Unabashedly Old School

The comfort of an agrarian sensibility

Integrity might seem like an old, stodgy word. It calls up images of serious, dour people who think too much and never, ever have any fun. But what if that’s not what it is at all?

What if integrity is the only path to a vibrant, joyful future for all of us and the planet?

I believe with my whole heart that is true, and also that integrity is something of a lost art. We need to talk about how to actually live a life of integrity on a realistic, imperfect, human scale. We have to talk about trying and failing. We have to talk about self-compassion and mercy.

If you’ve ever read the About page of this newsletter then you’ve read the above words. Even though I wrote them years ago, I still stand by them. I still believe integrity is the only path to a vibrant, joyful future for all of us and the planet. Why? Because it brings us into what is called “right relationship”— with ourselves, other people, and the environment.

I also still believe it’s something of a lost art. Because it requires a pace of thought and action that is out of step with the rushing avarice of our modern culture. You can’t engage in the kind of self-reflection and discernment required to practice integrity if you’re constantly moving a mile a minute. You can’t create boundaries or accountability in 15-minute increments of time that will fit onto your digital calendar.

Relationship building— with yourself and others, with a place, or a piece of land— takes time and attention. It is a slow, careful construction of connection. And though I don’t think integrity as a social technology necessarily arose out of an agrarian sensibility, I do think that attending to the wisdom of folks who maintain that sort of relationship to land, work, and community can revitalize a flagging practice.

Has my practice been flagging recently? Not exactly. But I have been feeling that the effort to keep all the balls in the air at once— job, parenting, household, friendships, and creative work— is almost tipping over the edge of my capacity. And the internal voices that constantly urge me to do more, better, faster never really stop.

In the face of these feelings I’ve found myself in need of comfort and grounding, and I’ve found it in the words of authors who have an old school, “agrarian sensibility” at the core of their perspective.

The first of them is Nick Offerman. Most people know Nick best from his time playing Ron Swanson on the sitcom Parks & Recreation, but I’ll confess I’ve never seen a single episode. I’ve also never read one of his books, though I did start listening to the audio version of his first book, Paddle Your Own Canoe, walking home from work this week. And a couple of years ago I briefly subscribed to his Substack newsletter, Donkey Thoughts.

But my affection for him was actually first ignited a handful of years ago when I happened upon an interview with him on YouTube. Listening to him talk about growing up in the middle of a corn field in rural Illinois, how much he loves working with wood, and how much he adores his wife, I was absolutely hooked. Not on his creative work, but on the way he thinks and approaches life.

That’s my dad.

Maybe I’m also drawn to Nick because he reminds me of my first bearded, philosopher-carpenter. And no, I’m not talking about Jesus.

My dad could wax poetic about non-violent direct action one minute and then sink a 16-penny nail with a single blow the next. He thought deeply about the state of the world, believed he was put here to be of service, and could also frame, wire, and plumb a house. Nick Offerman is like my dad might have been if my grandparents had stayed in Wisconsin where my dad was born, and if Dad had had a clearer sense of self-worth.

In any case, searching for comfort and grounding this week I came upon another interview with Nick on the On Being podcast. There’s much to recommend in this interview; I’d urge you to listen to the whole thing if you have the time:

But here are the parts that really jumped out at me, and made me feel like I could take a full breath for the first time in days.

Discussing his study under the tutelage of his college Kabuki theater instructor, Shozo Sato, (a man who later went on to marry Nick and his wife in a traditional tea ceremony), Nick related the most important lesson he learned: always “maintain the attitude of a student.” When Nick was a student he took this tutelage literally, and not particularly seriously. But over time, watching the way Sato moved through the world, it took on a deeper meaning for him around human fallibility, and how a lifetime commitment to learning “turns you to face [your] ignorance.” “And to me that leads to joy”, Nick insisted.

Yes! That’s one of the many reasons I talk here about a practice of integrity. If you can get past shame at your own imperfection and ignorance, then the inevitability of endless learning can be a joy and not a burden.

Nick also talked at length, as he often does, about one of the other great teachers of his life— Kentucky farmer, author, and poet Wendell Berry. Berry is one of the greatest advocates of the last hundred years for the agrarian sensibility, and how its loss in our culture since the advent of the Industrial Revolution has impoverished our connection to self, family, community, and planet.

Through his fiction and essays, Berry dignified the sorts of communities that Nick grew up in, and helped him value what he learned there. Like the importance of nurturing a garden. Does Nick grow his own food these days? No, his “itinerate” lifestyle doesn’t allow for that. And he felt some shame about it, thinking it proved him full of shit for espousing the importance himself. But then he looked at his life, specifically the woodshop that he founded and runs, and realized that was his garden. “I’ve got this woodshop that is a year-round garden, with four to six people,” he mused, “and I pay incredibly strong attention to the health of this garden and to the produce of this garden, which are the things that we make in the woodshop, but it’s also the people that I’m responsible for and that I take care of.”

There’s a saying, “Grow where you’re planted.” It’s a statement about figuring out how to put down roots and flourish where you are. But what Nick is advocating, at the behest of Wendell, is to nurture where you are. Figure out what and where your garden is— your family, your workplace, your faith community, your activist or friend group— and tend it with love and attention.

Or maybe just have an actual garden. That works, too.

“Growing a garden” is about responsibility and care, but it’s also about fidelity. Another old, stodgy word, perhaps, but an important one. Most of us, Nick included, tend to automatically associate it with being sexually faithful within the context of a marriage. But Berry argues it’s deeper and wider than that. The question that fidelity asks is, “Who and what are you loyal to?” What is the web of relationships to people and planet that you pledge yourself to, and how do you honor it?

Nick also highlights lessons around responsibility and consequences in the conversation. These are ultimately lessons, which he also learned from Berry around integrity. He describes the lesson as the check coming due for all of us as a society:

it’s that feeling of when you’re out at a dinner and some rich acquaintance is there, and you’re broke and you’re like, “Are they picking up dinner? Like am I going to have to, am I going to have to pony up the $17 in my pocket and is this going to be embarrassing?” That’s what we’re doing. That’s what our society’s doing, is we’re running up the bill and at some point the meal’s going to end. They’re going to run out of bread in the kitchen, and someone’s going to give us the tab, and we’re going to say, “Oh shit, we forgot we have to pay.”

The lineage of thought and sensibility in which Nick places himself, tracing it to Wendell Berry, traces back even further to one of Berry’s great teachers, Aldo Leopold. Leopold authored the classic book A Sand County Almanac. He was a philosopher, conservationist, and forester in the first half of the twentieth century and is considered by many the father of wildlife ecology and modern environmental conservation.

In the very back of his latest book, Where the Deer And the Antelope Play, Nick offers a quote of Leopold’s particularly pertinent to our conversation here:

Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching — even when doing the wrong thing is legal.

From this, like me, Nick sees the ways that modern society encourages us to turn away from the work of integrity. “All of these ideas, modern society allows us to ignore them,” he says. “They allow us to… turn away from the mirror of self-reflection and say, “Well, I’m too busy. I have all these distractions. I totally forgot about my ecosystem.”

It’s true, keeping all the balls up in the air of a modern life can feel like it precludes the work of ethical wholeness. But I don’t read that quote and simply feel admonished. I feel comforted.

Look!, I am reminded. This truth I carry on my heart has a long and honorable lineage.

I didn’t conceive of these truths, nor will they end with me. But I do need to carry them forward while I’m here. I can do that.

What garden are you tending?