Singer-Songwriter Matt Wheeler on His New Port William-inspired Album
Aug 22, 2023
In this episode, we interview singer-songwriter Matt Wheeler about his new album, A Hard History of Love. That album is inspired by five short stories in Berry’s story collection, That Distant Land. We talk about the process of writing songs inspired by great literature, about some of our favorite Port William characters, and what “membership” looks like in Matt’s life.
UPDATE: The Kickstarter for Matt’s album release is now fully funded. All backers will now receive a print of Ned Bustard’s cover art for the album. The Kickstarter ends on August 25 at 7:15 a.m. Eastern.
A Returning, a New Voice, and a Look Ahead
Aug 17, 2023
The Membership Podcast returns! We catch you up on the last three years, introduce a new co-host, and preview some of the books we’ll be reading in Season 3. Our next episode is coming in just a couple days, so be on the lookout!
Eternal Beings Living in Time: On Wendell Berry’s “Jayber Crow”
Aug 17, 2023
Author’s Note: Dave and I reference this short essay in the most recent episode of the podcast. I wrote it for my 2010 book, Besides the Bible: 100 Books that Have, Should, or Will Create Christian Culture. That book was co-authored with my friends Jordan Green and Dan Gibson. The three of us wrote seventy essays on the books we thought every Christian should read. Then we asked thirty of our favorite writers, artists, teachers, pastors, and musicians to do the same. This essay was the one I was most excited to write…which means that it was the essay I wrote last. By then I was exhausted, procrastinating, and looking forward to whole thing just being done. I would write the essay differently today (and hopefully better). But I’m even more convinced now than I was then of why Jayber Crow deserved to be on that list.
I will have to share the fate of this place. Whatever happens to Port William happens to me.
As a novelist, essayist, poet, and farmer, Wendell Berry has plowed the same plot of Kentucky hillside for nearly fifty years. His focus across all literary forms is healthy community built on fidelity to neighbor, creation, and creator.
The principles Berry argues for in his essays with the rigorous logic of a legal brief are tenderly brought to life in his novels and short stories, which are all set in and around the fictional village of Port William, Kentucky. The title character in Jayber Crow is not native to Port William. Jayber’s parents died when he was only three. Aging relatives in Squires Landing, a few miles from Port William, take him in, but several years later they die too. “I was a little past ten years old,” he says, “and I was the survivor already of two stories completely ended.” He is sent to an orphanage in central Kentucky, and doesn’t return to the area until he drops out of college and goes looking for “a loved life to live.”
When Jayber arrives in Port William, the town needs a barber, a job he happens to know how to do. He spends the next fifty years cutting hair, gradually being drawn into the life of the community. He falls in love with a girl who marries a man unworthy of her, and for decades he loves her from afar. Jayber performs several essential services for Port William. Besides cutting hair, Jayber’s barbershop becomes a meeting place. Whether they need a trim or not, men are always stopping by to share the latest news, catch up, or just watch life happen on the street outside the shop window. The old men tell him stories, and Jayber becomes a guardian of the town’s communal memories.
Berry repeatedly describes the people of Port William as a “membership,” an image derived from Paul’s letters to the Ephesians and Corinthians. Burley Coulter, a recurring character in Berry’s fiction, says in one short story, “The way we are, we are members of each other. All of us. Everything. The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.” Jayber becomes a part of this membership, and he sees in it a reflection of the gathered Church:
It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill…And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another’s love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.
And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.
The poem, novel, essay, and small farm were all pronounced dead by the experts long ago, but Berry’s voice is more vital than ever. The values Berry has been advocating for years – especially localism and settledness – are gaining broader popularity, thanks in part to mainstream writers like Michael Pollan and Bill McKibben who look to Berry as a mentor. (“To feel at home in a place, you have to have some prospect of staying there,” Jayber says.) It is a quiet movement, manifesting itself in the growing presence of farmers’ markets in communities large and small, urban and guerilla gardens, in the lives of people moving back to the country to work the land, and in the lives of people who apply the standards of health and good use to their work as teachers, lawyers, homemakers, and barbers. It is a return to story and to belonging, and for five decades the voice crying out in the wilderness has been that of Wendell Berry.
