All that passes descends,and ascends again unseeninto the light: the rivercoming down from skyto hills, from hills to sea,and carving as it moves,to rise invisible,gathered to light, to returnagain. “The river’s injuryis its shape.” I’ve learned no more.We are what we are givenand what is taken away;blessed be the nameof the giver and taker.For everything…
The brain burrows in its earthand sleeps,trusting dawn, though the sun’slight is a light without precedent, neverproved ahead of its coming, waited forby the law that hope has made it.– Wendell Berry, The Design of a House We all trust in dawn, and the fresh beginning it offers us. And now that it’s here, why…
“What is left is what is.” – Wendell Berry, The Broken Ground Lingering soreness from a long winter hike and tackling a foot of snow with a snowblower that quite halfway through the task, leaving only shovels to overcome mechanical obstinance. Fatigue, not all of it in muscles, wished me a good morning with a…
“When despair for the world grows in meand I wake in the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do…
In the place that is my own place, whose earthI am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.There is no year it has…
“My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into…
“How quietly Ibegin again from this momentlooking at the clock, I start over So much time haspassed, and is equaledby whateversplit-second is present from thismoment this momentis the first”– Wendell Berry, Be Still In Haste Two weeks into the New Year. About as distracting a beginning to a New Year as I can ever recall….