Wednesday, September 4, 2013

The mind incarnate they cannot confine

I know I've been a bit Wendell Berry-poetry-heavy of late...but its just so good.  One more, for good measure:

After the slavery of the body, dumbfoundment 
of the living flesh in the order of spending 
and wasting, then comes the enslavement 
of consciousness, the incarnation of mind 
in machines.  Once the mind is reduced
to the brain, then it falls within the grasp 
of the machine.  It is the mind incarnate 
in the body, in community, and in the earth 
that they cannot confine.  The difference 
is love;  the difference is grief and joy. 
Remember the body's pleasure and its sorrow.
Remember its grief at the loss of all it knew.
Remember its redemption in suffering 
and in love.  Remember its resurrection 
on the last day, when all made things 
that have not refused this passage 
will return, clarified, each fully being 
in the being of all.  Remember the small 
secret creases of the earth--the grassy, 
the wooded, and the rocky--that the water 
has made, finding its way.  Remember 
the voices of the water flowing.  Remember 
the water flowing under the shadows
of the trees, of the tall grasses, of the stones.  
Remember the water striders walking over 
the surface of the water as it flowed.  
Remember the great sphere of the small 
wren's song, through which the water flowed 
and the light fell.  Remember, and come to rest 
in light's ordinary miracle.  

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 118.

Let us look in anticipation for that last day--that day of return, clarity, and fullness of being. 

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