The Grace of Sabbath
Ragan Sutterfield
April 25, 2021
The practice of Sabbath also has the effect of elevating the value of labor and of the people engaged in it.
Posts from:
Ragan Sutterfield
Ragan Sutterfield (M.Div., Virginia Theological Seminary) is ordained in the Episcopal Church and serves a parish in his native Arkansas. His writing has appeared in a variety of magazines, including The Christian Century, Sojourners, The Oxford American, Christianity Today, and Books & Culture. He is the author of Wendell Berry and the Given Life (Franciscan Media). Ragan works to live the good and given life in partnership with his wife, Emily, and daughters, Lillian and Lucia.
Embracing Our Limits
Ragan Sutterfield
April 24, 2021
The deeper my love the more particular it becomes and the more limited in scope. It is only through such particulars that we can come to save the creation.
All the World Is Gift
Ragan Sutterfield
April 23, 2021
When we exist in a world of gift, in which we ourselves are given, then our own labors must be gifts to those around us.
Fill Your Days with Thanksgiving
Ragan Sutterfield
November 22, 2020
Thanksgiving is fully living into our givenness—it is the acceptance that our life is a miracle.
Learning to Live Poorer: A Meditation for Lent
Ragan Sutterfield
October 3, 2020
“If we really want to be at peace,” environmentalist Wendell Berry writes, “we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.” Lent is the time to put this into practice.
Wendell Berry on Humility
Ragan Sutterfield
May 15, 2020
When I was young, my family took a trip to the Epcot Center at Disney World.
Saint Isidore: Good Work Is Like a Prayer
Ragan Sutterfield
April 30, 2020
It is in work that we find the test of our relationship to the creation because work is the question of how we will use the creation. For Wendell Berry, work done well brings us into a wholeness and cooperation with the creation in which we can find health. Bad work destroys the connections that make life possible. For Berry good work is like a prayer—it is an act of both gratitude and return. Good work accepts the gifts of creation and uses those gifts to further their givenness. There are seeds that lie for decades in the soil, waiting for the right conditions before springing to life.