A QUESTIONNAIRE

Questionnaire
(a poem by Wendell Berry)

1. How much poison are you willing to eat for the success of the free market and global trade? Please name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much evil are you willing to do? Fill in the following blanks with the names of your favorite evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared to make for culture and civilization? Please list the monuments, shrines, and works of art you would most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and the flag, how much of our beloved land are you willing the desecrate? List in the following spaces the mountains, rivers, town, farms you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes, the energy sources, the kinds of security for which you would kill a child. Name, please, the children whom you would be willing to kill.

Wendell Berry


My thanks to a fellow member of the Creation Spirituality Communities for letting me know about this poem. And my thanks also a relative who shall remain nameless who appears to be far more fundamental than I am for her pro life comments regarding a progressive voting link.

I’m aware that not all so called pro lifers seem to lose their concerns for unborn as soon as they are born.

For me, being pro life means supporting all life. We have to support an unpolluted environment so that children have access to clean water, food, housing and air. Pro life means supporting jobs that pay enough to provide at least basic access to the above mentioned water, food, housing and air. Pro life means access to basic education. The ‘Pub candidate running for Peter DeFazio’s seat calls public education “socialistic” and I really believe he’d like to see the public schools closed.

Pro life means preserving as much of the natural world as we can so kids can dig in the dirt; plant a seed and watch it grow. We all need to at least know that the green is out there for the sake of our sanity.

Pro life means the support and protection of all Creation. It is in Creation that we see the face of the Creator.