The Seed is in the Ground

The seed is in the ground.
Now may we rest in hope
While darkness does its work.

-Wendell Berry

A poem for when your losses press hard

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose,
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go–
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to His work.

by Wendell Berry, emphasis mine.

Calvary, Andrea Montegna

What punishment so strange is suffered yonder!
The Shepherd dies for sheep that loved to wander;
The Master pays the debt His servants owe Him,
Who would not know Him.

The sinless Son of God must die in sadness;
The sinful child of man may live in gladness;
Man forfeited his life and is acquitted;
God is committed.

O wondrous love, whose depth no heart hath sounded,
That brought Thee here, by foes and thieves surrounded!
All worldly pleasures, heedless, I was trying
While Thou wert dying.

For vainly doth our human wisdom ponder—-
Thy woes, Thy mercy, still transcend our wonder.
Oh, how should I do aught that could delight Thee!
Can I requite Thee?

But since my strength will nevermore suffice me
To crucify desires that still entice me,
To all good deeds, oh, let Thy Spirit win me
And reign within me!

O Dearest Jesus, What Law Hast Thou Broken, sel. verses, Johann Heermann, Catherine Winkworth, trans.

Meditations on home

When I left for college, a friend's mother gave me a pair of green socks that showed a lovely house sitting on hill amid trees and blooming flowers.  Above the house was written, "Home is where your Mom is." (Note this is a direct quote.  I know better than to capitalize "mom" in that statement.) I marveled at the truth of the statement during that time in my life.  I was no stranger to moving, and never could quite find a satisfactory answer to the question, "So, where are you from?"  Here, stitched into a pair of socks, was the permission I needed to finally call our Western Nebraska town "Home."  Yet, lurking in the back of my mind was the understanding that, being a pastor's wife, my mother could be whisked away from our little town and relocated miles from any place I had ever called home.  Would that, then, be considered my home?  The socks pleaded with me, "Yes! For that's where your Mom is!"  A doubt lingered.

Eventually, I married, and found a new definition for home: the place where your husband is.  In our four years, we've called four different towns in four different states "home,"  and we're planning to move again this summer.  Should things go our way, we'll be moving closer to home, i.e. family.  Our rhythm of packing and unpacking has grown wearisome, and I'm revisiting my old doubts of being able to call our place home when we are so far from our families.

A few weeks ago, I attended my grandmother's burial.   My father drove her body from Western Nebraska, where she lived the last two decades of her life, to central Missouri, her home.  She was buried next to her husband on the farm they had owned, near the house they built, outside of the town where they were raised.  Walking through the town, I could point to the house where my great-grandmother had lived, the cement slab where our family name was carved into the sidewalk, the site of the old cookie factory, where I'm told, my grandfather would pick up bags of the broken cookies to take home.  Sharing these memories with my family, I realized a familiar sensation growing in my mind.  In many ways, this too, felt like home, though I had never lived there myself.  I wondered again where my home was, and if I would ever find it.

 I realize I'm not the only person who struggles with this.  After all, I know my own family is scattered across the country- Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, Texas, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa. Moving away from home has become the goal of childhood, and those who dream of returning are regarded as unambitious sissies, and therefore deemed worthless.  I have to imagine that only a few of us who have followed this model are truly satisfied with their homes; that something inside each of us yearns for a single place where all of our memories meet our futures, where our children will grow and stay, and sit with us late into the evenings to hear our stories and the stories of our ancestors.  Unless we start acting on that, I fear many of us will come to the end of our travels, and say with The Vagabond,

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?
Hunger my driver, I go where I must.
Cold blows the winter wind over hill and heather;
Thick drives the rain, and my roof is in the dust.
Loved of wise men was the shade of my roof-tree.
The true word of welcome was spoken in the door --
Dear days of old, with the faces in the firelight,
Kind folks of old, you come again no more.

Home was home then, my dear, full of kindly faces,
Home was home then, my dear, happy for the child.
Fire and the windows bright glittered on the moorland;
Song, tuneful song, built a palace in the wild.
Now, when day dawns on the brow of the moorland,
Lone stands the house, and the chimney-stone is cold.
Lone let it stand, now the friends are all departed,
The kind hearts, the true hearts, that loved the place of old.

Spring shall come, come again, calling up the moorfowl,
Spring shall bring the sun and rain, bring the bees and 
flowers;
Red shall the heather bloom over hill and valley,
Soft flow the stream through the even-flowing hours;
Fair the day shine as it shone on my childhood --
Fair shine the day on the house with open door;
Birds come and cry there and twitter in the chimney --
But I go for ever and come again no more.

  -Robert Louis Stevenson, "Home No More Home To Me, Wither Must I Wander?"