{"id":1232,"date":"2013-03-15T15:17:58","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T20:17:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slowchurch\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2013-03-15T15:20:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T20:20:27","slug":"belonging-to-our-places-liberty-hyde-bailey-and-my-explorations-in-urban-naturalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slowchurch\/2013\/03\/15\/belonging-to-our-places-liberty-hyde-bailey-and-my-explorations-in-urban-naturalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Belonging to our Places. Liberty Hyde Bailey and My Explorations in Urban Naturalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"Today is the birthday of Liberty Hyde Bailey\u2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Bailey was one of the preeminent American botanists and horticulturists in the early twentieth century.\u00a0 He also was an agrarian writer who wrote quite a bit about nature \u2014 nature poetry, nature education, conservation, etc. \u2014 and his work was deeply influential on Wendell Berry, and other more recent agrarian writers.<\/p>\n

Berry pays tribute in his essay \u201cA Practical Hamony<\/a>,\u201d (LGT: the part of this essay on Bailey via Google Books)\u00a0 Bailey\u2019s classic apologia for creation care, The Holy Earth<\/em>, mentioned by Berry in the above essay is available for free as a Kindle ebook<\/a> (and in other ebook formats via Project Gutenberg<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Earlier this week,<\/strong> a reflection of mine on \u201cbelonging to our places\u201d<\/a> was posted as part of the Lenten series on Christine Sine\u2019s blog:<\/p>\n

I was deeply moved by the story of the Spanish painter, Antonio L\u00f3pez Garc\u00eda, as it was told by art critic Daniel Siedell in a recent Books and Culture review<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

For most of us, the world is no longer a cause of fascination, of sustained contemplation and reflection. A bird is just a bird, a vase of flowers just that, and the grace of this man or the charm of that woman is buried beneath a multitude of judgments we make about them as they pass us. This is the \u201creal world,\u201d the world in which as Cervantes writes, an inn is just an inn.\u00a0\u00a0 \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the more remarkable and stubbornly beautiful and seductive objects in the world for L\u00f3pez Garc\u00eda is the quince tree in his backyard. For decades he has tried to paint this simple tree as it absorbs and refracts the sunlight. In 1992 filmmaker, Victor Erice was given unique access to the artist\u2019s world to make the award-winning documentary El Sol del Membrillo (The Quince Tree of the Sun). The film tells the story of L\u00f3pez Garc\u00eda\u2019s approach to art through his relationship with this little tree, which he feels the urge to paint every autumn. And yet every autumn it thwarts his attempt to capture his experience of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a similar way, I have for several years now been getting to know my own immediate urban neighborhood in Indianapolis, an undertaking that I like to call urban naturalism. Inspired by the poetry of early twentieth century agrarian Liberty Hyde Bailey<\/a>, I walk the streets and paths of the neighborhood, take pictures, climb trees<\/a>, look, listen and often write.<\/em><\/p>\n

[ Read the full post on Chrstine\u2019s blog<\/a>\u2026 ]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several years ago, I wrote an appreciative essay on Bailey\u2019s poetry which is now the introduction to the current edition of Bailey\u2019s primary volume of poetry Wind and Weather<\/em><\/a>\u2026 This essay offers a rich perspective on why Bailey\u2019s poetry is an important guide in the direction that we would eventually come to call Slow Church\u2026<\/p>\n

And in the same vein, I\u2019ve written a few pieces on Bailey and urban naturalism for CATAPULT magazine over the last five years:<\/p>\n