What did God speak to Job out of?

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Dude Abides

Home
Progressive Christian

Last updated on: April 3, 2009 at 12:36 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2009-04-03T12:36:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

GODSTUFF

WHITEFOOT: THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

Walking in botanical gardens one recent, perfect, early spring day, a quick burst of movement in the thicket of a yellow Carolina jasmine hedge caught my eye.

It was a mouse. A Peromyscus leucopus to be precise — a white-footed mouse with big black eyes — staring back at me. Neither one of us moved for a few moments, but as soon as I gingerly raised my iPhone to take a picture of the adorable, frightened creature, it disappeared in a flash into the shelter of the jasmine’s branches.

Later that same day, while perusing the bookshelves of a local independent bookstore, another mouse caught my eye. This one on the cover of a small, gray book set back deep on a shelf in the warren of the new fiction section.

On the cover was a detailed pencil drawing of a mouse, one that looked just like the one I’d encountered in the jasmine hedge. Whitefoot: A story from the center of the world was the book’s name, and though it was shelved in the adult section, it appeared to be a children’s book. Until I noticed the name of the author: Wendell Berry.

I snatched the last copy of Whitefoot, took it to the register and paid for it without even cracking open the cover, certain that Berry, the great American writer and defender of agrarian values, would have something extraordinary to say.

Whitefoot is a beautiful, subtle little book. Perfect for these lean times. It would be easy to dismiss it as a simple children’s book, but that would be a mistake. Berry’s first foray into “children’s literature,” is in fact a spiritual fable with lessons every adult should take to heart in these nervous times.

At 60 pages in a compact 7-by-6-inch cover, Berry tells Whitefoot‘s story with the aid of more than 20 stunningly detailed pencil drawings by Davis Te Selle. The entire story of Whitefoot the mouse takes place an inch off the ground (from a real mouse’s perspective.) The year-old mouse, who lives alone having not yet had a litter, is swept into an epic adventure when the jar where she’s made her nest is swept into the river during a heavy rain, transporting her to strange, and fraught, new worlds.

“She lived at the center of the world,” Berry writes. “This is one of the things every mouse knows. Wherever she was, she was at the center of the world. That one lives at the center of the world is the world’s profoundest thought. So firmly was this thought set in Whitefoot’s mind that she did not need to think it.

“Like humans, she lived in the little world of what she knew, for there was no other world for her to live in. But she lived at the center of the world always, and of this she had no doubt.”

Whitefoot lived simply, by her instincts, values that the prolific Berry has heralded in his fiction, nonfiction, essays and poems for half a century. Accordingly, Berry doesn’t anthropomorphize his mouse. She doesn’t think human thoughts or act in human ways. She’s compelled by an internal voice that tells her “Look out!” or “Hurry,” “Nest!” “Up!” or “Seeds! Seeds!” Whitefoot lives, while busily, without much care.

“She worked and lived without extravagance and without waste. Her nest was a neat small cup the size of herself asleep,” Berry writes. “When she went into it for her daytime sleep, she slept drawn into a ball, her eyes shut, her tail curved around so that its outer end lay under her nose. Her sleep was an act of faith and a giving of thanks.”

Whitefoot lives peacefully, but nearby, unbeknownst to her, there is a river on the verge of flooding, threatening to destroy all she knows and cut her already short life even shorter. When it does, she kicks into survival mode, doing what needs to be done —as Berry puts it, “her unfinished task of staying alive.”

One critic compared Whitefoot to the biblical story of Noah’s Ark: surviving a flood, doing what needed to be done to survive — in faith — and not knowing what the outcome would be when the catastrophe was over (if it ever would be.)

As I read and re-read Whitefoot, I was reminded of Berry’s famous poem, “The Peace of Wild Things.” In this moment when the foundations of our world economy are trembling (along with our souls), it bears repeating:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

April 1, 2009

Next Post

April 9, 2009 Hallelujah, here he comes!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A little happy ARCHIVED COLUMNS BECOMING FAMILY BelieberNess BREAKING NEWS! Disquiet Time DJ JEFF'S SPINTASMS falsani FILM from OCRegister From Sojo.net God Nods GODSTUFF I Take Requests incubatespirit LURKING IN THE NARTHEX On My Nightstand ONEMOMS Polling the Room PONTIFEXCELLENT Thru My Eyes TWO CENTS Uncategorized Upcoming Events VASCO VASCO'S HEART

Select a Month January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 July 2014 May 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 April 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 October 2003 March 2003 December 2002 October 2002 January 2001

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did God speak to Job out of?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A burning bush A cloud A whirlwind A pillar of fire