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tinydoctor (tinydoctor@mstdn.social)'s status on Wednesday, 02-Sep-2026 11:32:03 JST tinydoctor

An exchange between Wendell Berry and Tim DeChristopher. I've been in that building Berry mentions.
#WendallBerry #Shakers #ThomasMerton #PleasantHillKentucky
In conversation about a month ago from mstdn.social permalink
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1. Text: WB: It was the Shakers who were sure the end could come anytime, and they still saved the seeds and figured out how to make better diets for old people. Thomas Merton was interested in the Shakers. I said to him, “If they were certain that the world could end at any minute, how come they built the best building in Kentucky?” “You don’t understand,” he said. “If you know the world could end at any minute, you know there’s no need to hurry. You take your time and do the best work you possibly can.” That was important to me. I’ve repeated it many times. TD: That’s why the despair is not paralyzing. Knowing that it’s too late to prevent collapse, knowing that we’re not going to stop the catastrophic end, knowing that we’re going to die — it doesn’t mean that we stop. It means that we live in this moment as fully as we can.
  https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/117/199/096/034/601/636/original/7adac25b8b7bac3d.jpeg
2. My granddaughter, sitting at a desk next to a window in a Shaker dormitory at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.
  https://media.mstdn.social/media_attachments/files/117/199/096/067/136/482/original/440531294ed61b94.jpeg

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