Wendell Berry on Hope, Despair, and the Measure of Effective Protest

The current of life is charged by the poles of hope and despair. What we make of our hopes and their devastation may be the purest measure of who we are and what we leave behind. Protest is what we call the resistance we launch against our reasons for despair — personal, political, existential. Although in its healthy and potent form, protest is both a natural stage of grief and a motive force for