—I am trying to teach my mind
to bear the long, slow growth
of the fields, and to sing
of its passing while it waits.
—The farm must be made a form,
endlessly bringing together
heaven and earth, light
and rain building, dissolving,
building back again
the shapes and actions of the ground.
-poem by Wendell Berry, “From the Crest”
What Berry sees in his farm as form, I see in Scripture as form… Holy Scripture is a form in just this way: a fenced-in acreage of words and sentences of many different sorts and kins, but all of them integral to the work that is being done, working in long, steady rhythms in which we, the readers, participate but don’t control. We meditatively enter this world of words and give obedient and glad assent. We submit our lives to this text that is “endlessly bringing together/ heaven and earth…”.
-Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book page 40
