The mercy of the world is you don't know what's going to happen.
Interpretation
Life is unpredictable, and this uncertainty brings both mercy and opportunity.
Wendell Berry's quote suggests that the unpredictable nature of life is a source of mercy, as we cannot foresee the events that lie ahead. This unpredictability can lead to unforeseen opportunities and outcomes, which can be both a blessing and a source of hope, reminding us to embrace life's uncertainties with an open heart and mind.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech to encourage embracing change.
We weren't allowing our hopes to become expectations. Expectations are tempting, pleasant, maybe necessary. They are scary too, once you have had some experience. They are not necessarily and not always a bucket of smoke, but they can be and are even likely to be.
The uplands of my home country in north central Kentucky are sloping and easily eroded, dependent for safekeeping upon year-round cover of perennial plants.
A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY - I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
Much of our waste problem is to be accounted for by the intentional flimsiness and unrepairability of the labor-savers and gadgets that we have become addicted to.
We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
Even when nothing happens, everything seems too much for me. What can be said, then, in the presence of an event, any event?
To get back up to the shining world from there My guide and I went into that hidden tunnel, And Following its path, we took no care To rest, but climbed: he first, then I-so far, through a round aperture I saw appear Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears, Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.
Comparatively, we are so much quicker to return favors and to pay our debts to mortals - and we should be responsive and grateful. But what of Him who gave us mortal life itself, who will ere long give us all immortality, and who proffers to the faithful the greatest gift of all, eternal life? We are poor bookkeepers, indeed!
Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is... Matter and energy are interrelated.
The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.
They say that a kingdom is like a pyramid: the king on top and the people below. But in this country, it's upside down.
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