Writer, poet, and novelist Wendell Berry passed away yesterday, August 31, at the age of 92.

My appreciation for Berry began when I was a single 19-year-old.

Like a cage-stage Calvinist, I’m sure I spent some time judging people for eating food I deemed artificial, or pretending to mourn every tractor I passed in the beautiful Kentucky countryside. The fault was all mine and none of Wendell’s.

Life softened those edges, but what stayed with me was Berry’s attention to, and appreciation for, the seemingly simple gifts of God.

His poetry helped me see God’s goodness more and more in trees, birdsong, leaves, critters, the way a door props itself open, the sound of the wind. His work helped me appreciate quiet; indeed, his work quieted my soul itself.

The few novels I’ve read broke my heart with the beauty of the ordinary: men and women both mourning and hopeful, the resilience of normal life, the bonds of a small town. My heart still aches when I think about my first readings of Hannah Coulter or Jayber Crow - characters in a community whose details I can still picture, neighbors who feel like friends I haven’t talked to enough.

Berry is a testament to the power of simple, clear-eyed observation and work done well, letting its effects be discovered over time. He was also an example of saying what you actually think, no matter how much it might sting the outsider.

Wendell was a prophet, creating new worlds and ruffling the right feathers. But you always had the sense that he wasn’t a mere critic of modernity. It was almost as if he had a toe in the next life, a foot in the coming garden-city, and was seeking to show us a bit of what the good life might look like in the here and now.

I’m thankful to God for Wendell Berry, because Berry helped me become thankful to God for so much.