my place

There is no end to work -
Work done in pleasure, grief,
Or weariness, with ease
Of skill and timeliness,
Or awkwardly or wrong,
Too hurried or too slow.
One job completed shows
Another to be done.
And so you make the farm
That must be daily made
And yearly made, or it
Will not exist. If you
Should go and not return
And none should follow you,
This clarity would be
As it never was.
But praise, in knowing this,
The Genius of the place,
Whose way forgives your own,
And will resume again
In time, if left alone.
You work always in this
Dear opening between
What was and is to be.
{Wendell Berry from The Farm}

This is a excerpt from Wendell Berry's 38 page poem/love letter/instructional manual on farming. Andrew Peterson gave it to my husband and me for Christmas two years ago, and just this morning I sat down with a cup of coffee by an open window and read it. I lingered on the words {which I am often want to do}. As always, Berry's descriptions of {his home state of Kentucky's} landscape and farming transport me to my grandparents' farm in North Carolina.

{a piece of my grandparents' farm}

This particular passage leapt out at me. Recently I have had some in-depth discussions with wonderfully brilliant writers about pursuing the glimpses of beauty {as in the Garden of Eden and the new Heaven and new Earth} that we see in our everyday lives. One poem we read referred to those moments as "glimpses", another as "wormholes."

Are we to receive those glimpses with gratitude and move on? Or do we follow those glimpses, knowing that while nothing is truly perfect here, it is not in vain to hope for {and work towards} a more beautiful stay while we're here?

This passage is a beautiful picture of our both small AND significant roles on this earth {and our relationship with this earth}. We have important work to do. But it is within God's greater work. We are just in "this dear opening between what was and is to be."