Contemporaneity, in the sense of being “up with the times,” is of no value. Wakefulness to experience — as well as to instruction and example — is another matter. But what we call the modern world is not necessarily, and not often, the real world, and there is no virtue in being up-to-date with it. It is a false world, based upon economics and values and desires that are fantastical — a world in which millions of people have lost any idea of the materials, the disciplines, the restraints, and the work necessary to support human life, and have thus become dangerous to their own lives and to the possibility of life. The job now is to get back to the perennial and substantial world in which we really do live, in which the foundations of our life will be visible to us, and in which we can accept our responsibilities again within the conditions of necessity and mystery. In that world all wakeful and responsible people, dead, living, and unborn, are contemporaries. And that is the only contemporaneity worth having.
Wendell Berry, “The Specialization of Poetry,” in Standing by Words: Essays
Elegy in a Country Churchyard
The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And bees and birds of England
About the cross can roam.
But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.
And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England,
They have no graves as yet.
- G.K. Chesterton
(Hat tip: Destination: Order)
Let nothing disturb thee;
Let nothing dismay thee;
All thing pass;
God never changes
Patience attains
All that it strives for.
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing:
God alone suffices.
– St. Teresa of Avila.
From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 by Wendell Berry:
1979: II
Another Sunday morning comes
And I resume the standing Sabbath
Of the woods, where the finest blooms
Of time return, and where no path
Is worn but wears its makers out
At last, and dissappears in leaves
Of fallen seasons. The tracked rut
Fills and levels; here nothing grieves
In the risen season. Past life
Lives in the living. Resurrection
Is in the way each maple leaf
Commemorates its kind, by connection
Outreaching understanding. What rises
Rises into comprehension
And beyond. Even falling raises
In praise of light. What is begun
Is unfinished. 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.
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.
From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 by Wendell Berry:
1997: I
Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet.
G. K. Chesterton: By the Babe Unborn
"By the Babe Unborn"
by G.K. Chesterton
If trees were tall and grasses short, As in some crazy tale, If here and there a sea were blue Beyond the breaking pale,
If a fixed fire hung in the air To warm me one day through, If deep green hair grew on great hills, I know what I should do.
In dark I lie; dreaming that there Are great eyes cold or kind, And twisted streets and silent doors, And living men behind.
Let storm clouds come: better an hour, And leave to weep and fight, Than all the ages I have ruled The empires of the night.
I think that if they gave me leave Within the world to stand, I would be good through all the day I spent in fairyland.
They should not hear a word from me Of selfishness or scorn, If only I could find the door, If only I were born.
A Ballade Of An Anti-puritan
They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward–
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored–
I rose politely in the club
And said, `I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?’
The new world’s wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can’t afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub–
I want a mash and sausage, `scored’–
Will someone take me to a pub?
I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God’s last word–
Will someone take me to a pub?
Envoi
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub–
Is that the last of them–O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?
This is one reason why I love G. K. Chesterton.
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