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Tag Archives: Wendell Berry

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

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Tags

Catholicism, church, Commonweal, interview, John Updike, Matthew Sitman, Poem, Poet, poetry, Pope Francis, The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry

Ireland 2005 504

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

__________

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry. Find it in his Selected Poems.

Thanks to my friend Matt Sitman for bringing this one to my attention. If you don’t read Matthew’s work on Commonweal magazine, I recommend you do. You can start with his newest piece, “Sex and the Synod”, about the church’s posture toward the sexual revolution. I especially liked this:

The task of genuine Christian discernment in these matters is to sift through the gains and losses of the sexual revolution rather than dismiss it in one swoop and reply only with a steadfast no. Christians, and the church, must be able to distinguish between learning from history and experience and simply being fashionable. There really is a difference…

In his opening homily at the Synod on Monday, Pope Francis spoke of a “Church that journeys together to read reality with the eyes of faith and with the heart of God.” That posture of critical openness, of believing the realities we experience might actually teach us something, finds its negation in Reno’s no. It all reminds me of a line from a favorite novel of mine, found in a letter written by an aging minister to his son: “Nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.”

It echoes Updike’s liberating response about his belief, pulled from this interview:

Questioner: I remember reading that you said that other belief systems were religions of No, and you chose a religion of Yes.

John Updike: Yes, I did. And that terminology I got from Karl Barth, who I found of the twentieth century theologians to be the most comforting as well as the most uncompromising. He does dismiss all attempts to make theism naturalistic… He’s very definite that it’s Scripture and nothing else. I find this hard to swallow, but I like to see Barth’s swallowing it, and I like his tone of voice. He talks about the Yes and No of life, and says he loves Mozart more than Bach because Mozart expresses the Yes of life.

I took the above shot in Ireland.

Three more from Berry:

  • “To My Mother”
  • “How to Be a Poet”
  • “II”

Berry Center

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“II” by Wendell Berry

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

II, Poem, Poet, poetry, Wendell Berry, Writing

Leaves

When my father was an old man, 
past eighty years, we sat together
on the porch in silence
in the dark. Finally he said, 
“Well, I have had a wonderful life,” 
adding after a long pause, 
“and I have had nothing
to do with it!” We were silent
for a while again. And then I asked, 
“Well, do you believe in the
‘informed decision’?” He thought
some more, and at last said
out of the darkness: “Naw!” 
He was right, for when we choose
the way by which our only life
is lived, we choose and do not know
what we have chosen, for this
is the heart’s choice, not the mind’s; 
to be true to the heart’s one choice
is the long labor of the mind. 
He chose, imperfectly as we must, 
the rule of love, and learned
through years of light what darkly
he had chosen: his life, his place, 
our place, our lives. And now comes
one he chose, but will not see: 
Emily Rose, born May 2, 1993.

__________

“II” by Wendell Berry.

I took the above photo in New Ulm, Texas.

Wendell Berry

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“To My Mother” by Wendell Berry

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

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Tags

family, forgiveness, Paul Newman, Poem, Poet, poetry, Road to Perdition, Sam Mendes, To My Mother, Tom Hanks, Wendell Berry, Writing

Peter's Farm

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

__________

“To My Mother” by Wendell Berry.

One of my favorite movies is Sam Mendes’s Road to Perdition. There’s an unforgettable early scene in that unfairly forgotten film, where Michael Sullivan (played by Tom Hanks) has just been lamenting to his adopted father John Rooney (played by Paul Newman) the recent rebelliousness of his eldest son. After listening, an amused Newman stares out the window and responds. “Natural law: sons were put on this earth to trouble their fathers.” It’s a brilliant line, one which — for better or for worse — the fathers and mothers of my friends, from early on to late college-y age, would hear now with a slight smile of recognition, as I would hope they’d read this poem.

I took the picture at my friend Peter’s farm near Keswick, Virginia.

More from Berry:

  • “How to Be a Poet (to Remind Myself)”
  • “IX”

Wendell Berry

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“IX” by Wendell Berry

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

IX, Poem, Poet, poetry, Wendell Berry

A Field of Wheat

I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.

__________

“IX” by Wendell Berry.

The picture: taken a few months ago in New Ulm, Texas.

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“How to Be a Poet” by Wendell Berry

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

How to Be a Poet, Poem, poetry, Wendell Berry, Writing

Wendell Berry

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

__________

“How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)” by writer and farmer Wendell Berry. You can find it in his outstanding book This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems.

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