonymity
• Norman Wirzba reads Wendell Berry’s “In Rain”
• Hyperconnectivity and the meaning of being “braided together”
• Love as Erotic Hope—”the first of God’s love is an erotic love, which is an outbound love that wants  something other than God to be and to  flourish. And that outbound movement is generated by God's desire for For others to be beautiful, to be good, and I think that's the basis of our lives, right?”
• Audre Lorde and patriarchy
• Affirming the goodness of ourselves and the world as created and loved by God
• How the pornographic gaze distorts the meaning of erotic love
• Dancing as a metaphor for God’s erotic love
• Deep sympathy and anticipation, and the improvisational movement of dance
• Woodworking: taking time and negotiation
• “Sympathetic attunement” and improvisation
• Managing the unpredictable nature of our world
• Revelation of who you are and who the other is—it’s hard to reveal ourselves to each other
• Honesty and depth that is missing from relationships
• Learning the skill of self-revealing
• Belonging and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s sense that a people could be “loved by the land”
• Physiological, material reality of our dependence on each other, from womb to tomb
• “The illusion that we could ever be alone or stand alone or survive alone is so dishonest about our living.”
• Denying our needs, acknowledging our needs, and inhabiting trust to work through struggle together
• “It’s not about solutions.”
• “Some of the needs  are profound and deep and they take time and they are  never fully resolved. But it's this experience of knowing that you're not alone, that you're in a context where you are going to be cared for, you'll be nurtured, and you'll be forgiven when you make mistakes means that you can carry on together. And that's often enough.”
• Transactional vs covenantal approach to relationships
• Granting forgiveness and receiving forgiveness
• Transformation is not a replacement for reconciliation
• Rather than denying wrongdoing or seeking to eliminate it, focusing on a renewed effort to be merciful with each other.
• Economy and architecture
• “So how is the land supposed to love you back if it has in fact been turned into a toxic dumping zone?”
• “Think about how much fear is in our architecture.”
• Building was vernacular—people were involved in the development of physical structures
• J. R. R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers: Ents vs Saruman, natural agrarianism vs technological domination
• Joy Clarkson, You Are a Tree
• Rooted economy
• “Is anything worthy of our care?”
• When a parent chooses a phone and loses a moment of presence with children
• “Go to some one and tell them, ‘I want to try to be better at being in the presence of those around me.’”
• Be deliberate

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Norman Wirzba
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Alexa Rollow, Kacie Barrett, Emily Brookfield, and Zoë Halaban
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give