A Wendell Berry poem for this day.
I thought this poem would resonate with many of us.
It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which surely will surprise us, and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction any more than by wishing. But stop dithering. The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it as you care for no other place, this place that you belong to though it is not yours, for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.
Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor, who comes like a heron to fish in the creek, and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing in the trees in the silence of the fisherman and the heron, and the trees that keep the land they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.
This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work. Answer with knowledge of the others who are here and how to be here with them. By this knowledge make the sense you need to make. By it stand in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you. Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it before they had heard a radio. Speak publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.
Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart. Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields. There are songs and sayings that belong to this place, by which it speaks for itself and no other.
Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls freely upon it after the darkness of the nights and the darkness of our ignorance and madness. Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you, which is the light of imagination. By it you see the likeness of people in other places to yourself in your place. It lights invariably the need for care toward other people, other creatures, in other places as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.
No place at last is better than the world. The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue in them. When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.
~ Wendell Berry ~
__._,_.___
Thanks for sending this poem, Seth. Wendell Berry is a treasure. So much wisdom lived and spoken... Ellie Stock elliestock@aol.com Sent from AOL Mobile Mail -----Original Message----- From: Seth Longacre via Dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> To: oe <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net>; dialogue <dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> Sent: Sun, Oct 16, 2016 08:31 PM Subject: [Dialogue] A Wendell Berry poem for this day. <div id="AOLMsgPart_1.2_7e255d57-7e5f-4a95-8bbc-42364a97a511"> <div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="aolReplacedBody">I thought this poem would resonate with many of us.<div><div> <blockquote><div><div id="aolmail_ygrp-mlmsg" style="font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial, helvetica, clean, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: relative;"><div id="aolmail_ygrp-msg" style="line-height: 1.22em; z-index: 1;"><div id="aolmail_ygrp-text" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Georgia;"><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,</font><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">for hope must not depend on feeling good</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">of the future, which surely will surprise us,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Tell them at least what you say to yourself. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Because we have not made our lives to fit</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">then to belong to your place by your own knowledge</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">of what it is that no other place is, and by</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">your caring for it as you care for no other place, this</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">place that you belong to though it is not yours,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">for it was from the beginning and will be to the end. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">in the trees in the silence of the fisherman</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and the heron, and the trees that keep the land</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">when they ask for your land and your work.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Answer with knowledge of the others who are here</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and how to be here with them. By this knowledge</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">make the sense you need to make. By it stand</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Speak to your fellow humans as your place</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">before they had heard a radio. Speak</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">from the pages of books and from your own heart.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Be still and listen to the voices that belong</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">by which it speaks for itself and no other. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">freely upon it after the darkness of the nights</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">and the darkness of our ignorance and madness.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">which is the light of imagination. By it you see</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">the likeness of people in other places to yourself</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">in your place. It lights invariably the need for care</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">toward other people, other creatures, in other places</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">as you would ask them for care toward your place and you. </font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">No place at last is better than the world. The world</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">is no better than its places. Its places at last</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">are no better than their people while their people</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">continue in them. When the people make</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">dark the light within them, the world darkens.</font></div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;"></font> </div><div align="center" style="line-height: 1.22em; font-family: Calibri;"><font size="2" face="Comic Sans MS" style="line-height: 1.22em;">~ Wendell Berry ~</font></div><div style="line-height: 1.22em; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><br class="aolmail_webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div><div style="line-height: 1.22em; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); height: 0px;">__._,_.___</div><div style="line-height: 1.22em; clear: both;"></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div> </div></div> </div> _______________________________________________ Dialogue mailing list <a href="mailto:Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net">Dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net</a> <a href="http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net" target="_blank">http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/dialogue-wedgeblade.net</a> </div>
Thank you for the poem, Seth. Doris Hahn On Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 9:30 PM, Seth Longacre via Dialogue < dialogue@lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:
I thought this poem would resonate with many of us.
It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good and there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality of the future, which surely will surprise us, and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction any more than by wishing. But stop dithering. The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded, the streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope then to belong to your place by your own knowledge of what it is that no other place is, and by your caring for it as you care for no other place, this place that you belong to though it is not yours, for it was from the beginning and will be to the end.
Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor, who comes like a heron to fish in the creek, and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing in the trees in the silence of the fisherman and the heron, and the trees that keep the land they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.
This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work. Answer with knowledge of the others who are here and how to be here with them. By this knowledge make the sense you need to make. By it stand in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you. Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it before they had heard a radio. Speak publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.
Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up from the pages of books and from your own heart. Be still and listen to the voices that belong to the streambanks and the trees and the open fields. There are songs and sayings that belong to this place, by which it speaks for itself and no other.
Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls freely upon it after the darkness of the nights and the darkness of our ignorance and madness. Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you, which is the light of imagination. By it you see the likeness of people in other places to yourself in your place. It lights invariably the need for care toward other people, other creatures, in other places as you would ask them for care toward your place and you.
No place at last is better than the world. The world is no better than its places. Its places at last are no better than their people while their people continue in them. When the people make dark the light within them, the world darkens.
~ Wendell Berry ~
__._,_.___
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participants (3)
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Doris Hahn via Dialogue -
Ellie Stock via Dialogue
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Seth Longacre via Dialogue