Thursday, February 09, 2006

Sabbaths

If you've never read anything by Wendell Berry, I would dare say that everyone could profit from it. He is a sage. Berry has written essays, fiction, and poetry and all are equally challenging and thought-provoking. This is a sample of his poetry, taken from a collection entitled Sabbaths.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, Mr. Berry's poems "shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of his life." The poetry in Sabbaths shows itself to be worthy of such praise.

If you're interested, take a trip to your local bookstore and see if they have any of his work. It will be well worth your time. His insight into how we relate to our fellow man, the environment
and the Maker of all these things is thought-provoking and I dare say life-changing...if you're open to being changed. He has caused me to look afresh on this world and has illumined things once dark to my eyes.

1980, III

Great deathly powers have passed:
The black and bitter cold, the wind
That broke and felled strong trees, the rind
Of ice that held at last

Even the fleshly heart
In cold that made it seem a stone.
And now there comes again the one
First Sabbath light, the Art

That unruled, uninvoked,
Unknown, makes new again and heals,
Restores heart's flesh so that it feels
Anew the old deadlocked

Goodness of its true home
That it will lose again and mourn,
Remembering the year reborn
In almost perfect bloom

In almost shadeless wood,
Sweet air that neither burned nor chilled
In which the tenderest flowers prevailed,
The light made flesh and blood.

For a compendium of online resources of this poety, essayist, and conservationist, you can visit this site, which has links that will take you all over cyberspace.

http://brtom.org/wb/berry.html

Please be aware, however, that Berry is very much against computer technology, so in no way supports our little world of blogging.

Peace.

Janine

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