Water at the Roots: Poems and Insights of a Visionary Farmer

by Philip Britts, David Kline (Foreword by), Jennifer Harries (Editor)

Overview

In a society uprooted by two world wars, industrialization, and dehumanizing technology, a revolutionary farmer turns to poetry to reconnect his people to the land and one another.

A farmer, poet, activist, pastor, and mystic, Britts (1917–1949) has been called a British Wendell Berry. His story is no romantic agrarian elegy, but a life lived in the thick of history. As his country plunged headlong into World War II, he joined an international pacifist community, the Bruderhof, and was soon forced to leave Europe for South America.

Amidst these great upheavals, his response – to root himself in faith, to dedicate himself to building community, to restore the land he farmed, and to use his gift with words to turn people from their madness – speaks forcefully into our time. In an age still wracked by racism, nationalism, materialism, and ecological devastation, the life he chose and the poetry he composed remain a prophetic challenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874861280
Publisher:	The Plough Publishing House
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Pages:	179
Sales rank:	954,107
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 16.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Farmer-poet Philip Britts was born in 1917 in Devon, England. Britts became a pacifist, joined the Bruderhof, and during World War II moved to South America. There, in 1949, he died of a rare tropical illness at the age of 31, leaving his wife, Joan, with three young children and fourth on the way.

David Kline, an Amish organic farmer in Ohio, is the editor of Farming Magazine and author of three books: Letters from Larksong: An Amish Naturalist Explores His Organic Farm, Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal, and Scratching the Woodchuck: Nature on an Amish Farm.

Jennifer Harries, a member of the Bruderhof, was born in Llansamlet Wales and now lives in New York.

Table of Contents

In spite of the many hardships Philip Britts and his community suffered, poetry flowed out of him like water from a spring. He was he a prolific writer, an astute observer of his natural surroundings, a steward of the mysteries of God, and a true landsman who lived the life he wrote about. He knew that human touch, kindness, love of land and neighbors, working with nature and the seasons, nurturing and not exploiting were things that matter. In his death-shortened years he lived a full and generous life. --David Kline, author of Letters from Larksong and Scratching the Woodchuck

Editorial Reviews

04/02/2018
This evocative collection brings together the poems and essays of British farmer Philip Britts (1907–1949), who led a Bruderhof community of Christian pacifists in Devon, England, before WWII. As Europe plunged into war, Britts moved his pacifist congregation from England to a settlement in Paraguay, where they felt they could live out their ideals of peace. Britts’s poems and musings—collected here by Harries, a writer who attended his original congregation as a young girl—offer a window into a life defined by clear Christian values of radical pacifism, love of neighbor, and care for the Earth. Britts provides a gentle corrective to modern impulses of acquisition and aggression, his ebullient verses always returning to wonder and awe at the natural world: “All life is joy again/ The longest drought shall pass/ Bringeth sweet drenching rain/ Life for the grass.” Britts’s efforts in Paraguay may strike modern readers as misguided ecologically and socially (he elevates his way of living and farming above that of the locals), but his refusal to participate in WWII and his respect for the South Americans redeem him in the end. Britts’s work will be an inspiration for Christians and humanists seeking peace and purpose in a tumultuous world. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

One of the most powerful books I’ve ever read. Alive with profound spiritual and practical insights, Britts’s words are timeless. You will be deeply moved by his humble conviction expressed in thoughtful action. —Joel Salatin, author, Folks, This Ain’t Normal

There is a deep sense of reality—true, eternal, and human reality—in Britts’ work… Here was a man who clearly articulated and lived out his beliefs… a man who may have been quietly composing while hoeing, whose spirit ever sat at the feet of his Master while his body was at work. —Remembered Arts Journal

What to do with one’s life? Britts answered this question as one who loved the land, its creatures, and its people. For those seeking a healthy and peaceful world, this book will be a provocation to a better way of living. —Norman Wirzba, author, Food and Faith

There is much beauty in Britts’s thoughts, and a quiet radicalism too.…He warns that the worst possibility of progress would be to lose the organic connection with and intimate, tactile knowledge of the land: unlike “that indescribable sensation that comes, perhaps rarely, when one walks through a field of alfalfa in the morning sun, when one smells earth after rain, or when one watches the ripples on a field of wheat.” That is the agrarian spirit, the spirit of Wendell Berry and so many localists everywhere. —Russell Arben Fox, Front Porch Republic

Britts’s unpretentious style brings immediacy to his subjects, and Water at the Roots provides enough context about his life, and the challenges of building a community in an environmentally difficult region, to underscore what the author was up against. . . . It’s a thorough book that illuminates an important but little-known writer. —Foreword Reviews

Britts’s poems and musings offer a window into a life defined by clear Christian values of radical pacifism, love of neighbor, and care for the Earth. Britts provides a gentle corrective to modern impulses of acquisition and aggression, his ebullient verses always returning to wonder and awe at the natural world…. An inspiration for Christians and humanists seeking peace and purpose in a tumultuous world. —Publisher’s Weekly

In spite of the many hardships Philip Britts and his community suffered, poetry flowed out of him like water from a spring. He was he a prolific writer, an astute observer of his natural surroundings, a steward of the mysteries of God, and a true landsman who lived the life he wrote about. He knew that human touch, kindness, love of land and neighbors, working with nature and the seasons, nurturing and not exploiting were things that matter. In his death-shortened years he lived a full and generous life. —David Kline, author of Letters from Larksong and Scratching the Woodchuck

Philip Britts died at thirty-one, but this collection of poems and insights shows the depth and richness of his wisdom during those shortened years. His writings are reminiscent of Wendell Berry’s: they touch on the same themes of earth and faith, community and presence. It’s a short but lovely read. —Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative

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