LECTIO POETICA
If you have not read the explanation for Lectio Poetica, I encourage you to read it here before reading Berry’s poem below.
The Wild Geese
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 went west from here, 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.
by Wendell Berry
REFLECTION:
• What word, phrase, image, or sentence from Berry’s poem catches your attention today? Sit quietly for a few moments chewing on it. Then, pray the prayer that comes forth from your meditation. Afterwards, simply sit quietly trusting that what you need is here.
• When you sit still long enough and listen deeply, what is the tree that stands in promise within the marrow of the seed that is you, yearning to reach skyward?
• Life-Line for Prayer: Carry this with you today and this week. Throughout the day, take one minute, close your eyes and pray quietly:
May my heart be quiet, may my eye be clear, what I need is here.
⊕ Gracious Reader, thank you for spending a few moments on THE ALMOND TREE at The Sacred Braid. If you find the site nurturing, please pass word on to others. Gratefully, Dan
* The Season of Creation, running from September 1 to October 4, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, brother to all life forms especially the most vulnerable, is being celebrated more and more as a liturgical season by Christian communities of faith. Perhaps celebrating this season which draws our hearts and minds and eyes to creation when the gulf coast of the United States is under regular threat of being pummeled by hurricanes while the west coast of the U.S. is an inferno, will inspire us to work more diligently to care for the very earth that so generously and hospitably sustains us. Let us play our part in supporting legislation that will install measures to honor the planet, care for the earth and its other-than-human life forms, so our children and their children and their children might live in kinship with all of creation.
🙏🏼