One of the great gifts of my writing retreat at the Convent in Cincinnati last week (here’s a glimpse inside the Convent’s own story of stability, written by one of my fellow retreatants) was the realization of how important Liberty Hyde Bailey‘s work, and especially his poetry, has been in framing the concept of Slow Church in my head and in the life I share in community with others at Englewood Christian Church.

Liberty Hyde Bailey was one of the most prominent American botanists of the early twentieth century, who taught at the university that would become Michigan State and then later at Cornell in upstate New York.  But of more interest to me is his work as a nature and agrarian writer, one of the respected grandfathers of the New Agrarian movement (Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Norman Wirzba, et al).

On the retreat, I had the opportunity to read aloud the introduction to Bailey’s collection of poetry, Wind and Weather, that I wrote several years ago.  [ You can read the full intro here.] I read it as one of the most deeply moving — and despite my impersonal voice in it — personal pieces that I have written in the last several years.  Bailey’s poetry has played a vital role in helping me to come to know and love the Englewood neighborhood, an urban place that by most social and aesthetic standards doesn’t have a lot going for it.  Over the coming weeks, I would like to share occasional Slow Church-related reflections on Bailey’s poetry here.

Today, I’ll begin with a few snippets from the introduction that I wrote:

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