I love reading essays by Wendell Berry, aside from the fact that they make me realize I don’t share his passionate love for soil. In his essay “Local Knowledge in the Age of Information” regarding the relationship between industry and agriculture, he speaks of the need for an ongoing conversation between center and periphery. While I don’t think much about industry or agriculture, the concept has nudged its way into my mind and heart.

All systems of power have a center and a periphery. To remove the center or to try make everything the center won’t work. Berry’ explains, “The periphery needs a center, just as a center needs a periphery. One is unthinkable without the other.” The two need each other and operate best when they are in conversation (which is different than mere communication) with each other. I found Berry’s distinction between conversation and communication incredible insightful and practically helpful:

“A conversation, unlike a ‘communication,’ cannot be prepared ahead of time, and it is changed as it goes along by what is said. Nobody beginning a conversation can know how it will end. And there is always the possibility that a conversation, by bringing its participants under one another’s influence, will change them, possibly for the better.”

In a family system, the parents (as the center of authority) need to be in constant conversation with the children (who from a power perspective are at the periphery). In a church system, the elders and pastors need to be in constant, candid conversation with the congregants. In a business, the owners and stakeholders would do well to be in regular conversation with their employees. In a governmental system, those holding the majority of power need to be in conversation with those in the minority and at the periphery.

When these center-to-periphery and periphery-to-center conversations are valued and practiced, both parties open themselves to a different perspective and seek to strengthen the whole. When these conversations are not accessible or become one-way, power-heavy communications and ultimatums, the system becomes lopsided and vulnerable.

As we approach election season, I find these two concepts of the necessity (and beauty) of both center and periphery and the difference between a communication and a conversation timely and salient.

As believers continue the shift from moral majority to missional minority, we will and must grow in our empathy for the periphery– after all, we are being pushed there (or rather. led there by the providential hand of God). Having been long at the center, we are beginning to understand the crucial need for conversation (not just one-way communication) between center and periphery.

As a mother, I want to create systems to really hear from my periphery. I tend towards communication, assuming I know all the angles. Even though I won’t abdicate parental authority, I want my children to know they are really being heard in our decisions.

As a neighbor and friend during election season, I want to posture myself for conversations. I want to be open to the possibility of being changed. I want to fight past my own biases to listen.

And more than all of that, I want to stand in awe of our God. Christ calls the center to remember, see, forgive, and love those at the periphery and those at the periphery to remember, see, forgive, and love those at the center (Col. 3: 22–25). He not only calls us to do so, but He equips us to do so.

He who is truly the center of all things, not only came to the periphery but volitionally allowed himself to be persecuted and killed by the periphery (Col. 1: 15-17). He did so that we might be in constant conversation with our Center.