Be A Participant, Not A Tourist

[suzanne sanders]

The question is whether we are to be tourist or participants in our heritage.  I am interested in the question, because I believe it to be an eminently practical one.  I do not believe that tourists can preserve anything, including themselves, for very long.  And one of the tragedies of the modern world is that it has made us tourists of our own destiny.  It has taught us to turn to the past for diversion rather than instruction.  It has taught us to look into our inheritance for curiosities rather than patterns.  

Wendell Berry