Wendell Berry's Sabbath Day

Wendell Berry, in his collection of Sabbath poems, The Timbered Choir, speaks of failure and the deep weariness it produces as a kind of prelude to grace. Here is a portion of one story that he tells.

The bell calls in the town
Where forebears cleared the shaded land
And brought high daylight down
To shine on field and trodden road.
I hear, but understand
Contrarily, and walk into the woods.
I leave labor and load,
Take up a different story.
I keep an inventory
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods.

I climb up through the field
That my long labor has kept clear.
Projects, plans unfulfilled
Waylay and snatch at me like briars,
For there is no rest here
Where ceaseless effort seems to be required,
Yet fails, and spirit tires
With flesh, because failure
And weariness are sure
In all that mortal wishing has inspired.

I want to repeat that last bit: failure and weariness are sure in all that mortal wishing inspires. And so Mr. Berry’s Sabbath journey is to the wilderness rather than to church—and it is true that sometimes there is an abundance of mortal wishing in what is said at church. A little further on, the same thought returns.

I leave work’s daily rule
And come here to this restful place
Where music stirs the pool
And from high stations of the air
Fall notes of wordless grace,
Strewn remnants of the primal Sabbath’s hymn.
And I remember here
A tale of evil twined
With good, serpent and vine,
And innocence as evil’s stratagem.

I let that go a while,
For it is hopeless to correct
By generations’ toil,
And I let go my hopes and plans
That no toil can perfect.
There is no vision here but what is seen:
White bloom nothing explains
But a mute blessedness
Exceeding all distress,
The fresh light stained a hundred shades of green.

There is more to this beautiful poem than I extract and emphasize here, but I would like us to appreciate the connection that Mr. Berry makes between the Sabbath day and mortal failure. I am not as convinced as the poet seems to be that the flight into wilderness is so dissimilar to his neighbors' gathering to the village church—not so different as to be thought of as contrary. What the soul seeks in either direction is a sense of the holy. Both seek a Sabbath rest from the inevitable failure of human toil—toil that intellectually manifests itself in explanations. There is a part of us that will relish explanations—and so the homily and the sermon—but that is not what the soul is hungry for.

In another of his Sabbath poems, we find this:

…………… And so the mind
That comes to rest among the bluebells
Comes to rest in motion, refined
By alteration. The bud swells

Opens, makes seed, falls, is well.
Being, becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is
Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not dimmed by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

(Italics, mine.)

This is why meditative silence—a rest from all our explanations—is as essential to the Christian meeting that Mr. Berry avoids as it is to his own experience of wilderness. Such silence makes room for the holiness of Divine presence—as an indication of our deep faith rather than as evidence of its articles and creeds. What explains does not sustain. Next week, I would like for us to consider what this silence might be like, should we find it in our meetings.

For now, this last poem concludes with a verse that reflects upon the indivisibility of true Sabbath and this silent rest.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.