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| Stairway at Cabin - Cumberland Falls State Resort Park, Kentucky |
Kentucky once suffered from the Depression era damage to the countryside. The landscape was worn out from over cultivation and forest
clearing. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built service buildings, water
reservoirs, roads, and campgrounds. Near Carrolton, Kentucky the CCC built the
terraces, walkways and roads that became the General Butler State Resort
Park. The CCC planted trees. The CCC restored damaged woods and
pastures. It ended up that the New Deal
agencies planted 3 billion trees. The CCC was at the forefront of the
tree planting effort. The landscape of
Kentucky benefited from this work.
Franklin Roosevelt had the vision
that that the landscape could be restored.
He had a confidence about him that made people want to be involved with
him in making things better. He could speak in a way that proved to be
enduring. He set forth the concept that the land could be restored.
It is perhaps fitting that the words
of a President could cause change for the good.
By contrast the words written by a person in a monastic order are little
heard and quickly forgotten. One exception is a man that lived in a monastic
order for twenty-seven years at a location south of Bardstown, Kentucky.
The monk and writer Thomas Merton lived
in that monastery. Merton has produced challenging ideas that have been
communicated around the world. Merton
wrote that the “plague” of the “modern age” was “intolerance, prejudice and
hate.” Merton said the counter to this intolerance was rooted in personal and
community labor; “the Christian must labor with inexhaustible patience and
love, in silence, perhaps in repeated failure, seeking tirelessly to restore,
wherever he can, and first of all in himself, the capacity of love and
understanding which makes man the living image of God.”
It is that “capacity of love and
understanding” that we want to have. This is that process that we work.
As Kentuckians we are fortunate that
the forests and pastures were restored from the awful situation of the
Depression era. It took a long time for that process to have the look of a
restored land. As Kentuckians we are
fortunate to have a world-renowned writer that produced his work while living in
rolling green hills south of Bardstown.
It is about the land and the people.
