The Human Element

y text for this morning's sermon is drawn from the gospel according to Henry David Thoreau and Wendell Berry. First, the familiar verse from Thoreau: " In wildness is the preservation of the world. " And then the gloss put on it by Berry: " In human culture is the preservation of wildness. " With those texts in mind, let's talk about why your work is especially important at this moment to Ameri-can society, and will always be important to this ravished yet still magnificent continent upon which we live. Berry defines the work of the National Park Service, though without quite saying so, situating its role in society at the frontier between what is frequently stated to be " civilized, " or " civic, " or " urban, " " urbane, " or " cultural " activity—the adjectives all mean roughly the same thing—and what is often presented as essentially unaffected by humans—or " wild. " Our qualities, as humans, are " cultivated. " The quality of nature, while affected by human activity, is that which has not been so altered by that deliberate activity as to lose its essential " wildness. " We all know that there isn't a square mile of this continent that hasn't been affected by humans , nor will there be one unaffected by what humans do hencefor-ward. Nonetheless, let's stick with the artificial construct of a division between cultural and natural life just long enough to look up the word " culture " in the dictionary and see what it implies. Then we can get on to the moral consequences of re-defining it as Wendell Berry urges us to do. The first usage is that which gives dignity to you as professionals—we use culture to mean " development of the intellect through hard work —training and development. " From which comes the verb " to cultivate, " as in: to cultivate a singer's voice, a teacher's skill, a rock climber's balance, a dancer's grace, the skill of a preserver of adobe buildings or the competency of an analyst of changes in the minnow population of a stream. You are cultivated people. You have worked hard to learn your professions. You spend years sharpening your skills. If you are superintendents, you derive from your own cultivation a profound M