Season 2 Episode 5: "Nathan Coulter"
Jun 04, 2020
In this episode, John and Tim discuss Nathan Coulter, Wendell Berry’s debut novel.
If you enjoy the show and would like to support us, head over to Patreon to pledge a small monthly donation. Donations will go toward the costs of making this podcast. Thank you.
If you enjoy the show and would like to support us, head over to Patreon to pledge a small monthly donation. Donations will go toward the costs of making this podcast. Thank you.
Season 2 Episode 3: "A Half-Pint of Old Darling" and "The Lost Bet"
Jan 16, 2020
Season 2 Episode 2: Interview with David and Mike Kline
Nov 28, 2019
John Pattison interviews David Kline, the Amish farmer, writer, and editor of Farming Magazine. Kline is also a close, longtime friend of Wendell Berry. They are joined by Mike Kline, David’s son. Mike is the co-host of one our favorite podcasts, Back to the Roots, about organic farming.
If you enjoy the show and would like to support us, head over to Patreon to pledge a small monthly donation. Donations will go toward the costs of making this podcast. Thank you.
Jason and Tim are joined by Dr. Heather Finch, Assistant Professor of English at Belmont University. They discuss The Hidden Wound, Wendell Berry’s book on race originally published in 1970.
If you enjoy the show and would like to support us, head over to Patreon to pledge a small monthly donation. Donations will go toward the costs of making this podcast. Thank you.
Episode 12: Reflections on Season One
Jul 08, 2019
In the final episode of season one, Jason, John, and Tim reflect and look to the future of The Membership.
Show Notes and Links
What I Stand On: The Collected Essays of Wendell Berry 1969-2017: (A Library of America Boxed Set) by Wendell Berry (Indiebound | Amazon | Berry Center)
Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories: The Civil War to World War II, by Wendell Berry (IndieBound | Amazon | Berry Center)
Pursuing an Earthly Spirituality: C.S. Lewis and Incarnational Faith (Indiebound | Amazon)
Episode 11: "Watch with Me," featuring Dr. Tim Ross
Apr 25, 2019
Jason, John, and Tim are joined by Dr. Tim Ross, minister at Hopwood Memorial Christian Church at Milligan College. They discuss Wendell Berry’s short story, “Watch with Me.”
Wendell Berry: Port William Novels & Stories: The Civil War to World War II, by Wendell Berry (IndieBound | Amazon | Library of America)
Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, by Wendell Berry (IndieBound | Amazon | Counterpoint)
Essay: “Watch with Me: Wendell Berry and Sitting with the Least of These,” by Timothy W. Ross, in From Each Brave Eye: Reflections on the Arts, Ministry, and Holy Imagination (Amazon)
Episode 6: Interview with Charlie Peacock
Feb 13, 2019
Jason Hardy and John Pattison interview Charlie Peacock, the 4x Grammy Award-winning, multi-format jazz and pop recording artist, composer, and record producer.
“A Consent” is also available in the stand-alone collection, Watch With Me: and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch (IndieBound | Amazon | Counterpoint)
Jason, John, and Tim discuss Wendell Berry’s 1964 poetry collection, The Broken Ground. This collection is currently housed, in its entirety, in Berry’s New Collected Poems.
Episode 1: "The Girl in the Window" & "The Hurt Man"
Dec 19, 2018
Jason, John, and Tim discuss the only two Port William short stories set in the nineteenth-century: “The Girl in the Window” (1864) and “The Hurt Man” (1888).
We had the honor of recording Episode 0 in front of a live audience at the Hutchmoot Conference in Nashville, TN. In this episode, we go over plans for the future of this podcast and interview singer/songwriter Allen Levi.
The Membership Podcast: Coming November 2018
Oct 05, 2018
The Membership is a new podcast inspired by the life and work of Wendell Berry.
We will officially launch in November 2018, with a special Episode 0 debuting before that. Episode 0 was recorded live at The Hutchmoot gathering in Nashville in October 2018.
To be notified of the launch, and to keep track of future episodes and special content, we encourage you to subscribe to updates through The Membership Letters.
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