What We Need is Here—Wendell Berry
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 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.
Hand me a shard and I will scrape away this grief. Place my hands in the wounds of Jesus’ side and let me know true pain. Lift my eyes to see the splintered wood of the cross so that I might understand sacrifice. Open my ears to the screams emanating from dark corners of the earth, so that I might hear truth. Am I Job? Am I Jesus? Am I forsaken?
No. No. No.
In the midst of sadness, joy comes in the mourning. That’s what I wrote last week. The line is from Psalm 30—but I have changed the word ‘morning’ into ‘mourning’. It resonates with me that through grief we are able to claim joy, just like through death Christ was able to claim life. It isn’t on the highest peaks of faith that we ‘find’ ourselves, but rather the valleys, below. Many of our friends and family are suffering silently, agonizing over illness, grief, despair, or loneliness—or all of the above. Yet we have something that quite a few do not. We have faith. In times such as these, faith is the last remaining vestige of sanity lost—the quiet current of insoluble grace flowing through our veins which ties us to Jesus Christ. In his blood, we find our own. In his body broken, we find our wholeness. In his act of triumphant defiance, we rise.
We rise.
We rise above grief and allow the dawn from on high to break upon us. We rise from ashes of burning lives—lives lived in a hurry to get things done, to complete the next task, to be better human-doings--to become loved human-beings. We rise and take account of that which has been provided for us. We must take refuge in the glory of God; listening rather than asking; accepting rather than forcing. Because what we need is here. There is a holy table upon which we place our hopes, our dreams, our created wares. There is a holy font with living water which can humidify our arid souls and soothe our parched begging voices. There is a table from which to feed, a pew upon which to rest, a fountain from which to drink, and a great cloud of witnesses from whom to glean strength. What we need is here.
In the joy of the third week, the joy of Advent, we rise. We lift our faces over the manger in hopeful anticipation of seeing new life. We rise to worship, we rise to work, we rise to realize that we rise together. We rise to meet the face of new creation, the incarnate Word of God. We rise to thank God for the realization that what we need is here.
We rise.
Fr. Sean+