"Sabbath Poem: 2008, XII”, by Wendell Berry

 

2014

My people are destroyed
for lack of knowledge…

Hosea 4:6

We forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
by fantasy, on which we entirely
depend. We depend on fire
that consumes the world without
lighting it. To this dark blaze
driving the inert metal
of our most high desire
we offer our land as fuel,
thus offering ourselves at last
to be burned. This is our riddle
to which the answer is a life
that none of us has lived.

    —Wendell Berry

Small personal shrines

A few days ago I noticed a young woman sitting near the City Farm gardens at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, so today, out of curiosity, I walked where she had been sitting. I am always interested in people's expressions of spirituality, especially personal expressions not associated with any organized religion. Going back millennia people have made little shrines, memorials to dead animals, almost paganistic collections of feathers, shells, broken glass, weathered photographs, holy wells, things hanging from trees, Oak trees, Yew trees, or some other private ritual that is the expression of something important to them. Something that lives on in people's souls despite current events. So, I wasn't surprised to find hidden in some overgrown bushes a vase with a flower in it, several white stones, and a Christmas ornament. What does it mean? We'll never know except that it means something to someone.