Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8446 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2017 affection for a way of life; in the teachings of Christ we are given a vision for an even larger community, a kingdom where mercy and judgment meet in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. A gospel-sized economic model is not about sustaining an ideal, but about redeeming one. My small-town lineage tells its own redemp- tion stories. Now that I’ve grown more humble in years, I can better see the broken web of redemption in them. Every time my paternal grandfather plays the banjo for dancing great-grandchildren, he mirrors the good of his own father, a legendary jolly singer of tunes (even if he’d been drinking). My maternal grandmother, left on the doorstep of a stranger, with only one tiny suitcase the size of my laptop to hold all her belongings, once told a circle of her daughters and grandchildren it was the best thing that ever happened to her: “That was the house where I met Jesus, right on the knee of my foster mother.” Her stories of that home and that life mixed tragedy and humor – milking cows, emptying chamber pots for wealthy Catskill tourists, waving goodbye to her foster father as he left for his daily milk truck delivery. One of those mornings, his truck collided with a train, leaving my grandmother fatherless again. My grandmother and her foster mother took in boarders to make a living. A living that I’m quite certain Berry would approve of. In her own way, I think my grandmother’s life offers a profound response to the tension between generational interdependence and personal responsibility. A few weeks ago, I discovered her diary from 1931, the year she graduated from high school. In each entry, I could see the way her life was shaped around the woman who took her in as a daughter, and I was thankful all over again for that salva- tion. Reading between the lines, I could also hear the voice of a lonely teenage girl trying to do good and be good with a sort of forced cheerfulness. Still today, her children, grand- children, and great-grandchildren are trying to make sense of this sort of heartache. A discerning reader will notice similar moments of real-world redemption woven into Berry’s novels. Jayber Crow, the beloved barber of Port William, tries to sort out the complex web of redemption at the end of his life. His reflection sounds a bit like a gospel-scaled economy: This is, as I said and believe, a book about Heaven, but I must say too that it has been a close call. For I have wondered sometimes if it would not finally turn out to be a book about Hell – where we fail to love one another, where we hate and destroy one another for reasons abundantly provided or for righteousness’ sake or for pleasure, where we destroy the things we need the most, where we see no hope and have no faith, where we are needy and alone, where things that ought to stay together fall apart, where there is such a groaning travail of selfishness in all its forms, where we love one another and die, where we must lose every- thing to know what we have had. Those of us who wish to emulate his ideals will receive the greatest gift from Berry’s words by reading through a gospel – rather than an idealistic – lens, because the gospel of Christ is the only economy sturdy enough to save us all.  A Gospel-sized economic model is not about sustaining an ideal, but about redeeming one.