According to Christianity Today, Berry “attended Port Royal Baptist Church in his small town of fewer than 100 people. He joked about his erratic Sunday morning attendance, labeling himself a ‘marginal’ or ‘forest’ Christian who preferred to wander into the woods in nice weather than to plant himself in the pews.” This description corresponds with the poems he wrote known as “Sabbaths” primarily written from his meditative Sunday morning walks.
In one of them, from his recent book Another Day he says:
----"On the morning of the first day
----the old shepherd comes early
-------------------…It is the morning
----also of the resurrection of Christ,
----the lamb of God, His people’s shepherd…"
In one interview he said, “I still consider myself a person who takes the gospels very seriously. And I read in them and am sometimes shamed by them and sometimes utterly baffled by them.”
The following is a Wendell Berry poem I included a decade ago in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry.
The Wish to Be Generous
All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, 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.
*This is the fifth Kingdom Poets post about Wendell Berry: first post, second post, third post, fourth post.
Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of six poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), plus three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is now available from Paraclete Press.
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