Unmaking makes the world

I feel the need to rest, so I turn to one who is better at resting - and writing- than I, and share with you a poem by Wendell Berry. I feel as though I have been in this place (in the poem), and hope to return again some Sabbath soon.

The year relents, and free
Of work, I climb again
To where the old trees wait,
Time out of mind. I hear
Traffic down on the road,
engines high overhead.
And then a quiet comes,
A cleft in time, silence
Of metal moved by fire;
the air holds little voices,
Titmice and chickadees,
Feeding through the treetops
Among the new small leaves,
calling again to mind
The grace of circumstance,
Sabbath economy
In which all thought is song,
All labor is a dance.
The world is made at rest,
In ease of gravity.
I hear the ancient theme
In low world-shaping song
Sung by the falling stream.
here where a rotting log
Has slowed the flow: a shelf
Of dark soil, level laid
Above the bumbled stone.
Roots fasten it in place.It will be here a while;
What holds it here decays.
A richness from above,
Brought down, is held, and holds
A little while in flow.
Stem and leaf grow from it.
At cost of death, it has
A life. Thus falling founds,
Unmaking makes the world.

Enforced Sabbaths

Leviticus 25-26. God gives the people he has redeemed the gift of his laws, accompanied by rich promises of blessing. Included in these laws is the institution of the Sabbath, and the Sabbath year.

After the blessings of obedience come the punishments of disobedience. Notable in these is the 'enforced' sabbath of the land:

Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it. (Lev. 26:34-35)

I wonder how often this happens in our own lives: we push and push and refuse to rest in God (and even to rest literally!), and then, by physical limitation or circumstance, are forced to rest. This may work in the life of a student, when breaks punctuate the relentless pace of the semester, but is it really the way we are meant to live? What does it mean for our spiritual life?

"comprehended by what it cannot comprehend."

So it has happened. I forgot to post on Sunday evening. The thought crossed my mind once, but it then kept going and didn't come back until Monday night, well after my electricity and magnetism exam was over.

This week I have come to this conclusion about advent: it is celebrated in community, and not isolation. The people of Israel waited together for hundreds of years. We, the church local and global, wait together.

I started reading Wendell Berry this week (thanks to my writer-sister for lending me the book!) , and thought I'd share one of his Sabbath Poems. The second to last stanza really struck me.

Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path

Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and disappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves

In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection

Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun

Is unfinished. And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells,

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed y us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.