Practice Resurrection

This week's lectionary readings reminded me of one of my favorite poems, Wendell Berry's The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. Berry begins by describing how we live when we function out of our fear and anxiety rather than embracing God's promise that our needs are known and will be provided for and realized as we strive first for God's justice, peace, and joy.

Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die.
When they want you to buy something they will call you.

Berry spends the rest of the poem outlining how we might try to not worry about our life.

So, friends, every day do something that won't compute.
Love the Lord. Love the world.
Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it.

The reading from Isaiah describes how God cares for us even more than a mother for her child, asking:
Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Berry echoes:

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?

In the final stanza, the poet suggests that we might be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.
Berry concludes by naming what it would mean for us to live out of hope rather than fear:

Practice resurrection.

Amen. Read the whole poem here.

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, April is National Poetry month.

In honor of National Poetry Month, here's my very first favorite poem, thanks to Ms. Hamilton, my 7th grade English teacher. In 8th grade, I won some sort of poetry prize. All I remember is that one poem was about war, the other about chewing gum. Who knows.

The opening lines from the Dickinson poem:

Tis so much joy! 'Tis so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I,
Have ventured all upon a throw!
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so --
This side the Victory!

Visiting the Emily Dickinson home during the UMass Episcopal Youth Event ('93? Geez, I'm old) was awesome. Also, Ms. Hamilton's husband, Ed, is a well-known sculptor and the cathedral is home to the processional cross he made for Bishop Gulick's ordination.

Paying Attention

Kathy Grieb preached at our diocesan convention. She quoted one of my favorite poems from Mary Oliver, The Summer Day. An excerpt here:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.

[Update 3/2]: She must've been trying out Psalm 23.

Billy Collins on the moon

Riding the lunar eclipse made me want to paint or write poems or produce some other form of proclamation thanking god for the extraordinary creation in which we live. Since this is as close I get to that when not preaching, I turned to Billy Collins:

Moon
Invention
Man in the Moon

and from his haiku chapbook She Was Just Seventeen:
Moon in the window—
the same as it was before
there was a window.