the great dance that joins us

Black tailed deer in the forest near Drake’s Estero, Point Reyes. Robin L. Chandler, 2025.

“What can turn us from this deserted future, back into the sphere of our being, the great dance that joins us to our home, to each other and to other creatures, to the dead and the unborn? I think it is love. I am perforce aware how badly and embarrassingly that word now lies on the page – for we have learned at once to overuse it, abuse it, and hold it in suspicion. But I do not mean any kind of abstract love, which is probably a contradiction in terms, but particular love for particular things, places, creatures, and people, requiring stands and acts, showing its successes or failures in practical or tangible effects. And it implies a responsibility just as particular, not grim or merely dutiful, but rising out of generosity…”

Excerpt from a broadside by Wendell Berry produced to honor the legacy of North Point Press, 1980 – 1991.

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