I first read the poetry of Wendell Berry over fifteen years ago, during a time when I was receiving treatment for depression. The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (1998) sat for over a year on my bedside table, dipped into on most days. The poems quietly, gently, slowly over that year aided a recovery of the habits and rhythms, pastimes and routines which bring coherence and provide a basis for gratitude. The words of Wendell Berry are, for me, meditations on the words of the hymn: "let our ordered lives confess the beauty of Thy peace".
The years went by. The collections of Wendell Berry poems on my bookshelves increased. Sunday afternoons and evenings have become my favourite times for reading Berry - appropriate, I think, for a poet whose words, over decades, have been shaped by "the idea of the sabbath" (see the introduction to This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, 2013).
As I have said, I have no expertise in poetry. And I am certainly no Wendell Berry expert. This post, then, will offer no insights into Berry or his work. It merely seeks to record my gratitude for the poetry of Wendell Berry and something of my experience of reading his poetry.
The Wendell Berry psalms
On the 27th evening of each month, I think of Wendell Berry. Amongst the psalms appointed for Evening Prayer are Psalms 127 and 128. I refer to them as the 'Wendell Berry psalms'. The psalmist talks of labour, rest, marriage, children, blessing, peace - the stuff of many a Wendell Berry poem. I am tempted, indeed, to think of those poems as reflections on Psalms 127 and 128.
When the psalmist, then, says "Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine : upon the wall of thy house", my thoughts turn to 'The Country of Marriage':
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
When the psalmist says "for so he giveth his beloved sleep", I think of Sabbaths 1990, V:
Sleep is the prayer the body prays,
Breathing in unthought faith the Breath
That through our worry-wearied days
Preserves our rest, and is our truth.
When the psalmist says "For thou shalt eat the labours of thine hands : O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be", I think of 'Like Snow':
Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.
Wendell Berry, like the psalmist who wrote Psalms 127 and 128, turns us to the ordinary routines of labour, domesticity, and rest, and there sees grace and blessing. This is suggestive, I think, of a particular theological vision. Berry's poems meditating on the ordinary might be compared to Andrew Graham-Dixon's superb interpretation of Vermeer's paintings of ordinary, daily scenes: both point to a theological vision that beholds and rejoices in the grace of the ordinary.
Ordinary things and the divine
No, a mystical experience would be wasted on me. Ordinary things have always seemed numinous to me. One Calvinist notion deeply implanted in me is that there are two sides to your encounter with the world. You don’t simply perceive something that is statically present, but in fact there is a visionary quality to all experience. It means something because it is addressed to you ...You can draw from perception the same way a mystic would draw from a vision.
No less than with Robinson, Berry's vision has no need for mystical experiences, shrines, or icons. Consider 'Again the air is full':
Again the air is full
of falling: the fall of the leaves
in the weighty season that bring
all home again to the lowly
miracle from which they came ...
The year is the showing forth
of the heavenly love that is
the being of the present world.
The leaves, opening and at last
falling, hold a while
the beauty of God who made them
by the work and care of Nature,
His vicar and our mother.
His only is the light
of which all things are made,
the beauty that they are,
the delight that is our prayer.
This is also seen in 'The Wild Geese', particularly in its closing lines:
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
Words from a sermon by William Paley come to mind, words of which, I think, Berry might have approved:
We shall pray much in secret. We shall address ourselves to God of our own accord, in our walks, our closet, our bed. Form, in these addresses, will be nothing. Every thing will come from the heart.
Read in such a manner, Berry, like Robinson, can be seen as embodying something of the character of a mainline Protestant piety: knowing and grateful for the sanctity of the ordinary, that 'what we need is here'; quiet, never overbearing; modest, not loud; generous, not sectarian; gracious because of grace. This is the piety I received from my parents, the piety I see in those amongst whom I worship and minister. As for mystical experiences, shrines, or icons, there is no need. Instead, look around daily life with Berry. And give thanks.
... so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass ('The Wish to be Generous').
The grace of rhythms
The poems of Wendell Berry have nurtured in me a joyful gratitude for rhythms, rhythms marked in my life by the Book of Common Prayer.
Each morning, "who hast brought us safely to this day":
But this morning I came
again at first light. The river
had cleared. It lay still from bend
to bend. The night birds were passing
homeward ahead of the day. An owl
trilled once, and then a wren woke
and sang. The herons stalked
soundlessly the dusky shadows. Quietly,
quietly, the river received
the forgiveness of the new dawn (Sabbaths 2002, IX).
Each evening, "may pass our time in rest and quietness":
The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.
I have climbed up to water the horses
and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,
letting the day gather and pass ('In this World').
Each Harvest Thanksgiving, "we yield thee hearty thanks that thou hast safely brought us to the season of harvest":
The calling of a crow sounds
loud—a landmark—now
that the life of summer falls
silent, and the nights grow ('October 10')
Each Christmas, "born as at this time for us":
Remembering that it happened once,
We cannot turn away the thought,
As we go out, cold, to our barns
Toward the long night’s end, that we
Ourselves are living in the world
It happened in when it first happened ... (Sabbaths 1987, VI).
At each graveside, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live":
The old, whose bodies encrust their lives,
Die, and that is well.
They unhinder what has struggled in them ...
The young, who have looked on dying,
Turn back to the world, grown strangely
Alert to each other’s bodies. ('The Burial of the Old').
How to do religion
I turn again to Marilynne Robinson to aid my understanding of Wendell Berry:
My point is that lacking the terms of religion, essential things cannot be said.
As Berry put it:
They believe they've understood
belief in "the transcendent"
by disbelieving.
Some mental feats remain
impossible even to the best
of human minds (Sabbaths 2015, V).
Berry's poetry demonstrates how "the terms of religion" allow us to recognise grace and offer gratitude in the midst of this earthly life. He does so not through intense, loud confessional claims, but with a simple, quiet recognition of "the fulness of him that filleth all in all":
The incarnate Word is with us,
is still speaking, is present
always, yet leaves no sign
but everything that is (Sabbaths 1999, IX).
We glimpse this fulness now. We fully enter into this fulness - of which Berry says in Sabbath 2008, II, "And so we come, whichever way we turn, to plentitude" - in the life everlasting.
Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always (Sabbaths 2005, XIII).
For now, I end with the concluding verses of 'Remembering My Father'.
He said his father’s saying.
We were standing on the hill
To watch the cattle grazing
As the gray evening fell.
“Look. See that this is good,
And then you won’t forget.”
I saw it as he said,
And I have not forgot.
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