The Gospel According to Wendell Berry

On the eve of Sabbath, here's a poem by tobacco farmer Wendell Berry:

Who makes a clearing makes a work of art,
The true world's Sabbath trees in festival
Around it. And the stepping stream, a part
Of Sabbath also, flows past, by its fall
Made musical, making the hillslope by
Its fall, and still at rest in falling, song
Rising. The field is made by hand and eye,
By daily work, by hope outreaching wrong,
And yet the Sabbath, parted, still must stay
In the dark mazings of the soil no hand
May light, the great Life, broken, make its way
Along the stemmy footholds of the ant.
Bewildered in our timely dwelling place,
Where we arrive by work, we stay by grace.
(A Timbered Choir, page 59)

Mr. Berry has a habit of writing poems each Sabbath, many of which are collected in this wonderful book. As somebody once told me, the great benefit of poetry is that it slows down the words until we can hear them.

Works for me. How about you?