The work of the river flowing through Clairvaux Abbey

Leaving aside my nagging worry about what this meant in terms of pollution, the following is beautiful simply as a piece of prose personifying the river flowing through the Clairvaux Abbey. From Lewis Mumford (The Myth of the Machine), as quoted by Michael Updegraff (“Transitions of Power,” Mortise and Tenon tenth anniversary issue): The river enters the abbey as much as the wall acting as a check allows. It gushes first into the corn-mill where it is very actively employed in grinding the grain under the weight of the wheels and in shaking the fine sieve which separates the flour from the bran.

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So is The Cotton Patch Evidence by Dallas Lee the book to read if I want to learn more about Clarence and Florence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm?

This second issue of Robin Sloan’s pop-up newsletter on AI offers a series of helpful metaphors around the limts of AI. Essentially, AI is blocked by the air gap between it and the real world. If your work is entirely within the digital “symbols in, symbols out” then your work is in trouble.

A portion of “The Deer’s Cry”, or “St Patrick’s Breastplate”:

I arise today
through the strength of heaven, light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.

Reminded of this by John O’Donohue in Anam Cara. Also, don’t miss Arvo Pärt’s setting of another portion of the prayer, if you’re not already familiar with it.

A drive around Amish country

Rachel and I drove around the Amish settlement in Daviess County today and came across this guy spreading manure. (Poor quality, I know.) It was still cold today but the strong sunshine felt like a promise. After looking around the Odon Locker, we walked across the parking lot to a shop with a sign saying something about Amish goods, with the requisite buggy image. Turned out to be one of those faux Amish shops meant for tourists and church ladies.

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Philip K Dick famously said, “The symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the trash stratum.” Equally true: nearly all of the good in the world is happening in small acts, at a local level. If you never attend to the small and local, you will think the world is worse than it is.

Another entry in the series “we’re more Appalachian than Midwestern”: I grew up hearing a lot of people calling all moths (not a specific species) “millers.” Apparently, I’m not the only one.

Such is the centrifugal power of our economy that even the Amish are increasingly working away from home. Though it varies by settlement, generally less than half of Amish families farm full-time. Larger and larger numbers of Amish men are working in construction or in factories.

We just had a northern flicker at our suet feeder! First time we’ve seen one of those around here. Didn’t get a good picture, unfortunately. I was surprised how big it was. It was standing its ground with the starlings.

Gardening, this side of Eden

This post is a little long and rambly, but I think I’ll leave it. A few days ago I posed a question for Christians: “How would you square a belief in the inherent dignity of honest work with the idea that hard work was the curse of God on Adam?” I got some good responses, which you can see in the comments to that post. Caleb’s response, in particular, sent me back to the recent Plough issue on “Why We Work,” where I found a helpful piece by Alastair Roberts.

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