Tag Archives: nature

Sabbath Song and Shade

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Image of Redbud tree leaves in prayer garden of First Baptist Church, Richmond, Texas. 

The clearing rests in song and shade.

It is a creature made

By old light held in soil and leaf,

By human joy and grief,

By human work,

Fidelity of sight and stroke,

By rain, by water on

The parent stone.

We join our work to Heaven’s gift,

Our hope to what is left,

That field and woods at last agree

In an economy

Of widest worth.

High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.

Imagine Paradise.

O Dust, arise!

~Wendell Berry, Sabbath Poem VII (1982)

“Roses, Late Summer”

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If I had another life I would want to spend it all on some unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree full of waving branches. I wouldn’t mind being a rose in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition. Reason they have not yet thought of. Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what. Or any other foolish question.

-Mary Oliver, excerpted from “Roses, Late Summer”

 

 

I admire Mary Oliver’s poetry.  These lines, as do so many of hers, tug at my heart with an “oh, yes.”

I read between her lines that for me are describing the desire to be rid of the prickling, thorny, uncomfortable, and sometimes unnecessary things on which we spend ourselves. Oliver chooses a fox, a rose, and a tree – all created by God and lovely, although we are never told those things were created in God’s image.  Only man, with all his questions and fears, is said to be made like Him and for being with Him, not just His creation.  Only we have reason and relationship.  I revel in this life in relationship with my Creator and the family He has given me. I know who answers my foolish questions and calms my fears. I am practicing happiness as I celebrate this moment.  I think Mary Oliver likes what lies between her lines when I read them.

Spanish Moss

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During my morning walks, I see long veils of Spanish Moss draped on the branches of live oaks and bald cypress, but it is not a moss at all. It does not actively harm the trees, but its webs block out light which the trees need, and trees that are heavily adorned with it topple more easily in hurricane force winds. I think of what I allow to occupy my life that “really doesn’t hurt anything” but which causes me loss of growth and makes me more vulnerable to toppling.