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Our Practice this Lent

Scroll down to find links to the poems.

This Lent, we will share a common practice guided by Wendell Berry and the Sabbath Poetry of Lent, a booklet of scripture, poetry, reflection, and daily practices to move us through this rich season. We will use it to pray and practice at home on our own and, for those who want to, come together as a community to reflect on how the Spirit is guiding us through this practice. 

We will meet every Friday in March at 6:30 p.m. in Springwater Studio to drink tea, talk, and listen for the Spirit in one another. That's March 6, 13, 20 & 27.

The booklets are available in the Narthex on Sundays or in the church office during the week during office hours. You don't have to be part of the group to participate. Feel free to take a booklet and practice on your own. 

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The Poems

From Wendell Berry's This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems

You can buy the book at Powell's downtown and Hawthorne locations, on the Powell's website, or on bookshop.org.

ASH WEDNESDAY:

I would not have been a poet…154

By its own logic greed….328 (scroll down to poem in English)

I dream of a quiet man….196

FIRST SUNDAY of LENT: 

I go among trees and sit still…. 7

A young man leaving home….249

The bell calls in the town…11

SECOND SUNDAY of LENT:

Again I resume the long….201

Learn by little the desire for all things….312

Eternity is not infinity…274

THIRD SUNDAY of LENT:

How long does it take to make the woods?...67

Here where the world is being made….33

The difference is a polished….202

FOURTH SUNDAY of LENT:

Remembering that it happened once….80

Coming to the woods’ edge….73

Six days of work are spent….29 (scroll down to the second poem)

The frog with lichened back and golden thigh…..28

FIFTH SUNDAY of LENT:

What hard travail God does in death…25

Life forgives its depredations…68

And now the lowland grove is down, the trees…77

PALM SUNDAY:

Slowly, slowly, they return…71

It’s Spring. The birds sing….379

Off in the woods in the quiet….367

MAUNDY THURSDAY:

Since, despite the stern demands….383

Though his tenure on this earth….377 (two pages)

GOOD FRIDAY:

It is the destruction of the world…82

Hate has no world…144

In early morning we awaken from….87

EASTER:

Early in the year by my friend’s gift….329

After windstorm and ice storm….331

Again we come….131

The little stream sings….241

The politics of illusion, of death’s money… 242

Raking hay on a rough slope….152

The clearing rests in song and shade…44

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